Picture of Web Currencies: Facebook Imposes 30% Tax on Credits [source:excitingcommerce.com]

It is still speculation, but the indication is that Facebook is trying to establish a transnational web currency which could someday become the currency standard for the Web.

Although in the official announcement it seems all quite virtual, clearly Facebook wants to earn real money and has last summer executed some tests with purchases of real physical goods.

If Facebook makes headway, significant resistance against a parallel world currency could be expected.

Since 2007 Facebook has extended its American investor circle increasingly with investors from China and Russia, thereby ensuring that the most important global economies are represented.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of The Polyvore Founders Give Way To Professional CEO [source:excitingcommerce.com]

And it isnt as if they arent making enough efforts:

“A very high-profile hire for fashion site Polyvore.

The startup, which lets users mix and match products from any online store and then share their creations with others, has added Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, who formerly led Googles operations in Asia-Pacific and Latin America, as CEO.

Singh Cassidy had left Google in April in order to become CEO-in-residence at Accel Partners, saying that she was ready to take the next step and run or grow my own company. “

Polyvore has recently celebrated their third anniversary and had received a financing round of $5.6 million last August from Matrix Partners and Benchmark Capital.

Almost all social shopping sites of the first generation are finding it difficult to meet investors high expectations and are at the moment in the process of rethinking their strategies.

And although it repeatedly seems to make sense to bring in an outside CEO to professionalize the company, there is also substantial risk that the startup can lose their spirit in the process.

At least with Etsy, one of the founders was asked to come back and plans now to make innovative changes.

Social Shopping Strategies: ThisNext, Stylehive, Stylefeeder, Kaboodle, Etsy Polyvore Raises $5.6 Million in Second Round, Fashion Playtes $1.5 Million Social Commerce: Etsy Returning To Its Roots

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Hollrr: The Perfect Look & Feel For A Twitter For Shopping [source:excitingcommerce.com]

Hollrr started up last spring and has recently introduced a whole row of innovations:

“Founder and CEO David Hegarty says that most social recommendation sites dont really consider why people are motivated to share a product or a service with their friends.

Hollrrs theory is that theres a certain kind of person that really likes to recommend things to their friends.

Hollrrs initial goal is to attract these users, allowing them to share their recommendations directly with friends through services like Facebook. And to help keep them interested, theyre focusing on building out a badge system thats similar to Foursquares.”

With their playful approach, their emotion filled user communication as well as their overall system, Hollrr has everything that you could wish for in such a business model.

Particularly splendid is the product site with the real time recommendations, a perfect source of inspiration outside of the livestreams on the start page.

More of these kinds of concepts would be very welcome to see! Perhaps then we would be able to move the social shopping industry further.

Hollrr comes from the Dogpatch Labs, the incubator from Polaris Venture Partners, which also recently brought the Groupon clone Scoop St. online.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of TheBakery: How Intershop intends to revolutionize the retail industry [source:excitingcommerce.com]

And of all things, Intershop may become the driving force in this matter as an important catalyst for next generation trading. In February 2009 and largely unnoticed by the public Intershop invested in a majority share of TheBakery, which is a German start-up company with disruptive potential.

TheBakery aims high at breaking up traditional distribution structures and extensively establishing a virtual distribution of goods to allow for a wealth of innovative co-operation and distribution models.

“In the future, our standard solutions will allow for virtually incorporating the product lines of suppliers or third-party vendors into the range of products offered in an online shop and selling them in addition to own products.

There will be no constraints, since an unlimited number of suppliers can be integrated into an unlimited number of platforms. Of course, the data transfer will work automatically in all directions via standard interfaces.” states Henry Goettler, Member of the Board of Management.”

Behind TheBakery is a part of the former Product + Concept-team, who for example developed and operated the virtual Quelle Market platform for the Quelle company. Despite a promising future, the Quelle Market platform was shut down almost one year ago, because a purchase price couldnt be agreed upon during P+Cs insolvency.

Now at the best time TheBakery puts a vendor-independent solution on the market, meeting many exciting commerce demands for contemporary retail and distribution structures:

Flexible connection of different manufacturers and suppliers with vendor-specific assortments. Standardized shopping basket by integrating the entire assortment into existing shopping-systems (shop or portal) Although powered by Intershop, TheBakery can be connected to any existing shopping-system.

During the past years many retailing sites have been struggling with proprietary sales platforms from Ebay Express to Electronicscout24 and even Neckermann, Otto and Quelle.

If this concept works, TheBakery will bring drop shipment to a new level and plenty of “Quelle Markets” and other virtual sales systems will spring up like mushrooms in the near future. Even comparison engines and social shopping sites may use TheBakery to sell products all by themselves without difficulty.

We will be keeping an eye on this development with great interest. At first a well known electronic group is said to go live with TheBakery already within this year. [source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Magento Strategies: Seeking Crowdsourcing Extensions [source:excitingcommerce.com]

Until now, the t-shirt industry has been leading in this area, with Threadless, Uneetee, and Shirt.Woot! as prime examples. Indeed, Naked & Angry show in particular very well how different product groups can suit the crowdsourcing model.

Also Spoonflower demonstrates the creative potential that exists in this still largely untapped e-commerce field.

The market for open innovation is growing – and some of the most exciting developments in this area are the innovative components which are increasingly becoming inherent to the sales model. Crowdsourcing, with its playful competitive effects, grants some of the best opportunities to test this field.

Traditional shop systems have not implemented such business models and in turn, the innovation drivers in this field have needed to develop everything on their own. It would be very interesting now to see some Magento extensions which would help other merchants to access this model and allow them to more closely engage their users.

Tips on such crowdsourcing modules would be highly appreciated at crowdsourcing@excitingcommerce.de.

Magento Matters: Social Shopping with Facebook and Magento Magento Introduces Module for Private Sales Events New Study: The Market for Open Innovation

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Optimizing for Operating Systems: Why Should You Care? [source:getelastic.com]

But this data has great application for software and technology vendors who sell products that have operating system requirements. This includes cameras, printers and other computer accessories. Operating system detection can be used in targeted selling strategies to improve the personalization of product merchandising, offers and other messaging.

One way Ive seen this in practice is on the PC Tools website. When I visit from my Mac, I see the following:

PC Tools now offers iAntiVirus, a free antivirus product for Mac OS X. Please click below to learn more.

This is brilliant. It uses operating system detection to trigger the message, but gives me the option to decline and save my settings. This is important, since sometimes people shop on different machines than the ones they use most often (think of employees shopping on their lunch break or during conference calls). A shopper may also be buying a gift or purchasing on behalf of the business.

If I express that I am looking for Mac security software on the PC Tools website, I am taken to a special landing page. If the product catalog were different (more variety of Mac software items) I may have been directed to a Mac category, microsite or simply been merchandised Mac products only (filtered catalog).

Without device detection, technology manufacturers and resellers can still provide better tools for customers to hone in on the products compatible with their existing hardware. One way is product selectors (wizards) that ask a series of questions. Another way is better product filters. For example, Samsung could add Operating System to its existing (and very helpful) filtered navigation menu:

I checked all the major electronics sellers (think Best Buy, Radio Shack, Tiger Direct, Crutchfield and Amazon) and a few electronics manufacturers and could not find one example of category filters that included operating system.

Sure beats clicking on individual products and hunting for operating system compatibility the old fashioned way

If you sell software or technology products, please join us next week for our industry-specific February webinar: Ecommerce for Technology Vendors: Maximizing Your Online Channel, where I will be sharing an hour of tips and tactics for improving the customer experience.

Across all retail sectors, approximately 60% of consumers will go directly to a manufacturers site when researching a purchase. Another 16% will use a search engine, which often leads to the manufacturers site. For the technology and packaged software industries, these figures are likely higher, as online downloads direct from the vendors .com site is the strongest means of acquisition.

But with potentially more than 76% of consumers arriving at a manufacturers website, how much money is left on the table when its online store is not optimized?

Join Linda Bustos, ecommerce analyst at Elastic Path Software and author of the Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog, on February 25 to discuss how technology companies can improve conversion rates and average order values to maximize the return on investment for their ecommerce projects.

The advantages technology and software manufacturers have over retail resellers and affiliates and how to leverage these advantages

The common weaknesses of enterprise technology sites and how to improve them

Tips for turning trial downloads into purchases[source:getelastic.com]

A question which immediately arises from this is: Why are shopping systems so bad at presenting already purchased products?

Design rules! The First US Investors Are Re-orienting Themselves What Was and What Shall Be: The Rise of The Emotional Web Lockerz: The Shopping Extravaganza for the Next Generation

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihUt-163gZI[/youtube]

Picture of Quorus: How Personal Can Social Shopping Become? [source:excitingcommerce.com]

Etsy competitor 1000Markets is currently experimenting with the Shop with a friend solution from Quorus. On all the product sites there is a Q-Button Add to Discussion. Using this button the user can trigger a discussion amongst their close (or wide) circle of friends:

Particularly interesting is that the Quorus solution is universally deployable to all shopping sites and the focus is clearly on the personal communication level in contrast to SixGroups and other instant community initiatives which tend to try to build a community around a specific website.

This is exactly what Quorus is not trying to do. Here every user should first tap into their personal network either very simple over email, but also over Facebook, Twitter, IM, etc:

If your friends aren’t available at that particular moment, they can also express their opinions later. The discussion moves around the particular product site and can from there very easily incorporate further product recommendations, alternative suggestions, etc.

In this way, the shopping site grows a sort of social layer: Check it out! Whaddaya think of this? How does this look on me? The best way to experience it is to simply try it out. Brooks Running is also using Quorus (Discuss with a friend).

Thanks to the Quorus team for the forward information. Some background info on 1000Markets to be found on the Techflash blog.

From Social Shopping to Personal Shopping Network Etsy 2010: How Social Can Commerce Get? Magento Matters: Social Shopping with Facebook and Magento

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.[source:excitingcommerce.com]

Picture of Important Notice for Get Elastic Subscribers [source:getelastic.com]

David Linthicum is an internationally known cloud computing and SOA expert, and author of Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide.

Armando Roggio is a Contributing Editor for Practical Ecommerce and the Site Director for Ecommerce Developer. He also has a forthcoming ecommerce book.

Technical content will appear Tuesday and Thursday, while marketing and business topics will appear as usual, Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.

Expanding our topical coverage has prompted us to change our RSS and email subscription options. You can subscribe to the whole shebang or to marketing content only or technical content only.

If you are already subscribed via RSS you will receive posts Monday to Friday. You do not have to opt in to technical content. We encourage you to leave your subscription as-is and enjoy the launch of our technical blog. If you decide you prefer to receive only technical or only marketing posts, you must unsubscribe from the RSS feed and re-opt-in to the content you want on our home page http://www.getelastic.com/.

We are moving our email service from Feedburner to Aweber to ensure Get Elastic posts reach your inbox more consistently and on time. This was an issue we had with Feedburner. Moving our list unfortunately requires you to confirm your subscription again. You will receive an email early next week with instructions.

If you wish to receive all content (marketing and technical), simply re-opt-in when you receive the email from Aweber instructing you to do so. If you want to receive only marketing or technical content, ignore the email to re-opt and please return to www.getelastic.com to subscribe by email to the appropriate stream of content.

I apologize for the inconvenience, we hope you enjoy the new blog look and content. And thanks again for being a part of the Get Elastic family![source:getelastic.com]

Picture of 5 Ways to Improve Your Email – In 45 Minutes [source:getelastic.com]

Heres an example. Pier 1 Imports wanted to improve click through rate for its control below:

3 top design agencies tried to come up with a winning creative. They are all beautiful (and my gut was that one or more would outperform), yet none of them outperformed the control. In fact, they all had a significant decrease in click through:

Often its the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person in the Organization) that decides which creative wins the challenge, without any testing. Design approvals are made so often made on gut feel, and watching Dr. McLaughlins presentation is a wake up call for why best practices are not enough. It is essential to work within a rigorous methodology.[source:getelastic.com]