The Guardian today reports on the potential pitfalls of allowing collection of items paid for with Paypal, highlighting the gap in seller protection compared with – say – items sent by recorded delivery. Happily for the two people whose cases were brought up in the article, Paypal have made a goodwill gesture to cover their losses. But what can the rest of us do to protect ourselves from this kind of fraud?

The first thing to note is that this sort of thing is extremely rare, and isn’t something to panic about.  In the past eight years of trading, I can count on one hand the number of instances where we have experienced this sort of fraud on collection items, and in most cases it has been with payments made by cheque. Paypal seems to be more secure than traditional payment methods in this regard – on the whole, the benefit it offers in reassuring buyers far outweighs the risk of fraud.

Moreover, the news that Paypal are going to work closely with law enforcement is most welcome: being able to trace online fraudsters through their digital footprints one thing that keeps this channel more secure.

For our sellers, they were protected by our guarantee and so they got paid in any case: this peace of mind is all part of our service. But what can you do if you are trading directly and have some large one-off transactions like the sellers in the article?

Paypal is a required form of payment for all eBay transactions, and some items can’t simply be popped into a Jiffy Bag and posted.  Indeed the strength of eBay over many other e-commerce platforms is its ability to handle the larger and more exotic one-offs which require specialist handling and which are often collected in person.

The first line of defence is your intuition about a transaction. Is it for a large amount?  Is the buyer a new or recently returning user or showing unusual activity in their recently purchased items?  Are they particularly pressing for an urgent collection?  Is there anything about their approach which suggests something just isn’t right?  Any of these things might put you on a more suspicious footing about a transaction - obviously the more experience you have, the more likely you are to spot something out of the ordinary.

The second is to have good procedures for collections. Ask the buyer to identify themselves (genuine buyers won’t mind bringing some ID along with them) and take a note of the car registration in which they arrive.  Ask them to inspect the item fully and get a signature to confirm the item is the one they have bought. This will also minimise the number of returns which occur -particularly troublesome with larger items.

If you are running a warehouse, then ensure that your CCTV cameras cover the areas where transactions are made and items are loaded and can record faces and identify vehicles. All these steps will help deter fraudsters from believing that they can get away with the crime.

Finally, if you can’t satisfy yourself that the buyer is a trustworthy and reliable party, then be prepared to refund the payment and cancel the transaction if they can’t prove that it is genuine. No matter how much you want to make the sale go through, you have to remain objective in your assessment of whether it really is genuine.

Above all, remember that by far the vast majority of buyers are decent and honest folk. I really enjoy meeting the wide array of people from all walks of life who come and collect from us when they indulge their passions on eBay.

Actinic will be holding a webinar and live product demonstration on the 7th February starting at 11am which will show:

• The benefits of selling on eBay, Amazon and promoting your products on Facebook
• How to list your items on marketplaces and on the largest social media platform right from your Actinic Online admin console
• How to retrieve and process your orders

If you already use Actinic, or if you’re looking for an ecommerce website solution then register in advance to attend the webinar.

In that advertising spot undeneath the Seller Information Box, eBay have been promoting Top Rated Sellers.

But don’t you think, and I certainly think so, that if you don’t pay attention that it looks like this newbie seller is a Top Rated Seller?

We humbly suggest that eBay stop putting the ad in question in that spot before buyers get too confused.

Check out the announcements page for full details and terms.

So, what sort of year has it been for you? Perhaps as you eat the last of the turkey and raise a glass to 2012, you could share your reflections of the year past with an ecommerce and eBay lens.

Keep it pithy and light. One highlight, one lowlight each. (And no well-rehearsed oft-heard eBay rants please, because it’s boring and it’s still – just – Christmas.)

And wishing you a prosperous 2012,

Dan and Chris

Make of this what you will.

The Wall Street Journal directly compares a possible Google Marketplace with Amazon Prime (which costs $79 in the US to access free next day delivery). The WSJ says that the Google Marketplace would enable major retailers and shippers to create a service that lets consumers shop for goods on the Web and receive orders within a day for a low fee.

Scot Wingo points out that Google have the four main constituents needed for a marketplace – Buyers, Sellers, Catalog (Google Product Search) and a Payment system. If they do go ahead the WSJ suggests it would begin with a trial in the San Francisco Bay area in conjunction with retailers such as Macy’s, Gap and OfficeMax.

The Google Marketplace would join the dots between Google Shopping, Retailers Inventory and available shipping options to determine if the product could be delivered next day. This suggests technology similar to eBay’s Milo which brings local retailers inventory availability onto the web. However Scot Wingo also points out that retailers aren’t set up to accept orders over the web (a technology issue) and that also local retailers “typically have a) terrible inventory systems and b) little to no outbound shipping capabilities”.

It’s very doubtful that in the immediate future a Google Marketplace would embrace small retailers or be available outside of the US. However if trials are successful then undoubtedly it would be rolled out in more countries.

The big question has to be whether smaller retailers would ever be included or if it would be limited to larger retailers with stock held in multiple locations across the US. Having multiple locations is a very different requirement in the US to the UK – in the UK pretty much anything can be shipped anywhere in the country within 24 hours so long as it’s in stock. In the US shipping coast to coast within 24 hours across six time zones isn’t quite as simple.

However this pans out it’s going to send an electric shock through Amazon and eBay management. A Google marketplace is possibly the biggest threat to the incumbent marketplaces, although the threat may be tempered if the offer is limited to large retailers with multiple locations.

If smaller retailers can cut a slice of the action I’d predict that they’ll leave the incumbent marketplaces in droves. I’d recommend against this though, regardless how much business you gain from Goodle why would you cut off the income from existing marketplaces? If you do get the opportunity to add Google as a marketplace look at it as an addition, not a replacement for eBay and Amazon.

Oliver Prothmann and founding chartixx

It was in Richmond in September 2009, when I was there for two weeks as the EU Coordinator PayPal Business Seller on eBay, that the time came to start a separate project for the online retailers:

In the seven years prior I had worked closely with business sellers on marketplaces. I launched the T-Online-Shop (electronic shop of German biggest Internet provider) on eBay and Amazon and then brought in the sales department of ElectronicScout24 (subsidiary of T-Online) and in particular the CRM system and managed the sales team.

In 2006 I started at eBay Germany Seller Development Team and built up the account management team. Does anyone remember to eBay Express? I was at the time Head of Sales but, unfortunately, the product was turned off too early. Then in 2007 I moved to PayPal to build the Marketplaces team and was also responsible for the business sellers on eBay.

The most intensive contact I had with the online retailers was in 2008 in preparation for compulsory PayPal on eBay. It became clear at this time that the dealers have a great need to evaluate and analyze their metrics on eBay. In April 2010 I founded the company Applet-X GmbH and started with the development of chartixx, the first business analysis tool for online retailers. My goal is to help retailers have better business information.

What can chartixx do for you?

chartixx brings the business transparency they desperately need for online retailers, on marketplaces and other channels. Today, it’s really not about multi-channel but rather multi-platform business. But each platform the retailer uses only shows different metrics on the sales and developments and only for that platform. For example eBay provides its online retailers only the data from one eBay account and not all accounts held by a retailer. chartixx wants to make the analysis simpler and clearer, so that the retailer can focus on what matters most – increasing sales and revenue.

Why it’s important sellers know their stats

Only those who know their numbers, know their business. e.g how dependent are you on your bestsellers? If your top 10 bestselling items account for 15% of total sales, the danger when sales of one drops is less than when they represent 60% of total sales. chartixx profiles show quickly whenever there are fluctuations or dips and the dealer can take countermeasures quickly.

It is also important to have the format mix under control. Knowing your metrics also means having the numbers to know how to stay on or get the Top Rated Seller Standard.

chartixx is not about research of marketplaces. chartixx is about knowing your own business and seeing the potentials and risks.

How sellers can keep on top of their stats?

With chartixx the retailer´s financial results are always at hand. chartixx will offer a perfect view on the metrics, either on the desktop as an optimized display on mobile devices and as an app for iPhone and iPad, Android will follow soon. Thus, the retailer has access to all their business metrics at any time.

You’ll need to link chartixx to give access to your marketplace data, but that’s just entering a few data connections. chartixx uses but does not store retailers passwords, it uses tokens for each platform – data security is chartixx’s highest priority.

Instant access to Business Intelligence and KPIs

The big advantage of chartixx is that everything is instantly available. There is no waiting for data downloads and no need to select the data for analysis. chartixx provides the online retailer with ready prepared up to date metrics instantly available. In chartixx the retailer only needs authorise connection to the marketplaces they trade on and then they have access to the data analysis and trends in Chartixx.

chartixx is always up to date as a SaaS (Software as a Service) application, the retailer will always have the latest version of chartixx in use. Almost every month new analysis and interfaces are added and these can then be used immediately without any upgrades. Currently chartixx supports data from Amazon, eBay, PayPal and Google Analytics.

To access chartixx you only pay for what you use and it starts from as little as €5 per month for chartixx business intelligence.

However our friends at Terapeak have come up with an opportunity for UK sellers. Fijit Friends are selling like mad on eBay and are starting to sell for prices higher than the retail price. Toysrus in the US are pretty much sold out, but Toysrus in the UK still have a few in stock although they’re limiting online sales to four items per order.

Terapeak has the sell-thru at 49.75% with 300+ sold in the past 30 days. This is trending quickly with most of the sales in the past week so it’s rapidly becoming a really hot product.

So if you’ve got some Fijit Friends in stock there are a couple of things you should be considering:

1. Don’t let them got for low prices even on eBay UK, Fijit Friends are getting hot.
2. Consider putting some of your inventory on 99p no reserve auctions – there’s a reasonable chance they’ll fetch higher and higher prices towards Christmas
3. Seriously consider adding in postage to the US for Fijit Friends. If stocks totally dry up then the prices parents will start paying will go through the roof
4. Finally… if you’re a parent buy them now if they’re on your child’s wish list!

If you do think you’ve found a killer product that you can make some money out of then don’t forget you can use Terapeak to check exactly what the opportunities on eBay are.

Happy selling, and if you’ve got any more tips for hot selling products let us know. (Also if you have any idea what the attraction of Fijit Friends is please feel free to enlighten me!)

The so-called Mobile Manifesto calls on the government to improve the mobile network, fastrack the development of the 4G network and also work to limit super expensive data roaming charges across the EU. You can download the Mobile Manifesto here.

Miriam Lahage, Vice President of Global Fashion at eBay, comments: “The mobile economy is proving resilient as people increasingly see owning and using a mobile phone as an essential expense, despite cutting back in other areas. As smartphone and tablet ownership increases there will be even greater potential rewards for companies investing in mobile, and this is particularly true for retailers. At eBay in the UK we now see around 10% of sales by value transacted on mobile devices, but we need the right infrastructure in the UK to match this demand. For retailers, it’s about putting mobile at the heart of your strategy and creating a site that is optimised for every device.”

But this year, there is the spectre of snow again on the horizon and that represents huge uncertainty. But what are the pundits saying?

The IMRG has says they expect a 14% year on year growth in online retail in December on top of the strong 25% growth in 2010. The IMRG also anticipates that the fear of snow will mean more shopping earlier to avoid delivery problems and also to spread the cost of Christmas in these austere times. According to IMRG, the busiest weeks for online shopping will be the weeks beginning 28th November and 5th December.

eBay have thrown their hat into the ring with some predictions too. They claim that 4th December will be “Super Sunday” this year and the busiest day of the year. They estimate that 5.8m shoppers will log on to eBay.co.uk that day, half a million more than last year.

Selling activity will peak at approximately 30 gifts per second, with a doubling of buyers using smartphone to purchase their goodies. The most popular categories for online Christmas shoppers will be mobile phones and accessories, fashion and homewares.

I think it all hangs on the weather and the auspices seem to be uneasy on that front. If we see very snowy conditions across the UK in November and December, and worse than last year, then that will be bad news. But fear not: I’ll keep consulting the seaweed and pine cone I have here at the Tamebay weather centre and let you know about developments.

I’ve also decided that I really can justify getting a Kindle and not just because really I want one. So I bought the new Kindle, Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display on Tuesday. I bagged it at about 3:30pm. It arrived bright and early the next day. Pretty impressive. Product review to follow shortly.

Compare and contrast though with 7 items I bought and paid for on eBay on Monday from UK sellers. One arrived on Tuesday. Two arrived on Wednesday and I got another today. Of three items outstanding, two are already ‘late’ if I take eBay’s delivery predictions at face value. I don’t expect item number seven until next week but that was clear in the description.

The one seller who has slightly annoyed me stated and charged for first class postage, I paid it and then received it with a second class stamp on it. Now, none of this is terrible. But two things do spring to mind.

Firstly, Amazon is getting it unbelievably right. And one result of this is that consumers will be more demanding. I personally think, especially combined with the rise of mobile buying that this is a keener issue than it was a year or two ago. Even lightening fast despatch is looking a bit slow these days.

Secondly, the two late ones are Free P&P. I suspect that under the law of unintended consequences, that Free P&P to sellers, quite understandably means cheap and slow P&P. It seems to me that concentrating on speed of delivery should be something eBay should be looking at.

Sandra Hagelstam & Jennifer Inglis - eBay Fashion Outlet

Andrea says that as she was styling the guide, mixing one off unique accessory finds with eBay’s Fashion Outlet it felt like she had one big perfect (and affordable) wardrobe. That’s the aim of the Winter Wardrobe Collection – to showcase the variety of clothing and one off accessories and vintage items available on eBay to fashion buyers.

Fashion on eBay is intended for real women and to be wearable – you won’t find the typical catwalk clothing in the eBay Winter Wardrobe Collection, but you will find fashion that you (if you’re a woman) might actually want to wear.

Here’s a behind the scenes look at the eBay Fashion Outlet Winter Wardrobe Collection shoot:

The argument goes back years to 2005 when Craigslist accused eBay of obtaining confidential information through their board representatives which was then used by eBay when launching their Craigslist competitor then known as Kijiji. Kijiji is now known as eBay Classifieds.

A year ago (following the attempt by Craigslist to dilute eBay’s shares in Craigslist) eBay won back their holding in the company when a Delaware judge restored eBay’s 28.4% ownership of Craigslist.

eBay said of the news today “We will cooperate with any inquiry related to the disputes between eBay and Craigslist. eBay believes that Craigslist’s allegations against eBay are without merit.”

With or without merit it’s doubtful that Craigslist will ever leave eBay alone, although after so many years of court proceedings it’s hard to see what resolution would make them happy. Certainly eBay appear to have no intention of relinquishing their share holding in Craigslist.

The only real update in today’s news is that it turns what was hitherto a civil argument into a possible criminal case. However that’s assuming that the grand jury decide that there’s enough evidence for indictments and for the case to go to trial.

This position has been waiting for a successor for a year since the immensely capable and likeable Lorrie Norrington left in September 2010. Devin will have big shoes to fill and doubtless will want to take stock of the current marketplaces business before stamping his mark on them.

Devin was CEO of Thomson Reuters Markets, a division of Thomson Reuters, where he led the company’s global financial services and media businesses. Wenig also led the integration of Reuters and Thomson following the merger of the two companies.

Speaking of the new appointment John Donahoe said “Devin’s deep global operating and leadership experience, combined with his record of delivering innovation and of understanding global technology platforms and communities, makes him uniquely qualified to lead our eBay Marketplaces business“. Ultimately eBay is a technology and community platform which doubtless Devin has the experience to drive forward. The big question is how quickly will he get to grips with online retail and even more so does he understand the auction heritage that eBay was built on?

If you were Devin what are the first parts of eBay that you would look at and what would you want changed first? Would you change fixed price listings, auctions, Best Match, Feedback, the growing emphasis on large merchants or something else? Let us know what the one change which would revolutionise your business on eBay would be.

Industry guru and Editor-in-Chief of Internet Retailing magazine Ian Jindal will open the conference and keynote session, introducing Mark Hodgkinson, Digital and Financial Services Director at ASDA, Gavin Sathianathan, Head of Commerce Partnerships at Facebook and Miriam Lahage, VP Fashion at eBay.

As well as the paid for section of the conference there is a free exhibition as well as free workshops from a host of industry experts throughout the day.

If you’re attending let us know in comments below, I’ll be there for the day and it would be good to meet up with some TameBay readers.

eBay fulfilment may have just taken a step closer to becoming a reality as eBay have just invested in Shipwire. Shipwire provide shipping software and offer outsourced pick, pack and ship ecommerce order fulfillment services. They have a network of warehouses to which sellers send their inventory based in the US, Canada, or Europe, and then connect Shipwire to their online store or marketplace.

Shipwire uses “least-cost routing” to optimally pick, pack and ship orders to the buyers faster, and for lower shipping costs than the merchant can normally source themselves.

The new investment came from two investors – eBay and Newell Rubbermaid (who own the DYMO and Endicia brands) join Shipwire’s current investor Meakem Becker Venture Capital.

Whilst there is no suggestion that eBay will be launching eBay branded fulfilment services they’re definitely dipping their toe into the fulfilment arena and will doubtless gain expertise (let’s try avoid a Craigslist type battle though!) It wouldn’t surprise me to see eBay fulfilment services powered by Shipwire launched in the near future.

This fulfilment service investment by eBay announcement comes on an interesting day as Amazon have also chosen today to announce EU wide Amazon fulfilment services.

Click to embiggen

As a bonus for the spammers the emails aren’t duplicated in eBay My Messages. It’s still a mystery to me why all communications don’t appear in My Messages so that they can at least be identified as authentic even if they’re spam.

I’m not sure I should risk reporting this one just in case some overzealous eBay customer service rep makes a mistake and removes my item or worse still applies sanctions to my eBay account – after all it’s my item that’s being spammed, albeit being spammed to me and not by me.

Of course there’s no way I’m daft enough to buy from some Chinese company that resorts to spam and doesn’t even have contact details on their website. I have no way to verify that they’re not selling fakes, counterfeits and sub-standard products, that is of course assuming they’d even bother shipping anything if I parted with my hard earned cash.

It would be nice if eBay were to offer an opt out from social media spam. It would be even nicer if they were to block spammers from sending me my own eBay items. I’m already aware of the products that I have listed on eBay, after all I was the one that listed them.

20% of all eBay business world wide now involves cross border trade, that means if you don’t sell outside your own country you have a potential 25% uplift in sale by making your items available overseas.

Amazon shared a slide showing that just four countries – The UK, Germany, France and Italy – represented 69% of the estimated $122 billion online retail spending in Western Europe in 2010.

So how easy do marketplaces make it for you to sell overseas?

Amazon

Amazon allow buyers from anywhere in the world to buy from any Amazon site so long as the seller makes the product available for International shipping. If you use Amazon FBA then Amazon will take care of the shipping on your behalf which is probably the easiest way to make your items available worldwide.

However that relies on the buyer visiting the Amazon site that you list on – an item listed on Amazon.co.uk won’t appear on Amazon.de, if a German buyer wants to buy your item they will have to visit the Amazon.co.uk site.

For you to capture the maximum sales you will have to split your inventory and list directly onto Amazon.de to put your products directly in front of German buyers, and with Amazon expanding and adding a marketplace to Amazon Italy in the near future the number of sites for sellers to list on is increasing rapidly.

The complexity of listing inventory across multiple sites increases the overhead of management although software can simplify the problem. What software can’t do is help decide how much inventory to ship to each country if you have local warehouses or use Amazon FBA in each individual country.

eBay

eBay have a slightly different approach to Amazon. You can list on your home eBay site and make your product available world wide, and on some sites you can even pay extra for International Visibility to ensure your product appears in natural search results on selected other eBay sites.

Your items will most likely appear if the site your buyer is browsing has few or no search results, but in this case (as with Amazon) your item will appear listed in a foreign currency to the buyer.

To cater for buyers in countries where there is no eBay site eBay have their International Market. Fixed price listings from sellers who offer International Shipping. The big advantage is that the site will be translated into the local language with prices displayed in the buyer’s local currency. The only parts of the site that won’t be translated is the item title and description

In order to give the best shopping experience however eBay sellers need to list directly onto an overseas eBay site. There is a big difference in visibility for products “listed on” a site to those “available to” the site. This is where eBay’s solution falls down.

Currently your eBay account is held in your country of residence, and all the benefits such as fees, discounts etc are based on that eBay site. Whist you may have a featured shop and be able to list multiple quantity fixed price products on eBay UK for just £0.05 per listing, an equivalent listings on eBay.de will cost £2.00 or more to list.

eBay have over the last few years promoted to sellers that they will reduce the upfront risk and share in the rewards of seller success with low insertion fees and higher final value fees. eBay have yet to find a way to apply this to International transactions.

The opportunity

The UK is the biggest country in Europe for business to consumer online spending, we each spend around €1333 each year on the Internet. There are also plenty of competitors vying for our business, but in Europe the opportunities are just as good.

Germany is a bigger market, but they spend less per captia online than the UK, if you’re thinking of listing on overseas marketplaces then this is the first foreign language country to attack. France and Italy are also to big to ignore and Spain is the next country to put on your roadmap.

What is your international marketplace selling strategy? Do you list on your domestic eBay and Amazon sites and trust to luck that overseas buyers will find your products or do you actively list directly onto overseas sites? What is the one thing that eBay and Amazon could change about the internationalisation of their sites to increase your overseas sales?

Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor

Scot Wingo opened the conference with an over view of the ecommerce landscape, from what I hear he was a lot gentler on eBay than he was at the US catalyst, and rightly so as eBay UK is performing much better eBay.com.

According to Scot’s figures Amazon is still growing faster much faster than eBay, although eBay is still three times as large. A major difference this year is the growth of social commerce which now accounts for 4% of ecommerce and mobile commerce at 6% of the total.

Marketplaces now account for around 27% of ecommerce and search, which for the UK largely means Google, accounts for around 44% of ecommerce. Scot pointed out that whilst social is still a small part of ecommerce now is the time to embrace it as in a few years time it has the potential for huge growth. The message came through loud and clear that whereas in the past marketplaces, websites and paid search pretty much embraced ecommerce, companies now need to position themselves ready to take advantage of the way buyers are starting to shop.

Clare Gilmartin, VP Marketplaces, Europe, eBay

Clare continued the theme of a multi-channel approach to ecommerce being essential. The online and offline shopping experience is being to blur with shoppers researching online and then purchasing in a retail environment, and sometimes the reverse seeing a product in a shop and then checking online for the best possible price.

The UK is the fastest growing country in the EU for mobile usage – 1 in 4 have purchased on a mobile device. A surprising 22% of the UK have a mobile device as their only form on Internet access.

Clare also pointed out that websites need to tailor the shopping experience to the way that buyers shop. Vertical shopping experiences such as eBay’s Fashion Hub, updated tech pages and eBay motors are examples of how sites can cater for buyers needs.

Cross border trade is critical to eBay’s future success in Europe. The UK is already the most successful eBay country site with a higher spend per head of population anywhere in the world. eBay UK attracts around 17 million visitors each month, but across eBay’s European country sites are are 50 million buyers. However if you take the EU as a whole there are 180 million buyers willing to shop on eBay even though they don’t have an eBay site in their country.

20% of eBay’s trade is now cross border and if you’re not shipping overseas then you’re missing out on a large proportion of the available business.

Gavin Sathianathan, Platform Partnerships, Facebook Commerce

Facebook were the third company to present on the main stage at Catalyst, and they have an interesting story to tell. They told how they introduced site features which have propelled their site features ahead of the competitions even though they lacked features.

An example of this is Facebook photos – site users can upload pictures but when launched there was no cropping and resizing or any of the features major photo sharing sites like Flickr have. What made Facebook pictures successful was the ability to tag yourself and your friends in photos. Because users could now easily find their friends in pictures and in fact they’d appear in your Facebook News Feed it incentivised users to add pictures.

In the same way Facebook have the “Like” button, which allows users to show their interest in various products and services. The Like button along with the “Send” button have now migrated off Facebook and you can now share products from many websites with your Facebook friend.

This social shopping where you can let your friends see the items you’re interested in and they can comment is similar to the way people shop in the high street.

Even better is when a buyer links their Facebook profile to a merchants website and share products that they’ve actually purchased. This is where social shopping becomes most powerful as products purchased are shared with your friends as a personal recommendation.

Social commerce may not be a large proportion of the total today, but if the current trends continue it’s likely to grow over the next few years. Whilst today online retailers are spending on paid search in the future if they can turn their customers into their ambassadors it’s a much stronger recommendation.

This theme continued with a panel of retailers already experimenting with social media. Richard Wilson, Sales & Operations Manager of B&Q told how they use Twitter primarily as a customer service tool, but by encouraging their customers to have conversations around the DIY projects they’re doing gives a demonstrable increase in sales.

Natalie Primus, Online PR & Social Media Executive of Republic agrees but cautions trying to do to much too quickly. She suggests starting with one social network site and getting that right before trying to replicate your efforts across all sites.

There is little doubt that shopping has always been a social experience, whether that be a trip to town or gathering around a clothing cataloge at home. The challenge for online retailers is to replicate this online to allow buyers to encourage each other to spend more.

Click to see top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2011

In the world of retail Amazon has held the number one spot moving up two places to number 14 overall. Tesco which previously held the number 17 spot and 2nd in retail has plummeted to number 31.

eBay has gained 15% but still dropped to 82nd from 76th. Although eBay grew in value, overall brand value rose 17 percent as all sectors gained and the economy shifted from recovery to growth hence their drop in the rankings.

The BrandZ ranking measures brand equity based on interviews with over two million consumers worldwide. It is the most comprehensive annual ranking of brand value, and focuses on consumer-facing brands, rather than corporate brands. These are the companies that the man in the street values, so I imagine that Amazon will be pretty pleased to be the top retailer in the world.

eBay retained a 30% share of the company when they sold Skype to an investor group led by Silver Lake for for $1.9 billion. Skype was at this time valued at around $2.75 billion.

eBay played a typical face saving tactic in retaining a share of Skype whilst unloading most of the company – they recouped their investment but in the unlikely event that Skype (who lost $7 million last year and have never made a profit) turned into a money spinner they’d still reap a sizeable benefit.

Now the Microsoft deal values the 30% share at somewhere in the region of another $2.55 billion revenue for eBay – not an amount to be sniffed at for an acquisition that investors hated and eBay failed to find a use for.

The big question is what will Microsoft do with Skype, which they’ve said will be run as a separate business unit? The most obvious approach is integration into Microsoft’s Office suite of products to allow direct calling from Outlook and into their gaming platform, the xBox, to allow players to talk and video conference online. Skype is also a contender to be embedded into future Windows operating systems.

Without a doubt part of the reason for Microsoft to buy Skype was to prevent it falling into the hands of their competitors such as Google but even so the $8.5 billion price they paid appears to make little sense to anyone other than the Silver Lake investors who have tripled their money and eBay who at last have made an unlikely profit from Skype.

Location based media is easily translated to local mobile adverts. Where enable you to advertise direct to potential customers mobile phones in a specific radius of your business. You can also claim your local page giving a free mobile presence for your business.

The driver for the acquisition is pretty clear, eBay say that their first step will be to integrate PayPal into the WHERE mobile app. Making PayPal the payment method of choice for customers to pay for local deals is part of eBay’s bigger strategic plan to strengthen its position in mobile and local commerce.

eBay say that since they don’t compete with merchants, they are in a unique position to partner with retailers of all sizes and help people shop and pay anytime, anywhere and in any way they want. “Anywhere” means mobile and “pay in any way they want” means PayPal, we can expect eBay to continue focussing on local and mobile technology in 2011.

Ocado, established in 2000, now deliver over 21,000 product lines including Waitrose goods and a growing Ocado own-label product range.

Ocado chairman Lord Grade (better know as Michael Grade, ex BBC and ITV Chairman) said “I am very pleased to welcome Doug to the Ocado board. His high-level background in ecommerce and IT is a most valuable addition to the skills and experience of the existing directors. He will make a significant contribution to Ocado’s plans for growth”.

Congratulations to Doug and kudos to Ocado for snagging one of the top talents in European ecommerce. The only question that remains is will Doug recommend Ocado open up to 3rd party retailers at any point in the future?

The deal follows eBay’s acquisition of a minority stake in the company in 2007. Upon closing of the transaction, eBay will own approximately 93% of the outstanding shares of GittiGidiyor.

Launched on February 5, 2001, GittiGidiyor has more than 6.4 million registered users, 500 thousand daily visitors and 2.5 million live listings. According to Internet World Stats, Turkey is the world’s twelfth largest market for Internet usage, with a penetration rate of 45%

The company’s business model is complementary to eBay’s with the addition of a compulsory escrow service for payments between buyer and seller. Today, all of GittiGidiyor’s transactions come from fixed price listings with the largest categories being Fashion and Consumer Electronics.