Is your small business conducting e-commerce directly through Facebook? According to a recent study by Ability Commerce, only 10% of the Web’s largest retailers sell products directly through Facebook. Are retailers simply not hip to the sell-through potential of the world’s most popular social media site? Or, as I pointed out in my early review of Google+, is this just indicative of Facebook’s long-standing difficulties in integrating e-commerce into its social networking architecture? Read More
Tag: ecommerce
eBay Buys RedLaser Barcode App to Encourage Online Buying and Selling
Do you have an Ebay business? Wouldn’t it be cool to look up eBay prices for products your are selling (or thinking about selling) by scanning barcodes with your iPhone?
Well eBay was thinking along those same lines by buying the uber-popular barcode scanning RedLaser app developed by Occipital in hopes to encourage users to scan barcodes to find and buy the item on eBay.
The RedLaser app was originally designed for shoppers to scan barcodes of physical products to compare prices in surrounding brick and mortar stores. And it was a hit too, getting downloaded over 2 million times since it was put up in the Apple App Store. eBay is looking to duplicate that success with giving users the ability to not only search for the best price at local physical stores, but to expand that search throughout it’s 200 million listings on eBay. RedLaser will be a free app from eBay and will be integrate listings from all the eBay iPhone apps (including StubHub and Shopping.com).
RedLaser was originally a $1.99 app, but by dropping the price to a whopping free.99, eBay hopes to get that money back by way of increasing the number of shoppers using its app to scan barcodes of physical products and finding a better virtual prices online. As more people recognize the power of mobile technology and feel more secure with buying items online, the RedLaser app by eBay should bring in some BIG numbers for eCommerce businesses looking to expand their customer base to those mobile pros, as well as casual shoppers just looking for a better deal.