Online payments provider PayPal Australia Pty. Limited has announced the appointment of Frerk-Malte Feller as its new managing director, effective immediately.
“I am delighted to be joining the Australian team to provide strategic direction at a time when there is great demand for PayPal to help grow online shopping in Australia,” said Malte.  “My main priority is to continue to provide PayPal’s more than five million Australian customer accounts and 18,000 merchant partners with a secure and innovative online payments solution to facilitate safe, global e-commerce.”
Malte takes over the role from …

Patrick Stafford from  Smart Company has reported on eBay Australia’s latest announcement to increase the exposure of “buy it now” listings on ebay.com.au.
From 10 September all store listings will have increased exposure as they will appear within the main eBay search results.  This will provide sellers with increased exposure on search results pages, however eBay is also introducing monthly store fees, ranging from $19.95 to $499 per month.
eBay Australia managing director Deborah Sharkey said that 50 per cent of eBay’s global sales were now fixed price and that, in the …

IT News and eCommerce Report have reported on the launch of the Australian PayPal developer program.  It’s the first market outside of the United States to be included in the developer program.
The program includes free technical tools and resources, PayPal developer certification and  developer days to be held in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth later this month.
Spiro Rokos, PayPal’s senior manager of technical engineering, said it would help Australians tap into revenue opportunities.

MIS reports today that the Colorado group is preparing to take the plunge into online retailing again after suspending it’s ecommerce operations a few years ago.
The company upgraded it’s 500 stores to a wide-area network to assist with real-time information transfer between stores.
“Not a week goes by without us receiving emails from people asking when they will be able to buy from us online, so we are very keen to get back into the space,” Ms Ryan, Colorado Group’s chief information officer said.
Read the full article at MIS Australia

Yesterday, Google Australia announced an enhancement that allows Aussies to search for properties on Google Maps.
On the surface, the site looks great with a number of listings for various real estate agents and portals, however upon closer inspection there are a couple of noticeable omissions from the listings, namely the two gorillas of online real estate,  realestate.com.au and domain.com.au.
Patrick Stafford from SmartCompany spoke with former chief executive of REA Group, Simon Baker who views Google Maps as a competitor but not a major threat:

A growing number of Australians are going online to compare before they buy as Australia’s leading comparison shopping website, www.getprice.com.au reports its biggest month to date.
Reporting a massive 2.7 million people shopping for the month of June, getprice.com.au has seen an increase of traffic of more than 500% to the site from June 2008.
“As one of Australia’s fastest growing websites, we are seeing a huge increase in consumers coming to us to make their money go further,” said getprice.com.au Chief Executive, Chris Hitchen.
“Knowledge is power when making purchase decisions and …

Australian retailers trying to reach and retain consumers online will underperform if they fail to learn from the mistakes made by their counterparts in the US, according to the Paul Marshall, executive director of Salmat DigitalForce.
Speaking at the Retail World Summit in Sydney, Marshall warned that retailers risk losing market share if they do not synchronise their strategies across different channels – otherwise known as cross-channel retailing.
“The internet has opened up a whole new channel for retailers to reach consumers, however, it’s critical that a retailer’s ecommerce business is not …

CRN today reported Aussie manufacturer and online retailer of consumer electronics, Kogan, is opening a US warehouse which will pave the way for the company’s global expansion.
Kogan’s Australian head office will manage the Kentucky-based warehouse and products manufactured in China will be shipped directly to the US.
Ruslan Kogan founder and CEO said the company is in the final stages of opening the US branch after three years of growth in Australia.
He said the US market is 20 times bigger than the Australian market and shoppers purchase online there, which directly …

RetailBiz has reported on the latest ecommerce benchmark figures from Coremetrics.
According to Coremetrics, which surveyed the buying habits of more than 75 million shoppers worldwide, Australian and New Zealand shoppers are returning to the world wide web in droves to peruse global e-commerce websites and make online purchases.
Since the global economic downturn, consumers have been naturally careful about their spending habits but it seems that online opportunities are proving too good to pass.
“These figures represent a smarter modern shopper; one that takes time to visit e-commerce sites all over the …