Ecommerce Product Releases: April 16, 2020

Here is a list of product releases and updates for mid-April from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on automated product recommendations, social media toolkits, logistics, social commerce, and tracking the digital economy.

Got an ecommerce product release? Email releases@practicalecommerce.com.

Ecommerce Product Releases

Bringg raises an additional $30 million to expand delivery logistics platform. Bringg, a delivery orchestration platform, has announced a funding round led by Viola Growth aimed at helping businesses keep up with rapidly expanding delivery expectations. The latest round takes Bringg’s funding total to $83.3 million, enabling rapid global market expansion to both large and small-to-midsize businesses. Bringg recently launched BringgNow, a last-mile delivery management service for SMBs, releasing it early to aid businesses facing increased demand for delivery services during the Covid-19 pandemic. Bringg is offering the BringgNow service for free.

Bringg

Magento Commerce introduces AI-powered product recommendations. Product recommendations powered by Adobe Sensei, an artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, is now available to Magento Commerce merchants. Magento merchants can now deploy automated and intelligent product recommendations across their storefronts, helping consumers discover relevant products throughout the shopping journey.

SEMrush offers free access during the pandemic. SEMrush, the search-engine-marketing SaaS platform, has announced it will provide free access to several tools to support marketers during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company will offer its Social Media Marketing Toolkit and Oppty to new and existing users at no extra cost. The Toolkit allows users to monitor their competition and schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google My Business, as well as edit images in the interface. Oppty is a prospecting service to obtain qualified business leads across industries and locations across the U.S. and the U.K.

WP Engine Summit/2020 goes digital with free registration. WP Engine, the WordPress host, announced registration is open for its fifth annual Summit. Due to Covid-19, WP Engine has reconfigured the conference for developers and marketers as a digital event, which will still take place on June 10. Registration for the new, virtual format is free.

WP Engine Summit/2020

Pinterest adds new ways to shop. Pinterest has announced new ways to shop from pins, on boards, from search, and through new browsable recommendations. When Pinners visit their home decor or fashion board, they’ll now see a Shop tab that shows products from or inspired by the pins on the board. A new Shop tab will also appear on search, making it easy to shop in-stock products from a range of retailers, with price and brand filters. Users can now click “shop similar” right from pins. And when searching specific terms, users will also see a browsable style guide. Pinterest also recently launched a Verified Merchant program.

USPS tests Informed Delivery feature. The U.S. Postal Service is testing a new Informed Delivery feature that lets users know when their mail has been delivered. Informed Delivery allows users to receive digital previews of their incoming mail and manage their packages from smartphones, tablets, and other devices. During the test, users receive email notices within 30 minutes of the delivery of letter-size and flat-size mail. Package delivery notifications will not be affected by the test. USPS began testing Informed Delivery for approximately 90 days in select ZIP Codes in California, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia, and Washington, DC. Customers in those locations are invited to participate in the test and asked to complete surveys for feedback.

Adobe unveils Digital Economy Index. Adobe has unveiled the Digital Economy Index, a real-time barometer of the digital economy, which analyzes trillions of online transactions across 100 million SKUs in 18 categories, from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers. Powered by Adobe Analytics and based on a new “digital consumer shopping basket,” which measures sales of online goods and services, findings from Adobe’s Digital Economy Index include a 20 percent increase in digital purchasing power since 2014. Sales in certain categories, including groceries, cold medications, fitness equipment, and computers, have surged as a result of Covid-19. Buy online, pick up in-store shopping has increased 62 percent.

Adobe Blog – Digital Economy Index

Yottaa offers free RAPID CTRL for travel and SMB retail brands. Yottaa, a cloud platform for accelerating speeds of ecommerce sites, has announced it is offering RAPID CTRL for free to some of the businesses most impacted by the coronavirus crisis, such as travel companies and small-to-midsize retailers and brands. RAPID CTRL is an easy-to-install ecommerce acceleration service that enables online brands to optimize and control all browser-based site elements, such as third-party technologies, high-resolution images, and custom JavaScript. Yottaa’s offer runs through June 30. Participating companies can begin using RAPID CTRL within minutes.

AWS announces general availability of Amazon Detective. Amazon Web Services has announced the general availability of Amazon Detective, a new service for customers to conduct faster and more efficient investigations into security issues across their AWS workloads. Amazon Detective automatically collects log data from a customer’s resources and uses machine learning, statistical analysis, and graph theory to build interactive visualizations that help analyze, investigate, and quickly identify the root cause of potential security issues or suspicious activities. There is no additional charge or upfront commitment required.

Avalara announces sales tax risk assessment tool. Avalara, a provider of cloud-based tax compliance automation, has announced the availability of its sales tax risk assessment, a self-serve online tool that enables companies to quickly discover states where their sales activity has likely triggered sales tax obligations and determine which states should be closely monitored.

Avalara’s sales tax assessment.