Ecommerce Product Releases: March 1, 2021

Here is a list of product releases and updates for late February from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on live stream shopping, email marketing, managed hosting, and artificial intelligence-powered voice assistance.

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

Ecommerce Product Releases

GoDaddy launches WooCommerce extensions. GoDaddy has announced a plugin-bundle expansion for its managed WordPress ecommerce customers, featuring a library of 75 premium WooCommerce extensions. New plugins include the ability to accept payments from multiple processors, improvements to product reviews, social login integrations, Google Analytics Pro, digital or printable gift card offerings, and more. The new extensions come from GoDaddy’s recent acquisition of SkyVerge, a WooCommerce product developer.

GoDaddy Managed WordPress Ecommerce

Campaigner for eCommerce launches. Campaigner, the email marketing platform, has launched “Campaigner for eCommerce,” a platform developed for ecommerce sellers. Merchants on Shopify, Magento, and other ecommerce storefronts can use Campaigner’s new platform to run personalized email and transactional campaigns, with advanced native integration. Features include personalized automation on email and SMS messages and built-in conversion tracking.

Walmart Marketplace opens to BigCommerce sellers. Merchants on BigCommerce now have direct access to the Walmart Marketplace. After being approved, merchants join a curated community to connect their BigCommerce catalogs and share products with 120 million unique Walmart.com visitors each month. BigCommerce automatically syncs with Walmart.com, making it easy to track products, orders, inventory, and fulfillment from one place. Merchants connecting into Walmart Marketplace through BigCommerce will also gain access to a curated network of complementary partners to support their listings, inventory management, advertising, and fulfillment needs.

Talkshoplive raises $3 million for live-stream “shopatainment” network. Talkshoplive, a Los Angeles-based live-stream commerce company, has announced a $3 million seed round of financing led by Spero Ventures. The financing will accelerate the expansion of Talkshoplive product management and technical teams, meet increased demand from sellers and customers, and scale the network worldwide. Home to more than 3,000 small businesses, Talkshoplive is a live-stream commerce network and app with patent-pending technology that allows transactions to be processed within an embeddable video player.

Talkshoplive

Dynamic Yield launches deep-learning-based personalized listing pages. Dynamic Yield, an experience optimization platform, has introduced a deep-learning-based ranking engine, allowing ecommerce brands to personalize their product listing pages. Designed to automatically generate the optimal sorting order of items across listing pages, Dynamic Yield’s ranking engine uses a self-training deep-learning model to predict what products an individual is most likely to engage with or purchase based on past behaviors, in-session activity, as well as trends across the site at any given moment.

Opera launches Dify, an in-browser cashback, payments service, and wallet app. Opera, a web browser with 380 million active users globally, has announced the launch of in-browser ecommerce functionality supporting cashback and payments activities under the brand “Dify.” Opera’s plan is to offer in-browser services targeting a young set of “power shoppers” who could benefit from installing the Dify wallet app. The first version of the Dify app will allow consumers to receive ecommerce cashback for purchases made on partner websites accessed through the Opera browser. Opera users will also receive access to a special shopping mode that protects data while shopping by disabling third-party extensions.

YouTube to expand Shorts and launch in-video shopping. YouTube has announced plans to expand its Shorts mobile video tool to the U.S. Currently in beta in India, Shorts is YouTube’s alternative to TikTok. YouTube has also announced an expansion beyond beta of its in-video ecommerce shopping experience, a new paid add-on for YouTube TV that offers 4K streaming, new features for user playlists on YouTube Music, a redesigned virtual-reality experience, and more.

YouTube Official Blog

Haptik launches Buzzo, a voice assistant for ecommerce. Haptik has announced the launch of Buzzo, an artificial intelligence-powered voice assistant to improve the digital shopping experience. With Buzzo, Haptik brings an in-store assisted experience to apps and websites, navigating through various product choices using a voice-enabled interface. The AI assistant can nudge relevant upsells and cross-sells and add multiple items to the cart in a single voice command, leading to a faster overall checkout process.

Pattern89 announces new marketing performance tools. Pattern89, a platform specializing in artificial intelligence to predict digital marketing performance, has announced new features to enhance brands’ visibility into ad results. The features include predictions, custom performance dashboards, advanced analytics, and automation integration. The upgrades will streamline and improve the user experience while allowing marketers to access real-time predictive performance insights and assemble and launch top-performing ad combinations in-platform.

Amazon announces the general availability of Lookout for Vision. Amazon Web Services has announced the general availability of “Lookout for Vision,” a service that analyzes images using computer vision and machine learning to spot product or process defects and anomalies in manufacturing. By employing a machine learning technique called “few-shot learning,” Lookout for Vision can train a model using as few as 30 baseline images. Customers can get started quickly using Lookout for Vision to detect manufacturing and production defects and prevent costly errors from progressing down the operational line.

Nexcess launches StoreBuilder for WooCommerce. Nexcess, a player in open-source digital commerce, has announced the launch of StoreBuilder, a no-code ecommerce platform that leverages the power of WooCommerce. Using an AI-driven wizard, StoreBuilder delivers an intuitive, easy-to-navigate home page in minutes, ready for customization and content, and optimized to convert site visitors into customers. StoreBuilder has also been added as a free feature for customers of Nexcess’s managed WooCommerce hosting.

StoreBuilder from Nexcess