Software

Ecommerce software solution PrestaShop is planning to expand by opening its services for consumers in the United Kingdom, the absolute number one ecommerce market in Europe. A country manager will be recruited and will be responsible for local business development in the UK. PrestaShop currently has business operations in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Spain and the US.

Shopify and Nosto have today announced a global partnership, which provides Shopify's client base of over 120.000 retailers worldwide with access to recommendations and personalization features within minutes. Nosto is a Finnish company that has built a plug-n-play recommendation engine, enabling customers from online shops to have a personalized shopping experience.

MetaPack today announced the acquisition of ABOL Software, an American provider of multi-carrier shipping software. With the acquisition MetaPack's global delivery services offering gets expanded and opens up a new market for customers who want to drive cross-border sales and improve their international delivery experience.

PrestaShop and eBay have agreed to expand their partnership and business development activities in Europe. After already establishing a partnership in France, Italy, Spain and the UK, the two companies now will partner up in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Merchants using PrestaShop's ecommerce software now can rapidly integrate their online store with the eBay marketplace.

John Smedley, one of the world's oldest continuous clothing manufacturers, is using big data to boost sales. The company, founded in 1784 at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, has managed to lift its add-to-basket conversions by 11% using the ecommerce intelligence platform Ometria.

The French ecommerce solution PrestaShop has expanded its ecommerce partnership with payment provider Authorize.Net. Merchants who use software from PrestaShop and have an Authorize.Net account now are able to prcoess payments in multiple currencies.

LoyaltyLion has closed a seed funding round of 370,000 euros led by EC1 Capital. The European social loyalty platform enables small ecommerce stores to offer a loyalty scheme that rewards customers for all sorts of activities. It’s compatible with commonly-used ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento and SEOshop.

ChannelGrabber, the British multichannel stock, order and listing management software, has announced the addition of Fruugo, a cross-border marketplace operating in 23 countries. The planned integration will go live in the first quarter of 2014 and this partnership will enable retailers to sell their goods to shoppers worldwide.

A new tool is released which should help online stores be protected against the automated retrieval of prices by competitors. The anti-scraping software BotDefender is developed by France-founded software company Lokad and can be used and implemented for free.

Virtual fitting solution Virtusize expands to Denmark, Norward and Finland and has signed a deal with the Finnish online clothing store Brandos. Thanks to this partnership, Brandos' customers are now able to tell if a pair of jeans will fit before making a purchase.

Dutch customer service tool solution Robin saw the amount of signups grow with 100% in the first quarter of this year, compared to Q4 of 2012. Robin’s founder and CEO Patrick Speijers told us this, and the fact the company wants to spread their wings internationally, was reason for them to expand their team with a new marketing manager and a customer success manager.

Ecommerce company Nosto opened new offices in London at the TechHub Google Campus. The ecommerce personalisation engine from Finland already has some UK retailers using their solution and now aims to expand their business across the United Kingdom. It already has a presence in Berlin and Stockholm.

Strato, one of Europe's largest webhosting companies, is stepping up its game. It recently relaunched their software in the Netherlands by offering more features for less money. It already established a successful relaunch strategy in Spain and Germany.

Starting an online shop to sell some stuff is made even easier now Tictail has entered the market. This ten-month-old startup from Sweden wants to make selling things online a mere trifle for anyone who ever wanted to run a shop online. In minutes you can start selling en earning.