Software > E-CommerceEssentials

Last October, I wrote about Assurz, a service that-for a small up-front surcharge-would let you return anything you bought at a participating retailer, on very generous terms: no questions asked, a 90-day window, and no shipping charges or restocking fees. Sadly, Assurz is no more. The gist of the story is that Assurz filed for bankruptcy protection in late June after informing its retail partners that it was ending service because of excessively high return rates. What a shock: Whoever came up with the company's business model apparently didn't anticipate that the type of person who'd sign up for the service would be far likelier than the average customer to use it.

EBay this week rolled out WorldofGood.com, a new online Green marketplace offering products that are made from recycled or natural materials.

Microsoft has agreed to buy comparison shopping business Ciao in a deal worth around US$486 million, and plans to integrate the service into its Live Search sites, it announced Friday.

NetSuite furthered its verticalization strategy recently with the release of two new editions of its on-demand ERP platform specifically geared towards e-commerce vendors.

BEA Systems' latest version of its e-commerce tool takes a services-oriented architecture (SOA) approach to tackle challenges brought on by current e-commerce trends, said a company executive.

Domain name and hosting company NetRegistry has selected the locally-developed Freeway open source e-commerce system to resell to its customer base.

PayPal is touting better security for larger merchants in an effort to attract more enterprise e-commerce services to adopt the payment platform.