Online retailers saw an increase in fraud last year. The UK’s online retailers experienced a rise in the number of bad orders last year, with an average of 1.9% of orders turning out to be fraudulent. Read the full article here.

This joint venture will create a European group providing E-Commerce systems to the start-up and SME markets with a customer portfolio approaching 20,000 e-tailers. This union strengthens the group’s position in the E-Commerce market in the UK, France, Spain and Italy. The group also takes the lead as the foremost E-Commerce solution provider with over 11 million orders processed through Sellerdeck and Oxatis retailers combined, representing more than £1 billion of online sales per annum.

The joint venture will be represented in the UK by the formation of a new business division called Sellerdeck Online. This division will provide a full range of web-based E-Commerce solutions offerings to the UK market, based on the Oxatis platform.

The launch of Sellerdeck Online will complement the existing Sellerdeck desktop products (Catalog, Business and Enterprise) by providing an alternative SaaS-based E-Commerce application with a number of advanced capabilities not found in the current Sellerdeck range such as eBay, Amazon and Facebook integration. At the same time, Sellerdeck will continue development of the existing desktop E-Commerce software products range with version 11 due for release this summer.

Chris Barling, CEO and founder of Sellerdeck, says: “Sellerdeck has a large customer portfolio and extensive experience in the UK market. The combination of that experience and the expertise Oxatis possesses in the SaaS environment will help us to complement and strengthen the overall choice for both business customers and partners. There is clearly a strong synergy between Sellerdeck and Oxatis and we are looking forward to joining forces to make a real difference in the UK market.”

Marc Schillaci, CEO and founder of Oxatis, declares, “We are very happy to announce this alliance with Sellerdeck. It is an interesting and challenging market opportunity for us, and taking on this challenge will help us accelerate our European development and solidify our position as a European leader.“

Contact:

Simon Armstrong, marketing manager, Sellerdeck Online. 0845 129 4800   

About Sellerdeck:
Established in 1996, Sellerdeck is a long-time player in the UK E-Commerce market and offers a complete range of E-Commerce solutions dedicated to start-ups and SMEs.

About Oxatis:

Oxatis was established in July 2001 in Marseille, France and is a European leader in SaaS E-Commerce solutions. Oxatis is also present in Spain and Italy with over 6,500 confirmed customers.

In addition, the latest Sellerdeck survey of small and medium businesses selling online shows the quantity of orders processed by each e-tailer increased by 12% on average in the first quarter over the same period in 2010. Notably respondents also reported their average shopping cart value decreasing by over 3% during the period from £71.17 in the first quarter 2010 to £68.82 in the first quarter 2011, indicating shoppers are becoming more restrained in their spending.

If the two sets of figures are compared by month from 2010 to 2011 a very different picture emerges. January was very strong with a 20% increase in sales and 17% increase in orders processed, in contrast to February and March which both saw only a 4% increase in sales and 10% growth in the number of orders.

Nick Kington, managing director at Sellerdeck comments, “The quarter started very strongly, perhaps as a bounce back following the difficulties experienced due to the weather in December 2010. However in February and March there were signs that consumers might be starting to rein in their spending. With the government cutbacks starting in earnest and the possibility of an increase in interest rates the outlook for the second quarter of 2011 is looking less optimistic. But internet shopping still seems to be more resilient than the high street given that the British Retail Consortium reported a 1.9% decrease in sales this March.”

E-commerce stats: £10bn spent online in January and February. The UK’s shoppers spent £4.9bn online last month, 20% more than in the same period in 2010, bringing the total spend so far this year to £10bn. This figure comes from the most recent IMRG/Capgemini e-Retail Index. I have a round up of these figures, as well as some recent stats from our E-commerce Statistics document… Read the full article here.