An increasing number of American online-retailers puts its application programming interfaces (API) open for external developers.

According to Sucharita Mulpuru, who takes care of the developments in the American e commerce line, on behalf of Forrester research, sharing APIs could very well be ‘the next big thing’. ‘It absolutely makes sense to discover this. As long as you are careful in the way developers obtain access to your data, there is no backside.’

Products move
Also Gene Alvarez of consultancy Gartner expects that API (Wikipedia: ‘A collection definitions on basis of which a computer programme can communicate with a another programme or part’) will more and more often be opened. ‘In three yearstime,  25 up to 30 percent of large online-retailers will be using it. External developers can help their products, as it were, move over the Internet.

Netflix, Etsy and Amazon
Well known companies which already use  APIs to boost their online-sales are dvd-leasing companies Netflix and Etsy.com, a marketplace for hand-made goods. Also Amazon.com makes product data available by means of its Associates web service, with which the company lets others advertises for its products.

Best Buy
With its Remix-programma, Best  Buy is of the first, in relation to sharing product data. Recently the electronics chain launched a test version of its site consumersprice.com,  where shoppers can ask price alert. By means of API’ s , the site is linked to, among others, Google Maps, Twitter and Flickr.

One out of three Europeans bought something via the internet last year. This amounts to 150 million consumers according to a report of the European Commission. In 2006, 27% off all Europeans made a purchase online. Especially in Denmark (59%), the U.K. (57 %) and the Netherlands (56%) online shopping is very popular. In Belgium only 21% buys goods or services online. Movies, travels, hotels, tickets and multimedia are the most popular items. BeCommerce, the Belgian e-commerce federation also had a study executed. This showed that 4 out of 10 Belgians bought online yearly. Although the numbers may differ, one can see here an increase on a yearly basis (+42%). Per inhabitant, the turnover in Belgium is still less than half the turnover in the Netherlands. “So there’s still an enormous potential for the Belgian e-commerce” says BeCommerce.

However, it sees 3 impediments: the severe Belgian regulations for conditional sale, the prohibition for a long-distance seller to ask for an advance before the end of the “period of reflexion” and the severe rules on discounts. That is why Belgian e-shops could lose the battle with their neighbour countries.

“On the internet, an international alternative is only a mouse click away”
According to the European Commission the competition between countries should not be exaggerated. Helena Kunera, Euro Commissioner for consumer affaires says that consumers mainly stick to the national market. Only 7% shops online at a foreign supplier.

Recently, Clo Willaert , our belgian queen of the blog & organiser of the  Girl Geek Dinner group , invited 40 bloggers for a special day event in London. I was honoured to be part of this community beeing able to test a new ground-breaking application for smart phones using Flickr to share photos &  Twitter for tips messages. The idea is to be able to follow and contact each other in real time during a Shopping day in London.

Eurostar brought us to London for an exclusive shopping hunt and gave us a number of great advantages. In more than 9 shops in Regent Street, we enjoyed discounts and whole bunch of other advantages : a glass of Champagne in the Swarovski Crystallized Lounge, …

We also followed an unique presentation in the Apple Store. Molly Flat, female blogger for the Guardian and Jess Greenwood of Contagious Magazine, gave us an overview of the top 10 trends of 2009.

As you can see here, this great application contains an interactive map of London where you can see all the participating shops and the precise position of all the 40 bloggers. We can also post messages and pictures with the application and automatically exchange them with the others!

Just listen to an interview about what a Girl Geek really is here:

And now back to online shopping!

Online shopping is more environmentally friendly than driving to the shops, according to a new report from the Logistics Research Centre at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.  Their work is being undertaken as part of the UK-Government funded Green Logistics research programme:  www.greenlogistics.org.uk The team found that, on average, having goods delivered to your home by parcel carrier generates significantly less carbon dioxide than making a special trip to the shops to buy the same item.

The research compared the carbon footprints of online and conventional shopping for small goods such as books, CDs, cameras and household items.  The work focused on the final stage in the delivery process, the so-called ‘last mile’, when goods are either delivered to the home or customers travel to the shops to collect them in person.  It was found that a typical van-based home delivery produced 181g CO2, compared with 4,274g CO2 for an average trip to the shops by car.  An average bus trip by a shopper produced 1,265gCO2.  In other words, when a customer drives to the shops and buys fewer than 24 small, non-food items per trip or travels by bus and buys fewer than 7 items, home delivery is more environmentally-friendly.

Download the free report here