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Pindar Graphics has taken over Acorn E-commerce, extending its range of ecommerce services and its customer base.

The UK’s largest independent printer and multi-channel publishing business already provides fully bespoke and integrated ecommerce websites to larger retailers.

With Acorn, it hopes to cater for smaller customers too, E-consultancy.com reports.

Acorn’s full online self-service platform will improve the ease of maintenance and upgrades.

Roger Willcocks, director of Pindar Graphics, said: “Acorn has proven expertise in the marketplace and offers a very saleable product.

“Using the Acorn platform, it can take just a matter of days from creation of concept to developing an online shop that can take orders.

“This is important for customers who want a product that is easy to use, offers best-practice ecommerce in packaged form and will help them maximise their internet sales potential without investing significant sums of money.”

Founded in 1836, Acorn has over 170 years of experience in the printing industry.

Yahoo UK and Ireland has signed a deal with Britain-based social network Bebo in a bid to challenge Google’s market dominance.

Bebo will benefit from Yahoo display advertising, the inclusion of Yahoo Answers and the creation of a Bebo-branded toolbar.

Yahoo’s main goal is to help companies improve their online marketing to 16-to-24-year-olds, ClickZ.com reports.

Gaining access to Bebo’s information about its users will be a boon to Yahoo, especially in conjunction with the targeting technology it acquired from BlueLithium last week.

Blake Chandlee, commercial director for Yahoo UK and Ireland, said: “We started looking at how do we start to go off-network to bring about a more scalable marketplace.

“The Right Media exchange helped a little bit, the BlueLithium does a great job as they line up with our core values, and the Bebo deal is the icing on top of the cake.”

He continued: “This puts us in the number one position in the media perceptive in the U.K. with inventory and page views…to set our sights on Google.”

Mr Chandlee said he hoped the partnership would challenge Google’s close to 75 per cent share of the search engine query market.

Multi-channel retailers need to provide comprehensive descriptions to their customers if they want the technology to have an impact on sales, the e-tailing group has warned.

Some 77 percent of respondents to a survey the group conducted last month said that their interest in buying from a particular merchant was ‘very to somewhat’ influenced by the quality of content on its website.

Clothing and accessories, computer hardware and software and consumer electronics were the products for which consumers regarded detailed information as most essential.

Jay Heavilon, president of ARS eCommerce, said: “It is apparent that everyone wants more information. In fact, 91 per cent of those who completed this online questionnaire responded that they ‘almost always to frequently’ click to learn more when they find a product of interest.”

Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group, echoed his sentiments: “Conversely, limitations in product content prohibit consumer decision-making and can result in lost sales. We cannot emphasise enough the need for comprehensive content on ecommerce sites.”

The survey found that 66 per cent of people research for products online half the time or more.

Facebook is seeking to harness its massive online marketing potential, with a new London office and PR offensive.

The UK is now the third biggest Facebook market worldwide, the Guardian reports, with 5.2 million users.

Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president of product marketing and operations, said: “Advertising usually means banners and button, or search. We honestly believe if we make advertising more compelling and more socially relevant, we can have significantly less but have it being more valuable.

“We have an incredible number of page views and could become the most high traffic site in the world. The thing is not to have as many ads as possible but to make them as essential and necessary as possible. And then it is not viewed as advertising, but as content.”

Facebook uses a pay-per-view advertising model. Like Google, which Palihapitiya extols, Facebook can take a targeted approach to marketing due to the wealth of personal data at its disposal.