Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Excite Inc has launched a kind of virtual credit card wallet that makes it easier for consumers to make online purchases. The new feature, called Excite Express Order, is designed to let users buy merchandise from a variety of retailers with a few clicks of a mouse by allowing shoppers to enter billing information once and use it repeatedly to buy merchandise quickly from retailers on Excite. The company claims it is the first portal to offer a simple buying system for consumers by making Express Order is available immediately in the Excite Holiday Shoppe. America Online Inc is set to launch a similar service, AOL Quick Check Out, as early as this week. The Excite initiative is being sponsored and supported by the company’s payment partner MasterCard, which will launch a national broadcast and print advertising campaign aimed at educating consumers about online shopping. The move comes as part of an overall e-commerce push as Excite’s business model moves more toward a combination of advertising and transaction-based revenue. And the stakes are high over the holidays, as research from Jupiter communications projects online spending will hit $2.3bn during the period, up from $1.1bn last year. After the holiday season, Excite Express Order will continue to be available for use in Excite’s Shopping Channel with participating merchants. The company also plans to offer a succession of holiday and seasonally-themed shopping collections throughout the year. For the inaugural launch of the service, Excite says it has about 25 merchants lined up to offer goods, the majority of which the company has long-term agreements with, but some of whom were brought in for the holiday season. New merchants will be added to the stable in the coming months. Excite assures us that it pre-screens all participating merchants for customer service, prompt notification and delivery of purchases and a secure environment for customer credit card information.
