One of our big complaints against hyperlocal sites is they haven’t really invested in the commercial lifeblood of their community. They’re more like the (almost totally irrelevant) equivalent of a public access cable TV channel.

That’s why we like the approach of ShopCity, which lets hyperlocal sites, chambers of commerce, local publishers and local governments use a platform that provides enhanced listings, transactions and social media tools for SMBs.

Two former Gatehouse digital staff, in particular, have taken out new ShopCity sites: Emily Lowry, who launched Magic City Post’s ShopBirmingham after working on ShopBuffalo last year, and well-known journalism blogger and executive Howard Owens, who today launched ShopBatavia. The sites make me want to go out and use ShopCity to launch a shopping site for my own town.

The sites are new for ShopCity, which now has 30 local sites around the U.S. and Canada. The company has also launched ShopLocally, which is kind of a networked “greatest hits site” comprising the best of ShopCity sites.

Owens notes in today’s The Batavian that “ShopBatavia.com isn’t just another ‘hope they find us’ business directory with nothing more than a picture and a few words about your business.

“With ShopBatavia.com merchants can actually sell online, offer specials, discounts, coupons, daily deals, product information, set up newsletters for direct marketing, integrate with Facebook and Twitter, answer customer questions and do it all in an environment that is professional and backed by same-day phone support.”

Owens adds that “ShopBatavia.com is bolstered by the marketing power of The Batavian, with its thousands of daily local readers and thousands of Facebook fans.”

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When hyperlocal zeroes in on local marketplaces, it makes a lot more sense to me. Witness ShopBuffalo, an attractive new marketplace from The Buffalo News launched as a companion to Buffalo.com. The site has partnered with ShopCity and Hero, a local design firm.

Launched March 31 as part of a broader redesign, ShopBuffalo provides free business profiles, adding premium tiers priced at $47 and $97 a month. Businesses can claim them and flesh them out with Facebook and Twitter links, online inventory feeds, coupons, deals, gift certificates, video, event calendars and maps — a very well-conceived set of services. As with other ShopCity partnerships, “shop locally” is a major theme. Merchants are encouraged to promote their own presence via in-store signage. The site also features overall community pages for merchant news and events.

Buffalo News’ Emily Lowrey tells us that ShopBuffalo was developed as a piece of the broader site, which targets 13- to 30-year-olds who are not traditional newspaper readers. She’s not kidding about that. The animated characters that hover in the logo on Buffalo.com’s home page — designed by Hero — could be from a “Star Wars” comic. Another component of the beta is PaperG’s Flyerboard, which lets organizations and merchants post announcements and send additional information on request.

Lowrey notes that the site also has a strong community component. The five-person team that launched Buffalo.com — Manager Ben Kirst, a part-time manager, plus sales and content coordinators/creators — is working with community organizations now to get Neighborhood Goods and a few other really positive projects running.” She adds that site has not had any formal marketing while it is in beta, but will begin a major promotional campaign within two weeks.

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ShopCity, a storefront and marketing platform for SMBs, hopes to jumpstart its reach via a new “City Manager” program that allows local media partners to secure local URL rights owned by ShopCity (i.e., ShopMountainView.com) and market its services. City Managers, who handle sales and marketing as well as community relations, share revenues from storefront and marketing sales. They will also get a piece of the action from ShopCity’s community marketplace and upcoming daily deal feature.

One example of the program is ShopCorona.com. In this case, the SoCal city’s economic development division actively helped to market the platform to SMBs, greatly simplifying the city manager’s job — and winning an 80 percent participation rate among local businesses.

Embarcadero Publishing, a seven-title Bay Area group, is ShopCity’s charter media partner, having secured the rights to ShopPaloAlto.com, ShopMountainView.com and ShopMenloPark.com. Embarcadero has also begun actively soliciting support and business participation, landing partnerships with the chambers of commerce and municipal governments in all three cities, and ramping up for a September promotional campaign.

This summer, the Silicon Valley publisher hired a bunch of college kids to canvass the business community, showing off business profiles with a dedicated ShopCity iPhone app. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” says ShopCity CEO Colin Pape. “Small businesses really identify with our ‘shop local’ message and we’re generating a lot of goodwill by providing them with a complimentary profile page and online storefront.”

In other ShopCity news, Pape says the site is also building out its new national local shopping portal via ShopLocally.com, a URL it recently acquired.

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EBay is pushing to do more to integrate the flagship auction site and its Marketplaces products with ProStores, its online storefront software company. The effort to integrate ProStores is part of a broader effort to integrate its properties (i.e., eBay Classifieds).

ProStores, acquired by eBay five years ago, currently has “tens of thousands” of customers, who pay either $29.95 or $59.95 per month, depending on the service package. The majority of its customers come from eBay Direct, but the service also works with independent retailers. It competes with the likes of Amazon, as well as several boutique storefront providers that focus on local marketing, such as ShopCity.com.

A new version of the software has just been released that ProStores hopes to boost conversions and order size — the two currencies of online stores. The new version lets store owners “panelize” their content and turn promotions into graphical banners on the fly. Multiple promotions can be run at once.

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