February 15, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Content Team
At the end of January, ZippyCart had a call with Rick Wilson, the Executive Vice President of Miva Merchant, to learn more about upcoming changes in 2010 for Miva Merchant and their product road map. We also spoke a bit about the Miva Merchant 2010 conference coming at the end of this month, as well as the trends in the ecommerce industry. Below are some notes from the call and some insight to all of the great things Miva Merchant has in the works for their merchants to get the most out of their ecommerce software solution.
Q: Can you tell us about what you are working on for your next major release of Miva Merchant ecommerce shopping cart software?
The next major Miva Merchant product release should be out in late February, just before the Miva Merchant 2010 conference which starts on February 24th in San Diego. One of the most important things in the new release that merchants are looking forward to is PA-DSS compliance, which will make sure merchants have secure payment applications which the credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard prefer. There was an incident where over 500,000 data sets containing credit card numbers from registrar and hosting provider, Network Solutions, was compromised last year. This type of situation is what PA-DSS compliance is looking to combat, so that data is more secure and protected.
In terms of features there are 3 major changes coming to the new release of Miva Merchant ecommerce software.
New UI / Customizable CSS: Merchants can now use CSS to fully customize the look and feel of their home page, shipping page, contact page, etc. The new look is more current and has a cleaner look, which is a big step up from the current look of Miva Merchant ecommerce software. So now merchants just need to know CSS, and not how MIVA works to make their ecommerce shop look and feel the way they want.
Inventory at the Attribute Level: This change may not sound like much, but for merchants with massive product catalouges, like those who carry clothing in particular, there will be a vastly improved experience in the new system. For example new updates will allow merchants to track a specific red xl t-shirt so that they can know how many of that color, size, and type of t-shirt are in stock. All of this is in sync with the accounting system so that running an ecommerce shop is more seamless.
Advanced Order Processing System: This was previously available to Miva Merchant customers, but only as an add on module. Now it will be part of the core ecommerce software available for any merchant to handle the full cycle of the ordering process. This will be upgraded for all active customers when it goes live.
Q: Can you tell us more about Miva Merchant Conference 2010? It seems like a very unique event to the industry, are you the only one doing such an event?
The Miva Merchant Conference has been going for about 10 years and is a great way for merchants to connect with the company who powers their ecommerce storefront. There will be a great key speaker this year, Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz.org, as well as other people in the industry speaking to educate merchants on everything they need to know. There are also technical and leadership courses, in addition to breakout sessions which dive deep into certain aspects of ecommerce. On the last day there will be a meeting on the Miva Merchant Roadmap 2010, in which plans for the rest of year will be announced first to attendees at the conference.
Q: Any interesting trends you see in the ecommerce space for 2010?
Mcommerce is the biggest emerging trend in 2010, if you can do it correctly. Not many companies, thus far, are doing an amazing job at it excluding some of the big guys like Amazon, Ebay, and Fandango.
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