The CoreCommerce 7.7 Release: An Interview With President and CEO Matt DeLong

March 09, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Content Team

CoreCommerce is ranked #1 of ZippyCart’s Best Ecommerce Solutions of 2010, and we thought it was about time to catch up with President/CEO Matt DeLong regarding what has been going on lately at CoreCommerce. It was great timing for ZippyCart, as CoreCommerce is releasing their new 7.7 version of their ecommerce software solution, which includes a mobile optimized storefront that works across all smart phone platforms. We learned a lot about other great new features added in 7.7, in addition to gaining some more insight about what it is like each day for Matt DeLong at CoreCommerce. Overall the new 7.7 release sounds very impressive and there are still a lot more new features planned for future CoreCommerce software releases in 2010. CoreCommerce is a great ecommerce solution complete with shopping cart, web hosting, Facebook store widget, and a 96% customer approval rating. Below is a summary of our interview, please note that these are not exact quotes.

Q: We have not heard much about your corporate offerings, can you tell us a bit more about this and how those packages differentiate from the small business plans?

This is not a big part of our business, but we had certain large clients who had the request for something with even more horsepower. These merchants are pulling in a large amount of revenue each year and need a more dedicated server to ensure that their ecommerce site is always up. We partner with RackSpace and merchants on the corporate plans typically only share their server with 2-3 other merchants. They get all of the great features that our top small business clients do on their plan, but they do not have to share servers with 100 other merchants.

Q: You mentioned that you had a big announcement about CoreCommerce, what is it?
We have a new version (7.7) of the CoreCommerce ecommerce software solution debuting today that has some great new additions for our merchants. The biggest thing that we’re introducing is a a mobile optimized storefront to Corecommerce merchants. We now will be able to determine the smart phone a consumer is on so we can present them with the proper mcommerce experience for that phone. All servers will get this update pushed out to them, so our merchants will have this change available to all storefronts immediately, helping them become more effective about selling in the mcommerce space. CoreCommerce is one of the first ecommerce software solution companies to debut a feature like this to help our merchants with their mobile commerce sales.

Q: Beyond Moblie Commerce, what are some other updates with the 7.7 release?

The 7.7 release has a lot of great features. This includes an auto suggest feature, which is similar to Google’s auto suggest for search. The great thing about this feature is that it’s tied directly into your storefront, so if a customer is typing in a product in your search bar, and doesn’t know how to spell it, the correct spelling will pop up automatically. This release also includes the functionality of Picnik, which is an easy to use image editor that will allow our users to crop, resize, and touch up images. Also, we have a new portfolio of “Add to Cart” buttons so that our merchants can find the best possible buttons for their storefront. In all, there are 45 different button templates that our merchants can choose from.

Q: CoreCommerce is PCI/PA-DSS compliant right?

Yes we are. We already have approval from Visa, but it takes up to 15 weeks for Visa to add us to their public list. Still, we have all the credentials and are compliant with all PCI/PA-DSS requirements.

Q: What is a typical day like at CoreCommerce for you?

Some days I am somewhat of a pinch hitter, as I have a programming background, so on occasion I will help develop some of the features with our new releases. Luckily we have an amazing team of developers, and a strong COO, so I do not have to get involved with programming too often. Outside of that, I focus on working with our team with regards to the strategic vision of the CoreCommerce ecommerce software solution and feature set. I also do a lot of interviews with industry people in ecommerce, news publications, or in related niches as it pertains to new CoreCommerce features we release.

Q: What are some of your favorite CoreCommerce sites you have seen lately?

Well it depends if you are talking about great design or interesting products. Some of the CoreCommerce merchants stand out to me because of their great design and we cover some of the top choices in the CoreCommerce gallery. We have seen a lot of traction among apparel clients, but one site that caught my eye lately is http://www.flyjumperstore.ca/, as they have a nice design, plus one of the most unique products we have seen here at CoreCommerce.

Q: Is there anything ZippyCart readers should know about what makes CoreCommerce stand out among other ecommerce solutions?

CoreCommerce is big on customer service and we do everything we can to ensure our merchants have all of their tickets handled as quickly as possible so that they can focus on selling. When a ticket is complete, our merchants rate our service and we’re happy to say that we average a 93% customer satisfaction rating. This means 93% of our customers rate us excellent or good! If someone has an average or unsatisfactory review of how their ticket was handled, then our team reaches out to figure out how we might be able to improve our customer service in the future.

Another thing to note is that CoreCommerce is in this industry for the service we provide. We stand out from the rest because we are constantly working to improve the experience of our merchants and their customers. We release updates and new features every 2-3 weeks, which is far faster than other shopping cart providers out there, which usually only do 4-5 releases a year. Also, when we push out a release, we make sure that all of our merchants receive it. Most shopping cart services require the merchant to download and install the update on their own, while we push our updates live to each of our servers in a very timely manner. This ensures that everyone is up-to-date at all times.

Q: Why did you choose Rackspace for your data center?
We actually have been with Rackspace since 2001 and have always had a great experience using them to host our ecommerce merchants’ online stores. Uptime is critical to the success of an ecommerce store, and we want to ensure that CoreCommerce merchant sites are always live so customers can shop and make a purchase. Other ecommerce software solutions have tried to bring hosting in house, but we feel that a partner like Rackspace, who focuses on hosting, is best for CoreCommerce merchants.

Q: What does the future hold for CoreCommerce?

One of the things we care most about is what our merchants need to improve their sales. We listen to all customer feedback and work hard to provide the most popular features. This is why we put out releases every 3-4 weeks, since there are many new tools available online and we want to try to integrate what we can. We were one of the first shopping cart providers to integrate Facebook and Twitter, for example. We hope to integrate Google Buzz in the future as well. Also, we are working on releasing some amazing free templates that will help our users provide cleaner and better looking storefronts.

Q: What is the office / team like?

We have a great office atmosphere and a really amazing team at CoreCommerce that is extremely flexible and able to keep up with advances in the ecommerce space, ensuring our merchants always have the most up-to-date tools and technology. We focus on an agile methodology and therefore can put out frequent updates to our ecommerce software, whereas other companies only update there products a few times per year.

A note from the Zippy Team: All in all, this interview was very exciting. It’s clear that CoreCommerce works with the customer in mind and that they continue to build a unique and merchant focused feature set that rivals others. This is just one of the many reasons CoreCommerce has been rated the number 1 shopping cart solution on ZippyCart.