November 10, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

ZippyCart recently added reviews of the AmeriCommerce ecommerce solution to our site, and as part of the process we reached out to online businesses who use their software to get a better idea of why they were so happy. Luckily ZippyCart is based in Seattle, which is home to many popular websites and ecommerce companies, so it was not too hard to find a local AmeriCommerce client. We used our network of connections to get in touch with Pet Holdings, Inc, who are the geniuses behind the I Can Has Cheezburger network, and their very own ecommerce store dubbed LOLmart.

Fans of Cheezburger looking to show off their support can find all of their favorite t-shirts, books, toys, and more at the LOLmart. Currently the LOLmart has a limited selection of merchandise, but the Cheezburger crew has some big plans underway to take their ecommerce store to the next level. In order to provide merchants with better insight into why LOLmart picked AmeriCommerce to power their ecommerce store, we spoke with Loren Bast who is the development and data guy for the Cheezeburger network of sites, and was the one responsible for partnering with AmeriCommerce to create the LOLmart that consumers know today. Below are some questions and answers from the chat with Loren, which should help merchants learn more about why AmeriCommerce was the winning choice for LOLmart.

ZippyCart: What are some of the top reasons you chose AmeriCommerce to power LOLmart?

LOLmart: There are a variety of reasons why AmeriCommerce was the right ecommerce software solution for LOLmart, but two of the biggest features that stood out were their remote carting feature and robust API. Remote carting was key, as the Cheezeburger network is a big fan of using WordPress, and the remote cart feature allows us to integrate AmeriCommerce wherever we like. Additionally the API is a big plus for us, as it allows us to customize the UI as needed so we can be more efficient running our store. These are just a couple of the reasons why we decided to go with AmeriCommerce, but there are a variety of other reasons why their ecommerce solution stood out among others in the market. There were other ecommerce solutions that we experimented with… even some that cost thousands per month, but none matched the value and feature set that we found with AmeriCommerce.

How have things been going since you launched LOLmart on AmeriCommerce? Any hiccups?

LOLmart: Everything has been going great since we got set up with AmeriCommerce, and there have not been any major hiccups with the implementation or day-to-day operation of LOLmart. One small piece of feedback that I have given AmeriCommerce is that their interface does not truly allow merchants to understand all of the capabilities of the ecommerce software solution. However, once you get accustomed to the interface, you have a lot of power to control an online store and manipulate whatever elements you desire.

In general AmeriCommerce right out of the box did 95% of what we wanted in an ecommerce software solution, and the additional 5% that we needed, was easily handled by some custom development work by AmeriCommerce in just a couple weeks. Off and on we need custom development work to accommodate our unique ecommerce site, because we are always coming up with new ideas and feature needs. Regardless of what we need for LOLmart, AmeriCommerce can work with us to accomplish what we desire.

What are some of the top sellers in LOLmart?

LOLmart: In general the section of LOLmart that is most popular among consumers is the shirt of the day section, where we feature a new shirts in our collection. Some of the current choices in the ecommerce store include the Disappointed Turtle,  Banana Phone and Thanksgiving Thumbs Kitteh. However we have a lot of ideas in the works that will soon be available in an updated LOLmart. We cannot say much about all the upcoming changes, but there will be some great things in time for Cheezburger fans to pick up gear for the holidays. As such, there are currently a bunch of items in the LOLmart which are on sale, so we can make way for new merchandise.

Are your products most popular in the U.S.?

LOLmart: Yes, in general the United States is where we sell the most merchandise, but we do have a number of countries outside the U.S. who are fans of Cheezburger and purchase goods from the LOLmart. We have about 30 countries we ship to outside the U.S., and we’re continually trying to work on expanding the list, but it takes time as each country has unique shipping rules. Overall I think that 1/3 of the sales from the LOLmart are to international consumers.

Can you tell us a bit more about the Cheezburger Coins virtual currency?

LOLmart: This is another area where AmeriCommerce shined, as we were able to work with them to create a hybrid solution that allowed us to sell virtual currency alongside t-shirts and other physical products. Throughout the Cheezburger Network of sites, we have fun ways for our visitors to earn virtual trophies, but some may take a long time to earn. Therefore we wanted to give people a way to pick up these trophies right away, by purchasing our Cheez Currency, which allows consumers the ability to purchase that trophy that may take them a month to earn. SO far things are going well, and we have plans to expand this part of the business.

Conclusion:
Speaking with Loren Bast was enlightening and fun. Loren truly is a very happy customer for AmeriCommerce, and doesn’t have to work hard to evangelize the company to anyone who asks for advice on choosing an ecommerce solution. Hosted shopping carts provide services to a variety of businesses, but often merchants think that they are just for the small business that is just starting out or has no need to grow. LOLmart proves that this isn’t true, as the Cheezburger network has reached international success, experiences a volume of traffic some of us only dream of, all while becoming a famous Internet meme offering daily laughs and workplace distractions. As such, they needed a solution that could grow with them, and found that AmeriCommerce was far better than a high cost custom solution any day.

November 9, 2010
By the ZippyCart Shopping Cart Reviews Content Team

ZippyCart recently added the AmeriCommerce ecommerce software solution to our site, and throughout this week we will be highlighting the company, and why so many merchants have chosen AmeriCommerce to help power their online business. The AmeriCommerce ecommerce solution has a robust set of features which include remote carting, multiple storefront technology, and more, assuring that they can accommodate the needs of a wide variety of merchants. As part of the AmeriCommerce review process,  we interviewed VP of Product Development and co-founder, Ed Sturrock. We wanted to provide our readers with additional insight into AmeriCommerce, and get answers directly from the source. Below is a recap of our chat with Ed, where you can learn more about why merchants are so happy with AmeriCommerce as their ecommerce software solution.

ZippyCart: What are the most powerful features that you feel drive merchants to partner with AmeriCommerce?

AmeriCommerce: That would have to be our mascot Carty’s good looks!  Aside from that, it’s really less about 1 feature and really more about feature depth, we just do more than a lot of others in this space regarding depth of features in pricing, shipping, payments, tracking, ordering, customer management and more.  Since we are a community driven product and listen to our customers intensely we have a unique line to the heart of every business.   Our customers care passionately about one thing, selling their stuff!  So we leverage that open communication to put the right features in that drive a customer’s sales, because they tell us to.

Besides just feature depth in general (and Carty’s ravishing looks), here are a few really unique features that really do set us aside.

• Multiple storefronts allow you to run many stores at once, but differentiate them completely both in products and in front end user experience while pulling all the orders and customer information to be managed into 1 administrative console.
• We have a rule based workflow and traffic engine that allows you to make rules that trigger any action you want.  This feature has immense power to tailor AmeriCommerce to your needs without the use of a developer.  Make rules to send orders to external systems, to send emails to customers or visitors that fit particular profiles.  Make rules that automatically import products or cancel orders with no activity.  Make rules to wash your car and feed your dog. Thousands of use cases…one groovy system.
• Ecommerce enable any website or application using remote carting and remote ordering.  Just add the product info to any website on any server running any scripting language and we will maintain the cart information and securely check the customer out for you.  We don’t have to be your front end site, pick any vendor or technology for this task and use remote ecommerce.  Don’t recreate the wheel, instead use a mature and feature rich ecommerce system and focus on your front end website.
• A robust and powerful API/SDK is essential to integrating systems and we don’t just expose a few small pieces of the system, we expose virtually everything through our API.  This allows you to integrate virtually any application with AmeriCommerce.
• Another huge feature is actually our qualified support people, this is not a call center, they are not outsourced.  Instead they ‘know’ ecommerce, web technologies and HTML/CSS deeply so you don’t have to.

ZippyCart: Can you provide any insight into the upcoming Theming system changes? How will that improve life for AmeriCommerce merchants?

AmeriCommerce: Who wants to learn HTML and CSS?  So primarily it will make editing and sharing themes even easier.  We have immense power in our theme system, as many merchants can tell you, but so much of it is in an advanced format that needs to be easier.  We really want to unlock the power the system already provides and give a better administrative skin to use it all.  Many people don’t know that we can completely customize a page by just moving elements around, or that multiple layouts are a piece of cake, even multiple live entire themes on a single site are doable today.  So we plan to expose this power in an easy to understand manner.

For advanced users, we intend to move to a more file based approach, allowing them to work with raw HTML files even for dynamic layouts right from the start.  We already support this, but you have to reference files manually…we plan to make it super simple by just making file access the default.

Ultimately, it will be about extending the interface to make the power show, but simplify the steps to use that power.  There will be some exciting features that come out of this overhaul as well but I would be shot with nerf guns if I let word of those out!

ZippyCart: Can you tell us a little about what AmeriCommerce is looking to accomplish with the new AmeriCommerce Product Blog?

AmeriCommerce: To let our customers get to know us and us them.  The new product blog aspires to become a new way to give our community of users early access to what we are up to.  A less formal and more conversational bead into what AmeriCommerce is about and the how the features we have are used in everyday life.  We intend to gather feedback on new and upcoming features as we are designing them so that customers can take part in crowdsourcing that design.  If we do that, the feature will really be for them and be built in a way that provides immediate value.

Here are the main things we want to accomplish:

• Feature Previews of things to come
• Idea Conversations to see what you think
• Real World Use Cases of Existing Features
• Training on new features
• How people are using AmeriCommerce
• AmeriCommerce Tips and Tricks

ZippyCart: What can you tell us about the Social and Mobile features in version 2010.6?

AmeriCommerce: This is such an exciting release for us.  We are including a native Facebook store and shopping application you can put right on your business profile page along with many new Facebook features that allow liking, commenting and sharing products and services.

Another great feature in 2010.6 is a mobile shopping interface that is optimized for finger friendly navigation.  This new store pulls right from your product data and is completely customizable.  Customers can even serve differently themed storefronts to iPhone vs. Android and other major phone operating systems.

ZippyCart: What kind of feedback are AmeriCommerce merchants providing about the improvements in 2010.5?

AmeriCommerce: They are loving the speed enhancements which have enabled higher rankings in Google.  This also lowered the size of sites on our platform which reduces serving fees and that has helped some customers put more money to the bottom line.  The security and reliability changes have also really added peace of mind.   We are a very fast moving platform and with that kind of speed, customers want to know that the product is still secure and that all of these upgrades we push to them are stable when their site is upgraded.

Our customers know that when we take the time to tighten ship periodically, it shows that we are truly committed to their success, not just our own.  They know we care and that we listen.  It also helps that we added a few new integrations and features too.

ZippyCart: Can you tell us a bit about what a typical day is like for the team at AmeriCommerce?

AmeriCommerce: Our day rarely stops, businesses run 24/7 and we have people working around the clock adding features, supporting the product and working on the next great thing that is designed to increase our customers’ sales.  Everyone on the team identifies and personifies our mission of owning ecommerce and we’re constantly working towards it.  If I said none of us dreamed in code or didn’t have day dreams about ecommerce features…I would be lying!  We get giddy over new features and party over releases because we genuinely have fun doing this.  We’re pretty competitive too, we like to play armchair basketball, ping pong, darts and mini pool…I could lie and say this helps us think of new ideas and features…but honestly we’re too busy trying to focus on pulverizing each other!<

ZippyCart: Do you have any 2011 predictions for the ecommerce industry?

AmeriCommerce: Facebook and Mobile commerce are going to drive additional revenue to stores, more than ever before and merchants need to be prepared to take advantage of it early.  Facebook will continue to harness the power of their user base to drive revenue and change the shape of ecommerce as we know it.

Alternative payment methods will continue to thrive, chipping away at the costs of moving money from consumer to merchant.  Every year we can move money around for less and less.  These savings go to store owners and almost always trickle down to the consumers as well.

Couponing and mass discounts will get out of hand in 2011 and shave merchants margins in the hopes that it will drive traffic.  I’m not so sure this is an effective way for our customers to grow, but it will definitely drive traffic.  It’s good for the consumers though.  If merchants want to succeed in this, they need to be sure to have proper upsells, cross-sells and calls to action to drive deeper revenue while the visitor is cashing in their deep discounts.

With the upcoming changes to the PCI regulations, I also feel that PCI is going to be pushed more heavily by Visa and businesses will really start to feel the pressure of these regulations.  The expense of PCI/DSS compliance will likely move many customers off their homegrown or self-hosted systems and towards cloud based software as a service ecommerce platforms like AmeriCommerce.  Additionally, smaller ecommerce providers will begin to falter under the expense of properly securing and complying with PCI/DSS.  This poses an opportunity for larger ecommerce players like ourselves to help them and their customers out by forging strong and lasting partnerships where everyone wins.

Conclusion:

Thanks for the opportunity to ramble away about our passion!  I hope it shows that we work hard to provide a great product that we are proud of and one that helps our customers peddle their goods on this internet thingy that seems to be catching on, ha.   Come try us out, we have a no obligation free trial to get started with.  Keep an eye out, there’s more great things to come!

July 12, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

3dcart recently debuted the newest version of their ecommerce software, 3dcart 3.2, which has already received a great deal of accolades. The 3.2 release of 3dcart has many amazing features that ecommerce merchants have been searching for in an ecommerce solution including the ability to sell directly on Facebook, create a mobile optimized store, edit images from within your admin panel, easy customization and design, and store management from a smart phone, like the iPhone. We caught up with 3dcart CTO, Jimmy Rodriguez, and asked him some questions about this exciting release:

1. Can you tell us how you determined all of the great new features to include in 3dcart 3.2?

When researching new features for upcoming releases, we rely on feedback from our users, support staff, and research what our merchants will need to stay ahead of the competition. We have a robust user community that gathers in our forum  - forums.3dcart.com.  Our forum is filled with a diverse mix of users who communicate with each other, 3dcart employees, and directly with our CEO to express the features they would like to see in future releases. We also receive recommendations from customers via support tickets, phone calls, and social media pages like Twitter.  In fact, two of our newest features, SmartCategories and YouTube video integration, started out as a conversation on our Facebook fan page, facebook.com/3dcart.

Features such as mCommerce, Picnik Integration, SmartLists, and SocialCommerce were a result of research from our development team on current eCommerce trends, tools, and opportunities. 3dcart’s mission is to provide the tools to assist our merchants with staying ahead of the competition, expanding their business, attract more traffic and improving their conversion. We’re committed to their success.

2. What was the most anticipated feature in 3.2 that 3dcart merchants were awaiting?

SocialCommerce is an exciting feature that taps into the growing popularity of social media. Twitter updates, a Facebook store, social bookmarking, and a built-in blog help small businesses get some great exposure and build brand awareness on a smaller budget.

3. Is every merchant at 3dcart now on the 3.2 release? Do all new merchants get 3dcart 3.2 right away?

We successfully launched version 3.2 on June 28^th to all of our new merchants and demo users immediately. We began the migration process of existing storefronts immediately and we project that it will be completed within 4-6 weeks. Within the first week, over 2000 stores have been upgraded to version 3.2 and our technicians are working diligently to get every store moved over as quickly as possible. Our platform allows merchants to customize every aspect of their design. Additionally, we are the only hosted eCommerce provider to offer custom programming of the shopping cart. These 2 elements set us apart from the competition, but also require us to be very careful when migrating our clients to the newest version to assure there is no downtime and loss of sales.

4. How will 3dcart 3.2 help merchants improve the ROI from their ecommerce store?

SocialCommerce is a powerful tool that will help our merchants with the marketing of their store and increase brand awareness through the social web. Subsequently, our mCommerce platform will literally put their store in the hands of its users to allow for shopping without a computer. Lastly, we are integrated with every major shopping engine to allow our customers the most opportunities available.

5. Can you tell us a little bit about the support you offer 3DCart merchants who need help?

We are fortunate to have a world class technical support team that has years of experience supporting eCommerce clients. We’re able to provide 24x7x365 support to over 10,000 online businesses with our US based support team.  These interactions take place via telephone, online chat, and email. Customer service is a top priority and we are always working on ways to maintain very high quality of standards, customer satisfaction, and low wait times. Each customer that speaks with technical support receives a survey and this feedback allows us to improve our service.  To date, we have been able to maintain a customer satisfaction level of 98% or greater.

6) Can you give us some insight into what a typical day is like at 3dcart?

A typical day at 3dcart begins at 8am for our eCommerce Specialists, who will speak to over a hundred new and existing clients about ways that 3dcart can fulfill their needs and elevate them to the next level. Our designers spend their days working on custom eCommerce designs for our merchants, internal projects, and assisting customers with customizing their 3dcart stores. Since our technical support team works 24 hours a day, you could say that their day never begins or ends, but they will assist hundreds of clients each day and resolve any customer inquiry efficiently and quickly. Lastly, we have a dedicated development team who works hard each day on updating the 3dcart platform, integrating 3^rd party products, and researching features to include in our next update.

June 28, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

Last week, the acquisition of Vendio by Alibaba.com was announced, ensuring that Vendio’s free online storefront solution will continue to provide merchants with innovative ways to find success selling online. This morning, we spoke with Michael Levit, VP of Marketing for Vendio, about the acquisition and what it means for current and future merchants using the Vendio Platform. Levit was more than happy to answer our questions, and very excited about this merger, which he views as a Win Win Win for Vendio’s customers, Vendio, and Alibaba. Below are the questions we asked, and summaries of his answers:

1. What sparked the acquisition of Vendio by Alibaba?
We talked to Alibaba about a partnership back in November, and if you go back to 1999, we were evaluating opportunities for small businesses and trying to figure out how to provide value for merchants. [Zippy Aside: And they found many ways to do this with Vendio Research, Vendio Reports, and the Vendio Platform]. Mid last year, we found out that merchants need help with sourcing. They want differentiated products at great prices, which for many means working overseas, but there aren’t many easy ways to do this. We found that Alibaba provided the best opportunity for our merchants.

2. How does Alibaba help merchants with sourcing?
Alibaba is a wholesale marketplace that is similar to eBay in the sense that eBay is customer to customer, but Alibaba is business to business. Now that we are connected, our merchants can use Alibaba and Alibaba Express to reach out to manufacturers or suppliers and order products at low wholesale prices. Alibaba Express provides services for small to mid-sized businesses with all products available for review online and prices ranging from sample costs to bulk prices which merchants can purchase using PayPal. Alibaba will take care of the export and import of all goods, which will be delivered to a merchant’s doorstep.

3. What is your plan for making Alibaba an available source to your merchants?
We did a small trial with a subset of our customers and saw that this was a need worth meeting. Vendio has always connected products, orders, and customers through eBay, Amazon, and their own private label storefront using Vendio Marketplaces. Now, with Alibaba, we can connect our users to even more products. We added a sourcing tab on the Vendio Platform where merchants can connect with Alibaba, order products, and easily add them to their product section of their online storefront. They can then push these products to eBay and Amazon as well. Using Alibaba as a source is a feature that comes completely free with Vendio Platform, which is Vendio’s completely free online store solution.

Beyond adding products through the Alibaba marketplace directly to a merchant’s storefront, Vendio will also soon provide a resource similar to Vendio Research. Vendio Research is a tool that licenses all of eBay’s closed item data to suggest to merchants what products to sell, the probability of a product selling, what keywords and categories to sell in, and more. Soon, the same research will be available for the Alibaba product catalog so that merchants will know what products will bring them the most success.

4. Why and how can Vendio provide such a feature rich free online storefront?
Vendio grew up around ebay and built a robust business that helped users sell on eBay by taking a small percentage of merchant sales. This allowed us to become profitable, which we have been now for 5 years. So with a profitable business, the next question we asked ourselves was “How do we grow the heck out of a stable solid business?” The answer was that we provide a solution that lets merchants control their items, orders, and customers all in one place. That is the Vendio Platform. This free online store makes it easy to host a private label storefront, but often people want to push their products to Amazon and eBay. Managing Amazon and eBay and using their tools provides a lot of barriers, but with the Vendio Platform, customers can choose to upgrade for a very low cost to extend their products to Amazon and eBay, without having to hit all of those barriers. So we offer a free solution for any merchant wanting to sell online, and if they want to extend into other channels, then we offer an extremely low cost to entry that drives success for everyone involved.

5. Are there any features on the horizon for Vendio?
We are working on coming up with more exclusive deals and sourcing opportunities for customers, similar to our work with Alibaba. With this new acquisition, we can use a service that Alibaba created called Gagadeals. Gagadeals provides a service similar to a flash deal, which is kind of a lesser extended Groupon. Through Gagadeals, our merchants can provide a limited opportunity sale for a select number of customers to get a product at a great deal. This is becoming very popular online, so we want to be sure to meet this deal [Zippy Aside: this is yet another thing that would come with the free version of Vendio].

Keep your eyes peeled for further innovations from Vendio. It is clear that Alibaba acquiring Vendio is the beginning of some large improvements to an already robust and feature rich free shopping cart solution.

May 3, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

Today on ZippyCart, we debuted our expert review of the Volusion ecommerce shopping cart solution. Volusion is a well-known name in the ecommerce industry that continues to grow and see success as the world of online shopping evolves. They are considered by many to provide both an amazing customer experience and a suite of features that will help any merchant grow their online business with a competitive edge. We took a moment to talk with Clay Olivier, Volusion’s COO and CMO, to find out what Volusion has in store for 2010 and how the company works.

1. What makes Volusion stand out among other ecommerce software solutions?

Hands down, the biggest difference between Volusion and other solutions is that we give our customers everything needed to succeed. Our competitors will give you bits and pieces, but they ultimately leave it up to you to put together the details. We also provide all of the tools an online business could want up front, that way our clients can grow into the software as their business grows. That’s why we have companies of all sizes using our software – it’s so scalable that it will equip you for anything.

In other words, we look at building an online store as if you’re building a retail store. Some providers will give you what you need to build a foundation, but you can’t run a business without the walls, electricity and cash registers. We give you all of that and you grow into it as needed. That’s where things like our gift registry and affiliate system come into play – you don’t need them when you’re painting the walls of your store, but you definitely want them once guests come inside the doors.

I firmly believe that we’re different because of our innovation. We’ve delivered a lot of “firsts” in the industry. Way back when we first got started, we introduced the now industry-standard one page checkout. We were also the first to integrate sales and social media with our Social Store Builder. Recently we’ve stepped up our game by releasing our credit card protection service, Fraud Score and are currently getting in front of the mobile commerce wave by releasing our free feature, Volusion mCommerce.

We also keep things as simple as possible which makes life easier for our team and our merchants. We don’t have any transaction fees like other providers and we don’t make our clients sign long term contracts. We have to earn our clients’ business each month, and that really drives us to work harder each day. A big part of this includes our free, unlimited 24/7 phone support to all of our merchants. In this day and age, people are working around the clock and we want to be there at all times.

We also know that our merchants deserve the best in online security to protect themselves and their customers. Because of this, we’ve invested time and dollars to ensure we provide the highest level of security by achieving PCI/CISP certification. For us and our customers, compliance just isn’t enough.

Volusion has over a decade of experience in creating innovative, user-friendly software that allows online storeowners to take control of their business. I sincerely believe that it’s our focus on helping our customers realize their business dreams that makes us shine compared to other providers. I also believe that this is why industry leaders have given us the honor of providing multiple awards and accolades.

2. What are some of the newest features to be added to Volusion?

There’s been quite a few – we’ve rolled out several major additions to our platform, all in Q1.

We were very excited to release our newest credit card protection service, Fraud Score. This new service screens multiple fields across a massive database network to conveniently inform our customers if their orders are at risk of fraud. Whenever I was running my online store with Volusion, I got burned with some fraudulent orders and lost precious time and money. The entire experience was frustrating, so we wanted to make sure our customers had some form of protection from fraudsters. I’m proud to say that the service has really helped a lot of our merchants by preventing fraudulent orders before they happen.

Finally, we’re wrapping up the beta process of Volusion mCommerce, which creates a fully-optimized mobile storefront. It’s clear that more and more online shoppers are accessing the Internet through their mobile devices, so we wanted to provide our customers with an opportunity to take advantage of that. We truly believe that mobile commerce is the wave of the future, and we want to be steering the ship.

I’m very excited about mCommerce, and our clients are too. One of our merchants, Andrea of Repeat Possessions, told us how important mobile is to the future of her business and how the new mobile friendly feature will help her grow even further. It’s this type of feedback that excites us to continue innovating.

In regards to our core platform, our development team has been hard at work cranking out new additions. The latest release included dozens of new additions. Some of the most popular include:

• MyRewards, which allows merchants to offer a customer loyalty program through their stores
• Multi-language site capabilities so a website can be crafted in any language
• Gift registry integration to allow shoppers to add products to a larger registry list
• Soft add to cart to help streamline the shopping process and boost conversions
• AddThis integration so shoppers can share products across dozens of social networking sites

3. Can you tell us about some of the top merchants using Volusion?
We’re proud to power online storefronts for thousands upon thousands of merchants, spanning all sizes, industries and geographies. We’ve seen SMB customers achieve more than a million dollars in sales, showcase their products at the Grammys, make television debuts, and increase their sales by 400% after switching to our platform.

It’s a true testament to the scalability of our platform that major enterprise clients can easily manage their entire online presence with our shopping cart software.

Some of our larger clients include Disney, Motorola, 3M and Kinerase. These industry leaders have trusted their business with us, and we take that very seriously. Most of our enterprise level customers have spoken highly of our open API to streamline business processes and the branding flexibility that Volusion offers. They are also very appreciative of the 24/7 support and the drastic cost savings in IT investments upon launching their new Volusion site.

4. Can you give us more insight on Volusion and PCI/CISP?

There’s quite a bit of confusion out there regarding PCI/CISP certification and PCI compliance. The major difference is that PCI/CISP certified companies are held to a much higher standard of accountability than their compliant counterparts. Instead of following a set of guidelines on our own, as a PCI/CISP certified company, we have to achieve the following extras:

• Invest in our hardware and hosting facilities to meet more stringent security standards
• Receive approval from an independent auditor that performs on-site inspection of our facilities
• Pass a rigorous screening process in order to remain on Visa’s list of certified providers

Despite the extra time and investment to achieve PCI/CISP certification, we know it’s essential for any online business at this point in the game. In other words, we invested millions to beef up our security infrastructure because we had to. The risk far outweighed the investment for us and our clients.

I strongly encourage all merchants to check the status of their provider on Visa’s list. If not, then no amount of marketing spin will change the fact that they’re not PCI certified. And if they’re not certified, then your business isn’t as safe as it should be. This can have big consequences down the road.

5. Can you tell us about any future updates or change to the Volusion ecommerce solution in 2010?

Sure. As I mentioned earlier, Fraud Score was a huge win for us. Our team spent over a year perfecting that product and we’re very proud of the end result. It’s really a revolutionary tool in that it takes so much data, aggregates it, and returns it in a format that is easily digestible by the end user.

Volusion mCommerce is going to be a major update to the platform. The beta process is drawing to a close and we’ve received a great deal of insight to help better the feature before general release.

As a whole, we’re consistently working on our platform to enhance the experience for all of our customers, regardless of size or industry. We’re focusing on ease of use and creating exciting new additions, integrations and features to further streamline our merchants’ everyday business processes. We’ve definitely got some exciting things coming down the pipeline, so stay tuned!

6. Can you tell us about the Volusion Foundation?

Gladly. We started the Volusion Foundation several years ago as a way to contribute to a cause that is greater than ourselves. Kevin and I both have a strong belief in helping others, which is why we decided to launch it. The idea is pretty simple – give 1% time, 1% product and 1% revenue to deserving charities.

For 1% time, we give all of our employees 2 days paid time off to volunteer for any organization of their choice. With our Stores to Change the World program, we provide 10 free Gold stores to nonprofits each month. And, the 1% revenue is pretty self-explanatory as we give 1% of our yearly revenue to a deserving charity.

It’s truly been a fulfilling experience for all of us at the company and I really think that it positively affects our team to think beyond ourselves.

7. Can you tell us a bit about what a typical day is like at Volusion?

The best way for me to describe it is hectically rewarding. I’m constantly impressed with the hard work and dedication from our team and honestly find it hard to believe that we’ve grown so much in such a short period of time.

Of course there are meetings and projects and deadlines, but a typical day at Volusion is truly about the people. We’ve got an open environment and it’s astounding to see how many great ideas are coming from the team. Just walking around the office is a great way to sum up our culture. You’ll see people from different departments together in a room hammering out the details of a project when across the hall you’ll see another group shooting their Nerf guns while on a break. Everyone says ‘hello’ to each other and I never see any egos. It’s really refreshing.

I’m proud of our team for creating and keeping such a fun, innovative and open place to work. That spirit shows via our customer interaction in striving to always deliver an exceptional experience. A testament to this is that we have all kinds of our customers’ products around the office. We’ve got a huge collection of teddy bears, an awesome bonsai tree, paintings, and all sorts of things lying around. Our team has done a great job of building personal and professional relationships with our clients, and I’m always excited to see what our customers are doing to move the ecommerce revolution forward.

April 30, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

The world of ecommerce is filled with online stores dedicated to women’s fashion. From shoes, to purses, to dresses and more, it is clear that women are a target audience for a vast majority of online sales. With all this focus on women, men almost become a small niche rather than 50% of the market. Blank Label is changing this by joining the few ecommerce sites that provide clothing for men only. And they’re doing this with a twist: Blank Label provides extremely affordable custom designed dress shirts for men… that the customer gets to design! They are making fashion a must for the male online shopper and also making it easily accessible. We caught up with Danny Wong of Blank Label and asked him a few questions about what makes this online venture a success.

1. Can you tell us a little bit about Blank Label and your ecommerce model?

Blank Label allows you to make your own custom dress shirts with our online shirt creator. All of our dress shirts are individually made to fit your preferences. We’re pushing the concept of co-creation, empowering you to be your own designer, giving you final say in the product you are purchasing. We also identify our product as affordable luxury because our made-to-order dress shirts start at $45 and average at $60-$70 after adding a few really neat customized options. Our prices are comparable with mass-produced products because we are trying to encourage you to adopt co-creation over mass-production without there being much friction in the change. You can get a really awesome shirt you designed, that no one else has, that fits you for the same prices as a dress shirt at most department stores.

2. What have you done so far in 2010 to improve the Blank Label experience.

To improve the Blank Label experience, we launched a new website, with more content focused on dress shirt stylization and more text pushing the co-creation revolution. We also released a few big updates to our dress shirt design app, such as a newer, better navigation feature, and a virtual dress shirt that was twice the size as our original!

3. Why do you feel co-creation, and customized apparel has become so popular over the past few years?

Co-creation and custom apparel has become so popular over the past few years because of the Gen Y consumer, the entitled consumer who wants something catering to their needs and their wants. Businesses are realizing more and more that they should be more user-oriented, and how can you get more user-oriented than through co-creation – the collaboration between business and consumer?

4. Do you plan to ever expand outside custom dress shirts at Blank Label?

We have thrown some ideas around. Once we nail down custom men’s dress shirts, we may move onto men’s suits again, men’s pants, or even men’s jackets.

5. Can you tell us about any plans or improvements you have planned for the rest of 2010?

We’re a bit hush, hush about the rest of the year. You’ll just have to find out!

6. We heard you have a sample kit with some swatches of your fabric, is this becoming increasingly popular for new customers to Blank Label?
Yes! We are privately offering samples of fabric swatches to our customers to check out before they purchase their own dress shirt. You only have to cover the cost of shipping which is probably around $6 to receive your sample of swatches to get a better sense of our shirt fabric types and quality.

7. Can you tell me a bit about what a typical day is like for the Blank Label team in Boston, Orange County, and Shanghai?

Having the Blank Label team split across the world is crazy. We typically confer via email, IM, ooVoo, and Google Wave. But our roles are fairly independent so the need to be in an office, chatting constantly isn’t necessary. In fact, we may even be more efficient this way because we are not in the same place chatting our days away to each other.

April 30, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

The world of ecommerce is filled with online stores dedicated to women’s fashion. From shoes, to purses, to dresses and more, it is clear that women are a target audience for a vast majority of online sales. With all this focus on women, men almost become a small niche rather than 50% of the market. Blank Label is changing this by joining the few ecommerce sites that provide clothing for men only. And they’re doing this with a twist: Blank Label provides extremely affordable custom designed dress shirts for men… that the customer gets to design! They are making fashion a must for the male online shopper and also making it easily accessible. We caught up with Danny Wong of Blank Label and asked him a few questions about what makes this online venture a success.

1. Can you tell us a little bit about Blank Label and your ecommerce model?

Blank Label allows you to make your own custom dress shirts with our online shirt creator. All of our dress shirts are individually made to fit your preferences. We’re pushing the concept of co-creation, empowering you to be your own designer, giving you final say in the product you are purchasing. We also identify our product as affordable luxury because our made-to-order dress shirts start at $45 and average at $60-$70 after adding a few really neat customized options. Our prices are comparable with mass-produced products because we are trying to encourage you to adopt co-creation over mass-production without there being much friction in the change. You can get a really awesome shirt you designed, that no one else has, that fits you for the same prices as a dress shirt at most department stores.

2. What have you done so far in 2010 to improve the Blank Label experience.

To improve the Blank Label experience, we launched a new website, with more content focused on dress shirt stylization and more text pushing the co-creation revolution. We also released a few big updates to our dress shirt design app, such as a newer, better navigation feature, and a virtual dress shirt that was twice the size as our original!

3. Why do you feel co-creation, and customized apparel has become so popular over the past few years?

Co-creation and custom apparel has become so popular over the past few years because of the Gen Y consumer, the entitled consumer who wants something catering to their needs and their wants. Businesses are realizing more and more that they should be more user-oriented, and how can you get more user-oriented than through co-creation – the collaboration between business and consumer?

4. Do you plan to ever expand outside custom dress shirts at Blank Label?

We have thrown some ideas around. Once we nail down custom men’s dress shirts, we may move onto men’s suits again, men’s pants, or even men’s jackets.

5. Can you tell us about any plans or improvements you have planned for the rest of 2010?

We’re a bit hush, hush about the rest of the year. You’ll just have to find out!

6. We heard you have a sample kit with some swatches of your fabric, is this becoming increasingly popular for new customers to Blank Label?
Yes! We are privately offering samples of fabric swatches to our customers to check out before they purchase their own dress shirt. You only have to cover the cost of shipping which is probably around $6 to receive your sample of swatches to get a better sense of our shirt fabric types and quality.

7. Can you tell me a bit about what a typical day is like for the Blank Label team in Boston, Orange County, and Shanghai?

Having the Blank Label team split across the world is crazy. We typically confer via email, IM, ooVoo, and Google Wave. But our roles are fairly independent so the need to be in an office, chatting constantly isn’t necessary. In fact, we may even be more efficient this way because we are not in the same place chatting our days away to each other.

April 19, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

Shopster is a very unique ecommerce solution that is gaining great success in a market searching for shopping cart solutions that also integrate with drop shipping partners. Rather than integrating with a drop shipping partner, Shopster is a drop shipping partner in and of itself. The ecommerce storefront and shopping cart solutions that it offers are built on top of this unique foundation. Many of our readers have asked us lately about their best drop shipping options, so we decided to spend some time asking Shopster about their ecommerce solutions. If drop shipping is your primary focus, then consider what Shopster has to offer as it offers reliable drop shipping with a robust shopping cart solution, for the low low cost of FREE.

1. Can you tell us a bit about what makes Shopster ecommerce solutions unique?

Shopster is more than just a traditional turn-key eCommerce solution, we’re the only company out there that combines eCommerce and Social Networking and transforms it into a solution that enables users to explode their online business.

All Shopster members receive a free storefront, access to over 1,500,000 million products, numerous sales channels – eBay, Amazon, Overstock, shopping comparison sites etc, their own comprehensive order management solution, and the marketing tools required to promote a business in a way that makes potential customers sit up and take notice.

Where Shopster has revolutionized the way people think about eCommerce is how we’ve integrated Social Networking into these services. When you sign-up for Shopster, you gain the ability to sell your products, sell others’ products and have others sell yours. Regardless of which of these activities you tackle, you’re given access to the Shopster Network and virtual warehouse. This network allows you to connect with any number of sellers and suppliers, and quickly and efficiently build selling relationships with them. With a network of over 50,000 people, that’s literally thousands of key relationships you can develop over the course of weeks (compared to the decades it would have taken you in a more traditional setting). To learn more, watch our Get Connected video on How Shopster Works http://www.shopster.com/shopster-network.aspx.

2. Can you tell us a bit more about drop shipping, and why it can benefit an online merchant?

In a nutshell, drop shipping is a supply chain management technique where, when a customer purchases a product from an online store, the retailer passes the order information to a wholesale supplier and then the supplier processes and ships the order to the end-customer; hence the term dropship supplier. This is where Shopster comes in. As a network where Suppliers and Sellers can connect and build selling relationships, it makes it easy for someone looking for a product source to create an account and get access to thousands of different suppliers in all industries.

There are a many advantages provided to a reseller by using a dropshipper. You can quickly and easily increase the width of your inventory, it’s a low risk and low cost way of doing business (you don’t pay a dropshipper until after you’ve sold a product). A dropship supplier also allows you to focus on your business’ core competencies and let another company manage the logistics of shipping (which is often a full time job in and of itself).

To learn more about the benefits of drop shipping, checkout http://blog.dollardays.com/the-benefits-of-using-dropship-suppliers/ it’s a good read.

3. Can you tell us about how Shopster compares to services that only help with dropshipping?

Shopster is much more than just a product source. We’re an ecommerce solution that allows businesses of all shapes and sizes to interact and form b2b selling relationships.

If you’re a supplier and you’re looking to increase your distribution channels, you can signup to our system and instantly gain access to tens of thousands of Merchants looking to sell your inventory.

As a seller, when you become a Shopster member, you gain instant access to over 1,500,000 quality products in every category under the sun. Plus we’ll provide you with all the sales channels and tools to successfully sell these products. Every Merchant receives a free store, shopping cart, access to our eBay listing manager, his or her own inventory and order management center, and a host of other marketing tools designed to maximize sales and profits.

And remember, within the Shopster network, if you have your own products, you can act as both a supplier and a seller, so you’re maximizing your profit potential with a minimal cash outlay. For these reasons and many others 50,000 members have made the decision to join Shopster within the last year alone.

4. Can you tell us about any big plans or updates coming for Shopster in 2010?

We have loads of fantastic releases and feature enhancements coming down the pipeline this year, however the most exciting one is definitely our new API. This API will enable third party shopping carts to connect to Shopster and allow their members to access our product source and technology. As an entrepreneur, if you’re looking for inventory for your website and your shopping cart solution provider is integrated with Shopster, you can stock your store full of Shopster products with a click of a button. Once one of these products sells, our system auto generates your order and sends it to the supplier for processing.

Having already developed strategic partnerships with a number of industry leading Shopping Carts and having integrated them into our API, we’re well on the way to providing online retailers with a simple and efficient way to source products for their business.

If you are a shopping cart solution provider and you have an interest in integrating with our API, please direct all communications to marketingpartnerships@shopster.com. We’d be happy to discuss the integration process and how we can facilitate your set-up process.

As I mentioned above, the API is just one of many feature releases we’re currently developing. A few other ones that deserve mention are:

• The enhancements we’re making to our supplier services – the introduction of a new and improved supplier portal that makes it easier and more efficient for suppliers and wholesalers of any size to add their products to our system.
• The improvements to our merchant portal – at the request of our members, we’re adding new search functionality to our virtual warehouse, introducing further shipping enhancements, expanding our template selection and a whole lot more. Follow us on twitter (www.twitter.com/shopster) to be the first to hear the latest buzz.

5. Can you tell us what a typical day is like for the team at Shopster?

Definitely go, go, go. At Shopster, we’re always on the move, there’s never a dull moment. As a company, we are constantly looking for ways to enhance our product features, improve our services, and ensure our customers receive exactly what they need to be successful selling online. Each team members’ tasks vary depending on what department they belong to, but the end-goal and driving focus of the company is always the same: making sure our company delivers the absolute best solution there is so our members are fast-tracked for ecommerce success.

April 12, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

Fortune3 provides a popular shopping cart solution that has been available for 10 years now. Their hosted shopping cart package is available in 6 different hosting levels that all provide unlimited bandwidth, diskspace, and emails. The ZippyCart team spent the end of Q1 doing a thorough review on Fortune3 and scored it a 4.1 on the 5 point ZippyScale™. Fortune3 is now a Top 10 Hosted Shopping Cart Solution, which is a Top 10 list that evolves with the industry. With Fortune3′s new stature, we thought it appropriate to take a moment and introduce them to our readers with an interview of David Farache of Fortune3.

1. Can you give us the background on Fortune3 and the Shopping Cart Hosting Packages you offer for ecommerce merchants?

The Fortune3 shopping cart software and ecommerce hosting service was first announced and released in 2001. As one of the first ecommerce software solutions in the market, Fortune3 established the pricing structure that is based on the number of products, which is now widely used by other providers. Since then, we have become a worldwide leading Ecommerce software and hosting provider.

2. Can you tell us about why you decided to offer unlimited bandwidth and minimal transaction fees? Why do you feel this is a better model than some other merchants who offer limited bandwidth and no transaction fees?
Having been online retailers in the past, we grew very weary of bandwidth fees and how most providers charge for them. To us, a bandwidth fee is a hidden or a “surprise” fee, because you never know what the fee is going to be until the bill comes, at which point you will have to pay for it, without accounting for where the bandwidth came from, and whether it was valid or worth the expense. With a bandwidth fee, you are basically left in the dark, you trust your hosting company to count the bandwidth you are using properly, and leave it up to them to determine how much was used and how much to charge you. Instead, with a small transaction fee like ours, you know exactly what you are going to pay. If you had a good month in sales, you will pay a little more, and you will know that the amount will be a fair percentage of the transactions (less than 1%). Aside from this, with our transaction fee, you will never pay for traffic that doesn’t convert into sales, you will only pay for traffic that does convert into a sale, whereas with a bandwidth fee, you will pay for all traffic to the site, whether it generated a sale or not. This is a big reason why our transaction fee ends up being much lower than a regular bandwidth fee 95% of the time. We feel that this is a better and more fair model to charge our customers with.

3. Is the Fortune3 shopping cart and ecommerce software suited best toward a particular type of merchant or certain size merchant?

Fortune3′s shopping cart and ecommerce software is suited for any business, from small to large, start up to established, retail or wholesale (or both), and in any industry. We pride ourselves in having perfected our software over the last 9 years to provide any and all merchant types with a complete ecommerce software that will handle their needs, no matter how unique they are.

4. Can you tell us about a few of your favorite ecommerce sites using the Fortune3 solution?

It’s hard to pick favorites, but one of them is the Paris Hilton Handbags store, http://www.retouchbrands.com/. Others include http://www.raincosmetics.com/, http://www.safetysmartgear.com/, and http://www.n1wireless.com.

5. Can you tell us more about the other products and services offered by Fortune3?

We offer a wide range of services and products, all of which are ecommerce and web related, and revolve around our shopping cart software and ecommerce hosting service. Because our company is fully dedicated to ecommerce and transactions over the web, we offer all of the services that can possibly be needed by an online merchant, including Custom Web and Graphic Design, domestic and international Merchant Accounts and Gateways to process payments, Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click Campaign Management, SSL Certificates, Domain Names, and Custom Programming to achieve specific functionality.

6. Can you tell us what a normal day is like for the team at Fortune3?

A normal day for the Fortune3 Team involves many twists and turns, and varies greatly depending on the department. A support agent’s normal day would involve answering about 30-50 phone calls, 15-30 Web Chats, 10-15 Emails, and then using the remainder of their time to communicate with other staff members and programmers to solve or answer any questions that may have been left pending an answer, and then culminating with a 10 minute meeting with a supervisor to sum up the day’s work and finish any unfinished requests. Programmers on the other hand, have a very different day, most using about half of their workday to work with support members to help customers figure issues out, while using the other half to continue advancing the Fortune3 software and programming new features.

March 30, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

Throughout 2010, our content team here at ZippyCart is working hard to catch up with our Top 10 Ecommerce Solutions of 2010 and give our readers a chance to learn a bit more about their product including changes to their services, updates to features, and any deals you should know about. Over the past few months, we have already interviewed Pinnacle Cart, BigCommerce, and CoreCommerce. Today, we want to share with you this interview that we had with Nexternal, as well as the new deal that comes with it: 25% Off Nexternal Setup for any ZippyCart customers! Read below to see what makes Nexternal stand out from the rest as a high-end shopping cart solution.

1. Can you tell us a little more about what is new with Nexternal, and what else you have planned in 2010?

So far 2010 has been a really exciting year for Nexternal. In early January we released a new version of our software called Nexternal.net. We essentially built this new platform from the ground up using the latest ASP.NET technology. The new .net version supports all of the features that were in our classic version, but also has some very powerful enhancements such as static, keyword rich URL’s and extensive use of AJAX technology. What this all means for online sellers is that we’re taking extra steps to ensure that their storefront URL’s are Search Engine Friendly and that they have the best storefront technology available.

To be safe, we typically don’t talk about new features until they are released, but I can tell you that Nexternal is going to continue to expand on our feature list. Now that we have the new .net platform in place, we will be looking at other ways that will help our merchants become successful.

2. What do you see as the key differentiating factors that set your ecommerce solution apart from other companies in the space?

Hands down it’s the customer service. From the minute a potential customer contacts Nexternal, they’re assigned a dedicated Account Executive that will not only answer their questions during the sales process, but they will also train and support that customer once they do become a Nexternal client. It’s very rare in this industry to find that level of customer service and it’s what we pride ourselves on.

Aside from customer service, there are hundreds of features that we offer and it’s hard to point out just a few features that are the difference makers for every company out there. All online merchants have different business needs. For one company it can be a huge feature like our ability to automatically print UPS, FedEx & USPS shipping labels and send off tracking numbers right inside of the Nexternal system. For another company, it can simply be a combination of ten little features that all add up in helping them increase overall profits.

3. Why have you built out such a strong following among wineries? Is there anything particular which make so many choose Nexternal?

Nexternal was started in the bay area in 1999 and, at that time, wineries were just grasping the concept of having a website yet alone actually selling online. So when the founders were prospecting for new clients to try their eCommerce system, they just happened to come across a list of wineries in the area and started making calls. Once they got the first winery on the system, they started releasing new features to fit their needs. As the wine industry started to grasp the concept of selling online and the industry started to blossom, Nexternal continued to grow with the industry and now they represent a large portion of our customer base.

The wineries choose Nexternal because of the features set and extensive experience we have in the wine industry. Selling wine online is a lot more difficult then selling most products. There are complex shipping restrictions and sales tax laws in place that can make selling online very difficult for the wineries. Nexternal has done an excellent job at addressing these issues over the years by putting out features like our ShipCompliant integration, which helps the merchants comply with these restrictions in an automated fashion.

4. Can you tell us a little more about your social network integration with Facebook and Twitter?

As we all know, merchants love the power of word-of-mouth advertising and social networking provides a perfect platform for this opportunity. Last month we released a powerful new feature we call Post Order Sharing. What this feature does is give the online buyer a quick and easy way to share on Facebook and Twitter what they just purchased through a Nexternal online storefront.

How it works is simple. After an order is placed, the buyer is presented with a “Share” button on the order confirmation screen. By clicking this button the buyer can quickly connect to Facebook or Twitter and easily post what they just bought online. Their post will include their message and a link back to the merchant’s online store and for Facebook posts; it will even include a company logo.

5. Can you tell us a little more about the Nexternal always on screen shopping cart and how it helps conversions?

The always on screen shopping cart is one of our best features. We feel, and our customers agree, that taking the shopper to a checkout page every time they click “Add to Cart” is fundamentally incorrect because it requires that I click another button to get back to buy more products. With Nexternal, the shopping cart is always on the screen, so when the customer clicks “Add to Cart” they get the instant feedback of seeing their item in the cart but they’re not taken away from the storefront. Not only that, but they can also determine their shipping and sales tax, enter coupons or edit their items without ever leaving the original product page.

By providing all of this instant feedback, you’re giving the customer all the information they need to make the buying decision. You’re also eliminating any surprise costs that can come during the checkout process such as sales tax and shipping. When you combine all of these features it equals a better overall shopping experience and this in turn will show an increase in the merchant’s conversions.

6. What is the best way for a company to find out if Nexternal is a fit for their business?

The best way is to spend some time with one of our Account Executives going over your requirements. Nexternal does not have traditional sales staff and the Account Executives are very experienced in the eCommerce industry. We try to listen to the customer to learn as much as we can about their company and find out what can be done to improve their online business. We want to establish an ongoing partnership with our clients and the best way to start that process is by learning as much as we can about the customer.

March 30, 2010
By the ZippyCart Ecommerce Software Reviews Content Team

Throughout 2010, our content team here at ZippyCart is working hard to catch up with our Top 10 Ecommerce Solutions of 2010 and give our readers a chance to learn a bit more about their product including changes to their services, updates to features, and any deals you should know about. Over the past few months, we have already interviewed Pinnacle Cart, BigCommerce, and CoreCommerce. Today, we want to share with you this interview that we had with Nexternal, as well as the new deal that comes with it: 25% Off Nexternal Setup for any ZippyCart customers! Read below to see what makes Nexternal stand out from the rest as a high-end shopping cart solution.

1. Can you tell us a little more about what is new with Nexternal, and what else you have planned in 2010?

So far 2010 has been a really exciting year for Nexternal. In early January we released a new version of our software called Nexternal.net. We essentially built this new platform from the ground up using the latest ASP.NET technology. The new .net version supports all of the features that were in our classic version, but also has some very powerful enhancements such as static, keyword rich URL’s and extensive use of AJAX technology. What this all means for online sellers is that we’re taking extra steps to ensure that their storefront URL’s are Search Engine Friendly and that they have the best storefront technology available.

To be safe, we typically don’t talk about new features until they are released, but I can tell you that Nexternal is going to continue to expand on our feature list. Now that we have the new .net platform in place, we will be looking at other ways that will help our merchants become successful.

2. What do you see as the key differentiating factors that set your ecommerce solution apart from other companies in the space?

Hands down it’s the customer service. From the minute a potential customer contacts Nexternal, they’re assigned a dedicated Account Executive that will not only answer their questions during the sales process, but they will also train and support that customer once they do become a Nexternal client. It’s very rare in this industry to find that level of customer service and it’s what we pride ourselves on.

Aside from customer service, there are hundreds of features that we offer and it’s hard to point out just a few features that are the difference makers for every company out there. All online merchants have different business needs. For one company it can be a huge feature like our ability to automatically print UPS, FedEx & USPS shipping labels and send off tracking numbers right inside of the Nexternal system. For another company, it can simply be a combination of ten little features that all add up in helping them increase overall profits.

3. Why have you built out such a strong following among wineries? Is there anything particular which make so many choose Nexternal?

Nexternal was started in the bay area in 1999 and, at that time, wineries were just grasping the concept of having a website yet alone actually selling online. So when the founders were prospecting for new clients to try their eCommerce system, they just happened to come across a list of wineries in the area and started making calls. Once they got the first winery on the system, they started releasing new features to fit their needs. As the wine industry started to grasp the concept of selling online and the industry started to blossom, Nexternal continued to grow with the industry and now they represent a large portion of our customer base.

The wineries choose Nexternal because of the features set and extensive experience we have in the wine industry. Selling wine online is a lot more difficult then selling most products. There are complex shipping restrictions and sales tax laws in place that can make selling online very difficult for the wineries. Nexternal has done an excellent job at addressing these issues over the years by putting out features like our ShipCompliant integration, which helps the merchants comply with these restrictions in an automated fashion.

4. Can you tell us a little more about your social network integration with Facebook and Twitter?

As we all know, merchants love the power of word-of-mouth advertising and social networking provides a perfect platform for this opportunity. Last month we released a powerful new feature we call Post Order Sharing. What this feature does is give the online buyer a quick and easy way to share on Facebook and Twitter what they just purchased through a Nexternal online storefront.

How it works is simple. After an order is placed, the buyer is presented with a “Share” button on the order confirmation screen. By clicking this button the buyer can quickly connect to Facebook or Twitter and easily post what they just bought online. Their post will include their message and a link back to the merchant’s online store and for Facebook posts; it will even include a company logo.

5. Can you tell us a little more about the Nexternal always on screen shopping cart and how it helps conversions?

The always on screen shopping cart is one of our best features. We feel, and our customers agree, that taking the shopper to a checkout page every time they click “Add to Cart” is fundamentally incorrect because it requires that I click another button to get back to buy more products. With Nexternal, the shopping cart is always on the screen, so when the customer clicks “Add to Cart” they get the instant feedback of seeing their item in the cart but they’re not taken away from the storefront. Not only that, but they can also determine their shipping and sales tax, enter coupons or edit their items without ever leaving the original product page.

By providing all of this instant feedback, you’re giving the customer all the information they need to make the buying decision. You’re also eliminating any surprise costs that can come during the checkout process such as sales tax and shipping. When you combine all of these features it equals a better overall shopping experience and this in turn will show an increase in the merchant’s conversions.

6. What is the best way for a company to find out if Nexternal is a fit for their business?

The best way is to spend some time with one of our Account Executives going over your requirements. Nexternal does not have traditional sales staff and the Account Executives are very experienced in the eCommerce industry. We try to listen to the customer to learn as much as we can about their company and find out what can be done to improve their online business. We want to establish an ongoing partnership with our clients and the best way to start that process is by learning as much as we can about the customer.

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.