2011 CoreCommerce Review: Overview

• ZippyCart's Number 1 Ecommerce Suite
  of 2010
• Easy to Use Customization
• Professional Features for Beginner Prices
• Search Engine Friendly
• PCI Compliant Shopping Cart

CoreCommerce is the number one ranked ecommerce solution on ZippyCart, with a ZippyScore of 4.55 out of 5 and a customer score of 4.69 out of 5. CoreCommerce has earned this score because it provides one of the most robust feature sets out there and all for a low monthly hosting fee (as low as $19 per month). CoreCommerce features 6 different packages that vary based on bandwidth, disk space, and the number of products one can host. Their lowest cost package is half the price of comparable solutions that provide the same bandwidth, features, disk space, and product support. You can also test out CoreCommerce by signing up for a 15-day free trial, which doesn't require a credit card or commitment. CoreCommerce is well known for their customer support, with an average 93% customer approval rating. Read the detailed CoreCommerce review below to see what makes this ecommerce solution a go-to choice for merchants everywhere.

CoreCommerce Review: Shopping Cart Report Card

Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)	Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)
Overall Value (15%)	4.62	Customer Service (15%)	4.57
Level of Customization (15%)	4.52	Ease of Use (15%)	4.56
Search Engine Friendliness (10%)	4.42	Range of Tools Available (10%)	4.61
Depth of Reporting Tools (5%)	4.45	Social Media / Social Commerce Integration (5%)	4.54
Mobile Commerce Integration (5%)	4.55	Free Trial Features (5%)	4.50

Overall ZippyScore: 4.55 out of 5.00

2011 CoreCommerce Review: Expert Shopping Cart Review

One of the most popular ecommerce software solutions on ZippyCart is CoreCommerce, and in 2011 they continue to receive high marks for providing merchants with a robust feature set and solid customer support. Beyond being the top rated ecommerce solution on ZippyCart, CoreCommerce has also won a number of awards that we like to call The Zippys, which include:

1. Best Customer Service - First Place
2. Most Innovative - First Place
3. Best Social Media Tools - Third Place
4. Most Extensive Storefront Features - Second Place
5. Best Overall Marketing Tools - Second Place

The CoreCommerce ecommerce solution comes from the team at Sum Effect Software Inc., who in early 2008 acquired licensed ecommerce software digiSHOP PRO which they converted into the CoreCommerce SaaS based solution. Headquartered in Franklin Tennessee, CoreCommerce is now an ecommerce solution used by well over 10,000 online stores, and each day new merchants are finding out about this popular hosted ecommerce software. Merchants find CoreCommerce to be very easy to use, and appreciate that their team continually strives to improve the solution and put out great new features each month, whereas other solutions only update once or twice per year. Overall most merchants are very impressed with CoreCommerce, and often recommend it to other people who are looking to switch from their existing ecommerce software. CoreCommerce makes it easy for new merchants to determine if their ecommerce solution is right for any online business, as they offer a 15-day free trial (no credit card required) to take their software for a test drive. Below is a more detailed expert review of CoreCommerce, so you can learn even more about the features and pricing of their ecommerce software solution.

Setting Up & Designing Your CoreCommerce Store

One of the first things that you will have to address when working through the setup process with CoreCommerce, is picking your design template and the color you desire. Luckily, CoreCommerce has hundreds of professional templates to choose from, all of which are free. Once you have chosen a template (which you can change anytime), you will want to create or upload your brand logo, which will be prominently displayed throughout your online store. This is pretty easy to do in CoreCommerce since they let you upload an image, type out a site name that will automatically design itself to match your template, or use the CoreCommerce image editor to design your logo within the admin interface. These are the core first steps once you enter the CoreCommerce admin panel, but there are still more things that need to be completed in the setup process, which you can work through step by step during their quick set up wizard.

Speaking of wizards, CoreCommerce also has an import wizard which will allow merchants to get products into their online store very quickly, but if you plan to add products one at a time, it might take merchants a bit longer.

Once products are added to your online store, the next step is to set up your payment information. This is a step you shouldn't hold off on, since you'll want customers to be able to make purchases once your site goes live. As such, this tiny detail is of course a must, which is why CoreCommerce includes it as part of your step by step set up. After that is complete, your final step will be to configure sales tax and shipping information. Once this is done, you can start selling online. Online businesses have different tax rules based upon the state in which they created their company. Because of this, CoreCommerce gives you the ability to set a variety of shipping and tax rules for anywhere in the U.S. Merchants can also configure the shipping, currency, and tax rules for dozens of individual countries supported by the CoreCommerce ecommerce software solution.

Now that the majority of set up is complete, most merchants like to jump back into design mode to further customize their online store and achieve a unique look that matches their brand. There are two ways in which merchants can tackle customizing the design of their storefront with the CoreCommerce ecommerce solution. For those merchants who have solid HTML and CSS skills, it's easy to jump right into the source code and start tweaking things however they see fit. However not all merchants are HTML and CSS pros, so the other option is to hop into Design Mode, where you can make instant changes to your online store via drag and drop elements. This is a great way to customize things quickly, so that you can start marketing your online store and driving visitors to your site to convert them into paying customers. If at any point you feel stuck, you should try watching the helpful training videos that CoreCommerce provides, or contact the customer service team via phone, email, or live chat.

Live chat is very easy to access through the CoreCommerce administrative interface, so this is often a quick and easy way to get tips if you are lost or need help with a certain feature. The CoreCommerce team often picks up a live chat pretty fast, and the people you will speak with know the ins and outs of the product. In other words, the help team isn't some random company hired to manage the phones and chat. They are instead members of the CoreCommerce team and are often sitting right next to the experts who developed the product.

Customers, Products, Orders & Shipping Management

You may already be familiar with the product management capabilities of CoreCommerce after reading about the set up process, but that was just the beginning of what is possible with this hosted shopping cart. There are dozens of features that CoreCommerce provides merchants to handle their products, including a WYSIWYG editor and the ability to have as many photos as you want for each product, and even use image URL's so you can save some bandwidth and display photos from other servers or websites. Merchants also appreciate that they can use an "Add to cart to see sales price" feature, utilize product bundling with a discount, and have the option to sell digital products in their online store when powered by CoreCommerce ecommerce software. Honestly their are dozens of great features to help merchants manage their products, and one of the easiest ways to experience CoreCommerce is to test out the software via a 15-day free trial (no credit card required).

Shipping and order management are also key areas of an ecommerce software solution that merchants are often very concerned about, as they want to be sure that they will have an easy time processing and shipping orders each day. When a customer places an order, a merchant should have no problem navigating through CoreCommerce to view new orders or to add an order received over the phone. Merchants even have the option to review abandoned carts, which is a very useful way to learn more about what is working and what is not in your online store, so you can work to improve it. The CoreCommerce ecommerce solution will auto-calculate taxes based on the rules you define (or default rules if you choose to use those), and send out receipts via email to the customer and the merchant. CoreCommerce also allows merchants to have customers login before checking out, which some merchants prefer for a variety of different reasons. Overall CoreCommerce provides their merchants with a rich set of order management tools, which should please almost any merchant.

When it comes to shipping management tools, CoreCommerce continues to shine by including dozens of excellent shipping related features in their ecommerce software solution. Merchants enjoy that they can directly print out USPS, FedEX, or UPS labels direct from their online store, and they can even offer extra insurance from UPS and USPS packages. Another aspect that merchants like is that they can add padding to any live shipping rate that the system provides, which is good for those merchants trying to squeeze a bit more profit out of each sale. CoreCommerce takes shipping a step further than many hosted shopping carts, by also providing the ability to manage multiple shipping warehouses and drop shipping, control the weight shipped in each box, and the ability to decline orders that ship to PO Boxes. You can also choose to turn on quick shipping estimates for customers, which will help you decrease your shopping cart abandonment rate. All in all the shipping features provided in the CoreCommerce ecommerce solution are quite solid, and merchants will have a hard time calling out a feature that is not provided.

Now that you know about product, shipping, and order management, the next thing that is important to learn about is the customer management capabilities of CoreCommerce. Once a customer buys from your online store, you want to do everything you can to keep engaged with them, so that they do not forget about your site, and ideally they come back again to make another purchase. This is where this solution's great customer management tools come into place, as they will allow you to email customers direct from your admin interface, let customers add product reviews, and allow customers to email product info to their friends via the email a friend feature. Merchants can also setup customer groups and define different sales and clearance rules for those different groups. They can group customers into specific mailing lists as well as pull reports based on the customer or the customer group. All in all, CoreCommerce allows the merchant to have a lot of power and control as the administrator, allowing them to view a wide array of data, and control all the aspects involved with managing customers.

CoreCommerce Marketing & SEO

SEO and marketing are key components to almost all online stores, as proper SEO strategies result in a merchant receiving lots of free (organic) traffic to their site. In terms of SEO, CoreCommerce ensures that your entire online store is properly optimized for major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These tools include auto generated meta and Title tags as well as the ability to customize these tags yourself. CoreCommerce also knows the importance of URL structure when it comes to SEO. Because of this, they dynamically generate static HTML pages that show clean HTML URLs without numbers or special characters that normal dynamic URL strings have. They also let you 301 redirect old URLs to new ones, which will help you maintain history and ranking in search engines. Finally, when it comes to URLs, CoreCommerce lets you define canonical URLs in your code. Even if you aren't familiar with code, defining the canonical URL is easy and helps to ensure that you don't get dinged by Google for duplicate content. Beyond URLs, CoreCommerce lets you add custom, keyword rich, content pages to your site as well as to category pages. This gives search engines even more content to crawl, which will help them determine the value of your website and rank you. Overall merchants have been quite pleased with the SEO features found in the CoreCommerce ecommerce solution.

The marketing tools provided by CoreCommerce allow their merchants to drive traffic from other sources outside of SEO, and can help to increase customer conversion rates as well. Merchants will be able to further the reach of their online store, by being able to tap into third party shopping portals like Shopping.com and PriceGrabber. Additionally CoreCommerce has a solid affiliate management system, which is a great way to expand the reach of an online store, as you can leverage various websites to help drive traffic to your site. Merchants also appreciate that there is an email newsletter system included, which is an excellent way to stay engaged with customers so they keep having incentive to come back and shop at your online store. Once the customers are at your CoreCommerce powered online store, merchants can utilize up-sell and cross-sell tools, coupon codes, gift certificates, and even a gift registry. Other marketing features include the option to refer a friend, provide free shipping, and even offer customer gift wrapping options.

Social Media & Mobile Commerce Using CoreCommerce

Merchants are becoming savvier every year, and two things of concern to them recently are the social media and mobile commerce capabilities of their ecommerce software solutions. CoreCommerce frequently puts out new releases of their software, and this has allowed them to stay on top of the mobile commerce and social media offerings, which often makes them a leader in this space. The social media features from CoreCommerce include a free application which will allow you to set up a Facebook store (which you can manage from your CoreCommerce interface), add Facebook Like buttons, integrate with AddThis, and add in Twitter/Facebook integration so people can share the products on these popular social sites. Customers are coming to expect these social media features from merchants, and CoreCommerce plans to continue to improve in this area during 2011.

Mobile Commerce is slowly gaining in popularity, but merchants want to be ahead of the game and get their mobile storefront out to the masses now. CoreCommerce provides merchants with a mobile optimized storefront, which will auto adjust to fit various mobile devices. This ensures that Customers will be able to browse and buy from your online store via their mobile phone. You can also manage your store from your mobile phone or iPhone, which will help you increase sales on the go.

CoreCommerce Customer Service & Support

CoreCommerce has received high marks for customer service on ZippyCart for three years in a row, and merchants continue to comment about how pleased they are when dealing with their customer support team. In late 2010, CoreCommerce added a Get Satisfaction community to further their transparency when it comes to customer service. They also clearly display their ticket rating report on their support pages (93% customer satisfaction), which is something that few ecommerce software solution companies are willing to do. Merchants can utilize telephone or live chat support, in addition to their 24/7 ticketing system which can easily be accessed in the administration panel. If that is not enough for you, then you can review extensive help documentation, helpful FAQ's, and a popular online forum to get the answers you seek. Merchants should be confident in the support they will get with CoreCommerce, as they want to make sure you have time to focus on making your online store successful, so they make customer service a top priority.

When secret shopped by the ZippyCart team, CoreCommerce really shined. Their live chat was often very helpful once an online store had been established. There are two different types of live chat with CoreCommerce: the one you see when visiting their website, which generally links you to sales support, or the live chat you access through your administration panel. You will find a very knowledgeable support staff when logging into chat through the administration interface, and will get great support over the phone as well. When talking with CoreCommerce, you will get the feeling that they are really looking out for your best interest, which is a rare find these days.

CoreCommerce Review: Conclusion

Overall you can see why CoreCommerce is so popular and scores so highly on ZippyCart, and if their ecommerce software sounds like the right choice for your online business, then you should test out the solution via their 15-day free trial (no credit card required). CoreCommerce offers a variety of hosted ecommerce packages with affordable monthly pricing that merchants can choose from. If you still want to learn a bit more about CoreCommerce before you try the free trial, then review the CoreCommerce feature list and CoreCommerce customer reviews to learn more.