2011 Interspire Review: Overview

• Dreamweaver Friendly Templates for Easy Customization
• Product and Inventory Management
• Exceptional Customer Management Tools
• Search Engine Friendly
• Accepts Google™ Checkout, PayPal, and Credit Cards

Interspire provides a very powerful licensed shopping cart solution that has been driving merchant success for many years. Interspire is also the parent company of BigCommerce, which is Interspire's hosted shopping cart that has continued to gain popularity since its launch in late 2009. For many merchants, Interspire's licensed shopping cart provides all of the features necessary to run a successful online store in an easy to use package. Unlike many licensed shopping carts, Interspire is very easy to customize and doesn't require any knowledge of code to make a storefront unique and fully functional. Read the expert Interspire review below to learn what makes this ecommerce solution stand out.

2011 Interspire Review: Shopping Cart Report Card

Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)	Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)
Overall Value (15%)	3.80	Customer Service (15%)	3.87
Level of Customization (15%)	4.04	Ease of Use (15%)	3.68
Search Engine Friendliness (10%)	4.71	Range of Tools Available (10%)	3.80
Depth of Reporting Tools (5%)	3.78	Social Media / Social Commerce Integration (5%)	4.37
Mobile Commerce Integration (5%)	4.28	Free Trial Features (5%)	3.75

Overall ZippyScore: 3.97 out of 5.00

2011 Interspire Review: Expert Shopping Cart Review

Interspire is a popular licensed ecommerce software solution that a number of merchants have been using for many years, and in 2010 there was a major update to Interspire, taking it from Version 5.5 to Version 6.0. It is likely that Interspire will do another big update during 2011, so that they can provide their merchants with more value. Since Interspire is a licensed ecommerce solution, merchants only need to pay a one-time fee for the license, and then can use the software however they desire. This also includes setting up hosting for their online store, which means that merchants are in control of all aspects of their online store and ecommerce software. Interspire is also the parent company to hosted ecommerce software solution, BigCommerce, so if the licensed option does not sound right for you, then consider their hosted solution.

Store Setup & Design With Interspire

When considering Interspire as the ecommerce software to power your online store, you should know that they offer a demo of their product, which will allow you to get a better feel for what it would be like to use this solution on a day-to-day basis. Once you review the demo you can then determine if their Starter, Professional, or Ultimate package is the right ecommerce software license for you to purchase. While each package is different, the Ultimate package shares all the same features as BigCommerce, while the other two packages have less features. To learn more about each package and how they differ, view the packages side by side on our Interspire features page.

Once you have purchased Interspire, it is easy to install. Simply place it on your server via FTP, navigate to it through a browser, and follow the install instructions. After you have installed this licensed ecommerce solution, the next step is to start setting things up and designing your online store, which can be done through your new online control panel. There are a variety of different settings which you can attend to first including setup of shipping, tax, currency, checkout, live chat, analytics, gift certificates, and more.

It will take a little time, but after the settings are taken care of, most merchants like to then jump into designing their online store. There are now almost 100 professional store designs in Interspire that merchants can choose from, with many design templates being recently added in late 2010. After choosing a template, you can quickly set up the logo, favicon, and header images (if applicable in the design template) for your online store, so you can jump into further customizing the design template which you picked.

Now the real fun begins, as merchants can dive into design mode where they can drag and drop elements to refine the look of your online store. However if you have some HTML and CSS skills, then you can edit that code through your Interspire admin panel as you see fit. This allows you to achieve the desired look and feel for your ecommerce store. There is even the option to have complete access to the PHP source code, for those with PHP knowledge. Overall the design capabilities and functionality should be enough to please a wide array of merchants looking for a licensed ecommerce software solution.

Product, Order & Customer Management

There are certain things that are core in the day-to-day operations of an online store, with product, order, and customer management being some of those key things that are critical to attend to almost every day. The Interspire ecommerce solution has solid product management features, including the ability to sell digital or physical products in your online store. Interspire partnered with Picnic.com to allow their merchants to better edit product photos, and you can even embed videos into any product description. Adding video is a great way to hype up some of your top selling products, and hopefully increase sales. Additionally there is a WYSIWYG editor which can be used to make the creation of product descriptions even easier. Another feature which many merchants enjoy is the bulk export and import option, which is quite important to those merchants who have a massive amount of products in their online store, or who may be switching their ecommerce solution to Interspire.

When a customer goes to place an order from your online store powered by Interspire's ecommerce software, they can use a simple single page checkout, which has become a popular option that merchants demand. Another new tool that Interspire offers is the option to accept preorders at your online store, which is a great way to increase sales, as customers can place their order months ahead of a product being released. In order to provide a more professional experience for your customers, you can send an order tracking link to them automatically via email when it is ready. Overall there are a variety of order management features that merchants can utilize for their online store.

Managing products and orders is vital to any online store, but without customers their would be no reason to have products and no orders to fulfill. This is why customer management is so important, and Interspire has a decent set of tools and features that merchants can use to manage all of their amazing customers. For the most part, Interspire focuses this tool set on managing customer groups and memberships. There are a variety of ways you can maintain customer groups and rules you can set for each group including special discounts, group filtering, moving customers between groups, and more. Getting to this section of Interspire may not be as intuitive, but once you enter group management mode, it's easy to use. There are some aspects of customer management that could be improved on, including the addition of a "tell a friend" feature on the site, custom checkout questions, and more social medial integration.

Marketing & SEO For Your Online Store

In terms of marketing and SEO, Interspire has a solid set of features and tools that merchants will expect to see in any quality licensed ecommerce solution. Interspire had SEO expert Aaron Wall work with them to ensure that their licensed ecommerce software was optimized for search engines. This helps online stores have a chance of showing up high in the search engine results pages of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Interspire software has SEO friendly links, and merchants can even setup their own 301 redirect links, which is a big plus for proper SEO. Another benefit about Interspire and SEO is that merchants have full access to modify the HTML & CSS of their online store, so they can fine tune their SEO efforts as they desire.

The Interspire ecommerce solution has a variety of marketing features and tools which merchants can utilize to help create more buzz about their online store, and hopefully have return business from their customers. On the social marketing front, Interspire offers the option to add Facebook "Like" buttons to product pages, Disqus comment/reviews, and the AddThis button which can allows visitors the option to share your products out to dozens of social media sites. They are, however, missing a feature that would allow merchants the chance to sell directly on Facebook, which is now a common request among those who sell online.

In regard to email marketing, Interspire has partnered with MailChimp, which is one of the most popular email marketing tools used by ecommerce merchants. Interspire has their own email marketer software which you can purchase, but most merchants prefer working with MailChimp. Another way in which Interspire lets merchants market their online store is by letting them intergrate with different shoppign comparision sites, which will almost instantly bring an online store to a whole new audience of potential customers. They also let you sell on eBay quite easily, so if that is of interest to you, then review Interspire in further detail.

Statistics & Reporting

Keeping on the pulse of your online store is important, as it will provide you with valuable insight, allowing you to make adjustments, and ultimately helping you sell more products and/or improve your profits. Interspire views this area of their ecommerce software as "business intelligence," because merchants can view reports which will help them succeed. Things like your top 20 customers, best selling products, orders by revenue, or even your best and worst performing keywords. Actionable reports are a critical component to improving the performance on an online store, which is why all merchants should consider just how much data they can utilize when choosing an ecommerce solution. Some merchant prefer reports about shopping cart abandonement and a site overlay. While Interspire doesn't offer these, you can add Google Analytics for free, which will give you data about abandoned goals (shopping cart abandonment), site usage, and more. Byond those small issues, you should be able to get the right reporting with the Interspire ecommerce solution.

Interspire Review: Conclusion

Now you should have a solid understanding about the Interspire ecommerce software solution, and should be able to better determine if it sounds like an option that is right for you and your online business. Interspire offers their Starter license for $295, Professional license for $995, and their Ultimate license for $1,795. Keep in mind that not all features are the same with the different Interspire ecommerce software packages, so review the details well to ensure you get what you need. It is also important to note that your one-time purchase of Interspire includes 1 year of support and free upgrades, whereas a hosted solution like BigCommerce will include unlimited support and upgrades for the monthly hosted price. Should you choose to go with Interspire and want further updates/support, it will cost you 50% of the retail value of your license every year you want service.

Over the last year it seems like most of Interspire's efforts have been pushed to BigCommerce as more and more merchants enjoy a hosted ecommerce solution. A quick visit to Interspire's website shows this focus on BigCommerce, as it can be somewhat hard to navigate through to get information about Interspire's licensed shopping cart. That said, the licensed cart is still a very popular option over at Interspire, with many merchants utilizing this ecommerce solution each year.