2011 Nexternal Review: Overview

• Very Customer Friendly
• Search Engine Friendly
• Shopping Feed Integration for Yahoo!, Shopping.com, and Shopzilla
• Always On-Screen Shopping Cart
• Exceptional Customer Management Tools

The Nexternal shopping cart solution is highly popular among wineries and merchants needing to sell products that wouldn't typically be sold online. This is because Nexternal works hard to make their ecommerce solution match the needs of their merchants, rather than creating a broad feature set that meets some needs of one merchant and a different set of needs for the other. With Nexternal, all merchants are assigned to an account rep, who will walk them through the process of setting up their online store to work for their customers and increase sales. This account rep sticks with the merchant throughout their use of Nexternal, which adds a personal touch to their customer service and support. To learn what makes Nexternal tick including pros and cons, read the Nexternal review below.

2011 Nexternal Review: Shopping Cart Report Card

Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)	Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)
Overall Value (15%)	4.05	Customer Service (15%)	4.02
Level of Customization (15%)	4.09	Ease of Use (15%)	4.11
Search Engine Friendliness (10%)	4.32	Range of Tools Available (10%)	4.12
Depth of Reporting Tools (5%)	4.11	Social Media / Social Commerce Integration (5%)	4.41
Mobile Commerce Integration (5%)	4.32	Free Trial Features (5%)	4.50

Overall ZippyScore: 4.15 out of 5.00

2011 Nexternal Review: Expert Shopping Cart Review

There are a lot of great ecommerce software solutions online that merchants can use to power their online store, but Nexternal has a unique ASP based ecommerce platform that has attracted thousands of clients over the years. Nexternal has been around since 1999, and is based out of Carlsbad, California, with additional satellite offices in Lynnwood, Washington, and New Canaan, Connecticut. The ecommerce solution from Nexternal has a number of great features that merchants desire, and their team enjoys working with merchants to help grow any online business into a profitable venture. One area of ecommerce in which Nexternal is quite popular is with wineries, as they have customized elements of their software to meet the specific needs that wineries seek to properly sell online.

Store Setup up & Design With Nexternal

Merchants who sign up with Nexternal need to pay a bigger set up fee upfront to get things started, but the money will be well invested, as the team is there to do whatever it takes to help you out. Once a merchant has officially signed up, the team at Nexternal jumps in right away to design an online store that matches the branding of your existing site. The Nexternal team will use their flexible ecommerce software solution to ensure that the look and feel of the online shopping cart and checkout process also matches the branding of your site. Nexternal also likes to carry the branding out via custom designed merchant emails, which will ensure your email marketing campaign looks professional and keeps your brand identity strong with customers.

Nexternal then partners merchants with an account manager who is there to help with any questions or concerns that may arise. This allows for a very personalized customer service experience for merchants to ensure they are more comfortable asking about Nexternal's ecommerce software solution and their online store. Whenever your dedicated account manager is not available, there will be someone else there to assist you. They also offer a live chat on there site, or the option to set up a call for a time that is convenient for you. Overall merchants have been quite pleased with the customer service they receive from Nexternal.

SEO & Marketing Your Online Store

The ecommerce software from Nexternal was designed to be search engine friendly, as it provides merchants with a search engine optimized catalog and XML sitemap generator. This will help any merchant that wants their online store to rank higher in search engines like Google. However SEO is just one way for merchants to drive traffic to their online store, which is why Nexternal also provides some social media integration tools. They do not have an option for a merchant to create a Facebook store, but merchants can add the Facebook like button, Twitter button, and Add This Bookmarking which lets your customers share your products through their social media channels.

On top of SEO and social media, the Nexternal ecommerce solution also makes it easy to synch up your online store with shopping comparison sites like Shopping.com, Shopzilla, and Google Product Search. This is a quick way to expand the reach of any online store while attracting potential customers from a wide array of sources. In addition to shopping comparison sites, Nexternal also has affiliate marketing tools that you can use to create new traffic channels, plus a tell-a-friend feature so customers have another way to share your products and deals. There are still more marketing features that Nexternal has to offer, and if you want to see them all, then you should try out the ecommerce software solution on a 15 day free trial (no credit card required).

Manging Orders & Products With Nexternal

Merchants frequently rave about the order management system on Nexternal's ecommerce software solution, and like to brag about how it helps make running their online store a smooth process. Some merchants say they appreciate that Nexternal allows for multiple ship-to addresses for single orders. Others are quite pleased with how easy it is to update products and manage inventory. Processing orders is simple with Nexternal, and customers are impressed with the branded order and shipping confirmation emails which are sent out, because they help to create a more professional online shopping experience.

In addition to a solid order management system, the product management system is also a solid feature provided by Nexternal. Merchants can easily assign products to multiple categories, have unlimited attributes, and add product videos to enhance the overall feel of a product page. Nexternal has a WYSIWYG editor so merchants can quickly add or modify product descriptions, without having to be a pro at HTML. Overall merchants should be pleased with the product and order management tools provided with the Nexternal ecommerce solution.

Customer & Sales Reports Through Nexternal

Merchants who run an online store need to have feedback on performance, and this is why reporting and statistics are such critical components of an ecommerce software solution. Nexternal has an easy to use reporting dashboard, which will allow merchants to obtain a wide array of vital reports that will help them understand how their online store is performing. You can learn about which states you ship to the most, top selling products, customers buying habits, and much more. Nexternal even allows for merchants to have different customer types, which is great for those merchants who do business to business transactions and need to have unique pricing by customer.

Another helpful aspect of the reporting dashboard that merchants enjoy is the option to setup a revenue goal, and then track how well your online store is doing against that goal. It is a great visual tool to help keep merchants on track, so that they can continually optimize to reach their revenue goals. Merchants should be confident that they will be able to get whatever type of report they need with Nexternal's ecommerce software, or their team can work to create it.

Nexternal Review: Conclusion

While the ecommerce software solution from Nexternal can be used by any size online store, it is not the most ideal option for a small business. However Nexternal is a good option for those larger online businesses that want a great ecommerce solution which provides a dedicated account manager to help you out. In terms of pricing, Nexternal has a varying setup fee, which is discounted when you go through ZippyCart, and then the pricing is performance based. This means that Nexternal charges a small transaction fee, which is reduced as you increase the monthly revenue of your online store. If Nexternal seems like the right ecommerce solution for your online store, then try it out on a free 15 day trial (no credit card required), and see if the software has everything you desire.