Ecommerce Blog

iTunes became the first widely popular and successful Application Store. Since then, many other vendors have joined the gold rush. I write this blog post on the flight from Barcelona after spending a week at the Mobile World Congress, which is the biggest annual mobile exhibition and conference. This year it also included an event inside the event – Application Planet (an exhibition dedicated to mobile applications).

As I was wandering through the exhibition halls, it became apparent how popular the concept of the Application Store is.

The main goal of an App Store is to increase the attractiveness of a hardware or software platform to end users by engaging third party developers to increase platform capabilities.

Most of the current App Stores have been created either by a hardware manufacturer (Apple, Intel, Samsung, LG) or a wireless network operator (Orange, Verizon Wireless, China Mobile).

The Wireless Industry Partnership Connector Inc. (WIP) keeps track of App Stores for mobile developers and has listed 49 of them already on its web site.

However, App Stores are not limited to mobile devices. For example, Intel has created an application store for NetBooks which run on an Atom processor. According to Intel’s product manager Lucas Massuh, Intel sees the store as the main way to distribute software for NetBooks as they don’t contain a DVD drive. To make it very easy for a user to move applications from one device to another, the App Store keeps track of purchased applications and authorizes them on user devices.

Intel is planning to extend the App Store to its partners (netbooks manufacturers) and run white-labelled stores for companies like Acer. However, it looks like Acer already has plans of its own and will be offering downloadable software and e-book readers by mid-year.

Samsung has created a store for what it calls multi-device applications – programs that work on a variety of devices ranging from phones to netbooks, TVs to e-book readers. Samsung is encouraging developers to create applications that can utilize multiple devices. For example, using a phone as a remote control for a TV.

Pure software companies that want to attract developers to their platform are also joining the suite. Salesforce has created a store for applications that runs on the Salesforce cloud.

As the number of applications balloons, more specialized App Stores are appearing that cater to a specific market segment or to specific user needs. While most of the stores are targeting consumers, there are a number of new stores that focus on business and enterprise markets.

For example, MobileIron provides each corporate customer with its own customised Enterprise App Store, transforming the delivery model of enterprise applications from ‘push’ to ‘publish’.

The corporate IT department publishes approved internal and external applications, noting whether they are supported and/or reimbursed, and defining access based on the user role or IT policy.

Employees then browse their Enterprise App Store through the MyPhone@Work portal and select the applications best suited for them.

A similar model is used by AppCentral which brings together the efficiency of a self-service App Store with the power of IT controls.

Applications of Application Stores

Application Stores create an opportunity for a new business model when it comes to selling software and its components. Let’s say Developer A has a great idea for a new game. To get his super game to the market fast, he wants to use an existing game engine created by Developer B. Currently, the only way for a game developer to distribute his or her game with a 3rd party game engine is to license it upfront.

Intel plans to start a developer-to-developer application store with an innovative revenue sharing model. When Developer A’s game is sold, Intel will give Developer B an agreed upon percentage of the revenue. There is no risk for Developer A as he is not paying the licensing fee upfront and the application store takes care of all hassles associated with revenue sharing and payments.

Another ecommerce opportunity is “in-app” sales. In-app ecommerce refers to an application that sells additional content or services from inside the application. For example, a developer can release a free version of a game and allow users to upgrade to the paid version from inside the application, or buy additional virtual goods which can be used in the game.

Another example is an application that sells content. In Barcelona, I visited the booth of a Japanese company that sells Japanese Namga (Comic Books) on a variety of cell phones. The user installs the application on a mobile phone and uses it to purchase new comics which are immediately downloaded to the mobile device. e-book stores use the same approach.

The Application Store as a Marketplace

In essence, an App Store is a Marketplace for selling applications or content produced by a number of vendors.

There are substantial differences between an App Store and a regular ecommerce system.

A standard ecommerce system provides interfaces to two different types of users – shoppers and store operators. Application Stores have a third category of users – vendors. This means that an Application Store’s system needs to support interfaces for creating and managing vendors’ accounts as well as give the vendors their own interface to manage their products, prices, and generate reports.

The vendor interface needs to be simple and straightforward, as developers want to spend their time writing software or creating content instead of operating an ecommerce site. For example, Samsung, who plans to operate its App Store in 50 countries, makes it very simple for developers to set up product prices across multiple stores and currencies. A developer only needs to select a pricing tier for his or her application and this automatically determines prices in all currencies across all Samsung stores.

There is also an essential difference in managing shoppers’ accounts. In the Application Store, order history means “what the user owns” instead of “what the user has purchased”. Thus, the store should allow a user to reinstall applications on a new computer or phone as well as make sure that the user has access to application upgrades.

Another interesting distinction from a standard ecommerce system is that most App Stores don’t have a web storefront. Like iTunes, the App Store has two types of applications: a store application for PCs, and another for mobile devices.

Some App Stores do have a web storefront that customers can use to look for an application. When a shopper finds the application he or she wants to buy, they are asked to enter either an email address or a phone number, and a link to complete the purchase is sent to their phones via an email or SMS message.

As we discussed above, the main goal of an Application Store is to attract developers, and the main goal of developers is to maximize revenue by selling more applications. Most of the current Application Stores are built internally by companies that operate them, and do not have advanced ecommerce features that have become common in modern ecommerce platforms.

Functionally, most App Stores are very similar to iTunes. The selling process is based on a simple product search, category browsing, and user ratings. This works well for the small number of applications which have made it to the top of the charts. The rest of the vendors bring in less than optimal revenue from their less popular applications.

The Future of App Stores

I believe that a second generation of App Store systems will arrive soon from established ecommerce vendors which will adopt more sophisticated ecommerce techniques like bundling, SEO, cross-sell/up-sell, promotions, and tier pricing to increase revenues for store operators and developers.

Please join me on March 30th for this month’s webinar App Store – a new way to sell software, media, and anything digital where we will further explore this new fast growing trend in ecommerce.

Original post by Michael Vax

February was a short month, but there was no shortage of great articles popping up around the blogosphere. Blogger’s Digest is Get Elastic’s monthly roundup of can’t miss posts from Linda’s RSS reader.

• Not one, but two of our Elastic Path software developers sent me a link to this fascinating case study by Luke Wroblewski: “Mad Libs” Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%. Dare to give it a try on your own site?

• Another great post from Luke W, Web Form Innovations on Mobile Devices covers design best practices for mobile usability.

• Gmail is really stepping up its bells-and-whistles. One innovation is Enhanced Email which allows the recipient to browse products within the message. Sears is already taking it for a test drive. Another new feature allows YouTube video to be played within Gmail. Mark Brownlow reports how it works and explains the hope and the hype of it for retail email marketers.

• Sephora sent out a brilliant email asking recipients to personalize the email (on an interactive landing page) to get featured product recommendations that match their skin type, tone, eye color and fragrance preferences. A novel way to personalize email when you haven’t collected such information in profile data.

• Avinash Kaushik blesses us with 7 sources of free intelligence data on your direct competitors, your industry segment and search engine / website behavior.

• What does the Apple iPad mean for retail? Forrester Research’s Brian Walker weighs in on the multichannel opportunity represented by the iPad as an in-store device.

• HTML5 is (slowly) coming! Will it be a Flash / Silverlight killer for showing video and other rich media or is it just hype? The iStobe blog discusses HTML5’s potential applications for ecommerce and mcommerce.

• Speaking of mobile commerce – Graham Charlton of Econsultancy addresses the question: should you have a mobile site or app?

• Forrester believes that retailers are leaving too much cache on the table – focusing too much on server cache, and missing the opportunity to optimize browser and edge cache:

“Caching nearest to your users goes without saying, but most companies must allocate their caching dollars carefully, and your biggest investment should be close to your most profitable customers. Your most profitable customers may not be located in your highest concentrations of customers. Work with your marketing department to analyze customer profitability and location, and then review this data at least annually.”

• Bryan Eisenberg has compiled a master list of everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Google Analytics (and a few hundred things you never thought of) with the Missing Google Analytics Manual. Bookmark!

• Keep your bookmark finger ready… Which Multivariate? is an unbiased review of all the conversion optimization testing tools out there and it’s very comprehensive. Hat tip to Bryan Eisenberg for sharing and Conversion Rate Experts for putting it together.

• Can A/B testing have search engine implications? Traian Neacsu shares how you can minimize the impact of website testing on SEO.

Original post by Linda Bustos

This post is a recap of yesterday’s webinar Ecommerce for Technology Vendors: Maximizing Your Online Channel. The replay is now available on-demand at www.elasticpath.com/software/.

The webinar is the first in a series of software and technology related topics based on the top issues we have found working with and speaking to enterprise firms in this industry. In the webinar we took a deep-dive into the issue of “owning the conversation” and bringing all relevant content and information to bear on each transaction.

5 Considerations

• Manufacturer strengths / weaknesses
• Governance
• General design / site architecture
• Source and nature of traffic (segments, personas)
• Leveraging user-generated content

Manufacturer strengths

The software and technology marketplace involves a mix of retail resellers and their online counterparts, manufacturers selling direct to consumer/business and affiliate websites like comparison shopping engines and technology reviews (think Cnet and PC World Magazine).

These channels are all important to the technology brand, as they will all attract different types of customers and cast a wider net for more sales. Of course, maximizing revenue driven through a manufacturer’s own ecommerce project is the goal – not only for higher margin but the opportunity to remarket to these customers through renewal and upgrade emails, cross-sells/upsells etc.

Brand strength

But the beautiful thing for technology manufacturers is when a customer knows what product he or she wants, there is a high likelihood that the customer will go directly to the manufacturer’s web site. According to Forrester Research, 58% of consumers researching an online purchase will begin their research at the manufacturer’s website. An additional 16% will use a search engine, and when searching for a product or brand name, will likely land the customer on the manufacturer’s site also. So potentially you have 75% of customers beginning research at the brand website. For software that offers a direct download, we expect this figure even higher, as research has shown customers prefer to receive an instant delivery than a packaged product.

Content

Manufacturers also have more content to leverage than resellers, including rich product information (videos, tutorials, screenshots, demos, .pdfs), comparison tools, product finders and even community forums and knowledge bases. All this content supports the researcher and can help “sell” your product.

Manufacturer weaknesses

Unfortunately, all this great content creates complicated information architecture. Most commonly among software and technology sites, we find the .com site has rich product information along with a separate “store” (subdomain or subfolder) that has its own product pages – often with different design, copy and calls to action. Furthermore, stores often don’t have the rich content like product finders and comparison charts that can be found outside of the store.

The more fragmented the content is, the more difficult it is for the customer to reach all the necessary information to make a purchase decision, and the more effort it takes to navigate from product page to store to checkout.

Above, top: The .com product page is text-heavy, but calls to action for the store are very subtle, perhaps too subtle to be noticed by the reader. Above, bottom: The transactional page has a simpler design, more like a retail store page, but may not provide the depth of information necessary to make a confident purchase decision.

Surveying 82 of the top technology and software sites, I found that 70% have separate stores. The 30% of sites that did have a consolidated store (one product page with a “buy” button linking directly to the shopping cart) were “smaller” in the sense that they serve only one market, with one line of product or were gamer sites like Atari.

Why do enterprise sites have separate .com content and store content? The main reason for large companies is governance – the .com (informational site) is owned by Marketing while the store (transactional site) is owned by Sales.

Governance

Organizational structure can often get in the way of what drives a really effective ebusiness. When you have segregated groups with each group chartered for different purposes (this could be IT, Marketing, Sales and Web Analytics or Product A vs Product B vs Product C), strong advocates for certain web changes will be motivated by their own interest. For example, Product A pushes for a certain change that may lift his division’s product revenue by 10% – but would the resources required to support that change be better applied to something that could lift revenue across the board?

The best scenario is when there is a holistic approach, when a tightly integrated team is working toward the same targets with plans completely aligned, and there are little organizational differences.

In addition, an ecommerce business should be data driven as opposed to opinion driven. This requires a core team that makes decisions independent of how the rest of the company is organized.

Site architecture

Menus and navigation

Remember that a home page’s goal is not to convert a customer to a sale but to get a click deeper into the site. Content must be well organized, menus usable and intuitive, and labels clear.

Home pages that make it easy for a customer to “self identify” will enjoy reduced bounce rates. Symantec does a good job at minimizing merchandising and copy in favor of showing clear links for different visitor segments – home users, small and medium business and enterprise customers.

There is danger showing products and offers when you don’t know who your customer is or what they are looking for yet.

The word “Download” is often ambiguous. A download may refer to a full product, trail version, upgrade or .pdf file. The site below displays all available products under the Download menu, but also under the Products and Store links. This makes it confusing for customers looking for something specific. If you want to download a full version immediately, do you use the Products, Download or Store menu?

Search

Enterprise technology sites have so much content, including product pages, store pages, .pdf files, press releases, blog and forum posts. Any and all of this content may be matched in site search to a query. Often large software search results look like this:

These results look a lot like Google search results, but do not help a customer looking to buy a product. Technology companies can improve search pages by including product thumbnails for “transactional” product pages (pages with a call to action to add to cart), prices, brief product descriptions and filter/sort refinements, like a traditional retail store like Best Buy would:

Source and nature of traffic (segments, personas)

Targeted selling refers to showing different content and offers based on what you know about a site visitor (we have a whole webinar on targeted selling if this is new to you). Some of the ways you can gather this information is thorugh:

Browser/OS Detection – As I blogged about a couple weeks ago, software vendors can leverage operating system detection to deliver the right products based on the platform the customer is using.

User Authentication – If a customer is logged in, you may draw upon purchase history, download history, profile information (hardware he or she owns, interests, industry he or she works in) and even forum participation (is the customer a power-contributor or a newbie?)

Campaign/Referral Source – Leverage referral information like email campaign, search engine and keywords and serve up relevant messaging, banners, landing pages and so on.

Site Behavior – Keep track of events like clicks on offers, clicks on product categories, time on site and number of visits in cookies to build a profile of customer intent. You may, for example, reserve your live chat agents for customers who have spent X number of minutes on a site, viewed X number of pages or made X number of visits vs. a visitor who has spent 5 seconds on your site.

Leveraging user-generated content

A final consideration is an emerging concept rather than a trend. I did find Apple leveraging user generated content on its software product pages, including customer reviews and support forum posts:

Many manufacturers hold back on adding reviews because they are not always positive. It’s easy for a Best Buy or Walmart to be “transparent” – they sell a wide range of brands. Negative reviews on a software product site can be damaging to conversion, as can forum posts. While this content can enrich a product page, care must be taken that all content be supporting to the product decision and not superfluous or damaging to the brand.

Another question is if using content off other sites like general tech forums, if it relates to your brands, is a good idea for product pages. That depends on the legal issues of using another site’s content, and whether the content will help or hurt your conversion rates.

Certainly there should be a dedicated resource working on moderation of all user generated content that appears on a product page, and this idea should be tested against having no user generated content on the site at all.

Next webinar

App Store – a new way to sell software, media and anything digital

Join Michael Vax, Chief Technology Officer and Matt Dion, VP Marketing of Elastic Path Software on March 30th to discuss the current state of
Application Stores, future trends, and how technology companies and network operators can leverage this new business model to drive adaptation of their platform and generate additional revenue.

Date: Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
Time: 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern
Date: Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Register at www.elasticpath.com/apps

Original post by Linda Bustos

Just a quick update to our webinar this Thursday, Ecommerce for Technology Vendors: Maximizing Your Online Channel. We will be joined by a special guest speaker, Sanjay Saraf who is Vice President of eBusiness at Symantec. Sanjay will discuss the top ecommerce issues affecting software and technology vendors and will be available for Q&A at the end.

Thursday, February 25th, 2010
9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern
Sign up today

About the webinar

Across all retail sectors, approximately 60% of consumers will go directly to a manufacturer’s site when researching a purchase. Another 16% will use a search engine, which often leads to the manufacturer’s site. For the technology and packaged software industries, these figures are likely higher, as online downloads direct from the vendor’s .com site is the strongest means of acquisition.

But with potentially more than 76% of consumers arriving at a manufacturer’s website, how much money is left on the table when its online store is not optimized?

In this one hour webinar, learn how technology companies can improve conversion rates and average order values to maximize the return on investment for their ecommerce projects.

Webinar Takeaways:

• The advantages technology and software manufacturers have over retail resellers and affiliates and how to leverage these advantages
• The common weaknesses of enterprise technology sites and how to improve them
• Tips for turning trial downloads into purchases
• Optimizing the renewal/upgrade process

Original post by Linda Bustos

The long wait is over, the New Get Elastic (as promised last September) is ready to launch on Monday. Not only have we given the blog a glamorous makeover (including a new logo), we’re very excited to announce we are diversifying our topics to include technical content of interest to ecommerce developers. You’ll be hearing from our Chief Technical Officer, Michael Vax as well as rock star columnists David Linthicum and Armando Roggio.

David Linthicum is an internationally known cloud computing and SOA expert, and author of Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide.

Armando Roggio is a Contributing Editor for Practical Ecommerce and the Site Director for Ecommerce Developer. He also has a forthcoming ecommerce book.

Technical content will appear Tuesday and Thursday, while marketing and business topics will appear as usual, Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.

Expanding our topical coverage has prompted us to change our RSS and email subscription options. You can subscribe to the whole shebang or to marketing content only or technical content only.

**Important**

RSS Subscribers

If you are already subscribed via RSS you will receive posts Monday to Friday. You do not have to opt in to technical content. We encourage you to leave your subscription as-is and enjoy the launch of our technical blog. If you decide you prefer to receive only technical or only marketing posts, you must unsubscribe from the RSS feed and re-opt-in to the content you want on our home page http://www.getelastic.com/.

Email Subscribers

We are moving our email service from Feedburner to Aweber to ensure Get Elastic posts reach your inbox more consistently and on time. This was an issue we had with Feedburner. Moving our list unfortunately requires you to confirm your subscription again. You will receive an email early next week with instructions.

If you wish to receive all content (marketing and technical), simply re-opt-in when you receive the email from Aweber instructing you to do so. If you want to receive only marketing or technical content, ignore the email to re-opt and please return to www.getelastic.com to subscribe by email to the appropriate stream of content.

I apologize for the inconvenience, we hope you enjoy the new blog look and content. And thanks again for being a part of the Get Elastic family!

You may also like these similar posts:

• Holiday Marketing 2.007 – Nobody Waits for Black Friday Anymore
• Elastic Path Launches Grep Community Site
• Bloggers Digest – 7/11/08
• Bloggers Digest 11/28/08 Black Friday Edition
• Bloggers Digest – 7/18/08

Original post by Linda Bustos

As a thank you to our valued Get Elastic readers, we’re offering you our Friends and Family discount code for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store.

The code is good for 15% off any purchase, no minimum! (Excluding Red Mittens, Petro Canada glasses and video games. Ends February 14th.)

For our US readers, use the code EPFRIENDS2010US at the US Olympic Store.

The rest of the world, use EPFRIENDS2010 at the Olympic Store.

Just to clarify, that is the year 2010, not the letter “O” in the code.

You may also like these similar posts:

• QRious About QR Codes?
• Turn Customer Reviews Into Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
• An Ecommerce Tip from Prime Time
• Leap Year Marketing – Inspiration From Online Retailers
• Commercial Facebook Applications: Is There Hope or Only Hype?

Original post by Linda Bustos

This post is contributed by Janis Lanka (@janislanka, who manages front-end development for Elastic Path Software.

This post is a continuation of a series of posts related to conversion optimization for the Official Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store. Following checkout process and product details page optimization, in collaboration with Wider Funnel, we looked at the store’s homepage. Following list of hypotheses were made:

• Too many banner spaces create high clutter
• Secondary (left side) navigation doesn’t stand out and is difficult to navigate
• Product photos are too small with no indication on available alternative colors

Control

(Click to enlarge, will open new page)

Variation A

(Click to enlarge, will open new page)

Variation B

(Click to enlarge, will open new page)

As a result, we produced two alternative variations with following changes:

• Reduced banner amount and increased size to improve prominence of each banner
• Increased prominence and clarity of secondary navigation
• Provided color thumbnails to products that have alternative colors
• Increased size of photos and reduced amount of products shown under New Arrivals, Featured Products, and Most Popular tabs

What We Learned

This was a very tough test where even 2053 transactions and 21 days did not provide a statistically significant winner. However, decision had to be made and Variation A was chosen based on following data:

• Variation A converted (GWO) 3.14% better than control variation
• Visits with Variation A resulted in 12.54% less Bounce Rate
• Overall site Conversion Rate was increased by 0.59%
• Average Order Value was increased by 5.16%

As a bonus point in our findings (to put it in perspective), if hypothetically we would be using the winning AOV and Conversion Rate, revenue would be increased by 5.78%.

Finally, a thing we learned which might be already obvious for some: use banner space very strategically. Based on your overall strategy – be that to increase AOV or Conversion Rate – you will need to choose carefully what to advertise and where to send users.

You may also like these similar posts:

• A/B Test Case Study: Location of Size and Color Options Mattered

Original post by Janis Lanka

No shortage of amazing blog posts to link to this month, was tough to narrow it down. Here’s a list of my favorite ecommerce related posts in January. Enjoy.

• Justin Palmer kicks off our list with 5 Anti-Resolutions for Marketing Success in 2010. All the things you shouldn’t rely on this year.

• While we’re talking about things to avoid, Kevin Hillstrom has 5 things to avoid in your annual sales forecast.

• Ever wonder if those “Tweet this” links in emails get used? According to Silverpop research, sadly, the answer is no.

• Essential reading for anyone involved in pay-per-click is the Rimm Kaufman Group blog. Don’t miss George Mitchie’s Broad Match is No Substitute for the Long Tail and Evaluating a Paid Search Program.

• There’s no one who sees more retail email than Chad White, who’s rounded up his favorites for the Email Design Hall of Fame, 2009.

• Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz shares a tutorial for determining your success in the search engine indices with Indexation for SEO: Real Numbers in 5 Easy Steps.

• Mobile data can and should be integrated with information from other channels according to DM News.

• In last week’s webinar Bridging the technology and marketing divide for ecommerce success, someone asked the question about the role of SaaS — some marketing departments look to SaaS as a way to circumvent IT. Todd L. Michaud makes a great point that bypassing IT for SaaS is not a way to eliminate the “bottleneck” that IT is pegged to be:

As more outsourced point packages are implemented within an environment, the more the emphasis is placed on integration management. Integration is tough enough when all the systems are in-house. When you add disparate technologies (because the service providers don’t standardize on a single technology set just for you), separate companies (that now have to be coordinated with when there is any change) and feature overlap (each one of these products offers some functionality that another system already provides), it can really become a problem.

The IT team is now forced to spend more time and money on making sure that its systems all play nice with each other. Integration starts overtaking all of the other aspects of IT, and less time is spent on developing new offerings.

• Some lively discussion happening at YouShouldTestThat.com debating the usefulness of computer generated heatmaps as a conversion optimization tool.

• There’s still time to grab your own copy of our Ecommerce Tips desktop calendar by joining our Research Panel.

• Sally McKenzie brings us home with It’s 2010. Do You Know Where Your E-Commerce Strategy Is? 7 Signs You Need to Find It.

You may also like these similar posts:

• Bloggers Digest – 11/30/07
• Bloggers Digest – 12/07/07
• Bloggers Digest – 12/21/07
• Bloggers Digest November 2009
• Bloggers Digest: October 2009

Original post by Linda Bustos

No shortage of amazing blog posts to link to this month, was tough to narrow it down. Here’s a list of my favorite ecommerce related posts in January. Enjoy.

• Justin Palmer kicks off our list with 5 Anti-Resolutions for Marketing Success in 2010. All the things you shouldn’t rely on this year.

• While we’re talking about things to avoid, Kevin Hillstrom has 5 things to avoid in your annual sales forecast.

• Ever wonder if those “Tweet this” links in emails get used? According to Silverpop research, sadly, the answer is no.

• Essential reading for anyone involved in pay-per-click is the Rimm Kaufman Group blog. Don’t miss George Mitchie’s Broad Match is No Substitute for the Long Tail and Evaluating a Paid Search Program.

• There’s no one who sees more retail email than Chad White, who’s rounded up his favorites for the Email Design Hall of Fame, 2009.

• Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz shares a tutorial for determining your success in the search engine indices with Indexation for SEO: Real Numbers in 5 Easy Steps.

• Mobile data can and should be integrated with information from other channels according to DM News.

• In last week’s webinar Bridging the technology and marketing divide for ecommerce success, someone asked the question about the role of SaaS — some marketing departments look to SaaS as a way to circumvent IT. Todd L. Michaud makes a great point that bypassing IT for SaaS is not a way to eliminate the “bottleneck” that IT is pegged to be:

As more outsourced point packages are implemented within an environment, the more the emphasis is placed on integration management. Integration is tough enough when all the systems are in-house. When you add disparate technologies (because the service providers don’t standardize on a single technology set just for you), separate companies (that now have to be coordinated with when there is any change) and feature overlap (each one of these products offers some functionality that another system already provides), it can really become a problem.

The IT team is now forced to spend more time and money on making sure that its systems all play nice with each other. Integration starts overtaking all of the other aspects of IT, and less time is spent on developing new offerings.

• Some lively discussion happening at YouShouldTestThat.com debating the usefulness of computer generated heatmaps as a conversion optimization tool.

• There’s still time to grab your own copy of our Ecommerce Tips desktop calendar by joining our Research Panel.

• Sally McKenzie brings us home with It’s 2010. Do You Know Where Your E-Commerce Strategy Is? 7 Signs You Need to Find It.

You may also like these similar posts:

• Bloggers Digest – 11/30/07
• Bloggers Digest – 12/07/07
• Bloggers Digest – 12/21/07
• Bloggers Digest November 2009
• Bloggers Digest: October 2009

Original post by Linda Bustos

A few years ago I blogged about using the Untangle firewall to replace a Sonicwall or similar firewall appliance.

Since then, Untangle has come a long way. I would like to revisit the untangle appliance as it has undergone numerous improvements, and in my opinion is now a fully capable replacement for an off-the-shelf firewall appliance.

Hardware update…

For a solid, and completely silent firewall for a business environment, here’s my current recommendation (Prices are for new components. Refurbished or used could result in a 30% – 50% reduction in price).
Server – ASUS rs100-x5/pМ: ~$300
Processor – Intel Core 2 Duo 򪒜: ~$105
RAM – 4Gb (2×2GB) DDR2667: ~$90
Hard Drive – WD RE3 or equivalent (200 – 500GB) SATA: ~$100

Total cost is under $600. This would be comparable to a $3000+ Sonicwall or similar appliance and would be significantly more quiet.

If you need more ports, a quality 4 port PCI-E Ethernet card runs about $350. The $1000 tag on this server with 6 Ethernet ports is still a bargain. A quality single port Ethernet card would run around $75. Don’t use a desktop Ethernet card in a server like this and expect good performance, you need a quality 3com, Intel or other enterprise quality card.

This is still a low-end server, but is silent and would work well for a moderate sized office. If you have the budget and usage to require it, you could put this on a dual quad-CPU server and put 32Gb or more ram on it. Additionally for any datacenter usage, you don’t need to worry about sound, so a more robust server could probably be setup for the same cost.

Unlike most human related computer activities, packet inspection and other firewall activities are very processor intensive. The faster the processors, the better a firewall appliance will perform. If you do decide to build a Untangle or other firewall appliance, keep this in mind. Embedded processors like Atoms, or VIA’s are not a good match for a firewall, even through they are designed to fit in compact sized enclosures. They work well for what they’re designed to do, but they are not designed for this.

Current hardware recommendations are as follows:

VPN

Something I didn’t discus in my last article was the VPN. Untangle comes bundled with openVPN. There is no limit other than that of your hardware for the number of VPN users your appliance can support. It is extremely easy to add, suspend and remove VPN users. VPN users are sent a custom key and connection for them to install on their computer. The VPN also supports site-to-site VPN allowing 2 or more offices to virtually share the same network no matter their distance from each-other.

Open VPN is much simpler than any VPN software I have used on either the client or host side. It makes VPN administration and setup a breeze. If you have used cisco, sonicwall or other VPN services, this will be a breath of fresh air in administration and setup.

Feature Improvements

When we started using Untangle, it was not designed to handle advanced protocols including some VPN services, and multi-protocol traffic like VOIP (Voice over IP) phone services.

I am happy to say that Untangle now fully supports multi-protocol traffic like VOIP or Ipsec. Some types of traffic will require custom configurations, but so far I haven’t found any sort of traffic that Untangle has problems with.

Untangle also now support firewall bypassing for high-availability applications, and supports a form of QOS (Quality of service). The QOS is very configurable, but still not quite a user friendly as other platforms. It is however usable despite some potential complicated setups. QOS is essential for running VOIP and other mission-critical applications. It can also be used to throttle down bandwidth eating services like online video.

OS Upgrades

Untangle is now offered in a 64bit operating system, something to satisfy the larger memory requirements for more robust servers. It is still a small custom Debian-linux build. The total install file size is around 500Mb, which is a fresh breath compared to the 3 – 4Gb sizes of many current Linux distributions.

There is also a Windows version for those who don’t have a dedicated server to run untangle on. In this case, Untangle works as a re-router, controlling the routing and traffic of a network, but on an existing windows XP computer.

Conclusion

Untangle has moved from an aspiring concept, to a true contender to established firewall appliances. At this point, I can’t see any reason why a business would spend the extra money on a Sonicwall or similar appliance. Pair this with OpenDNS, and you have a reliable system that can block websites on a DNS level, and a full featured firewall for spam, intrusion, phishing, viruses, and just about every other threat your users will encounter on the internet.

Untangle resources
Untangle Downloads (32bit, 64bit, and Windows)
Untangle guide (Wiki)
The Untangle Blog

If you don’t want to built an appliance yourself, there are plenty of approved untangle hardware vendors.

Original post by jestep

This post is a recap of Elastic Path Software’s January webinar Bridging the technology and marketing divide for ecommerce success ( Smart Destinations’ CTO Matt Higgins and CMO Rob Schmults.

Agenda

• A Modern Fairy Tale
• Marketing Needs to Step Up
• IT Can Do More
• Good News For Everyone

A Modern Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, marketing lived in a happy place where 50% of its efforts were wasted (but no one knew or cared which 50%). IT only had to work with logical, process driven folks who understood the value of fault tolerant systems. Their two worlds were buffered by a handy layer of finance and operations.

But things changed in a hurry, the arrival of the web created the need for new organizational dynamics. From skunk works operations to…spin-outs to…an integrated sub-department to…a free-standing business unit. Very quickly, relationships between IT and marketing changed, forcing a high degree of collaboration.

Collaboration or When Worlds Collide?

View from “IT”

• Rolling 90 day plan
• Change = Risk
• Enterprise systems rightly get top priority
• IT a cost (and blame) center, any time you draw attention to yourself the budget axes come out
• IT views Marketing as fickle, prone to overpromising, and not held accountable

View from “Marketing”

• Short term focus
• “We’re the guys paying the bills – view themselves as top dogs
• It’s all about being nimble and cutting edge
• “Do it/Fix it”
• Enterprise systems are utilities like plumbing or electricity, they should “just work”
• IT a gate keeper (almost as bad as legal)
• IT is slow, a source of unnecessary complexity

The Challenge for Both Marketing and IT

These two worlds need to work together. Senior management is hearing that IT needs to be nimble and markting needs to be accountable, rather than the status quo of marketing being nimble and IT accountable. Both departments need to wear both hats. This forces the two sides to work together to be successful.

• Web raised expectations of executives and customers to new heights
• Growing source of profits dependent on a whole new set of systems that move at an unprecedented pace
• While legacy systems and channels still need to be supported (increasingly integrated with online)

Marketing Needs to Step Up

Marketing Needs to Sharpen its Game

Marketing needs to recognize the world has changed. In the same way you see customer centricity and ROI based campaigns have become the norm, similarly marketing needs to adapt and change the relationship with IT.

How?

It’s critical to take time to get basic hows and whys around requirements and risk management down.

Just because you now have some projects under your marketing belt, don’t forget projects are a means, not an end. Demand for project time that is not commensurate with value of that demand (features/functionality that don’t have a significant impact on business) should be recognized. Focus on what matters. Treat IT like scarce resource which is what they are, and you’re going to get more help.

• Marketing cannot afford to be ignorant of how development and delivery works
• Building is ceasing to be equated with running a web store
• It is now possible to understand which 50% is wasted – so focus on what matters

Why Are Projects Always Late?

• Andersen study showed that 50% of projects are OVER 50% late and over-budget
• Easy to point fingers at IT
• Two main areas projects get derailed:
• Up-front requirements ill-defined
• Scope change during project

The best way to solve this problem is for marketing to nail down up front what the business goals are – what marketing is trying to DO. This way IT can propose alternative solutions that will work better with existing systems, processes and resources. And, when things change (and they inevitably will), marketing should not say “great, make this change” and walk away, but rather understand the tradeoffs.

Building vs. Running: Shiny Objects

Arms Race Mentality

“Gap’s new sites leapfrog every other retail site out there today,” said Carrie Johnson, a retail analyst with Forrester Research, an online consulting firm. “They’re providing a customer experience that other retailers will quickly try to figure out how to copy.” – NYT 9/12/2005

This quote in the New York Times led many retailers to jump on the “mini-cart” bandwagon after Gap launched its new website. The mistake was these retailers didn’t do their homework. They didn’t ask “how does this apply to my business?” or “how do I know Gap’s research was done with enough rigor?” Many mini-carts got launched and were soon taken down.

Building vs. Running: Missing What Matters

Pixels or Inventory?

Focus on the right things instead of the trivial. An example given was of a leading apparel brand’s web team’s obsessive focus on image pixel counts. While 3-4 people were busy worrying about pixels, no one worked on restocking core sizes of best sellers.

A dirty store can hurt sales, but stock-outs eliminate them. Physical store managers obsess about inventory and merchandising, not about upgrading window glass or installing talking price tags.

The Great Cop-out is Over

• World of budget based marketing ending with marketers increasingly stapled to a bottom line
• Dev efforts increasingly given the level of scrutiny marketing campaigns have started to receive – what is the ROI?
• News used to be just about ecommerce leaders rising – now they are falling too

IT Can Do More

Avoid Us vs. Them

• Marketing not actually the enemy
• If they are, then what does that make the customer?
• Easier for an engineer to become a marketer than vice versa, so meet them more than halfway
• Wear a company hat rather than a silo hat
• Help drive the trade-offs vs. use them as an anchor
• Managing risk still important, but put it onto the scales or risk/reward rather than blindly guard

It’s IT’s job to get out of the corner of coding and look to the rest of the organization to find out how they can meet marketing half way.

Provide alternatives instead of just saying NO. Instead of “that’s really hard” or “I don’t have time,” try to say yest more often with alternatives. Step back and consider how the changes being asked for may have an impact on the business or serve the customer better. Become more customer centric in your thinking.

IT Cannot Simply Be Order Takers

• Doing exactly is what asked (when we know it’s not an optimal solution) gives a passive aggressive thrill…but it’s better to be a thought partner
• What are the goals? Find the root of the requirement
• Force rank priorities

When it comes down to it, it really is hard to build a rocket ship. We can’t build it in Q1 but we might be able to get you a booster and a shell and some other parts. This goes back to the collaborate effort. Find a real solution with marketing and help them understand some things are really hard to do, while working out what’s possible.

Good News For Everyone

Landscape Changes

• ASP phenomena: minimize IT involvement

Lighter weight skill requirements to integrate and manage

Support and upgrades someone else’s responsibility

• “Marketing interfaces”

Technology not just for technologists

Let marketing serve itself

• Fading of the “shiny object?”

Recession may have been at least a partial cure for marketing’s confusion of could with should

Good news is we don’t have to build everything from scratch. We can pull in other solutions, integrate with other service providers (rating and review tools, etc).

Personnel Changes

• Increasingly have people with varied backgrounds in key roles, lessens myopia
• Contact has breed an understanding, with IT understanding marketing and (increasingly) marketing understanding IT
• Elapsed time since Al Gore’s invention (aka the Internet) allows for more specialization, expertise, and lessons learned

How it Works in Practice

Smart Destinations’ experience developing their ecommerce solution:

• Marketing put product reviews on priority list
• Didn’t micro manage beyond requirements definition
• IT able to present recommendation that balance implementation effort and cost with capability
• Reviews successfully launched within 2 weeks

Q&A

Any tips for helping Marketing better understand IT?

If you’re in marketing, raise your hand and ask your IT colleagues to help you understand where IT is coming from. IT folks have their focus on risk management, schedules and plans for good reason. The approach is important, give IT guys the time to respond too and take time to understand what they are saying.

I’m in marketing. Our programming team writes great code, but is about 8 months behind on a key project. Cash incentives haven’t worked. How do we motivate them?

Sometimes IT people will go into the corner and code, and be very guarded. You need to communicate what is at stake — that there is a real business need, not just the carrot of a bonus. Being part of bettering the business can be a great motivator for IT people. Also, make sure you as a marketer think of the tradeoffs, what can you do to reduce scope.

Should we have a liaison role between IT and marketing?

Reminds me of the Office Space movie, the guy who takes faxes to engineers. If you are in a really big organization, and you need someone who needs to liaise, go ahead but the best way is to break down tthe “us vs. them” and create a “we.” When you have spent face time with a colleague it’s harder for them to flame you or come back with “I don’t want to do it” because you have built a personal bond. This approach is much better than relying on an arbitrator.

Many Marketing types bring in SaaS solutions as a way to get around IT. What is the role of SaaS in the IT/Marketing relationship?

The good thing about SaaS point solutions is both IT and marketing can look at the same solution and can talk aout it together. E.g. “here’s this tool called Salesforce and here are the 10 reasons why it will solve our business problems with minimal IT involvement.” It brings it home that technology has become a lot more accessible. Going rogue is possible, but what happens is nobody gets what they want. Even SaaS decisions should be collaborative. Whatever solution that goes over the head of IT will not be the optimal one.

If IT is used to being told what to do by marketing and has become jaded, what are some good exercises in creating more involvement?

I don’t think IT is used to being told what to do (nor will they ever be) as that is a more subservient role, which may bring out more passive aggression and defiance. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and adopt a collaborative approach. Rather than IT always saying “no,” you’ll get “hey, I think there are some issues here, but here are some possible solutions.”

Next Webinar

Ecommerce for Packaged Software Vendors: Maximizing Your Online Channel

Join Linda Bustos to discuss how both ʖC and ʖB packaged software companies can improve conversion rates and average order values to maximize the return on investment for their ecommerce projects.

Date: Thursday, February 25th, 2010 Time: 9am Pacific/ 12pm Eastern
Register at www.elasticpath.com/software

You may also like these similar posts:

• Delivering Successful Ecommerce Projects
• Reminder – Affiliate Marketing for Online Retailers Webinar Next Week
• The Best of Get Elastic: 2008
• Wrapping Up 2009: The Best of Get Elastic
• November Webinar Correction and Update

Original post by Linda Bustos

Elastic Path Software and Get Elastic are looking for ecommerce professionals to join our Research Panel. We want to hear your opinions on a variety of topics and concerns for upcoming blog posts and research reports.

We’re looking for:

• E-business professionals from all levels and departments of the organization (IT, Marketing, Finance, Operations, Merchandising etc)
• Minimum annual online revenues of $5 Million
• The willingness to participate in 1 to 4 surveys / interviews per year (maximum once per quarter)

By participating in our online and telephone surveys, you’ll get:

• Exclusive access to research reports only available to Panel members and Elastic Path clients
• The opportunity to voice your opinions on critical ecommerce issues
• Free schwag like the “Year of Ecommerce Tips Desktop Calendar” (Think Dilbert without the Dilbert, and more ecommerce tips)

Topics include:

• Internet marketing strategies and tactics
• Affiliate marketing
• Conversion and landing page optimization
• Ecommerce technology and platforms
• Managing an ecommerce team
• Customer service and loyalty
• Multichannel marketing and management
• Targeted selling (segmentation and personalization of content)
• Mobile commerce and application development
• Operations and fulfillment
• Holiday strategies
• Social media
• International ecommerce
• Industry deep-dives (apparel, software, travel, manufacturer, ʖB etc.)
• Analytics and reporting

Sign up today!

You may also like these similar posts:

None Found

Original post by Linda Bustos

The stereotypical IT/Marketing feud has the visionary, revenue focused CMO barking orders at the process-oriented, cost conscious CIO. Perhaps you’ve heard horror stories of the CIO hijacking the marketing plan, refusing to implement it or worse, the entire IT staff quitting in revolt.

Hopefully it’s not that bad in your organization. The majority of eBusinesses do struggle with the IT/marketing relationship to some degree. 71% of eBusiness leaders surveyed by independent firm Forrester Research, Inc. report low to average levels of support for their business coming from IT. Many prefer to outsource key technology needs in part to avoid working with internal IT staff. Only 9% believe they are well supported by IT.

69% of eBusiness and channel strategy professionals report that they outsource their IT, development and infrastructure:

Source: Improving The eBusiness And IT Relationship, Brian K. Walker, Forrester Research, Inc., October 6, 2009. (Email subscribers: please enable images to view the diagrams from Forrester)

Common complaints from eBusiness teams are that IT is too slow, not reliable and doesn’t see things from the customer perspective. IT complains that marketing doesn’t give enough detail on requirements and doesn’t understand the work required to “make it so” in light of existing systems and platforms.

It doesn’t help the situation that Marketing and IT are held to different measures of success. Marketers and online store managers are responsible for growing sales and making customers merry. IT is typically concerned with keeping costs under control and minimizing risk. These competing objectives are the heart of the problem.

How can the Marketing and IT relationship be improved?

Join us on January 26th for our next webinar: Bridging the Technology and Marketing Divide for Ecommerce Success. Our guest speakers will be Smart Destinations’ CMO, Rob Schmults and CTO, Matt Higgins. Learn about how bridging the technology vs. marketing divide has gotten easier as the technology landscape has changed, yet these changes have not been sufficient to completely close the gap. Our speakers will share views on the way changes in enabling technology combined with better organizational collaboration can make your ecommerce business faster, better, and cheaper.

Sign up today.

Webinar Takeaways:

• How web services, WYSIWUG, and GUI’s offer the allure of cutting IT out of the picture entirely
• Why marketers have to understand the importance of articulating solid requirements—and why change orders are beautiful things
• Why technologists cannot be passive order takers despite the safety such a pose offers—and how they can help marketers focus on what matters
• These lessons are applicable to SMB or enterprises with internal or external resources

You may also like these similar posts:

• Persistent Shopping Carts vs. Perpetual Shopping Carts
• When Web Developers Don’t Consider Usability
• Cart Abandonment: The Case for Christmas Cookies
• Why Victorias Secret Lost A $350 Sale
• Convert First Time Visitors With Coupons

Original post by Linda Bustos

It’s the end of another year, and I want to personally thank you for being apart of Get Elastic by subscribing, Tweeting, Stumbling, sharing posts with friends and co-workers, commenting and sending us your emails!

We’re looking forward to bringing you more ecommerce tips, tricks and trends in 2010 (and we’ll have a big surprise for you very soon).

Get Elastic will be taking the January 1 holiday, and will return January 4th. Until then, we wish you and yours a very happy New Year, and here’s our picks for the Best of Get Elastic for the last 12 months:

January
Thinking positively about negative reviews

February
Tracking Twitter Links: Twitter Analytics Tools & More

March
Personalization: What Sort-By Reveals About a Customer

April
Looks Can Kill Your Design Effectiveness

May
Checkout Inspiration From Top Converting Sites

June
Is Free Shipping More Attractive Than A Dollar Discount?

July
Merchandising Usability: Better Ways to Display Product Recommendations

August
Top 10 Web 2.0 Activities for Ecommerce

September
Reducing Size and Color Uncertainty in Product Photos

October
8 Applications of IP Geolocation

November
Holiday Season: Are You In The Game or On The Bench?

December
8 Tips for Account Registration

You may also like these similar posts:

• Get Elastic – The Year In Review
• Bloggers Digest Resurrected: Ecommerce Links for September 2009
• $95 Landing Page Handbook FREE For Get Elastic Readers
• Bloggers Digest December 2009
• Bloggers Digest – 12/28/2007

Original post by Linda Bustos

Here we are again at the end of another year! Here are some posts of interest to ecommerce professionals from around the ‘Net this month:

First, the bad news

Shipping Rates to Rise 4.9% in Coming Year via DMNews

PayPal to Retire PayLater via Plumber Surplus Blog

The Link Canonical Tag is Breaking Websites via Audette Media (this is the bad news in response to the good news that Google is supporting cross-domain use of the canonical tag – both are important reads)

The E-Commerce SEO Game May Soon Have To Deal With Page Load Speed (but Google Analytics’ new Asynchronous feature and Omniture’s Regional Data Collection may help speed ya up a bit)

Discounts and Promotions: Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction via MineThatData

And the good news: Tips to improve your ecommerce business

How Do You Handle Payment Card Declines? via Econsultancy

Principles of Effective Search in Ecommerce Design via Smashing Magazine

PPC Landing Pages: Choose Wisely via RKG Blog

Bypass Image Blocking By Converting Images Into HTML via StyleCampaign

Seven Sensational SEO Tips for Ecommerce Sites via Econsultancy

30 Topic Ideas for Your Online Store’s Blog via DoublePlus

Tips for Ecommerce Challenged Telcos via Ecommerce Times

You may also like these similar posts:

• Bloggers Digest Resurrected: Ecommerce Links for September 2009
• Bloggers Digest November 2009
• Bloggers Digest – 11/30/07
• Bloggers Digest – 12/14/2007
• Bloggers Digest – 12/21/07

Original post by Linda Bustos