In the heart of a man in a major urban city there beats a dream. This dream includes the proverbial white picket fence and prosperity. He finds a product he is sure will be a best selling item. He doe…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Scott Lindsay)
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Original post by blogadmin
Without a doubt, ecommerce is what drives the Internet. The Internet’s life force is due thanks to ecommerce and the loads of money making opportunity in cyberspace today. With the introduction of eme…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Matthew Bredel)
Many sharp business owners are taking advantage of what the web can do for their business. They have developed a good looking website and many are even devoting part of their budget to online marketin…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Alison Lindemann)
What is social shopping? It’s essentially a mashup that resembles social bookmarking, social networking and comparison shopping in a blender. A bunch of flavors of social shopping websites have popped up as of late, creating a great opportunity for online retailers to engage in some low-cost word-of-mouth marketing.
We’ve hunted down a number of different sites that you can submit your retail products to, and provided a brief summary of each site’s features. Since you never know where a sale is going to come from, it’s worth it to get into as many of these sites as you can and track which bring success and which are just a hassle.
These sites allow you to bookmark, tag, share and even blog products you like. Some allow you to join groups or even earn revenue from your picks.
Here’s a tip: if you’re going to submit your own products – tag with reckless abandon. Browse popular tags for ideas (as they will be surfed often) and also more targeted, specific terms, to maximize your likelihood of being found using search boxes.
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Join groups, create wishlists, email products to friends, add product lists to your blog or MySpace, and easily submit products here. |
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Add a bookmarklet to your browser and off you go. Search for products by category and user lists, add friends, join groups and comment on products and people. Kaboodle auto-creates product descriptions when you bookmark items. |
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Wists (weblists - get it?) gives users a way to keep all their wishlists in one place, rather than in each individual e-store. The description copy and paste may seem tedious but gives you more control than Kaboodle’s autogenerated description. And if you want to encourage bookmarking, Wists’ got a chicklet. See Wists in action. |
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In addition to the typical bookmark / add comments / join groups / add friends options, you can also “follow” your friends or random stranger style mavens a la Twitter. And they’ve included a social media 1.0 feature: a forum. |
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Yet another bee-branded social shopping site … WhatsBuzzing is the Stumbleupon of social shopping. Users browse storefronts, rather than individual items to discover e-stores and get ideas before going comparison shopping. Tag storefronts, add to favorite list and add friends. You can’t submit your store, if you’re buzzworthy they’ll find you. |
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Bookmark products, email to friends, and subscribe to RSS feeds of other users’ picks. Doesn’t look like you can add friends — yet. There’s 2 ways you can add your product: enter the name, URL, or UPC code of the item or add a browser icon and bookmark a product from it’s product page. And you can “Shopcast” by adding a badge or feed of your list to your blog. Kudos to the designers, the |
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Lacks the social features like adding a community, but you can tag your items. Unfortunately it’s attracting a lot of irrelevant spam that appears at the top of all product listings (with no images) and the design is nothing compared to other sites, nevertheless a site to submit products to. |
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Pick products from MyPickList’s merchant network, earn commissions from a number of stores and share a slideshow of your pick list with a widget supported by a number of blogs and social networks. Add friends and message users. If you’re listed in Amazon, Buy.com or other participating merchants, you can get in on the action and recommend your own products. |
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Social by virtue of being a wiki, add a product, subscribe to RSS feeds, tap items as “love it,” “want it” and “have it.” |
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Find deals on specific items, browse posted coupon codes and special offers from Dealplumber’s database, or post your product or affiliate product coupons. “Free Stuff” and “Free Shipping” categories, too. Pipe your products here. |
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Free listings for merchants, woot-woot! Add a button to your bookmarks toolbar or submit your deals here one by one. Join groups, tag, browse, and keep your peeps updated with Twitter tweets. |
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Submit deals, rate, surf, repeat. You can also earn revenue when people click on AdSense around your posted deals. (Sounds like an invitation for click fraud…) This site is really in its infancy, with not many deals, categories or members, but a one to watch. |
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Social dealmarking with community voting — best deals rise to the top. Deals come from sites like Dealnews, BensBargains, Woot and from registered users. |
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Just like Dealcritic, but with much better organization/categories, and options to subscribe to RSS feeds for hot deals, all deals and freebies. Plus Dealspl.us runs giveaway contests. An added incentive to invite friends, if they win a prize, you win too. |
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Like a deal search engine. Users submit deals and then vote on them, but the site lacks tags and categorization. Users must browse the “popular” list or use the search box and hope for the best. Posting a deal is easy. |
Now for some gray-area social shopping sites. The following are comparison engines which have either social shopping features, or a free way of submitting your own products to them, and thus being worthy of honorable mention here for etailers looking to cast a broad net over sites that we believe are going to take off.
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A visual search engine that lets you zoom in on a detail of a product and see similar items based on colour, shape, pattern, price etc. Categories include watches, shoes, handbags, jewellery, clothing. Etailers can add individual products, or email to submit a feed or link. Helps if you have an affiliate program, you may pay per click or per sale, Like.com supports both models. |
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This ain’t your Grandma’s online craft fair. Modern Etsy exlusively lists hand made products, with a whack of Web 2.0 goodies that makes Etsy so sticky — including the Geolocator and Shop by Color. Users can create their own lists in the Treasury. Merchants get a free username.etsy.com account for free, and can list products for $0.20 per quantity, with a 3.5% of sales fee. Listings live for 4 months. |
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Crowdstorm is like MySpace, Digg and Shopping.com in a blender. You can build your social network, “Recommend” products (Digg-style voting system) and search and browse products like any comparison shopping engine. It’s easy to submit products, but here’s the catch — users will be directed to Amazon or Ebay to make a purchase. So this works best if you’re an etailer already using these channels. |
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Sound like a place to unload your Redwings Bobblehead collection? Think again. Hawkee is a social network for tech afficianados where you’ll find user-posted coupons and deals, product reviews and code snippets in addition to comparison shopping. Hawkee uses feeds direct from retailers, not from other shopping engines so drop them a line for more info on getting listed. |
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Fivelimes is an eco-friendly shopping community where you can find sustainable products and services. Browse by categories (no tags), shop locally or browse reviews. Submit a product URL you know about, or join the Vendor Program which works on a cost-per-click basis. |
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Crawls the web picking up products from etailers on its own. Unfortunately some products are outdated. Really cool color search feature. Doesn’t accept merchant product feeds but you can add your e-store URL here. Or read more about getting listed. |
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The social sister of comparison engine Buy.com, at Yub (Buy in reverse) you can shop for over 6 million products, receive cash-back discounts, and shop with your friends. Write reviews and earn commissions when users buy through you. The Meet People feature is tres MySpace. Another reason to get listed in the Buy.com marketplace. |
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Yahoo! Answers approach to the purchase decision. (Run by Yahoo! Shopping, guess where product results come from). Hint: if you spot a “powwow” (thread) related to your e-store’s products, you can drop a link in there. Sell individual items Craigslist-style by starting a new pow-wow and uploading an image from Photobucket. |
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Like Yub, offers members discounts, splitting their affiliate commissions with the buyer 50/50. Advertisers are ranked my how much discount they offer buyers. Works on a “Cost per Sale” model so advertisers can keep a fixed return on ad spend. Send Jellyfish and email to join the merchant program. And did I mention Smack Shopping - Jellyfish’s Deal or No Deal-style online Dutch auction? (Just check out the link for a great video explanation &/or listen to Smack Talk about Transparent Shopping - Get Elastic #30 from eTail West) |
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Site looks great, but not the most intuitive site to figure out (what’s the “Download” for?). You can earn 25-50% affiliate commission on products “suggested” from the Usuggest merchant database. Tagline is “Shoppers Helping Shoppers” but may end up more like “affiliates selling to affiliates”…and we know affiliates will always buy from themselves. Needs a widget to post to blog to market outside of the community. Unfortunately no information on how to add your products to their network. |
Definitely are interesting space to watch and we are all curious about how the social shoposphere will evolve, however more awareness among the general public is needed. So go sign up and tell ten friends!
Did we miss your favorite site? Something you want someone to build? What missing from social commerce site? What’s the real value? Drop us a comment to share your experiences with social shopping.
Original post by Linda Bustos
Most of the web design enquiries coming through these days are requests for ecommerce web design solutions. Not only are we buying more and more of our products and services online, it would appear th…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Ralph Ramah)
An absolute tracking as well as reporting system is now to be had to help you understand and analyze ecommerce web site design and appraise the performance of marketing strategies of current market.
…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (deepak bansal)
By now you know about Elastic Path’s OEM relationship with BEA. The analysts have blogged about BEA’s re-entry into ecommerce and we’ve been spreading the word our customers and prospects (many of whom are already using some BEA components).
Since the announcement a few months back, some of the EP crew met up with our new colleagues at a BEA soiree somewhere in some bright shiny city in Nevada and learned about what BEA’s big platform picture looks like.
Importantly for us too, they started conversations about how AquaLogic Commerce Services (the BEA-i-fied version of EP) fits in to this map (BTW, this is also a common topic on Josh Lannin’s ALCS blog).
Aeroplan differentiates themselves by being an innovator and finding new ways for customers to use their “miles” from spa treatments to donations to Schools Without Borders who use the miles to get volunteers to needful places (note that Aeroplan won a middleware integration award too).
Anyhow, now with a few months under the relationship belt, we are beginning to see the joyful results of the joint efforts with the release of a BEA/Aeroplan study called “Next Gen Loyalty Marketing” (.pdf).
You may recall the Aeroplan case study I wrote last year - well this report goes a step further into their technical workings and describes the total infrastructure experience using (you guessed it) BEA’s AquaLogic pieces to solve a tricky puzzle - elegantly and efficiently.
Here are a few snippets to peruse and the whole report (BEA and Aeroplan Case Study - Next Gen Loyalty Marketing) is attached as .pdf for your homework.
“Our business was changing dramatically and we needed a business platform that would allow us to turn all of our creative ideas into reality,” said Remi Lafrance, Director of Technology—Architecture, Strategy & Operations at Aeroplan.
{snip}
Aeroplan considered a number of options and ultimately selected BEA WebLogic Integration as the backbone for a revamped infrastructure and BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services for storefront and back-office operations. The infrastructure is based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
“We evaluated platforms based on robustness, price, and a real-world proof of concept,” said Lafrance. “BEA demonstrated to us that it was the right choice to address our business requirements. The feature set, reliability and support for open standards were very impressive. It is truly a business enabler.”
{snip}
Among the unique aspects of Aeroplan’s business, and an important competitive differentiator, is the ability for members to redeem miles for hotel rooms and car rentals in real time and completely online. No other loyalty program offers that type of redemption.
“It is a tribute to BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services that we’re able to integrate with travel service providers to offer our members such valuable rewards,” said Lafrance. “Car rentals and hotel bookings can be complex transactions involving real-time inventory and price management. By eliminating the big technical obstacles, AquaLogic Commerce Services helps us make travel planning faster, easier and more convenient for our members.”
The BEA solution is running in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment. The primary database system is MySQL.
{snip}
“The robust feature set in BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services has helped us to diversify our product offerings, expand our business partnerships and eliminate some barriers to revenue growth,” said Lafrance. “We’ve become more effective at converting customer contact into revenue. Our business has increased significantly and we have a strong foundation for future commerce growth.”
Original post by Dave Olson
Without a doubt, ecommerce is what drives the Internet. The Internets life force is due thanks to ecommerce and the loads of money making opportunity in cyberspace today. With the introduction of emer…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Matthew Bredel)
Sometimes writing candidly about the company that writes your paycheck (or in Canadian, cheque) can be a dubious arrangement. Additionally when writing about an industry (ecommerce in our case) and trying to be at least sorta objective is hard when you really want to speak frankly about your company’s solution but not look like you are a shill.
I don’t identify myself as a “corporate blogger” but rather a person acting as the inside source on (non-confidential) company info plus general banter about what we are up to and what I am learning as I hang out with co-workers, especially the smart ones ;-).
Jason digs deep into the nuance of ecommerce and Tom kicks down some great developer tips and tricks, however we’ve sought someone to talk about ecommerce trends but someone who is not in the office with us all day. The aim, to defeat the echo chamber and bring in some fresh ideas.
Enter Linda Bustos - she’s in our mix here in VanBC - we hang out at Vancouver’s Barcamp and other ‘geekfests’ - and we read her engaging and enlightening social media blog - Smogger (where she blogs as postergirl). She is also rocking some web development and Internet marketing projects at a Vancouver Web design factory, specializing in Drupal so she gets big techie points.
I find Linda has a particular knack for assembling lists and wrap-ups. Indeed, as a chronic podcaster, I have referenced her podcast directory list many a time. And now she’s diligently (well i assume anyhow) at work on a comprehensive wrap-up report of social shopping / bookmarking sites (like those guys at Jellyfish).
She’ll also be writing some practical informative research pieces for Get Elastic … taking a look at EP - what we do and how we fit into the big picture of the ecommerce space and open source community with the cutting edge techniques rockin’ from the fingers of the diligent developers - usability, testing, design, analysis … that kinda stuff.
The fact that she blogged about Canadian cult legends and erstwhile ambassadors Bob and Doug McKenzie’s upcoming anniversary special scores big hip points too.
So one more ecommerce geek blogger for your money (you’ve mailed in your cheque right?). And remember … this blog takes requests - topics, songs and/or jokes - we’re here all week.
Original post by Dave Olson
On the eve of the Tri-Coastal E-commerce Trade Show Summer Tour, Dave O has a quick chat with Andrew, a friend of Elastic Path, about the upcoming shows.
Including:
They share some hockey stories and marketing anecdotes along the way and invite you to stop by the booth at any show to say hello and score some premium EP schwag.
Original post by Dave Olson
When you check the auto-complete option in Windows internet explorer, you just opened yourself up to a mess of potential problems. Internet explorer stores all of the user names and passwords that you tell it to learn, in a single flat-file that is unencrypted and can be easily read by a variety of program.
I was installing a password managing program this morning and during one step of the installation process, I unexpectedly saw that all of my user names and passwords popped up completely visible. What this means is that if someone gained access to your computer, they could have full access to any password that you saved in auto-complete with internet explorer. It wouldn’t take someone with the least bit technically competency to steal all of this information.
As far as data vulnerabilities go, this is about as big as it gets. Imagine that if someone logged onto your computer, they could access your online email, bank account, car insurance, and every other place where you clicked ‘Save Password’.
Do yourself some good and get a password management program, or just remember your passwords. It is so irresponsible for Microsoft to release a new internet browser and not encrypt information like this. Both internet explorer 6 and 7 store passwords without any encryption.
How to store passwords securely in FireFox (FireFox still auto-completes, but password file is encrypted and unreadable).
How to clear passwords in Internet Explorer 6 »
How to clear passwords in Internet Explorer 7 »
UPDATE ON THIS:
Before this gets out of hand, I want to clarify that the passwords are actually not stored in a flat file, but rather in a section of the computer’s registry. They are also not readable under every circumstance, but in my case and probably many other people’s, the user names and passwords can be easily extracted by the correct program. I read an incorrect source, that at the time seemed credible which I will reference if I can find it again. I apologize for the error.
Original post by jestep
If you’ve seen the movie ‘The School of Rock’ this video should be pretty humorous to you.
If you haven’t seen the movie, then this looks like some sort of suspense thriller movie about a deranged teacher, when it is actually a comedy.
How does this apply to a website?
The movie itself really has nothing to do with what is in the preview. However, all of the clips in the preview are directly from the movie itself. Essentially, how you design, layout, and style your website, will have a drastic effect on your visitor’s perception of you. You may run the most efficient and amazing ecommerce business in existence, but if your visitors cant perceive value, then you have none.
It’s obvious that colors and layout can dramatically alter how a person feels about a product. This is very well documented, and is a focal point of many marketing studies in the last hundred years or so. Different colors inspire different feelings to different people. Here’s a great overview of color psychology in relation to marketing. Essentially, you need to match the layout, design and colors of your website with what your anticipated audience expects to see and do and feel when they are interacting with your site. It makes no sense to design an elegant day spa website in red and black with flashing banners everywhere, and conversely if you sell demolition equipment, light blue and white probably wont spark the right emotion from someone looking to purchase a wrecking ball!
None of this even has to be measured for it to be completely effective. Common sense will go a long way (assuming that you have some) when you finally do decide on colors and a layout for your site.
Simple is always safe…
If ever in doubt, blue, white, black, and Verdana are always a safe bet.
Verdana is the most readable font in any size. It’s getting much more common to see screen resolutions of 2048 and higher, so the ability to have legible small fonts is more important than ever.
Black text on a white background is by far the easiest to read, and is always the most professional text-background color scheme. The main content area of every site should white. If it’s not white, it should be close to white.
Using layout with a blue color base rarely delivers a poor result. Blue is the most universal color, and while it may not spark high-energy emotions as red and orange do, it is a sign of stability and trust, something that every website can use.
Final thought:
I still see websites that have flashing banners everywhere, have logos and icons all over the place, or are designed with colors that make absolutely no sense. These sites look messy, and never perform to their full potential.
Less is always better than more. Assuming a website looks and performs professionally, there isn’t any amount of pizazz that will make it work better. Most of the time, the more you add to it, the more you loose… Just because you see other sites that are super flashy, with dynamic content and videos all over the place, doesn’t mean that they are actually working.
Make your sites clean and simple and put some thought into why you are using the colors and layout that you choose. If something doesn’t absolutely need to be there for the good of the people visiting your site, get rid of it…
I highly recommend taking a look at all of the books on the Books you should have page, with Designing Web Usability, Prioritizing Web Usability, and Don’t make me think being the most relevant to creating clean, usable websites.
Original post by jestep
Choosing the right domain name is an important foundation for any ecommerce business. Not only should it be memorable and relevant to your target audience, but there are specific considerations relati…
Original post by default@goarticles.com (Rebecca Prescott)
A great rule of thumb when setting up and organizing categories within your site is to think of each and every category as a separate landing page. As Wikipedia notes, a landing page is a “specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking a link or advertisement.” Advertisements should be targeted and […]
Original post by blogadmin
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