'Net Features : shopping cart

Bigcommerce Gets Funded, Adds Apps

Michael Garrity — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:34:00 GMT

The e-commerce software provider Bigcommerce recently announced the results of a $2 million integration fund it launched for developers in early 2012.

A plethora of developers came out to utilize the Bigcommerce API to build a variety of new integrations and applications for the e-commerce platform, which are now available in the Bigcommerce app directory. In fact, 500-plus developers originally applied to receive part of the fund, and of those applications that the company decided to endow with capital, the majority focused on providing marketing services; this is largely because Bigcommerce realized that this is the area that most of its small businesses clients had the hardest time with.

“We know that our clients want more than just a pretty online store,” said Co-CEO Eddie Machaalani. “They want traffic, orders and repeat customers. The range of apps built as a result of our integration fund not only extend on our 25 built-in marketing tools, but make it even easier for our clients to drive a stampede of targeted traffic to their Bigcommerce stores.”

Overall, 577 developers applied for funding and 31 different apps ended up being funded. The monetary funding range for individual apps started at $1,250 and went all the way to a whopping $20,000. And, following the influx of new applications as a result of the integration funding, the Bicommerce app store now has 105 total apps.

“The applications we selected are truly best-of-breed integrations that meet significant needs for our clients,” explains the other CEO, Mitchell Harper. “Using our extensive API, market-leading apps like HubSpot, MailChimp and Zendesk, as well as up-and-coming developers like Stitch Labs, are building on top of our platform and generating serious revenue.”

He adds that this is “a win-win situation for Bigcommerce, developers and, most importantly, our clients, who get to extend the functionality of their Bigcommerce stores in a nearly unlimited number of ways.”

Even though integration funding is over, the company is still encouraging developers to submit their app applications at developer.bigcommerce.com.

The Switch: Re-Platforming Project Guide for E-Commerce Merchants

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:45:00 GMT

With the 2012 holiday comfortably behind Web retailers now is the perfect time to begin the process of moving a digital storefront to a brand new e-commerce platform. If you’re actively involved in a retail platform switch (or are only considering it), Website Magazine has put together a three-part series to guide digital merchants through this immensely challenging project.

In this, the first part of Website Magazine’s guide to e-commerce re-platforming, the focus is on auditing the numerous features that are required and in demand by retail-centered enterprises in 2013. The next two installments will focus on the specifics of making the technology transition to a new platform, and, on developing a post-transition strategy for moving forward.

Do I Really Need to Re-platform?

For many the interest in finding a new online store software provider will ultimately relate to their performance - in the most recent holiday shopping season as well as throughout the rest of the year.

While those that had a “good” 2012 and improved results (e.g. sales) are unlikely to make the transition to a new platform, it remains important for successful merchants to routinely explore the solution vendor landscape in order to understand the variances in licensing, maintenance and support costs offered by other providers as well as the features currently in use by their retail competitors (so as not to fall too far behind in their efforts to meet or exceed customer expectations).

Those that performed poorly however will first need to explore what’s preventing greater sales performance. That’s not always easy but with a data-driven understanding of performance it is possible to eventually choose a platform which meets your enterprises expectations and can correct the virtual ills plaguing any retail Web presence.

Quick Re-Platforming Analytics Audit

There are dozens of reasons why a digital retail enterprise may consider switching ecommerce platforms - from a lack of organic traffic due to poor SEO controls, to a failure to integrate with other essential ecommerce-friendly software solutions/platforms like robust CRM systems. To find out what’s preventing your e-commerce storefront, dive into the analytics.

Analytics solutions contain lots of actionable information on performance and those insights should not be ignored by retailers switching to a new e-commerce platform. For example, how often are products posted to social networks? Are support requests increasing? Did conversions fall off after a new feature integration? Are there water-cooler complaints circulating internally within your enterprise about the complexity of the system you’re currently using?

Ideally, there should be some available mechanism in place to track and regularly perform audits that can be used to indicate the right time to consider a formal switch. In order to do that, conversion goals (e.g. for support tickets generated, or social shares initiated) and performance benchmarks must be in place. Moving to a new platform without empirical evidence that a move is required is a dangerous game that the savviest merchants avoid at all costs.

Ecommerce Platform Feature Audit

In the first part of Website Magazine’s Ecommerce Re-platforming Project Guide, let’s explore five essential, high-level features that should be audited – on your existing site and in any new shopping cart being considered.

Marketing Features: The features that enable an ecommerce enterprise to promote its’ products effectively to prospective and returning customers – both on and off the website (or application) itself – should be an area of immense interest for retailers. Areas of discovery should be site search capabilities, recommendation, and merchandising controls – as well as how these features impact conversion.

Technical Features: It’s often what happens behind the scenes that most impacts what occurs in the front. While a well-staffed and smart team of developers can ultimately make anything functional, a well-documented code base and supportive developer community, not to mention a reliable infrastructure, are of immense importance.

Administrative Features: It might be the least “sexy” of all the features, but they are undeniably the most important – features for those that make formal business decisions. Administrative requirements such as the ability to run performance reports and export data are often one-off line items are the feature request list but their importance is critical.

Support Features: Merchants are demanding in their requests for support features. Ticket-based support systems, while still in regular use among top merchants, aren’t the only way to provide assistance to product buyers and site visitors. For example, it’s not uncommon today for merchants to buy into third-party software providers of support technologies such as live chat. Are these and other integrations available through modules, plugins or add-ons?

Design Features: Most ecommerce platforms today offer their e-commerce customers a great deal of control over the visual elements of their websites. “Fully-customizable” however doesn’t necessarily mean that designers shouldn’t be involved in decisions made related to an online ecommerce presence. If there’s a trend toward going mobile within your enterprise, know whether the solution you’re evaluating can keep pace.

So how should you approach your re-platforming project? Can what you learn from an audit influence which ecommerce solution is chosen? Ultimately, the features listed above need far more exploration and discovery on a merchant-by-merchant basis. They do serve as a good starter guide for making a platform switch.

1&1 Offering Simple Shopping Cart Integration

Michael Garrity — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 20:15:00 GMT

It will certainly be a happy new year for 1&1 MyWebsite users, as the company just announced a hot new partnership and integration with the ShopIntegrator E-Commerce Solution.

This big news means that merchants and Web designers working with the 1&1 MyWebsite platform can now easily incorporate a hosted shopping cart into their website, turning it into an online store in just minutes.

ShopIntegrator is a McAffee-secured e-commerce solution aimed predominantly at small and medium-sized businesses. It provides mobile- and tablet-ready online checkout functionality, allowing merchants to sell their own products, services or digital downloads from their own websites.

By integrating the ShopIntegrator solution into its platform, 1&1 is able to offer users a more sophisticated and cost-effective checkout system than the typical Amazon or PayPal shopping carts without requiring them to sign up for 1&1 eShop. Merchants simply have to add the ShopIntegrator e-commerce widgets into their sites to receive a flexible and fully-featured online retail solution, as well as various product management tools.

Merchants can also customize their ShopIntegrator shopping carts and online stores with designer settings for creative checkout customization, multiple currency converters, real-time product and stock control, European VAT handling (for VAT registered merchants), shipping cost creators, discount codes, special offers and shipping status email updates.

In addition, the ShopIntegrator e-commerce software can securely handles a range of payment processors, such as CardSave, eWAY, PayPal and Sage Pay. It also offers a couple of offline payment options that allow customers to pay by check or bank transfer, or on collection or delivery of the products or services.

Interested merchants can check out the 30-day free trial of ShopIntegrator. There is even a tutorial available to help simplify the integration process even more.

E-Commerce Meets CMS at Sitecore

E-Commerce Express : feature — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:33:00 GMT

.Net Web Content management system (CMS) released an E-Commerce platform. What does a CMS know about e-commerce software? It turns out, quite a bit courtesy of the company focus on marketing automation. What makes this e-commerce solution different (and...(read more)

Exclusive Free E-commerce Software for Website Magazine Readers

Mike Phillips — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:39:00 GMT

Web-based software developers Interspire have developed Big Commerce, a shopping cart that combines ease-of-use with powerful functionality. And it's free. The shopping cart will not be available to the public for a few weeks, but Website Magazine readers can get it now.

Big Commerce was developed with a few goals in mind, one being it's ease of use. What jumps out right away is the ability to customize your shopping cart with drag-and-drop functionality. So, if you wanted to test a new position of a featured product, that could be done by simply dragging it to any area of the page. This ease of use, combined with built-in integration with dozens of payment gateways, and any number of analytics providers and CRM softwares gives merchants a fully-functional shopping cart without a steep learning curve or the need for outside help. In short, Big Commerce is made to fit in with your existing website and business. And for that reason, the cart would also make a nice add-on for website developers to offer to their clients - the less support clients need, the more a developer can focus on new business.

Big Commerce was also developed from the ground up with SEO in mind, tapping some of the leading SEO experts in the business during development. The shopping cart automatically includes optimization for meta and title tags, as well as a very clean CSS structure, allowing for easy customization.

Some other features of the Big Commerce cart include:

Recommendation functionality for "related" products to increase cross-selling opportunities
Refund and store credit abilities
Flexible discount rules
Re-orders from previous purchases
Coupon codes and bulk discounts

Visit http://BigCommerce.com and enter "websitemagazine" for a free, exclusive beta invite to the new shopping cart and explore all its possibilities.

Aplus.net Integrates Pinnacle Cart

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:00:00 GMT

It's not often that you see a commercial shopping cart bundled with a Web hosting package.

In fact, only those of the open source variety have ever crossed my path. Web hosting company Aplus.net must not have gotten the memo (or chose to ignore it) because they've gone and made available one of the most powerful commercial shopping cart solutions on the market today in Pinnacle Cart.

The solution is included free as a standard feature with any Aplus.net e-Commerce Shared Hosting plan. The cart is also available as an add-on for other shared hosting plans and dedicated server plans as well.

“Pinnacle Cart stacks up extremely well against other offerings in this competitive arena,” says Dennis Kittrell, senior product manager at Aplus.Net. “Not only is it packed with essential features, payment and shipping options, Pinnacle Cart is very search engine friendly as well as robust in terms of product management.”

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