e-Commerce Watch
e-Commerce world analyzed
My vision about the future of iPhone apps market and e-commerce
Sep 27th
Apple owns one of the most successful e-commerce sites on earth:,itunes, and with that knowledge developed another top ten: the apps store. From my point of view, no matter if Android becomes more popular, Apple will still have a huge percentage of users that are followers (and sometimes addicts) to “The Wow! Company”, as I call it. In 1983 I was a little teenager working for one of the first computers store in town when I tried the first Apple Lisa, I started to say “Wow” since then and I never stopped saying that with every Apple release. So at this point the question about how successful the company will be if Jobs pass away is a good question, but a company is not a lonely island. A company is always the egg’s yolk, so the white will always contain it. Of course it is fragile, but both are a whole. Even without Jobs on board the company will keep moving forward because many people will help and will expect that,even forgiving a bad release.
So with this in mind I foresee many many years of a nice road ahead, with a huge market with incredible potential, specially for creative and courage developers that want to be at the same Apple’s excellence level.
The hard and software experience with iPhone, iPad and iPod is so good, that makes them awesome platforms for e-commerce related developments. Of course to sell an app using the Apple store is a great e-commerce itself. But with so many web sites and software out there needing a mobile solution, and with so many 2.0 services and ideas floating around ready to make combustion, it is difficult to run out of gas, right?
So my vision is that Apple have the same advantage that Microsoft had and have against Linux. Apps diversity, one and only OS platform with upgrades (no dozens like Android right now being adapted by carriers to their needs).
And finally, Apple’s gadgets are and will be beautiful toys for adults, with lots of fun, and hundreds of apps to spend the time with, while a Blackberry is still a tool, and Android based phones are still phones for people that buy them mostly because of the free apps (not really big market behind).
Well… my two cents on this topic.
Secure your passwords and make your login life easier with Clipperz
Jun 25th
E-commerce means on-line money, and on-line money means hackers trying to get it. So you need to be very careful when managing passwords and logins, and also when providing admin access to people working remotely.
Some time ago I found this great tool and I want to share it with you, Clipperz
- Store and manage your passwords and online credentials
- Protect all your sensitive and confidential data
- Share secrets with family members and associates
- Login to your web services with just one click!
The site offer you also to download an offline version of this web app, then you can open it directly from your computer, and also, to create special login for public computers with key phrases that expires automatically once you use one! (very useful when you’re in a hurry and you need to login to your admin panel from a friend’s or public computer). The best thing, they don’t ask you any personal information, so you cannot be identified in any way, and all the information is encrypted by the javascript app that is preloaded in your browser before connecting with the site, so all the information travels the net encrypted since the very first moment and all the time! The service is so secure that if you lost your password there’s nothing to do, they can’t get into your account!
Oh!, this is not good enough for you? do you want the app installed in your server so you have your very own Clipperz? absolutely possible with the Community Edition!
Open source enterprise level solution missing? here is a proposed solution
Jun 25th
I was reading this article about “Open-Source Making Significant Traction in the Enterprise“, and I started to analyze this from the E-commerce point of view. I’m not sure if I’m missing something but I can’t find an enterprise level open source solution that really makes me say “wow”. The most advanced and only enterprise level solution is Magento but the Enterprise Edition starts at $12,990 USD/year!
On the other side, usually the regular and even good solutions are not that good when talking about backoffice, stock management, deposits, I mean, the whole accounting, logistic and CRM every big e-commerce site needs. That’s why some time ago I started a reasearch in my company (Openpower) approaching to this from the other side, looking for a good ERP free open source solutions that can be expanded to create a full package. In this path I found solutions like Compiere and all its spin-off, ADempiere, OpenXpertya, and the great pre-configured Argentine OpenXpertya spin-off called Libertya -of which I’m certified dealer- and now the challenge is to create the web site front-end based on a world class ERP like Libertya. Are you interested? contact me and we can start a Source Forge project. I can get all the needed support from the Libertya Latin American community.
Web site mockups and design collaboration made easy
May 8th
When developing an E-commerce site you will work a lot designing the interface and all the elements you want, and in that process you will have to interact with the team of programmers, designers and marketers, among others, so this tool will help you a lot. Balsamiq Mockups is a good tool to create mockups in a matter of minutes and where the whole team can interact at the same time, and just for 79 dollars, cheap and good enough.
Google Map Custom Marker Maker
May 8th
Google Map Custom Marker Maker is a great tool to help you create the images needed to put your own logo in your google maps mashup, or any other image you like. After all we all need good maps in our sites, so add some spice to them!
Twitter + Discount cupons + E-commerce = A Winner team!
May 8th
Twitter is becoming a top communications tool, and of course E-commerce can be highly benefited, but some web sites make this even easier. This is a great example of what you can do to attract more customers if you are staring a Twitter stategy using the great service of twtQpon:
Does Facebook really help e-Commerce? 10 recommendations for going to Facebook
Apr 1st
Some time ago the urgency of being online was backed up by the sense of invisibility for the people that started to adopt Internet as the way to find professionals and shops. So if you wasn’t online you started to feel like non-existent for them. And in fact it is.
Nowadays, if you are not in Facebook it happens something very similar. So the Facebook fever started not so long ago. but does Facebook will help your e-Commerce?
My answer is that it depends on how seriously you take your Facebook presence. Like it or not, Facebook became a neighborhood where people started to live their online life. Indeed some even stopped using E-mail, and instead they are using only Facebook for communications. The most common mistake is to minimize its importance and to think “we need to have a group just to have fans”, and then you don’t really take care of the group. So finally nothing really happen in the group, and if people start to complain there you will discover it several days after when the bomb might be near to explode. This happened to Amazon (the story) and in a short period of time the Amazon group exploded when gay/lesbian books disappeared from the listings, and two new groups boycotting Amazon joined almost 5000 people (Group 1, Group 2). So that’s the power of “viral marketing”, it is powerful for good but also for bad. If you visit the official Amazon Page in Facebook you will find people that comment positively and some of them negatively. If you’re out of the loop you will miss the chance to reply publicly, leaving the gap empty. That’s not good for your business. Even though Amazon have a really big number of users only 30 thousands are actually fans. That’s a low number for such a big e-Commerce site. They are not doing the right thing.
So when going to Facebook:
- Assign a team of people to take care of the page or group daily (even weekends)
- Be creative presenting special Facebook offers and tell web site visitors to become fans to get them.
- Create special content for facebook (reviews, videos, pictures)
- Humanize the page presenting employees, or inner stories that can help to show your work environment in a positive way
- Don’t connect your corporate blog with facebook using its blog import feature, instead share each article in your wall, otherwise people read the full article in Facebook taking traffic to your site
- Don’t let the page slow down, keep it moving, so create a set of contents, offers, etc., and publish them regularly.
- Push your news. Remember your wall publications does not alert fans by email, so don’t abuse with the mass mail feature but use it at least once a week to communicate what happened and what is going to next week.
- Share the good news! if you reach an objective, if you add new people to your staff, if opened a new office or store, if you have happy customers stories in your web site… share them all! (but don’t publish so many that your fan publications goes quickly to page 2).
- Ask for comments. Fans comments are shared in their own wall and viewed by their friends, so publish some give aways only for those that reply to the offer with a comment. That will give you more viral exposition in more users walls.
- Really take care of angry people. If you manage those situation in a very professional way right in your page that will enhance your trustworthiness. For this you need to be quick, don’t let the wheel roll much, otherwise a small snowball can become an avalanche of negative comments.
Remember that Facebook is a great chance to know your customers in a very humanized way, so if you get in touch with them, you have the chance for example to send them a happy birthday message in their wall, and even to give a birthday 24hs discount. For this you need to add them as friends. So you can even ask in your web forms “Are you in Facebook? We want to be friends, do you want to leave us your Facebook E-mail?”
Hope this can help you.
So remember: take Facebook presence very seriously, be fun, be creative, see the human side of your customers, and use it for feedback.
New domain to access the site
Mar 29th
Hi!
This is a short notice to tell you that a new and more easy to remember domain is active to access the site:
www.ecommercewatch.com.ar
So if you want to access the site and you don’t have the bookmark you will probably remember the name, so add it .com.ar and you’re in!
Thanks for your visit!
Powerful catalog, easy administration development plus E-commerce with Caspio
Mar 26th
Several month ago an e-Commerce site development came to my hands. A good friend of mine and his Canadian partner were thinking about to create an online vacation saver club. So it needed to have a good content management system, a flexible catalog, and a back-office to manage it. And finally an e-commerce solution for purchasing the discounted weeks. Oh, I almost forgot, a subscription plan was needed to have access to the database… but then the business changed and now it has a public search and a private one for members that can save 200 USD in each purchase. But, how to do this with a low budget and in a short period of time, without custom programming? (I lately hate custom programing due to the lack of speed+flexibility and the tie to programmers that use to switch projects very often)…. well… after some hours of research I found Caspio!, in a matter of minutes
my free account was up and running, and in a matter of hours I knew it would be the solution. But some days after I realized that one of Caspio weaknesses is the lack of real e-commerce features… so then a mixed solution came to life. We kept Caspio as the offers catalog and connected it to an e-commerce open source solution with a small custom programmed gateway. The final product: the best of both worlds, flexibility, easy database administration development, and a good checkout process.
So, then visit the site and see how it works: www.vacationsaverclub.com and if you like it leave a comment here!
After that I started two more Caspio implementations that I will blog about soon, but those are not pure e-Commerce
Information is power: The Global Information Technology Report 2009–2010
Mar 26th
If information is power, then this report will give you much. If you want to identify targets this report will give you very useful information.
The Country Profile is great to take decisions based on market size, broadband connectivity, networking and so on.
If you want to sell cell phone apps, then you have to take a look at the Mobile Thelephone Subscription chart!.
Well, there’s no doubt that you will be entertained for several hours, and this information could be the key to better and more wise decisions.
But take care, don’t believe everything. China is ranked 20 in the Freedom of the Press chart! what a joke!
