e-Commerce world analyzed
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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.
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.
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:
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!
Google brand new service: Commerce Search
Mar 24th
Many invididuals and companies only want to create an online catalog, sometimes with prices, sometimes without. But the solutions you find in the market does not have the search capabilities that Google has. When you do it in Google you always have the synonyms and misspelling suggestions among many other features. Then imagine that in a catalog of your own but with a dynamic interface where you can control many parameters of this online catalog and as a hosted solution that can be quickly implement? that’s exactly the new Google Commerce Search. Look at this video:
Main features are:
- Enable visitors to find the right products faster
- Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
- Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
- Increase website conversions and sales
- Boost or promote chosen products within search results
- Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
- Customize, track, and optimize performance
We have to try it to see if it’s that good as it looks!
Square: new way of P2P and P2B payment
Mar 23rd
Things are getting better and easier for e-Commerce. Square service will make a lot easier people to enter in the e-Commerce era with more confidence using their cellphones and the mobile credit card reader!
Watch this video and see it by yourself
Awesome, uh? I think this help a lot of people and businesses. Specially because it becomes a mobile posnet with just a phone and this tiny card reader.
Circle of Excellence Award Winners at BizRate
Mar 19th
BizRate published some time ago the 2009 top stores for customer satisfaction – according to shoppers like you!
According to millions of customer ratings, these 167 stores achieved excellent ratings in the following areas: Overall Satisfaction, Product Selection, Ease of Finding Products, Likelihood to Shop Again, Product Met Expectations, On-time Delivery, and Customer Support.
via Circle of Excellence Award Winners at BizRate.
Look carefully each one of them. You will learn a lot!!!
BBC News – The top 100 sites on the internet
Mar 19th
A treemap is a way of analysing large amounts of data in a small space
In this example the top 100 websites have been depicted in proportion to the number of unique users they received in January 2010
via BBC News – The top 100 sites on the internet.
Take a look at the Retail area. No big surprises but impressive numbers for sure! 121 millon unique users for eBay, or 111 for Amazon! wow!
