e-Commerce world analyzed
Sites
e-Commerce web sites analyzed
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!
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
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.
The delicated art of being trustworthy
Mar 20th
When visitors come to your site you need to convey trustworthyness as fast as possible. This means to say “hey, you can trust in us”, but after this short phrase there are many others that follows:
- “We are going to deliver your product fast”
- “Our payment methods are world class and certified”
- “Our business reputation is certified by government/organizations/partners”
- “Our customers love our site, look what they say”
- “You have money back guarantee”
- “Our post sales service will always help you”
- “Our servers are secured and monitored”
And many others that you can say in many ways. Of couse if you say it you should provide/prove it, but anyway you need third party actors in this trustworthyness construction.
Here are some of them:
McAfee Secure, BBB (USA only), Web Trust, Rainforest Alliance, Paypal Verified, GeoTrust
There are many others you can research, and browsing top e-Commerce sites you will see them.
But after all, it’s about doing things right, providing visitors with the necesary credentials, and finally to give visitors the channels for rating and feedback.
Remember to make good use of partners or any known brand that can give you permission to be mentioned. That will always means you are being trusted by them.
http://www.mcafeesecure.com/us/merchants-benefits.jsp
Reputation and satisfaction rate: how to have and improve one with BizRate
Mar 17th
Do you believe your online store, products and service is that good that your shoppers will rate you high? then your reputation and satisfaction rate will help you to get more conversions. But how to have a rate and how you can improve it? here is one way to do it.
BizRate is a price comparison portal, but further than that, BizRate allow shoppers to rate and review the sites in their program. Let’s take a look at what shoppers said about Zappos.com using BizRate and then you will have a perfect idea of each detail you need to take care of in your own shop:
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Detailed Store Ratings
Pre-Ordering Satisfaction
Post-Fulfillment Satisfaction
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Then, the next step is to know the very best of BizRate you will find it here: BizRate Circle of Excellence Award Winners. This is something like the “dream team” of customer satisfaction, so you better take some time browsing theses sites and see why shoppers rate them that good.
If you want to join BizRate and use other options you can click here
p.s: about performance improvement, take a look at the big graphic that BizRate use in their site. They load just this image and show portions of it using CSS. Once you have the image this one and only image in your browser cache, they have everything you need to render their interface in every single page. Pretty good, uh?
Zappos.com review part 1
Mar 14th
I have to say it, if Amazon spent 928 millon dollars to buy zappos.com something good should be there, and in fact it is!
Probably is the best e-Commerce interface I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to mention the many ups and a few downs in a short review. So first of all please open the site: click here.
The first impression is about a regular e-Commerce site, in fact nothing moves! which is quite rare nowadays, but you don’t need to scroll to have everything you need one click away, even a generous search box with tips and shortcuts. And what to say about the drop down menus! Awesome! but wait! don’t click anything… scroll down, and down, and you will see that the home page is huge… the antithesis of Google for sure, but it loaded pretty fast, right?
So now the magic begins… let’s go and search for a wallet, look at the criteria selector with those blocks to narrow your search! incredibly easy, informative, and user friendly… and most important of all, no need to reload again and again thanks to it’s ajax powered interface. Please raise, and clap, clap, clap, and keep claping. That’s the way aha aha I like it!
And now the creativity comes to the scene when you land in a product page…. what to say, the speed is awesome, the product images are great, the colors variations are always there for you to see at a simple mouse over. But even more: bookmarks, product subscription box, social tools (I love the Tell a Friend with subject selector), and a short url and badge for you to blog about it. But the star is the Larger Images interface with mouse over and 2 to 4 x zoom! Please rise again, and clap even louder!
Maybe you already noticed these people really takes products photos seriously. Again, that’s the way aha aha I like it!
The few downs: nothing new in the shopping cart, it would need to be interactive and visible in a layer onto the current page, and even informative (you get no information about your cart from the top button, not even when you mouse over). No wishlist concept available, just favorites. Drop down menus are not available in inner pages and no way to activate them. Nothing new in chat online concept.
So I hope Zappos staff can keep this great creativity and quality in the new Amazon era. Keep going!
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- Search narrower
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- Home Page
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- Product Page
