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Shopping Cart Review

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:14:19 PST

Top Features of a Successful E-commerce Company

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:25:12 PDT

Why a lot of e-commerce companies continuously increase their success on the electronic market, while others fail to do so?

MarketingPilgrim.com, a website that covers the latest news, rumors and reviews of everything related to internet marketing as well as online advertising, has worked with a lot of websites that currently register turnovers of over 1 million GBP. The company analyzed the common features of the successful sites and we bring you the top 10 traits of a flourishing e-commerce company.

1. A Comprehensible Goal

Any company, not just an e-commerce one, must know exactly what it wants to achieve. Thus forms the idea of a stable conviction to creating a successful on-line business.

2. A Long-Term View

Successful e-commerce business constantly estimates in case it is continuously getting there. They may live with paradoxes. For instance the Internet is continuously changing every day, every second. However, organic SEO is a process that is somewhat slow. Each day, week, month provides feedback estimated in a variety of ways against targets.

3. Taking Estimated Risks

The main thing here is to take the needed risk and be ready to invest. Obviously investment is the air that businesses need to survive, thus it is crucial to know exactly where your money should be invested. Thriving e-commerce companies look forward to invest their money in activities that are more probably to generate growth.

4. A Dedication to Strategy of Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)

Whenever a person learns there is no limit to continue improving the knowledge and skills. The same comes with e-commerce companies. Successful businesses are aware of the fact that continuous improvement is crucial for thriving. Complete redesigns in such companies occur every 6-12 months and such search engines like Google simply adore it.
E-commerce companies that gained success never rest on it due to the fact that in several weeks a new player may come and take a share of their business, and that is certainly not a part of a successful business plan.

5. Good Advisors

One person cannot be at several places at once, neither can the person know everything. Thus having advisors, who can be trusted and followed, is very important. There is nothing simplifying in the world of e-commerce. Those who want to win should pay for a good advice regarding the strategy, tactics and enlarging the business.

6. Think Fast and Change Mind Slowly

Three month is retailing is a long period. It is important to take certain actions within short periods. Successful e-commerce companies try to make take their decisions fast, estimate the results and then adjust them consequently.

7. Consumer is the King

All the changes a business performs should benefit the consumer. If this is achieved then the consumer can be turned into a customer and later the existing customers are converted into regular spenders. A nice design can be quite satisfying, however, in case a company performs frequent improvements that show positive results on the bottom line then it will surely pay off
much more.

8. Successful E-commerce Companies Consider Technology and Change

Consider the idea that today a lot of teenagers are ready to steal your business, just give them the necessary funding. The key in e-commerce is to keep side by side the developments online. It is important to be informed on the latest shifts in online culture and be aware of how to read fundamental web analytics.

9. Honesty and Fairness with Customers and Suppliers

The main feature here is to create a respected business. Big money doesn't come at once. An on-line business is steadily built through repeat sales and referrals. With a great customer service and honest dealing with customers and suppliers will surely make your business prosper. Giving back customer's money is not the thing to be afraid of. Chat thorough customers' options and be ready to help them.

10. "Easy Money" is a Myth

Surely today there are a lot of wannabees who look forward to create millions by doing little or no work at all. Internet is like any other business, one should work hard, continue improving and estimating in order to achieve the much expected goal.

Which VoIP is best, Vonage, Skype or Dedicated VoIP?

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:27:42 PDT

Skype & Vonage

Did you ever wonder why Skype can afford to offer their services from FREE to only $5 per month for unlimited calling? (Vonage for $24.99) Skype and Vonage actually use the same technology, its called Peer to Peer (P2P) service.

p2p - Stands for "peer to peer" which is the technology used for file sharing among computer users over the internet.

Peer - A peer is one instance of a client (program) running on a computer on the Internet to which other clients connect and transfer data. Usually a peer is not responsible for the complete file transfer, but only parts of it. However, in the colloquial definition, "peer" can be used to refer to any participant in the swarm (in this case, it's synonymous with "client").

How can Skype and Vonage be so cheap in offering their services? Skype and Vonage doesn’t offer a real telecom service, they are simply selling a program to many users that build a P2P community. They are not selling dedicated bandwidth for you to make the phone calls. By signing up for a P2P service you are volunteering to use other people’s computers and bandwidth who have the same program as you installed to talk to your final caller and vice versa your bandwidth will be used at about 800Kb/s because others will be using your computer resources and bandwidth to talk as well.

It all sounds fine and dandy when you are making personal calls since you are indeed saving a whole lot of money. But how reliable is P2P for business? Everything that is cheap has consequences, there a plenty of cons with VoIP, but when you are involved in VoIP and P2P you’re just asking for trouble.

VoIP challenges:

Available bandwidth
Delay/Network Latency
Packet loss
Jitter
Echo
Security
Reliability
Pulse dialing to DTMF translation

Since the bandwidth connection and power computer resources are not guaranteed with P2P, you can only expect these problems to occur on a constant basis. In a scenario where you call New York to California, Skype has to travel to over 1000 different computers in order to reach the destination. The problem occurs when you connect to Joe in Arizona who is playing an internet video game on his slow computer and while you’re connected to him for that one moment you will experience a Packet Loss (You will sound extremely choppy on the other end). When making personal phone calls and there is a packet loss or echo, you just call back. But can you afford such poor reliability with your business? Is it worth to save $60 per month on P2P VoIP to potentially lose a $1000 order where the profit will be much higher then the monthly saving?

More Problems with P2P VoIP (Skype / Vonage)

Skype going down for 2 days because of a Microsoft reboot (http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9762551-7.html) and Security and Privacy concerns, where your competitor can listen in to your phone calls makes Skype and other P2P VoIP questionable for business. Any business should consider the high risks P2P VoIP poses, especially with issues such as having your phone system shut down for 2 days because of a Microsoft reboot. P2P VoIP may one day be a great solution for business as technology improves and outdated technology gets upgraded, however today in my opinion it’s to early to relay on P2P VoIP for business.

Dedicated VoIP

Dedicated VoIP are provided by Dedicated VoIP companies which maintain the central PBX system that customers use to make phone calls. Small – Large size business use dedicated VoIP solutions. Dedicated VoIP is different from P2P VoIP because the bandwidth connection that is used to make the phone calls is not shared between multiple clients (users or computers). A customer with Dedicated VoIP uses only 4Kb/s per one phone call. A P2P VoIP constantly uses 800Kb/s of bandwidth on the computer that has the P2P VoIP software installed as other peers are using the computer to route calls. P2P VoIP completely dominates the bandwidth and computer resources which makes the phone quality dreadful. The reason Dedicated VoIP is the best solution for a business is because it routes a phone call from the VoIP customer directly to the other end of the phone line through the VoIP company without any other delays. Certainly the Dedicated VoIP is much more expensive then P2P VoIP but nothing is free. P2P is cheap because they don’t guarantee the quality service, while Dedicated VoIP does.

Dedicated VoIP maintains the system to make sure it never goes down and the quality of phone calls is always at its best. Another reason why businesses use Dedicated VoIP because many offer solutions that P2P doesn’t. Solutions such as expanding a phone system with multiple phone lines under the same company with extensions, auto attendant, call forwarding, personal voice mail, holiday schedule, etc.

Shopping Cart Elite offers VoIP solutions which integrates Dedicated VoIP with the SCE software allowing users to have fully functional call center. Here is a scenario of how Shopping Cart Elite takes full advantage of the Dedicated VoIP system.

Ex. Joe has a retail website store with the Shopping Cart Elite system. Joe also has a Dedicated VoIP line with Shopping Cart Elite. Joe has a Click to Call button on his website which allows end consumers to click on the button, enter their phone number and connect with Joe automatically without actually dialing out. This saves money for the customer on long distance and saves Joe on the toll free number as the click to call feature includes unlimited calling. Once the customer connects with Joe, the Shopping Cart Elite system will automatically pull up the customer information through the caller id and display Joe the customer’s account, recent order history, email conversations, etc. Joe can instantly help the customer without spending an extra minute finding out who the customer is and what the customer wants. If Joe can’t help the customer, he can reroute the call to another representative with a click of a button, while passing the full customer information and message to the new representative on how to help the customer.

This type of technology is only available with Dedicated VoIP, and technology mentioned in the example is available through Shopping Cart Elite.

The Future Program for Every Manufacture

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:09:16 PDT

Below you will find a questionnaire that I made which questions how reliable your current system is. This is only one benefit of our program, the other benefit is the mass distribution we will be able to automate for you, without getting us involved directly. If you can take 30 minutes to review all the information, I would love to speak with you to answer any questions and get a verbal commitment if you are or not interested in our program.

We have designed the software specifically for manufacturers. This software will allow you to combine your Inventory, Accounting, Customer Service and eCommerce website all in one. Please review the questions below and if your system currently does not support the features our system will.

We are also inviting you to use our software FREE OF CHARGE.

8 Must Read Questions for Manufacturers

The questions below is a test to see how complete and reliable your business management system and eCommerce shopping cart really is. If you can’t answer any of the questions below you should be looking for better a solution.

1. Can your business software support your Inventory, Accounting, Customer Service and eCommerce website all in one?

2. Is your advertising budget interfering with your profits?

a. Do you pay for the traffic to your website or is it Search Engine Optimized that delivers the traffic for free?

b. Are you satisfied with the amount of ranked websites on the internet which carries your product?

c. How much control do you have over the amount of market share of your products online?

d. Do you have the ability to create an unlimited of dealers to sell your products without spending a penny?

3. Is your communication with your online dealers advanced to the 21^st century?

a. Do you have a system to automatically update information for new products, price updates and discontinued items directly into your dealer’s website?

b. Do you have the ability to automatically send inventory reports to your online dealers?

4. Is your shipping department reliable?

a. Are you employees making mistakes during shipping and handling?

b. Are you able to account for 100% of your inventory in your warehouse?

c. Do you have the ability to automatically enter tracking information into your online dealer’s website?

d. Do you have excessive complaints from your customers not receiving the tracking information on time?

5. How reliable is your accounting system and how secure is your data?

a. Does your system protect your business from employees stealing company secret information such as Supplier Contacts, Customer Address Book, Accounting reports, etc.?

b. Do you have the ability to automatically submit invoices into your online dealer’s website bypassing emails or mail?

c. Do you have a reliable Return Merchandise System which manages your returns and exchanges, credit memo, etc. for you?

6. How much control do you have over Customer Service?

a. Do you have the ability to follow up on every email and phone call to evaluate the feedback automatically?

b. Are you using a Voice over IP (VoIP) telephone system? (It can make your phone bill $100 including Toll Free

c. Are you able to integrate a corporate VoIP system with your business management system?

7. How efficient is your inventory management system?

a. Does your system support Bar Coding and aisles lookup?

b. Does your system automatically track sales trends to predict future sales and reorder items upon low inventory?

c. Does you system link the inventory between multiple warehouses?

8. *Manufactures Only*

a. Are you able to see each employee’s daily work flow?

b. Are you able to track each work flow process from beginning to end?

c. Are you able to report the current work flow status to your online customers?

Shopping Cart Elite has a solution to perform an ideal distribution model. Before you start reading, I would like to mention that the solution is FREE OF CHARGE!

Please visit the following articles to learn more

1) Summary on how we plan to eliminate your advertising budget
2) A small list of features the software offers to retailers and manufactures
3) How you can improve your online presence and relationship with dealers
4) Tour of Shopping Cart Elite about SEO Technology
5) Full List of Shopping Cart Elite features

6 Must Read Questions about new eCommerce Stores

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:41:18 PDT

Based on the answers to the 6 following questions will determine if you have the right eCommerce Solution for your business.

1) How far do you plan to grow your business, do you plan to receive 5 or 20 orders per day?

If you answered 20, how will your eCommerce solution help you manage the 20 orders per day which would equal to 140 orders within one week?

How will you send the orders to your suppliers and then make sure the tracking #s are received, entered in the system and emailed to your customers?

How will you manage Backorders with 140 orders per week?

How will you satisfy new customers between emails and telephone calls while keeping the existing customers happy by fulfilling their orders and tracking information?

How will you manage your accounting which includes credit card charges, profit audits, overcharges and refunds?

How will you manage your returns and exchanges, will there be an automated Return Authorization system or will it be done manually?

Majority of readers will answer the questions above with “I will hire employees”. Even though it is a logical solution it is not practical. Redundant work such as tracking #, invoices auditing, etc. should NOT be performed by employees who are common to make mistakes but by a computer software which should be a part of your eCommerce business solution.

2) Does your eCommerce solution protect your business from employees stealing company secret information such as Supplier Contacts, Customer Address Book, Accounting reports, etc.?

3) Will your eCommerce solution make you pay for advertising and traffic to your website or deliver it for free?

Data Entry for new products to your website takes a very considerable amount of time. It is estimated that 30 products can be entered every hour in a proper format.

4) Does your eCommerce solution have a way to enter thousands of third party products to your website within minutes or will you spend hours entering it manually?

5) Are you able to design and update your website without hiring a computer programmer and web designer?

6) Does your eCommerce solution provide you with a way to track your visitor trends to allow the ability to optimize your web pages to improve conversion?

If you answered “No” or “I don’t know” to any of the questions above, your eCommerce solution is not working for you, it is working against you. You must be fully confident and satisfied with your eCommerce Shopping Cart solution to answer the questions above.

Shopping Cart Elite is a full business management and eCommerce solution that was designed with the features that are mandatory for every online business. Problems that you may have never considered already have a solution through Shopping Cart Elite.

TOUR SHOPPING CART ELITE

Rating an eCommerce Shopping Cart

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:37:49 PDT

Based on the answers to the 6 following questions will determine if you have the right eCommerce Solution for your business.

1) How far do you plan to grow your business, do you plan to receive 5 or 20 orders per day?

If you answered 20, how will your eCommerce solution help you manage the 20 orders per day which would equal to 140 orders within one week?

How will you send the orders to your suppliers and then make sure the tracking #s are received, entered in the system and emailed to your customers?

How will you manage Backorders with 140 orders per week?

How will you satisfy new customers between emails and telephone calls while keeping the existing customers happy by fulfilling their orders and tracking information?

How will you manage your accounting which includes credit card charges, profit audits, overcharges and refunds?

How will you manage your returns and exchanges, will there be an automated Return Authorization system or will it be done manually?

2) Does your eCommerce solution protect your business from employees stealing company secret information such as Supplier Contacts, Customer Address Book, Accounting reports, etc.?

3) Will your eCommerce solution make you pay for advertising and traffic to your website or deliver it for free?

Data Entry for new products to your website takes a very considerable amount of time. It is estimated that 30 products can be entered every hour in a proper format.

4) Does your eCommerce solution have a way to enter thousands of third party products to your website within minutes or will you spend hours entering it manually?

5) Are you able to design and update your website without hiring a computer programmer and web designer?

6) Does your eCommerce solution provide you with a way to track your visitor trends to allow the ability to optimize your web pages to improve conversion?

TOUR SHOPPING CART ELITE

Understanding How Hosting Companies Operate

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:22:07 PST

The same question is asked by customers who are shopping for the best hosting company, “Which Hosting Company has the Best Deal?” Before shopping for a hosting company, the customer must understand how a hosting company operates and earns its profits. Many individuals simply read a sales pitch from a hosting company (ex. GoDaddy.com) and are automatically convinced they are getting the best deal. Before getting into revenue details of a hosting company, a big misconception must be addressed about the difference between Megabytes and Megabits, as well as Bandwidth Transfer and Data Transfer.

1) Megabytes vs. Megabits

Verizon FIOS advertises 20 Mb download and 5 Mb upload. This marketing technique is used to confuse individuals into thinking that the company offers 20 Megabytes download and 5 Megabytes upload. In reality Bandwidth is not measured by Megabytes but Megabits.

1 Megabyte = 8 Megabits
1 Megabit = 125 Kilobytes

Megabit is defined by symbol Mb and Megabyte is defined by (all capital) symbol MB. Verizon FIOS advertising 20Mb is actually 20 Megabits which would equal to 2500 kilobytes or 2.5 megabytes. In conclusion FIOS offers 2.5MB (2.5MB = 20Mb) download not 20 Megabytes (20MB would be 160Mb).

2) Dedicated Line

Dedicated Bandwidth Line means that the full bandwidth capacity on a particular line is dedicated to only one server, rack or customer (It is not shared). Using the FIOS example in paragraph 1, 20Mb download is not dedicated 20Mb and in result the customer will receive “up to” 20Mb download. Since the line is shared on a wide network the speed will decrease as more customers will use the Bandwidth Line.

3) Bandwidth Transfer vs. Data Transfer

Bandwidth Transfer means the amount of dedicated Megabits each customer can use at full capacity for data transfer (1Mb = 125KB/s). Bandwidth Transfer is mainly used by First Tier Data Centers for charging their customers (First Tier is the source Data Centers which sell Bandwidth and Rack Space to Second Tier Hosting Companies). Second Tier Hosting companies (Resellers) are charged per Megabit of usage with unlimited data transfer for each Megabit by First Tier Hosting Data Centers.

Data Transfer means the amount of data (calculated in Gigabytes) that is transferred over the bandwidth line. Data Transfer is widely used by Second Tier Hosting companies because it is a simple way to track and bill each client’s bandwidth usage. One Megabit can withstand 325 Gigabytes of Data Transfer on a monthly basis.

Why do Second Tier hosting companies pay for Bandwidth Transfer and Hosted Customers get billed for Data Transfer?

Data Centers are equipped with virtually unlimited amount of gigabits (1000s of Mb) of bandwidth on a central line. A Second Tier Hosting company will purchase bandwidth from the Data Center and distribute it to each rack and server. Each rack and server is closely monitored for the amount of bandwidth usage. T3 Line or 45Mb will cost on average $1500 ($30/Mb) for a Second Tier Hosting company. On a shared rack (server) there is 25, 250, 1000 or more clients using the same bandwidth line. In an example that a rack is powered by a T3 line (45 Megabits), in order for the bandwidth line to be overloaded the server rack must be transferring 5.6MB (45Mb x 125KB) of data each second. To avoid one customer using more bandwidth over another customer on a server, on a flat fee hosting plan each customer is capped accordingly (no extra bandwidth allowed over a certain limit, usually 200kb/s). Once a customer reaches the bandwidth limit they will experience lag and slow loading. Second Tier Hosting companies will often allow a customer to go over the data transfer limit but charge an additional fee (hidden fee).

It is not practical for a hosting company to charge each customer for Bandwidth transfer unless the customer knows how much Megabits they will use. Many new websites and small websites don’t require 325GB (325GB = 1Mb) of Data Transfer per month. Instead they require enough Bandwidth transfer on occasion (certain peak hours of the day). A customer may use only 150GB of data transfer per month but they will use more then 1Mb of bandwidth transfer at a certain time of the day (From 10am-6pm, they use 2 Megabits of bandwidth transfer at peak hours and from 6pm-10am they use less then 1Mb). If a customer was to pay per Megabit, they would have to pay for 2 Megabits (650GB of data transfer per month) since they use 2Mb during peak hours, instead they pay for data transfer which in the case above is 150GB per month (less then 1Mb). Data Transfer billing allows the Hosting Company to bill each customer only for the Data Transfer throughout the month while using additional bandwidth at peak times (This saves money for the customer and allows for the hosting company to offer competitive rates). The Second Tier Hosting Company can have better control on charging customers who use less then 1Mb of bandwidth on a monthly basis. In conclusion each customer is charged for Data Transfer.

Customers shopping for a hosting company should look out for Hosting Companies who place bandwidth CAP (limitation) on each server. A bandwidth cap is placed by hosting company that would like to save money for themselves and fraud scheme their customers with incredible deals ($5.95 / unlimited hosting). Bandwidth cap limits the amount of data that can be uploaded and downloaded at any given second. By limiting 25Kb of bandwidth per website on a shared server, a hosting company can load thousands of clients on a single server. In result each website works extremely slow and practically unbrowsable to the visitor.

The reason hosting companies practice such activities, because the customers are flooded with $5.95 - $24.95 hosting deals all over the internet. In order to have the customer understand that such deals are fraud, each company must educate the customer on how hosting works. Customers are not interested in researching and reading on this subject, they want deals! So the hosting companies do just that, they offer GREAT DEALS to these customers who demand them. In result, the customer who signs up for the $5.95 hosting package, does nothing with it and eventually upgrades to a much more expensive package which still under performs the speed for the visitor and in conclusion drives the website into bankruptcy or offline.

4) Bandwidth on Shared Server vs. Dedicated Server

Shared servers are the cheapest hosting solution because they are capped at 1-5Mb of dedicated speed per server. As in the example in paragraph 3, if one customer (website) is using much of the bandwidth on that server, others websites will suffer. If all websites are actively using the bandwidth for that server, the server will usually work extremely slow, resulting in all the websites barely loading. Dedicated Servers are a much better solution as they have their own dedicated bandwidth without sharing it with other customers (websites).

5) 2GB-700GB or Unlimited Data Transfer

Each company tries to offer its own Sales Pitch by offering 500GB, 700GB or Unlimited Data Transfer. The customer must understand that nothing is for free; solutions for $4.95, $24.95 or some other incredible deal always have a catch. The fact is 1 Megabit (Mb) costs $15 - $40 for the hosting company, the hosting company must make a profit in order to stay in business. Hosting packages that range from $4.95 - $49.95 may sound like incredible deals, but don’t expect much from them.

Unlimited Data Transfer is the best choice only if the hosting company offers to charge you per Megabit or Gigabyte, otherwise there is a catch of some sort (You can’t have unlimited data transfer for free). Usually the catch is there is a hidden fee or the server that the website will be on is not powerful enough to even handle 100GB of data transfer per month. The hosting companies offer unlimited data transfer knowing that each customer will never use more then 100GB (0.25Mb) of data transfer. If the server is powerful enough to handle the Unlimited Data Transfer, the customer should ensure that there is no CAP (bandwidth limitation) on that server.

By having a powerful server with unlimited data transfer and being charged for the bandwidth used, will ensure that the customer has the best hosting package in which the visitors to the website will browse freely without any lag.

How much will Unlimited Data Transfer Cost?

1 Megabit = 325GB per month or 11GB per day, in other words if you are charged $60 for 1 Megabit, you should be paying $2 for every 11GB of transfer. This will equal to $60 per month if the website transfers all 325GB or 1 Megabit. How much data will each website transfer depends on how much traffic the website receives.

6) Server Performance vs. Unlimited Data Transfer

Hosting companies usually offer great data transfer deals (700GB for $20) because they know the server they set up for the customer will never even handle 100GB of data transfer. Servers which cost under $2,000 should be used as personal computers not hosting servers.

Example: A deal from a leading hosting company offers to lease a server:

Dedicated Intel Celeron 2.0+ / 80GB Hard Drive / 512MB Ram / 750GB data transfer = $69.00 / mo

Dedicated Intel Celeron 2.4+ / 80GB Hard Drive / 512MB Ram / 750GB data transfer = $89.00 / mo

This company purchases huge bandwidth lines which cost them $10 per 1Mb and limiting each dedicated server with a CAP of 100KB/s – 200KB/s of data transfer. The hosting package they offer sounds good in theory, but the specification of the server will barely handle 400Kb/s of data transfer once the visitor starts browsing the website. Imagine having 5-10 visitors browsing your website which exceed 400kb/s? Besides the fact that the server may be capped at 200Kb/s, it won’t even perform fast enough to satisfy the visitor.

The hosting company mentioned above is charging $89, since the hosting is costing them $10 at most; they profit $79 per month. The server itself does not cost more than $800. After ten months, the hosting company will have paid off the server (since it was leased they keep it) and profit from thereon.

In conclusion in order to get the best solution, the hosting company must have a very powerful server that can handle unlimited data transfer with NO CAP on bandwidth transfer and the hosting customer must be billed per GB of data transfer or per Megabit, “NOT” a flat fee plan
(AVOID ANY FLAT FEE PLANS, always ask to be billed per Gigabyte of Data Transfer or Megabit).

RECOMMENDATION

Specifically for eCommerce online business that are targeting a minimum of 500 unique visitors per day, should have a server with a duo core or quad core CPU with 4GB of ram. For customers seeking a Shopping Cart solution to start and eCommerce business (Retail, Distributor, Manufacture or Information website) visit Shopping Cart Elite. Shopping Cart Elite is a full eCommerce and Business management software that loads every client on a virtual dedicated server (Worth $20,000+ Dell R900 - 4 QUAD CORE 3.0 CPU, 32GB RAM). Shopping Cart Elite offers Unlimited Data Transfer with NO CAP on Bandwidth Transfer. Data is backed up every 20 minutes, Server are located in a 24/7 secured, fireproof Data Center. Shopping Cart Elite charges per GB of Data Transfer and a very low license fee for the software license (Ranging from $50 - $300 depending on the solution). Shopping Cart Elite has no other fees or hidden fees, it is the only software in the eCommerce industry today that guarantees your website to rank top 10 on the search engines or your money back (Contact the Shopping Cart Elite directly to ask about the Ranking Guaranteed or money back). Since Shopping Cart Elite is not a hosting company but an eCommerce Software Provider who hosts the Shopping Carts, you can only expect the best from them.

TOUR SHOPPING CART ELITE

WEB GRAPHIC DESIGNERS COMPETE WITH FREELANCERS OVERSEAS

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:35:32 PST

Have you ever wondered why Freelance Web Graphic Designers fail to make their desired salary 90% of the time? According to Salary.com, a base salary for a web graphic designer is $40,000 annually. Considering the inflation in US and the rising prices on goods, a $40,000 annual salary earns many individuals the ability to live from pay check to pay check. You can read a more detailed true story of a New Orleans web designer.

From my personal experience over the years, there is a trend of growing demand from companies that seek web graphic designers overseas. After all, there are some very talented individuals in India, Romania, Russia, etc. who are willing to work for as low as $5 per hour. Due to the internet and websites such as eLance.com, getafreelancer.com, project4hire.com, etc. it is very easy for anyone to find a freelancer to do the job. According to a WSJ article US corporations outsource over $20 billion annually for labor overseas. “In India, $20 is enough to buy a week's groceries for two people.” - Ellen Gamerman, WSJ, in result we can’t blame them for working so cheap. But how can a freelance graphic web designer in US compete in today’s hostile market?

The logic behind winning this overseas conflict is not to work pay check to pay check. As a web graphic designer, your goal should be to establish a stable system, which would create a recurring monthly payment to you on each client you complete the work for. An example could be, to create a Shopping Cart for a client and put the client’s website on a hosting server where you earn $5/mo for every client you sign up. The problem with $5/mo is you will have to work long and hard to achieve your desired salary.

There is another solution available if you partner up with the right company. Shopping Cart Elite has a reseller program, where you can earn from $50 - $500 / month for every client you sign up. Designing a website and selling the hosting and software license with a design to client should be a regular procedure. The reason why clients will choose to go with Shopping Cart Elite is because the technology is so advanced it’s a no-brainer to say no. Combining Shopping Cart Elite’s technology with a simple design can save a company thousands of dollars in development and years’ worth of work.

Shopping Cart Elite even offers a rebate program for web designers. The rebate program will pay the web designer’s fee for the client, if the client signs up for a year contract. This means as a graphic web designer, you can advertise your services for FREE on sites such as eLance.com and get paid from Shopping Cart Elite for the design fee and earn a recurring cost from the client’s license fee.

What does Shopping Cart Elite offer for clients? Every possible solution for retailers, distributors and manufacturers, Shopping Cart Elite is the only Shopping Cart which is designed to accommodate every business model in the retail industry. Shopping Cart Elite even offers free web development for minor and intermediate projects for clients. Advanced projects are available to be developed as a plug-in DLL through Shopping Cart Elite or third parties. Review the Shopping Cart Elite tour below and consider partnering up with Shopping Cart Elite today. Shopping Cart Elite’s motto for Web Designers is to have Web Designers earn a salary they really desire.

SHOPPING CART ELITE TOUR

Turnkey Websites work 95% of the time

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:10:13 PST

There have been many stories from BBB and FTC about turnkey website scams. It is indeed true, 95% of all Turnkey websites fail. In this article I will go over few of many reasons why Turnkey websites fail so often and how to have a successful Turnkey Website.

1) Products

Many Turnkey websites are already preloaded with products. Usually the products on the Turnkey website are not attractive to the internet consumers. By performing a simple research on Keyword Tools you can quickly find what the consumers on the internet are shopping for.

Competition is a big factor, if a Turnkey website will sell books. As a result the competition will be over a hundred million websites on Google alone, not mentioning companies such as Amazon, Borders, etc. which already have loyal book shoppers. A Turnkey website must be unique and targeted to a specific niche market. As an example, if the website has books, they must be unique books that are not found anywhere else. Products in the automotive category are examples of good niche markets (Consider a supplier such as MimoUSA).

Profit Margins are also very important; a Turnkey websites should have a net profit of at least 20%. Anything under 20% will not be worth selling unless it is a high dollar item.

2) SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

A Turnkey Websites will not be successful unless it is organically (FREE) ranked on the search engine. Good products combined with SEO techniques will get a Turnkey websites generating sales like a cash cow. The SEO is not an easy task, in eCommerce Retailer Solutions Article; you can learn the requirements a retailer must have to achieve a successful eCommerce website.

3) Shopping Cart Platform

A shopping cart platform combines tools to run the daily operation of the business such as processing orders, tracking numbers, etc. and the front end website design with user navigation. Turnkey websites are operated on an Open Source Shopping Cart. As discussed in the article Open Source Shopping Carts Fail this is a very bad solution.

4) Content

The term “Content is king” has been used widely in Search Engine Marketing. Unique rich content drives the website ranking through the roof on Google and Yahoo. Most Turnkey websites are sold as is with no content or the same content which is spread out between thousands of pervious customers. In result each Turnkey website must be completely rewritten. In order to rewrite the content and properly align it, the buyer must know HTML. Turnkey websites are not webmaster friendly and modifying the content is a very big hassle. Turnkey websites may be on the best SEO platform with great products, but will fail to be successful due to poor content.

5) Education

Turnkey Websites are usually sold to new internet Entrepreneurs who are not experienced with retailing or SEO. Education is a critical point to get things rolling for newcomers, MY SEO 101 lessons will help you get through the learning curve for Search Engine Marketing. There is another solution though, called GRO Project.

GRO PROJECT

Before explaining what GRO Project is, there are two key facts to keep in mind. 1) GRO Project is a FREE program (You don’t need to buy any Turn Key websites or pay hosting); 2) GRO Project is free because it offers a win-win situation for everyone, please visit GRO PROJECT home page for more details.

GRO Project is a solution for individuals who want to start a profitable online business but require help with startup funding and/or learning on how to DO IT YOURSELF. GRO Project will offer each member a complete functional website with products pre-loaded on the Shopping Cart Elite Platform.

GRO Project addresses all key points mentioned above. GRO Project pays the monthly fee ($500) to make sure the best SEO optimized platform is used. Through extensive research products and prices are selected by GRO Project. GRO Project will provide you a step by step guide to create unique content and optimize it using hassle free technology. Education is covered by GRO Project Mentor who will work one on one with the owner throughout the lifetime of the website.

All products will be purchased by the GRO Project owner directly from the manufacture or distributor. GRO Project does not get involved in the daily operations of the website. Prior to distributing the website, GRO Project will negotiate deals with vendors to have products drop shipped to the consumers.

Imagine an Ideal Distribution Model

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:55:35 PST

Many manufacturers and distributors struggle daily to get new customer to buy their products. According to Marketing Charts, Business to Business (B2B) advertising spent $14.39 billion dollars in 2006. For small manufacturers and distributors even a few thousand dollars per month can save a lot on overhead expenses. Shopping Cart Elite created a solution to perform an ideal distribution model. Before you start reading, I would like to mention that the solution is FREE OF CHARGE!

Imagine tomorrow you cut off your marketing budget completely and get 3 times more sales than ever before.

Imagine a solution where thousands of highly ranked websites in your industry get updated instantly with your products without any of your sales pitches.

Imagine mentioning a new product and getting hundreds of pre-orders for it the next day.

Imagine creating new products due to DEMAND rather than wild guessing.

Imagine for once that you can come to your office at any day of the year and be fully confident in the amount of sales you will have. (EVEN DURING RECISSION)

Imagine having such a tight connection with your industry that every retailer is grateful to deal with you.

Imagine having all of this for FREE.

If your company needs more retailers, Shopping Cart Elite will create as many retailers as you desire through GRO Project. Each retailer will use the finest Shopping Cart platform that will ensure that each website succeeds. An article about Shopping Cart Elite Retailer Technology proves the platform is indeed the finest on the market today. If your company requires team work, Shopping Cart Elite will connect you with hundreds of retailers that will volunteer to help your company with tasks such as pushing excessive inventory on eBay to patrolling the MAP prices on the internet. For companies who have existing retailers on the internet, Shopping Cart Elite will automatically connect your products to their Shopping Cart platform.

A recent article Technology gap is forcing Manufacturers into Stone Age points out that software technology in the past denied us to achieve this type of revolution. Shopping Cart Elite has been created to put a new standard on the retail industry. We aim to connect manufactures with distributors and retailers together. To achieve such a goal, everyone must contribute to this technology revolution.

We need you to participate; this is the reason why we are offering this program for Manufactures and Distributors for FREE. Shopping Cart Elite will convert your data into a webmaster friendly format and push the products through our channels to achieve the maximum amount of sales.
Shopping Cart Elite will advance your technology to automatically link you to every channel that is on our platform. You will have access to communicate directly with each retailer (40,000 retailers) through a mass broadcast using blogs, forums and directly with webmaster portal that each retailer will use for their own website. The benefit your company has with this solution is you can negotiate and prioritize your products yourself directly with the retailers.

In addition Shopping Cart Elite will replace all your current tools that you use from Inventory Software, to Order Processing, and online Shopping Cart. Tasks such as order processing, tracking information, product information, specials, etc. will be tied in between all your customers. This means with one click of a button you can announce to your message to everyone and all notifications ranging from tracking to returns will be automated for your customers. You will be using state of the art technology which will allow your company to easily convert and become a certified ISO 9000 standard operation.

Even if you decide not to go with our program, please read the articles that are linked above and check out the tour page for Shopping Cart Elite. By spending this time going over the information I have provided, will only make you more knowledgeable about the solutions in our industry we have today.

eCommerce Retailer Solutions to the most common Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:26:45 PDT

Author: Igor Soshkin
Tag: sce-pr3

As many may already know, the retail business via eCommerce has been growing faster than the any other type of retail business today. For those who are familiar with the possibilities that eCommerce has brought to retail, wholesale and manufacturing companies, may already know of the common conflicts that need improvement. For those who are yet unfamiliar with eCommerce retail, consider this article as an educational experience that is needed to start or expand the most prosperous business we all strive to reach. The sole purpose of this article is to explain the problems in simplified detail along with solutions that will universally work. As the best possible referral and solution, a company called Shopping Cart Elite will be used as the reference and a solution to each problem posted below.

Let us begin with one of the most misunderstood concept and terminology:

1) SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Why do you need SEO? Getting highly listed on the search engines organically (free) will drive FREE traffic to your website. The only way to accomplish an efficient, profitable and most importantly a successful retail website is to have the website ranking highly on the search engines. Once that is achieved it may be a good time to start considering doing a Pay Per Click campaign.

This subject needs an article of its own. For those interested in more detail, a great recommendation is to read Wal-Mart Offers SEO, which talks about the basics that are required and recommended as well as what Wal-Mart offers. Quoted from the Wal-Mart article, the author tells us what is required to perform successful SEO, “keyword research; then there’s planning the ad campaign, especially if pay-per-click marketing is a factor, going over the web site with a fine tooth comb to hit all the on-page optimization, building links for off-page optimization…the list goes on and on.” When the author stated “on and on”, he really meant it. I have put together over 100 lessons and videos for individuals interested about what is required for SEO on this website. Please note that learning SEO will require a lot of your time and you must have intermediate programming skills to implement the changes on the website.

SOLUTION

Shopping Cart Elite is the most efficient solution because it has every On-Site Optimization factor automatically integrated into the Shopping Cart. Every lesson that you find on MYSEO101 or in any SEO book on the market will be already integrated in your Shopping Cart Elite store. You will only have to do Off-Site Optimization which is mainly link exchanges and directory submissions, those are very simple and Shopping Cart Elite learning center will teach you how to perform the basics in the simplest form yet for FREE.

Pay Per Click gets a new definition with Shopping Cart Elite; I call it the future of PPC marketing. If you ever decide to launch a PPC campaign, Shopping Cart Elite will not only help you but also

Research the keywords for you within the products you select
Suggest the optimized keywords for the campaign
Launch the campaign for you using your suggested budget
Track every single click and conversion from that campaign (referral)
Report back to you daily on the results. The task above is one that is very time consuming and can be very tedious.

Until now, the tasks described were always done manually. Shopping Cart Elite will do everything for you automatically leaving you more time to run your business instead of trying to follow the PPC Trails.

2) Data Mapping

Speaking as a retailer, this becomes nothing less than a hassle. As most retailers will confirm, the daily undertaking in a competitive market requires the addition of the newest and most demanded products from manufacturers in a timely manner. Doing so requires a lot time for data entry of the new products into the website. This task is very time consuming as well as costly. Usually the products are entered one by one by the owner manually or it is done by an employee which requires added expenses in wages for your company. For Instance, a well know online retail company called Auto Accessory Store has five employees to enter such data; each employee processes an average of 30 products per hour. Many manufacturers have anywhere from 400-5000 products. As you can see this task can take anywhere from 10 hours to 170 hours, leaving no or very little way of going around it. Usually established companies can afford to pull this off without feeling a major hit in their pockets. However, the unnecessary expenses can be avoided.

SOLUTION

Fortunately, now there is a way. Shopping Cart Elite has released a new tool called the Data Mapper. It will read any manufacturer’s spread sheet (excel, csv, xml) and map the data into its correct fields. It is too soon to get into details of how it exactly works, but it has proven to work great so far. It usually takes anywhere from 10 – 60 minutes to complete the process. It has been estimated that 12,000 products can be mapped in 40 minutes using this tool. Please note this task would normally take 400 hours to complete manually.

3) Designing your Website

For certain retailers, designing a user friendly and an attractive website can be very expensive. For many this a very common problem that can cost thousands of dollars unless you can safely say that you are a professional computer programmer or literate in HTML and many of other necessary computer languages needed to build a functional web site. In most cases, a manufacture or retail company would usually hire a professional computer programmer and a professional web designer. According to many small companies and even quit large companies, it is often the case that the computer programmer personnel and the web designer have a hard time collaborating the company’s ideas and demanded modifications. In turn the results cause much undesired delays in updates and sometimes incoming orders are affected by such procedures. To eliminate such distorted communications and cost effective procedures Shopping Cart Elite has generated a very useful tool that can solve such a common problem among most internet companies.

SOLUTION

Shopping Cart Elite created a DIY (Do It Yourself) wizard which no designer or programmer can compare to. If you have ever used Blogger Basic Design (illustration below)

you know how easy it is. According to a poll conducted by MimoUSA “The Shopping Cart Elite DIY tool is hundred times better then Blogger” responded most BETA users. To demonstrate an example, the user can select a customized template for each page and drag/drop modules anywhere on the page. The user can also create blocks with multiple images and functions within another block. The examples above are just a few of the many favored features of the DIY tool. Another very important and favored feature is the email system.

4) Emails

The client integrated email with Shopping Cart Elite allows you to:

Save professional responses
Automatically tag email messages to an order
Automatically tag email to pervious conversations and most important feedback
Evaluating the email replies by conducting automated customer evaluation polls. Such a feature is very valuable and important for internal controls of any company.

5) Shipping / Drop Shipping

Shopping Cart Elite accommodates both services. If drop shipping, the user can automatically map each product in their database with the supplier that the product needs to be shipped to and it will email the supplier or vendor with your approval. The drop ship system is so advanced it can pin point exactly when the order was invoiced and which order requires tracking information or even indicate which order is on backorder. For Shipping, a tool called “Packing List” is provided. This tool is automatically integrated with all major shipping providers (UPS, FEDEX, DHL, and USPS). With one click of a button, the user can have the label printed, tracking # entered in the system and emailed to your customer. An Additional feature also allows the user to use the system to support inventory with bar coding and scanning.

6) Return Authorization System

To keep things organized, whenever a customer wants to return or exchange an item, Shopping Cart Elite offers the RMA tool. The customer can visit there account on your website and fill out an RMA form. This RMA request goes into your system for approval and will be tracked all the way from the product’s arrival to refunding the payment.

7) VOIP (Voice Over IP Call Center)

Shopping Cart Elite supports corporate VOIP. How does this benefit you? Well the fact that the company can cut their phone bill in half should be a good incentive to switch over. ($70/mo – 5 incoming calls, unlimited calling, free long distance) other features include; having a professional auto assistant with hold music, expanding your phone system with a hunting service as your company expands, if your customer would like to be connected, a button on your website will permit it, and the customer can receive a call from you for FREE. Once the button is tabbed, the system will automatically connect you and your customer at no charge.

The small list of features described above is just some of the solutions Shopping Cart Elite provides. I would highly recommend investing the time to check out all the features Shopping Cart Elite has to offer. This program is nothing less than a smart investment made by some of the most experienced and successful business owners. This truly is the BEST Shopping Cart on the market today. But you must find out for yourself.

If you would like more information about this topic or schedule an interview with Igor Soshkin, please contact, email: myseo101_gmail_com

Technology gap is forcing Manufacturers into Stone Age

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:26:21 PST

Speed Boost the Technology of your Business into the 21st Century

Author: Igor Soshkin
Tag: sce-pr

In the modern day and age, technology is improved every day by the minute. However, far too many small businesses and especially the “Manufacturing” companies are falling behind on the technological advances. Advances that would improve productivity, output and perhaps even cut the work load and wages payable by unimaginable amounts. Many may say “Yes, I’ve heard this before” but have never understood the concepts or the idea of how this can be accomplished. Usually the reasons why most operating managers and owners of such businesses have fallen behind on technological advances is; because they are often too busy trying to keep up with their own work load and can never find the time to learn about the possible advances that modern technology has to offer. In this post, I have put together many resources to help face the problems that manufacturers experience today. I assure you that you will find this article to be very helpful in getting up to date with the current trends.

To make this experience a bit more interesting and maybe more relative towards your own business, I will illustrate an example of how a manufacturing and wholesale company called MimoUSA operates effectively as well as how they successfully secured 10,000 dealers (retailers') with a 99% loyalty rate.

Below is an illustration of how MimoUSA devised their Technological Strategy along with an explanation of the steps and processes you will need to succeed.

1. Securing your wholesale customer (retailer)

As illustrated in the diagram to the left, MimoUSA is the “Manufacturer” in this example (please Ignore the YOU icon at this point). “WD Drop shipping” is an Internet website, which is used as a portal to connect to the manufacturer (the retailer would log in in to the portal using a user name and password). The “Dealers” are the retailers or clients that purchase directly from the manufacturer. (For this example they will be referred as the “retailer” from hereon).

Below is a simple explanation of how the portal functions:

From the front end of the website it simply looks like a general company website with products information. However, once the retailer logs into the portal it’s a whole new experience.

Once logged into the portal, the retailer can instantly gain access to tasks such as placing orders, tracking orders, adding funds, checking prices and all the necessities needed to make a successful transaction without ever having to call customer service. This allows the retailer to have the comfort of a 24 hour “on demand” order processing. The benefit that is usually unrealized is that this alone can eliminate your phone call volume by 70%. A step closer to achieving a “Just In Time” system (JIT) of operations.

In the portal, retailers will also find tools such as:

· Point of Sale System – This is a touch screen program which can be loaded in a retailers store to offer a full list of the manufacturer's product information. Inventory and Price can be customized accordingly to show on the screen.

· Auction Generator – This program will help the retailer list the manufacturer's products in minutes (no matter the quantity) on marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon, etc. In fact, the retailer will be able customize the templates and choose which products they want to sell right from this program.

· Website Building – The portal is designed to integrate the manufacturer's data into various shopping carts. If you have a retailer who owns a website or wants to build one, the portal can transfer live data to them in the format they desire or build a website for them from scratch to promote the manufacturer's products.

· Education – It is always nice to educate your retailers, this creates brand loyalty and market expertise on the manufacturer's behalf. MimoUSA has over 15 hours of video tutorials and over 100 articles which teach retailers about Search Engine Marketing, Business Management and methods to be successful in the their industry (Automotive).

· Dealer Assistance – The portal supports affiliate and mentor programs. An Affiliate program is where one retailer can sign up another retailer and receive a one time payout. The Mentor program is when retailer A (mentor) helps a new retailer B throughout his lifetime as a member. In return retailer A receives a small % from all the sales that retailer B makes through the manufacture. (This program completely eliminates long phone calls between the retailer and the manufacture customer service. New retailers have the will be more persuaded to participate in the manufacture program where otherwise they would never consider). Forums are also a social network that is on the portal which allows retailers to communicate with each other on a daily basis.

*If you are interested in more features that MimoUSA offers you can watch the 10 minute video on their website.

The portal that MimoUSA uses is actually available to anyone that desires to have it. Shopping Cart Elite is the company who hosts and provides the software (portal) for MimoUSA to run their business. There is no reason for manufactures not to take advantage of it.

2. Standardizing Data

Manufactures who have a good market share from the Internet simply MUST GET IT TOGETHER (If you are not selling online, it should be highly considered. Doing so the correct way from beginning is imperative that you use a sophisticated portal). 95% of all manufactures who sell online are using their own Shopping Cart Software (Open Source, Closed or Custom) with their own data format. To further expand on this example let us take a look at one of the most complex manufacturing industries, the automotive industry.

The most common complexity with the automotive industry is that most manufactures have hundreds if not thousands of products (parts #/SKU). There are three major problems with that:

i. ENTERING DATA - How does a manufactures expect new retailer’s to enter the manufacturer’s data to fit the retailers website (shopping cart)? Since the automotive industry is filled with millions of retailers, the data format has to be reformatted by the retailer to accompany their own shopping cart. The retailer has to spend 10 – 100 hours entering the data manually or pay someone to do it for them in order to get a single manufacture online.

ii. ACCURATE DATA - According to MimoUSA’s Statistics, if the above is accomplished and data is entered by the retailer, it is usually inaccurate. There are standardized data formats that must be used in some industries. As an Example with the automotive industry, http://www.aftermarket.org/ provides ACES data. ACES is the official and accurate data for vehicle make, model and year. Every manufacture should integrate this information with their products.

iii. LIVE INVENTORY – Some retailers manage to do all the work listed above only to find out that they have to call the manufacture every day to see if the products they need are in stock and ready to ship. This causes the retailer to spend more time calling the manufacture instead of promoting the products.

iv. UPDATING DATA – Each year, manufactures update their pricing. New products are released while old products are discontinued. At the end of every year, the retailers are forced to spend the next 4 months manually updating manufactures data. This causes grief on the retailer side and slow movers for new products on manufacture side.

MimoUSA portal (Portal is provided by Shopping Cart Elite) solved the problem by offering the retailer the following solutions:

i. The manufacture has the ability to automatically convert their data into any format the retailer desires. It can be for any Shopping Cart or custom formats. This eliminated the retailer from ever having to enter the data manually.

ii. The portal supports integration between multiple databases. This allows the manufacture (in the automotive industry) to enter the products separately from the vehicle vehicle make, model and year, otherwise known as ACES. When you enter a product you map each product to an ACES # which will define the product to which application it will fit. The manufacture benefits from this by always having accurate data for there vehicle make, model and year. Every year the manufacture can update their ACES database without touching the actual product, in result all products will have the correct application years. This also provides the retailer 100% accurate information.

iii. The portal supports live inventory data. This data can be passed from the manufacture to the retailer automatically through an API or manually via email.

iv. The portal can also automatically enter the information into the retailer website such as discontinued products, new products and prices updates. This allows the retailer to automatically have his website updated with new products, discontinued products and make sure the prices are at MAP.

3. Better Business Management Tools

Would you like your company to have the features I listed above? Shopping Cart Elite Portal can provide you these tools. Let me to tell you what else they can provide that will save you at least a few thousand dollars every month.

Shopping Cart Elite is a full front and back end business management tool. This means that you won’t simply have a website, but you will have a website that is fully integrated with your companies management tools where your employees perform their daily activities (Customer Service, Shipping, etc.).

Here is a brief list of just some of the tools Shopping Cart Elite can offer for your company:

Shipping – The shipping is fully integrated with UPS, DHL, FEDEX and USPS. You don’t need a separate employee to do shipping, your packing employee can press a button and a label will be printed for the package that is being shipped.

Inventory – Bar code your whole warehouse and keep an accurate in and out inventory on a daily basis. Hot seller tool will alert you on any low inventory as well as provide you reports on the amount to reorder based on sales statistics.

Email – The email tool will automatically tag each email to an order and previous correspondence between each employee. A feedback evaluation tools can track on the performance of your employees on their replies.

Employee – Generate reports for each employee about their daily activity, payroll, follows up, etc. The tool can manage unlimited employees.

VOIP – Fully integrated Voice over IP system will not only lower your phone bill by half, but you can offer a convenient way to have your customer reach you by simply clicking on a button on the website and getting connected on a land line.

Fraud Detection – Offers extensive fraud detection from tracking IP addresses for origin detection on every order to searching each order processed with a centralized fraud alert system.

There are tons of other features that are available for the back end side through this software. Once a good portal such as Shopping Cart Elite is setup it will completely replace your current website shopping cart along with the back end management tools necessary for the optimum Output of your business. It also has options to replace your accounting software with a built in one (if you require) as well as tons of other features that is simply too many to list. For a full feature list please visit this link, Feature Tour.

The Greatest advantage of using Shopping Cart Elite as your main ONLINE operations manager is that you avoid getting trapped in ancient “Stone Age” business methods and always keep up with the most modern way communicating with your clients. Shopping Cart Elite is constantly updating their users and integrating the most recent and modern proven methods of online business to their software. Last but not least, I strongly believe that Shopping Cart Elite is a program that I consider the solution to the Stone Age that the Technology gap has caused among many Manufacturing Company’s.

4 Important Reasons why Open Source eCommerce Shopping Carts Fail

noreply@blogger.com (Igor Soshkin) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:52:42 PST

Facts you should know why Open Source eCommerce is not your best Solution

Author: Igor Soshkin
Tag: sce-pr

Suppose a survey was conducted on “The satisfaction of all Open Source eCommerce users”. Although no actual survey has been conducted yet, I as an everyday ecommerce user and researcher can safely predict the outcome and the answers of the surveyors’. If we were to ask simple questions such as “how satisfied the eCommerce user is”, (that is currently using Open Source eCommerce software). I can assure you 95% of individuals would respond with a “not at all”. Then ask them “What is the most common response you get when you ask the community to implement a new desired feature”. The answer you will usually hear is “Not anytime soon”, “It can be easily done on your own with the communities help” or “There are a bunch of 3rd party software that are available for that solution”. As witness to such responses from fellow patrons and co-workers, I began to further my research and would like to widen my knowledge and some facts about why Open Source ecommerce is not your best solution.

Please do not mistake me for a person who is against Open Source Software. In fact, I am completely for Open Source software and community development. As a CMO of MimoUSA (Wholesale Auto Parts), our users are all about Networking together. If truth be told, initially we have developed many websites for our users on open source software and we are certainly grateful for the opportunities that it opened up for our clients. However, many Open Source eCommerce providers do not realize that Open Source eCommerce will not work out for most users, specifically in the long term. Many start-up companies never envision expanding or developing their ecommerce beyond that of which they were systematically equipped with. Hence, the incapability of foreseeing the decline of their business due to rapid expansion and lack of technology to satisfy the expansion.

This is an informational insight to the future of internet business and information provided to you at no cost, just time. Yes! Time is money, but the time invested into reading such information may only help you succeed and gain the money you may possibly loss by wasting your time with Open Source eCommerce.

Now let’s get to it! Here are 4 top reasons why:

1. Database Infrastructure

Internet is way too young for Open Source eCommerce companies to completely build a proper infrastructure to accommodate all business models. Once an Open Source eCommerce company releases its initial framework and infrastructure there is no reversing it without completely rewriting the whole project. The majority of companies (oScommerce, Zen Cart, X-Cart and even some new ones Magento, etc.) fail to see this. They all have an infrastructure to accommodate products with a single database and multiple attributes. Let me give you some examples:

The most advanced Open Source eCommerce currently supports products with options and multiple attributes. See example below

i. Hawaii Shirt > Size: XL > Color: Red

ii. Hawaii Shirt > Size: XL > Color: Blue

Automotive industry has one of the most advanced and complex data right behind computer hardware. Let’s take the automotive industry data and try to integrate it with one of these Shopping Carts. In the automotive industry we have the following databases that must be linked together:

iii. Product with Product options = Product, Color, Size, etc.

iv. Standardized Vehicle Data (ACES) = Car Make, Car Model and Year

To get even more advanced lets look at some specific products such as rims for cars with matching tires. The database will need to be linked together to the product with product options, (19” Spider Rim in Chrome) and vehicle data (Nissan Maxima 00-03) as well as the database below:

v. Standardized Wheel data = OEM Size, Recommended Replacement Size, Offset, Bolt Pattern (19x9, bolt pattern 104.3x5, offset 35)

vi. Standardized Tire data = OEM Size, Recommend Replacement size, Different tire rating, etc. (245/40/19ZR)

It doesn’t end there let’s take a look at bulb applications:

vii. Each standardized vehicle has a unique bulb type which is suppose to be mapped back to the vehicle application data and the product with options

As above said, there is no Open Source eCommerce Shopping Cart that can support such complex data mapping between databases without advanced programming. The only solution you have if you are in this scenario is to hire a programmer for this type of project. However be prepared for the programmer to tell you that it will be easier to rewrite everything from scratch then to use the Open Source eCommerce. In conclusion this completely eliminates the purpose of Open Source eCommerce software and their modules for a complex business model. Automotive is not the only complex business model, I can name hundreds of business models ranging from service providers (IT and Medical) to retailers (Vacuum hosing to Computer Hardware) where Open Source will not work due to the poorly designed infrastructure.

The main reason complex data is so hard to come by for Open Source eCommerce because there is too much data mapping going back and fourth. The databases (which are usually standardized such as vehicle make, model, year with separate database of rims and tires) will require you to use third party software such as MySQL where advanced programming knowledge is required. This makes it impossible for Open Source eCommerce to provide such shopping carts for you for free without daily maintenance and testing.

If you have a complex business model don’t look into Open Source eCommerce. Either find a closed source solution or be prepared to pay high hosting costs and expenses in hiring a professional programmer. Keeping the data in the database up to date every year is a project of its own.

New Features, Centralized database, Patches and Security updates are subjects that require there own sections but I will point the main key points of each:

2. Features

New Features seem like a stone age away for some Open Source eCommerce end users. What Open Source eCommerce companies fail to see is their target market is not as big as they think it is. In result there is not enough incentive to expand the open source network. Lets look at some examples

According to http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos110.htm in 2006 out of 435,000 computer programmers in United States only 17,000 were self employed.

As an Open Source eCommerce company your target audience is only 17,000 self employed developers to help out the community. You can’t assume that 17,000 developers are occupied with online retailing. They might be contractors, 3rd party developers, etc., realistically we can take 17,000 developers and cut it by 75% in order to get a statistic of developers that are involved with eCommerce (Certainly this statistic is not 100% accurate but at least we know it’s not in the millions and we can round up a number). This leaves us with an audience of 4250 developers in United States in 2006. Now lets take this figure and try to match the following, developer plus eCommerce retailer plus not already established and looking for an Open Source eCommerce provider. I will not be surprised if this number falls under 500. Now from the 500 people let’s take this into consideration, Advanced Programming Skills. I won’t be surprised if we will be working with a number close to 10 programmers. If you are a good programmer, you will most likely not use open source because you can develop whatever you need from scratch or if you do use open source you won’t share it.

What does this realistically leave us with? We have fewer than 10 people who are related to retailing and have good development skills in the United States where 10 major different Open Source eCommerce companies are targeting the same 10 people. The other 490 people we have in the Open Source eCommerce industry are individuals who have bright ideas of how they need their online businesses to succeed. The problem is they don’t have money, knowledge and/or man power to develop these solutions.

Now tell me, what kind of business plans these Open Source eCommerce companies had under their sleeves when they decided one day to launch there software companies and depended on the community to provide them with FREE modules. Was it to hard to calculate what I was able to research in less then an hour that there is not enough people and coordination to accomplish anything open source. There are no Fortune 500s interested in sponsoring projects like these. Open Source eCommerce might as well start charging for their services and hire professional developers to expedite whatever they are doing because 8 years from now they will be in the same place they are today. If you don’t believe me, look at oScommerce.

Open Source eCommerce completely ignores the fact that there are million of entrepreneurs coming online everyday who have no knowledge of even basic html but would like to use a Shopping Cart and sell products. Targeting new comers with Open Source eCommerce is like throwing a homeless person into the ER to help out a doctor with an operation, “Practically impossible”.

In conclusion if you have no knowledge of development forget about Open Source eCommerce completely unless you have some serious cash to put into development and a good business model. If you have little knowledge in development do not expect your solution to be finished anytime soon. The Open Source companies are either too busy doing their basic updates and integrating with partners or they are (Joomla) too busy trying to keep up with fixing bugs on their Shopping Cart which will leave them no time for new development since they have limited staff and no income. If you are thinking about working with someone in the community to develop the feature for you, either prepare to lay out some money or wait another 10 years before it’s finished and working properly.

My Personal Opinion – “Open Source eCommerce supporters or employees may read this and disagree with me. But if you think about it, it would be a much more organized community if there was a single Closed Source Shopping Cart, where each party would benefit with an incentive by working for that company either via license fee per module created or equity in exchange for mass development. Take all the knowledge between oScommerce, Zen Cart, X-Cart, Joomla and create one super cart and we would be 30 years ahead from where we are today. You can’t handover source code to ordinary people without incentive and expect them to do magic”.

3. Integration

Open Source out of the box solutions will only work for a one man show. If you ever expand to 5 or more employees. Prepare to spend most of your day trying to integrate your front end website with your backend management tools. After you’re done, you’ll be ready to continue integrating your backend management tools with your accounting software and visitors analytics.

One of the biggest expenses eCommerce face in the industry is their poor marketing conversion campaigns (specifically pay per click campaigns). This is due to poor centralized database which should be working automatically (such as automating the statistics and reporting about which traffic is converting and which traffic is spam). Instead of spending time to look over your marketing campaign, you are usually too busy doing something in your business which can be automated (Integrating databases with other tools, inventory, tracking, etc.). When you finally get time to go over your marketing analytics, you realize you lost a lot of money. However, you can’t stop the campaign because you need to get traffic to your website and there is nothing you can do about it because you can’t be doing everything at once. If you are doing the same work everyday you need a better solution. It is not about doing 1 thing 4000 times, it is about doing 4000 things one time.

4. Security

Open source software is known to be good against hackers because the community can exploit bugs and quickly release patches for them. Yes that is true, except Open Source eCommerce does not have Fortune 500 companies using the software and pouring millions of dollars into development. Open Source eCommerce (oScommerce) is the most exploited software on the market where your database can be easily hacked at any moment and you will never know about it.

Open Source software is unable to repair your critical security threats unless you update them yourself (If they are ever discovered). Open Source eCommerce does not have the ability or permission to automatically enter your FTP and update your software. If a patch is discovered and released, the next problem you face is that the retailer is too busy running the business to realize that the patch was never installed.

Security is a very big issue in eCommerce; if your server gets hacked in good case scenario you lose your data and reload it from you backups later. Worst case scenario, your credit cards get stolen by a hacker without you even knowing, the hacker sells the data overseas. 11 months later you get picked up by the CIA for providing credit card information to fund terrorist organizations, then you’re taken to Guantanamo Bay and you never see the light of day again.

SOLUTION!

There is indeed an eCommerce Software company that has been developing software since 2006. It’s called Shopping Cart Elite (eCommerce Solution). Everything that I mentioned above is resolved and much more. You will have the most advanced data infrastructure technology which will not only support automotive industry type data but any data which exists today including computer parts. It also includes an automated data mapper module which will allow you to enter 100, 500 or 50000 products into your shopping cart in under 30 minutes. It runs on a centralized advanced database with all security compliances internally managed. The marketing campaign tools are so advanced that it can literally launch the PPC campaign for you by researching your products on your website and suggesting keywords to use. After the campaign is launched, it can track every single visit from every campaign and report daily statistics on which particular keyword from which campaign converted into a sale and which campaign is recommended to be shut down.

Shopping Cart Elite was created considering the Open Source Community programs out there. Their program works on a low monthly subscription base. However there are more benefits then you think. You will have access to developers to create features you desire and they will never say “No, we can’t do it”. The features that you request will be developed FREE OF CHARGE as long as you are on the network. Free features include minor to intermediate modifications. If there are major modules to develop you will have a choice to have it developed for free but have a monthly subscription for that feature or you can help develop the feature and use it royalty free. If you develop the module on your own, not only will you be able to use it royalty free but also have an exclusive license to it. This means if you will want to license your module out to another user on the network, Shopping Cart Elite will help you do it and you will be able to earn money for each license sold. Definitely check them out (Shopping Cart Elite).

If you would like more information about this topic or schedule an interview with Igor Soshkin, please contact, email: myseo101_gmail_com