Widetail

Your shop everywhere

Tiago Matos — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:02:09 +0000

A lot have been talked about distributed e-commerce, the ability of selling everywhere in the web, not only at your online shop but also at your blogs, Facebook account or external affiliates’ blogs.

From now on, any shop in Vendder, our e-commerce platform, can be embedded at any external page, with a simple copy-paste code, just like you do with YouTube videos.

Let’s say you have an online wine shop and, by coincidence, your best friend owns a very famous blog where he writes about his wine tasting adventures. Before, you’d be patiently waiting for visitors to pop in your online store and become customers and your friend would hope his visitors would click some non-sense targeted advertising links along his page. Now your friend can publish your online wine shop to his blog and you can both share profit, not wasting effort with advertising intermediaries and taste more fancy wines together!

Check how one of our first customers published his online shop in his blog.

Amazon Ec2 image with Nginx, Varnish, PHP-FPM and Mysql

Filipe Gonçalves — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:34:09 +0000

We have just released a new Amazon AMI (m1.small) running Nginx, Varnish, PHP 5.2.11 (with eAccelerator and the PHP-FPM patch) and Mysql. The image is called widetail-ubuntu9.10 (ami-05a18a71) and is located in the EU West region.

The image is running ubuntu 9.10 karmic and was based in ami-2fc2e95b from canonical. It’s perfect to run Magento or any other type of web application that needs a good performance.

All the software is running with the default configurations. Great improvements can be archieved with some tweaks in the base configuration. In case you are running Magento, check out the paper “Methods and Best Practices for High Performance eCommerce“.

To login ssh to instance with user ubuntu and if you need to run any command as superuser use sudo.

In case you want to test performance, we are running a Magento 1.4 Demo Store in one of this instances.

If you have any questions or comments, leave it on the comments and we will try to help you.

eAccelerator

Internet shopping per adult in the EU in the last 3 months

Tiago Matos — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:36:38 +0000

“The prospects for the e-commerce sector look very healthy over the next few years, with our nVision
forecast predicting 70% growth in the proportion of people shopping online. By 2013, almost half of
Europeans are expected to make a purchase online, up from 21% in 2006. Numbers are expected to
grow most rapidly in Southern Europe, albeit from a very low current base. Low penetration of
broadband internet and underdeveloped attitudes to shopping online mean that reaching even
current Northern European levels remains a distant vision.”

Project Presentation

Tiago Matos — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:18:04 +0000

We have been busy, finishing up the developments of the first phase of our ecommerce platform and on Friday, the 18th, we hosted a very informal presentation at Hub Porto about the current state of your project and future ambitions with it.

Circa 20 people were there, showing interest in the concept, giving us valuable feedback and new ideas. We ended with a small cocktail and spent some enjoyable time there, talking about bootstrapping, ecommerce and other tech projects.

We would like to thank Hub Porto for hosting our event and congratulate their avant-garde project.

Presentation of our e-commerce platform

Tiago Matos — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:48:25 +0000

Widetail invites you to participate in an informal presentation of the e-commerce platform that have been developing and which will be launched at the beginning of 2010.

This platform allows small business who have no computer skills or don’t want to invest in dedicated e-commerce solutions to easily establish an online presence.

The presentation will take place at Hub Porto, located at Rua do Tâmega in Paranhos, on December 18th, Friday, at 6pm and will last for 30 minutes.

After the presentation there will be a networking event called Wine Time, organized by Hub Porto, which all are invited to participate.

Please confirm your presence by email until November 17th, Thursday.

Portuguese E-Commerce in Numbers

Tiago Matos — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:43:34 +0000

Data from the Portuguese Knowledge Society Agency, a Governamental Agency, concerning 2007, shows that from the 67% of the Portuguese people, age between 16 and 74, using the national ATM Network, MULTIBANCO:

76% : Top-up their mobile phones;
57% : Pay their house bills, like water, electric, land line, television, internet consumptions;
10% to 14% : Pay for internet shopping products;
9% : Show tickets. e.g. music concerts, football matches;
9% : Transport tickets.

Considering ATM transactions as an electronic transaction, Portugal matches most developed countries in Europe in terms of e-commerce adoption.

Nevertheless, considering e-commerce through internet, only 6% of the Portuguese populating shop through this medium. In the other hand, if we would consider only the universe of the Portuguese internet users this percentage raises to 80%, according to the same instituion.

Statistics apart, there’s a visible disparity between the average internet users in European developed countries and the Portuguese. They distrust internet services, especially those involving money transactions, preferring to hold and touch products before buying and pay directly to merchants. Credit cards and online banking systems are not commonly widespread in Portugal, even if our ATM system is world state-of-the-art.

Language barriers also disables biggest e-commerce reailters, like Amazon, to do business in Portugal where the majority of people are not at ease with foreign languages.

Even so, by being stuck in a distant corner of Europe, we should embrace e-commerce and leverage the reach of Portuguese products to foreign countries, who admire and consider our products unique. Like Jonhy Depp, who in his recent movie “Public Enemies“ wears Portuguese hats or Marks & Spencer , which teams up with a Port Wine house and introduces Pink Port to a more feminine industry.

Video: Welcome to Magento

Filipe Gonçalves — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:11:52 +0000

Introduction video presented in Meet Magento and Bargento

Free Magento Templates

Filipe Gonçalves — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:26:43 +0000

Below you’ll find a showcase of excellent Magento templates for your e-commerce website. This templates can either be used directly in your Magento store or as a foundation for your costumized theme.

Modern Theme

Live Demo | Download

Classic Theme

Live Demo | Download

Telescope Theme

Live Demo | Download

Pet Store Theme

Full Preview | Download

Electronics Store Theme

Full Preview | Download

Linen Theme

Free Pop Theme

Blank Theme

Absolute Theme

MageSupport Theme

Live Demo | Download

Foot Prints Theme

Live Demo | Download

Silverthemes Smashing Magazine Theme

Live Demo | Download (Installation Guide)

Teal Magento Theme

Live Demo | Download

iPhone Optimized Theme

Video | Download

Headphones at open-space offices

Tiago Matos — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:29:27 +0000

If you are on the Software Business, from startups to multi-nationals, it is very likely you are working in an open-space office type. There are many reasons why companies choose this sort of working environment, mainly it fosters colleagues interaction and it helps to reduce space costs.

There is also a downside for it: productivity.

Fortunately, throughout my University times I spent a great deal of time studying in crowded public spaces as study rooms and coffees, so when I started working on open-spaces I could only see it as a more ordered environment with always available Internet connection and electric plugs, plus unlimited coffee.

Concentrating on this kind of setting can be tricky and my best tool was Jazz and Ambient music without which I could not spend a minute without. At the beginning some of my co-workers found it strange and sometimes improper to spend the day listening music but with time it was amusing for me to see them bringing their headphones and questioning me about on-demand music websites.

Yesterday, Julian Treasure on a TED Talk, confirmed my inner feeling, the background noise in open-spaces office drastically reduces productivity by 66%.

Internet shopping orders fail across the EU borders

Filipe Gonçalves — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:16:28 +0000

European shoppers looking to purchase products from other EU countries on the Web are likely to fail 60% of the times, according with the a study from the European Comission.

There are many reasons why this happens, but the main ones are:

the language barrier. many e-commerce websites are only in the country language.
many different payment systems. eg: in Portugal people prefer to buy using Multibanco, a system only in use here, and the same happens in the Netherlands with iDeal.
expensive cross border shipping. State mail is still widely used, subsidizing deliveries inside the country.
too many different laws along the EU. eg: value-added tax, recycling fees and copyright levies.
lack of vision by some merchants, that are only interested in selling to more than a few neighbour countries.