Yes, consider this a public service announcement for all of you website owners running your site on any kind of server - that even includes you dedicated server hogs. How many of you can say that you’ve never pulled up the URL to your site only to find it down? And of course, this usually happens at the worst time - at a conference, when showing a colleague, or during an all important business meeting! Hosting can be a mixed bag, sometimes you see good results with little outage, and sometimes, you’re not so lucky. I’m not going to make this into a hosting rant, because that could take a while.

Instead, I want to state that this does happen, to pretty much everyone, at some point in time. But being able to know how often it happens, and when it happens, can make a big difference in being down for minutes, or hours, or even days. (more…)

These days, the sounds that have become synonymous with driving—the revving of the engine, music from the dashboard radio, wind rushing through the sunroof—are drowned out by a quieter but altogether disturbing noise: the ticking of the gas pumps as the dollars accumulate to unprecedented sums. Your tank can’t tell the difference, but it sure is hard for you to swallow.

With the national average hovering right around $4 per gallon, rising gas prices are a topic of universal complaint and heated debate throughout the country. The short-term effects - more expensive vacations, busted budgets, and slumping gas station sales - are no match for the longer - term ramifications many analysts predict for our already faltering economy. (more…)

BV Commerce is one of our favorite eCommerce apps, it’s flexible, scalable, and adaptable. I won’t get into all of the details of why we love it, but we’ve decided to open the box on some of the customizations that we develop to extend the application to meet functionality requests to give you some insight into what actually goes on behind the scenes with some of these features we develop. These may range from small little utilities, to feature enhancements, product tweaks, or in depth customizations. So consider this the first of many articles to come from us on the topic.

For our first installment, we’re going to show how you can add, what we call “product flags” to your catalog and product pages that add value to the user experience by telling them about a certain detail about specific product very quickly. These product flags should provide the user some useful information about the product that will help them in their purchasing decision. Typical flags you’ll see across the ‘net would be “On Sale”, or “New”. But what about other flags, that actually might provoke an action, such as “Limitied Quantity” (ie. act quick or this might run out)? (more…)

As a frequent eCommerce shopper, I’ve got a mental checklist of things I want to see before I go hunting for the “Add to Cart” button. Some of them are no-brainers: Price. Benefits. Pictures. Then there are the more secondary (but still important) attributes, like shipping cost, product availability, and any applicable options to configure, such as color or size.

And then, of course, there are the reviews.

Over the past few years, I have become a review snob. If I’m poised to purchase a product from a website but there are no comments from other customers who have used it, I immediately enter hesitation mode. Usually, I’ll leave my cart, open up a Google window, and search for reviews of the item elsewhere. Sometimes, I end up finding the product on a competing website with a lower retail price, a free shipping offer, or some other incentive that causes me to abandon the first site. And I’m not alone—a recent study by Forrester found that a whopping 71% of web shoppers rely on product reviews as an influential factor in their buying decisions. (more…)

What many e-commerce companies forget is that they communicate with their customers more than other websites. From registration forms, to order forms, to order confirmation emails, to lost password/login information emails—well, you get the idea. No doubt, you’ve spent a lot of time getting your website’s “tone” just right. But is that tone reflected in all of the communication that your site generates?

Let’s look at a company that does a great job “talking” to its customers on its website: Comcast. Then we’ll look at some ways Comcast could improve its tone in some of its other forms of communication.

Comcast’s site is fun and hip. It appears geared to the 18- to 49-year-old crowd. When I sign in, it immediately welcomes me back, which is something Melissa noted as a good marketing strategy. (more…)