Groupon

Groupon is one of the first largely publicized savings programs on the net. First launched in 2008 in their home town of Chicago, their first deal was a half price pizza from the pizza place that was on the first floor of their office building. They have come a long way in a short period of time, now being a publicly traded company that is worth well over 6 billion dollars USD at this time. How they work is, Groupon partners with companies to provide a significantly reduced product or service such as a massage that would be valued at 80.00 and sell it on their daily deals for 40.00. This provides the company with brand new customers and hopefully repeat clients from that, and Groupon keeps ½ of the deal price.

Over time, there has been some criticism about how Groupon does business, some going so far as to say that it is “like a Ponzi” scheme. They are losing about 100 million dollars a quarter and have a negative net balance of well over 200 million. They are using later investors’ money to pay the earlier ones, etc. Somehow, though, even though this is known they still remain and even thrive! In fact, they genuinely only have one serious contender, Living Social.

Living Social

Living Social is much the same as Groupon, however, offering a bit more in the way of options. They have family and “escape” options that generate much interest among the cost conscious family community. While Groupon is primarily geared towards women of a higher economic class, Living Social has kept its eyes closer to the ground, for the “everyman” types. They have received much seed money from various large name firms in order to get the company going. While still smaller than Groupon, they have undoubtedly cornered the market in their own way.

Amazon Subscribe and Save

Amazon of course could not be left behind when it came to this juice part of business! They opened their “subscribe and save” service. This service allows you to sign up to receive certain products you use a lot of and have them shipped automatically to your home on a schedule. For example, you use 196 or so diapers in a month for your infant, and you don’t have a car but it’s blessedly expensive to put them in small packages because your local store does not sell cases. You sign up for this service through amazon, you find your brand and a case with the amount you prefer in it, and approve your credit card or debit card to be automatically charged for that item every month renewing on the same day that you originally bought the first product. The better idea is still that by signing up you receive a secondary 15% discount on the cost, bringing the price down to as low as .14 cents a diaper.

Amazon lately has had many generous promotions like this, keeping in mind the working lives of people in the world today and the terrible economy we face. They too, enjoying the idea of the “deal of the day” model, have opened their own program along these lines, although it is still in beta and not yet in all cities around the country. It is called Amazon local; along the same ideas as both programs listed above, just through the Amazon website and servers. With this program, we will have to see how it fares after it comes out of beta and is nationwide. It is rather late in the game to be jumping on this particular bandwagon.

Restaurants.com

Restaurants.com is an entirely different program all together, focusing solely on places to eat out and maybe have a few drinks. It is much the same idea as Groupon, except that the gift certificates are always available, not just for a day or so (or until time runs out or all are purchased). For example, the restaurant up the road from you is perhaps a bit more pricey than you are usually willing to pay, however, the site has a gift certificate for 20.00 except that it is worth 50! Here’s the catch however; in order to get that 50.00 off, you need to spend 75.00 total. So, you will be outlaying some money but not as much as you would be if you went and had not purchased the certificate.

Potential for Scamming

Unfortunately, just as there are those companies who do a legitimate business, there are also those who would take advantage of people. When you choose to use an Internet discount club or a similar service, look out for these warning signs:

After purchasing a gift certificate or deal from a legitimate site, a pop-up comes up asking if you’d like to save 10.00 on your purchase today, if so to enter your email.

• You end up being redirected to a site whose listing in the address bar is different from that which you began at. This is a sign of click-jacking.
• A site asks you after purchase for any identifying information that seems unnecessary for the purchase such as your ID number.
• As always, be safe with your information online and you should be fine.

In conclusion, there are many ways to save on everyday expenses online in this dreary economy. There are even ways to ensure that you have some luxury as well and don’t have to forgo eating out in pleasant places or getting that massage that would unquestionably make your day. By utilizing Internet discount clubs like the ones listed in this article, you can still have the life you had before…just for less cost.

Related posts:

• May 24, 2011 – An Overview of Facebook Deals
• February 3, 2011 – The New Trend of “Crowd Purchasing” in Ecommerce

Oftentimes the reason this is the case is that whoever is #1 is there for a reason.  Google offers the most extensive search results; Apache offers the most stable web hosting package, and so forth.  Sometimes, though, #1 doesn’t try harder.  In those cases, their top ranking is based on little more than momentum, meaning that it’s only a matter of time before a competitor sweeps in, finding that company’s weak spots, and seizes the day.

PayPal: a decadent king

PayPal has been ripe for this seizing for a long time.  It is still easily the #1 payment processor online.  For years, though, this has been a title rather grudgingly awarded.  The complaints about the company have been piling up.  Most of these have centered around customer service, which branch out into various subcategories, such as bad decision making on fraud determination and poor customer communication.

These complaints were highlighted by an incident in which PayPal froze the account of the Flux Foundation.  The group was planning an historic exhibit at Burning Man, and though PayPal responded to the negative publicity by quickly granting them an exception, the story shined an embarrassing light on the company’s approach to their customer base.

It was from a far smaller incident, though, that a competitor to their services was birthed.  In 2008, Rich Aberman, now 25, was attempting to raise money for his brother’s bachelor party.  The hassle of trying to get the $4,200 from 14 different people presented the kind of headache that, in the right kind of mind, results in that very special realization otherwise known as, “There has to be a better way”.  While PayPal provided, and still does, some small types of group fundraising, it didn’t have a lot of the functionality for this kind of purpose that he required.

WePay steps into the ring

Aberman soon found investors who agreed with both the general complaints about PayPal and the belief regarding that “better way”.  They received $17,000 in seed money.  That was 2008.  Today, their investment capital has hit the 8-figure mark.  That’s an amazing increase.  What’s even more amazing is the list of people that this comes from, a list which includes PayPal founder Max Levchin.  Big names are seeing reasons to bet big on WePay.

It’s not just venture capital that’s increasing.  WePay’s revenue, transaction stream, and employee count are all shooting up with the kind of geometric growth that gets a company’s CEO’s grinning picture on the front page of financial magazines.  So what is it that makes this company so hot?

The selling points

There are several things that WePay is doing right that could mean PayPal has a serious challenger to contend with here.  Some of them are as follows:

• Customer service: Recognizing that this is one of PayPal’s primary weak points, WePay has been putting serious effort into making sure that their customers don’t feel brushed off.  24/7 support by phone, chat or email is available.  One subtle sign that they take this seriously is that tech agents and customer service agents are located next to each other.  Many in the tech community have experienced the phenomenon wherein a customer service agent wants to communicate an idea to the tech team, and feels like it has to cross a guarded moat to do so.

• WePay Stores: If there’s any idea left in E-Commerce that might make someone smack themselves in the head for not thinking of it first, this could be it.  WePay Stores is an E-Commerce solution that handles both the setting up of the storefront and the processing of payments.  It’s been so many years that this has been split between different companies that the whole of the internet seems to just have assumed that this must always be the case.

• Having fun: Let’s recognize that this is something that many startups have in the early years, only to lose it in the grumpiness of bloated corporate middle age.  We’re interested in the now, though, and right now… well, how can you not at least chuckle a little bit at a company that trolls it’s competitor’s conference with a 600 pound block of ice embedded with money as a symbol of the accounts PayPal has wrongly “frozen”?

Not there yet

These advantages notwithstanding, it’s not all smooth sailing for WePay just yet.  While so far they are appealing to a lot of the things that PayPal has dropped the ball on, their Goliath still has upwards of 80 million customers to call on.  The daily worry over at WePay is that PayPal will decide to alter their services one day and offer the same group payment architecture that WePay is focused on.

There is also the economic consideration that WePay’s services come at a price.  Their 3.5% transaction fee is high for the industry.  Scanning the comments that we saw in some of the articles about this company, there are still a lot of customers who are willing to deal with PayPal’s corporate deficiencies if it means saving a few bucks.  This is a hard line to walk, and with so much of WePay’s revenue coming from investments, one would not be irrational for being concerned that these guys are being a little too loose in rolling the dice.

As good a chance as any

Then again, when facing off against a behemoth like PayPal, does one have the luxury to not take any chances?  While things are riding hard and fast over at WePay headquarters, so far there doesn’t seem any sign that it’s moving faster than they are capable of handling.  PayPal is vulnerable, and Aberman and co-founder Bill Clerico just may have struck at the right time in the right way.  We can’t predict the future, but we can say that so far from what we’ve seen, it’s possible that we could be in the beginning phases of the passing of a great torch in the world of online payments.

Related posts:

• September 28, 2010 – Ecommerce Site Building Checklist
• July 9, 2009 – Introducing the nopCommerce Shopping Cart
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• October 5, 2011 – What to Look for in Your Shopping Cart Software
• September 1, 2011 – Budget Web Hosting: Is It Worth the Buck?
• June 24, 2011 – Preventing e-Commerce Shopping Cart Abandonment
• June 20, 2011 – eCommerce Shop for Specialized Web Hosting
• June 13, 2011 – An Expansion of eCommerce Web Hosting in the United Kingdom
• May 12, 2011 – Essential Shopping Cart Attributes

Independent contractors are people who specialize usually in one or two types of work, in a particular field. There is everything from independent computer programmers to independent telemarketers out there. They come from all walks of life, and they have one thing in common. They are especially skilled at what they do. This is why they can branch out on their own and manage to be hired by others on a per project basis.

Benefits of hiring freelancers: The Employers View

When an employer is faced with a project that may only be lasting a few years, or a larger long term project that needs hands on it that are highly specialized and there is no one within the company with the qualifications, this is one example of when they might consider hiring a freelancer. With a freelancer, they are hired on a contract basis, and because of such are paid their fee as negotiated and agreed upon and are not considered full company employees. While they may be drawing a much higher per hour pay than the company employees, it bears remembering that when an employer hires a freelance worker, the company does not have to pay taxes on their pay or for benefits or any unemployment insurance; all of these are the responsibility of the freelancer to pay on their end.

When shopping for a freelancer for your position, there are many consulting agencies that are brick and mortar as well as those that are based online in their entirety. When speaking to your account representative make sure that you are abundantly clear about your expectations. This is very much a “what you see is what you get” business. Make sure that you look into the feedback of the firm or person that you hire and get references from previous employers.

What is in it for me? Contractors View

For the most part, the reason people become independent contractors is that they wish to have more variety in their situation and prefer to work their own hours instead of punching a clock each day at 8am and again at 5pm. To put yourself out there as an independent contractor, you are essentially telling the world that you are an expert in your field. Chances are if you’ve gone so far as to become a freelancer, you are an expert in your field.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of working this way is setting your own hours and making the final decisions as to what projects you take on and for how long. Your work gets evaluated on a daily basis and while for some that can be nerve wracking, for the right freelancer it is a freedom they would never give up.

OK, I’m sold. I want to hire/become a freelancer. What is my next step?

Hiring A Freelancer

You have made the decision to take that leap and hire a freelancer for your upcoming project. Let’s say that it is a new computer programming project in which the result is an elegant looking and user friendly user interface for this otherwise command line only program that the office uses every day. Your first step will be to choose if you will be using one of the brick and mortar agencies or one of the online based freelancer project sites. If you select an agency, they will guide you through their process, and there is little about that for us to write about for you as each agency is different. However, using the Internet-based sites is a little different and often yields excellent results at a lower cost than using an agency would be.

There is many freelance project posting sites out there, below are just a handful of the better known ones:

www.oDesk.com

www.freelancer.com

www.elance.com

When you sign up and make a profile (it is usually free to do so and necessary to browse available freelancers), you will want to browse freelancers by keywords. Use the keywords that best describes your project. In this case I would use GUI (graphical user interface) and Web design. Once you have a few freelancers in mind and have a decent idea of how the site works, go ahead and make a posting for your project. This is like an advertisement for the project itself going into what will be required, how many hours are expected to be put into it, reporting procedure for progress notes and, of course, rate of pay. From here, you can invite certain freelancers to place a bid on the project and leave it open for others to come in and discover what is being offered and set up bids themselves. Set a time limit for bids to be taken (usually anywhere from 24 hours to 2 weeks). Then, when it is done, select those you wish to interview and then who will take on the project. It is as easy as that!

Becoming a Freelancer

Using the same sits we have listed above, visit them and make yourself a profile there. Make sure that you are treating it like a resume, as if this is the first tool that potential employers will see. If it is sloppy or clearly arrogant or bragging, you will not be taken seriously. If you are in a field like writing, programming or graphics design, make sure to maintain a portfolio that prospective employers can examine to help them make their decision. A decent, well-stocked portfolio can make the difference between programming toilet seats to flush automatically and working on the next NASA programming project.

When you are set up, take a look around in your interest areas at the various advertisements for jobs. Make certain that you read the requirements all the way through before sending in a proposal! There is nothing more embarrassing than showing that you are unable to read basic instructions by blundering into the proposal without all of the facts on hand because you did not take 5 minutes to read. Once an employer accepts your proposal, make certain to sit down either by instant messenger, Skype video conference or phone call to hammer out terms and how the work is to be completed. Always stick to a strong working ethic, and you will have few problems to worry about in your new working environment.

Is this how employment will evolve?

It may very well be. This form of employment puts the burden of responsibility on the worker, not the employer. This is one way to make certain that companies keep their costs down while still maintaining a viable workforce. There is nothing saying that, if you enjoy a freelancer so much, renewing their contract many times is not possible. Just remember, however, that they have the ultimate power in the end. They might choose not renewing for any number of reasons…or no reason at all, as is their privilege. This form of employment also brings us to the point of a truly worldwide workforce. There are on the freelancer board people from every country on the planet that has an Internet connection somewhere nearby.

Last but not least, this form of employment allows for employers to switch from large buildings and offices to a small, much smaller place that costs less as employees are often working remotely from home! As time goes on, this is becoming more and more common all over the world. Next time you look for a job ask if they allow you to telecommute! They just might allow it.

Related posts:

• October 23, 2011 – Web Design: Do it Yourself or Outsource?
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This is the business revolution represented by the term “crowdsourcing.”  The word was introduced in a 2006 article in Wired magazine.  The concept has taken off like a rocket since and hasn’t stopped for breath.  If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s a summary to catch you up to speed.  If you are familiar with it and want to use it, here are some tips from the pros.

A new name for an old concept

The first instance of effective crowdsourcing is older than all of us.  One of the earliest editions of the Oxford English Dictionary was created by the collaborative work of about 800 volunteers.  OK, this is about as relevant to modern crowdsourcing as the first 17^th century steam automobile is to a Ferrari.  Still, the dictionary is still with us, and now again, so is the concept.

What crowdsourcing does is to tap into “collective intelligence”, that is, the ideas that are generated by approaching problems as a large group rather than an individual or small set of them.  It generally works like this:

A company or other organization posts a service that they need to appeal to an open pool of applicants to find an answer to.  Examples of common crowdsourcing requests are the generation of company logos, solutions to governmental public policy problems, software testing, programming, and writing of all kinds.  In reality, though, it can be just about anything that you might want to “poll the audience” for.

The crowd finds a needle in the interstellar haystack

An example from just a few days ago underscores the potential power of crowdsourcing.  Rainer Kracht, a retired school teacher in Elmshorn, Germany, reviewed images sent to the crowd from the Teide Observatory Tenerife Asteroid Survey (TOTAS).  This observatory was sponsored by the Space Situational Awareness program, a European Space Agency project.  What he saw in one of the images was eventually named “2011 SF108”, an asteroid set to approach to within 19 million miles of earth (that’s not as far as it sounds).  The image was confirmed by other volunteers in the crowd before receiving its official designation.

The vastness of space makes it impossible to rely completely on even the best computers to scan through all of the data for anomalies.  Here, then, is an example of how instead of using even more powerful processors, you can instead go to the collective observation of several thousand sets of eyes.

Where is the crowd now?

There are too many crowdsourcing projects in existence now to even begin to summarize all of them.  Here are just a few of the more notable examples:

• Amazon Mechanical Turk – Named after The Turk, a chess-playing machine hoax from the 19^th century, it provides a place for humans to perform tasks that their silicon-based cousins are still not so hot at.
• reCAPTCHA – This Carnegie Mellon University project uses the crowd to help digitize paper works such as the entire New York Times archive, 20 years of which have now been uploaded.
• CloudCrowd – CloudCrowd works by breaking large jobs down into more manageable tasks that require human judgment, and farms those smaller jobs out to the crowd.
• Freelancer.com – This site describes itself as the largest outsourcing site in the world with a pool of more than 1.5 million users.
• Facebook – Yes, far be it from us not to squeeze Facecrack somewhere into an article. Since 2008 the social networking czar has been using crowdsourcing to help produce better foreign language page translations.
• Design Contest – Crowdsourcing website to get your logo design, website design and other graphic design done with in few weeks.

Even if you have no interest in implementing crowdsourcing yourself, it’s worth a peek at some of the ways its used just to re-establish your faith in what the internet is capable of.  Finding relatives lost in the Katrina disaster, the recording of taxonomic dinosaur data, and archival of artifacts related to the first World War are just some of the amazing uses for this new approach to “employment”.  It’s a heartening sight.

Great, I want in!  How do I do this?

Setting up is the easy part.  Use any one of the popular crowdsourcing destinations; specifically, find one suited to the kind of work you want to split up.  Most common ideas have entire sites devoted just to that.  For the uncommon work, there are plenty of catch-all locations that are ready for your jobs.  Naturally, go over the terms of service.  If your work is for pay, many of these sites will take a cut.

A little more important is how to do it right.  As always, there are lots of tips sites out there that go into great detail about how to use this dynamic effectively.  Here is a condensed version of the most common pieces of advice:

• Communicate your need clearly – If you are not very specific about exactly what you want you will receive a gaggle of replies that won’t meet your requirements.
• Search out the right crowd – Different sites have different sets of demographics.  Make sure you are someplace where the pool of labor is akin to what kind of job you are looking to fill.
• Have the crowd judge as well – If you are looking for, say, a slogan, you might wind up with thousands of submissions.  You can have the crowd rate them as well as submit them, making it easy to narrow the field down to a small subset of the highest quality replies.
• Offer incentives – This incentive doesn’t necessarily have to be money, but it does have to be something.  One thing that most people agree on is that if this is art of any kind, give the winner public credit whether or not you are paying them.

Crowdsourcing is becoming a major shift in the business world, with little of any significant criticism or drawback.  There is little reason not for anyone, group or individual, who thinks that they might have anything to gain from it to not at least give it a look.

Related posts:

• January 10, 2012 – DesignContest – Workflow Innovation

Eliminate the basics

Let’s first go through a list of what features you should always expect.  It should, for starters, place no limits on the amount of products and categories you can create: imagine getting 90% of the way through entering in your information and discovering that you can’t go any further.  It also should be as easy to use and as cheap to purchase as possible: for the former, check web reviews, as this is naturally a thing you can’t know until you try it.

Now the list

Even this is just a long list, so we’ll try to restrict it to ones that are important but that the software package you are looking for may or may not include.

• Customer product feedback – This is critical these days.  Ecommerce is becoming more and more social, and one of the main elements that customers use to decide on their purchases is what others are saying.  Most packages offer this, but not all.  Check also to see if it supports product ratings and polls.
• Immediate shipping calculations – Only about half the packages on the market include this feature, and not all of them give you shipping amounts via different methods.  Shipping rates for the United States Postal Service are common to find.  For Australian and Canadian rates you’ll have to look harder.  If you want Federal Express it’s even harder, and it’s rare to find the package that will give you shipping rates for DHL.
• Instant search – This is where you type something into a search bar and it makes suggestions before you even finish.  It’s a wonderful little feature that we’ve already gotten used to, but only about half of the products we surveyed currently include it.
• Social bookmarking – Reference the above statement about the importance of ecommerce as a social event.  The line between networking sites and shopping is so frayed as to almost not exist anymore.  You’ll want this feature for now, and you’ll want it even more in the future.
• Returns – There’s one you might not think of, but is obvious once you hear it.  Just try to picture working with a sales system that’s electronic and a returns system done on paper.  This is another feature that you’re only about 50-50 likely to get.
• Larger images – Most of the available packages out there seem to have this, but that makes it all the more important to notice if yours doesn’t.  This is when you click on a product image to bring a separate window up with a larger, more detailed picture.

Even among basics features there are still a lot more things to look for, such as site membership, coupon support, and site maps.  As you are looking through each package, go through the full list of what they offer.  You’d be surprised what good features exist that you may not have thought of, and what necessary features exist some products didn’t.

Related posts:

• June 24, 2011 – Preventing e-Commerce Shopping Cart Abandonment
• June 13, 2011 – An Expansion of eCommerce Web Hosting in the United Kingdom
• May 12, 2011 – Essential Shopping Cart Attributes
• April 6, 2011 – Using Free Shopping Carts for Your E-Commerce Website
• January 5, 2011 – Why Hosting Companies are No Longer Offering eCommerce Hosting Plans
• October 30, 2010 – Review of Volusion – Professional eCommerce Shopping Cart Solution
• October 26, 2010 – Effective E-Commerce Ideas
• September 28, 2010 – Ecommerce Site Building Checklist
• April 1, 2010 – Selecting an Ecommerce Shopping Cart – What to Look For
• March 25, 2010 – Setting Up an eCommerce Website With Ease

If that’s the case, then it’s a good idea to go over the options available to someone investigating Linux servers and E-Commerce for their web sites.  Here are five hosts that are good selections for the Linux E-Commerce user, judged not just by their specific E-commerce offerings, but by what else they have to offer surrounding those packages:

1) WebHostingHub

WebHostingHub’s Premium Website Builder lets you build a storefront from scratch without having to fuss with any other programs.  For those of you who want to dive into the nuts and bolts, though, WebHostingHub should have everything you need to get started.  Their supported shopping cart packages include Cube Cart, OS Commerce, and Zen Cart.  Among important and related features are RingCentral, a virtual phone system, RatePoint, a word-of-mouth marketing program, and iContact, an email marketing tool.

2) JustHost

This big name in the web hosting world impresses with a strong array of both E-commerce and other supporting features.  They offer OS Commerce and Agora shopping carts, several types of security protection, Merchant Account and PayPal support.  Their accounts also come with several different types of site building software and lots of ad credits.

3) iPage

The very affordable web hosting accounts at iPage have three shopping cart options (ShopSite, osCommerce and Agora), multiple content management system packages, $150 in ad word credits, related scripting and other software of all varieties.  They are one of the largest hosts around today, meaning they have experience in managing and supporting these packages.

4) DowntownHost

One of the better-kept secrets in the hosting world, DowntownHost has a dazzling array of features.  CubeCart, OS Commerce and Zen Cart are all offered.  Even more impressive is their dozen different portals and content management systems, 5 blogging software packages, 2 project management software packages, and a few miscellaneous programs that you don’t see often but could greatly enhance the right E-commerce site, such as Noah’s Classifieds and PHPAuction.

5) BlueHost

Another big player in the web hosting world with millions of sites on their servers, BlueHost has one of the largest selections of shopping cart systems, with OS Commerce, Agora, Cube and Zen carts all present.  Rounding out their offerings is support for lots of types of multimedia, script support with some more rare inclusions such as DHTML, and an average 30 second hold time to reach a technical representative.

As stated above, the amount of hosting companies that we will be looking at for this category will likely do nothing but increase over time, and increase rapidly.  It appears safe to say, though, that these five companies will continue to have a strong place on our list for some time to come.

Related posts:

• June 12, 2009 – Power Your Store with Open-Source Shopping Carts
• April 8, 2009 – Open-source Shopping Cart Options
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• August 30, 2011 – Top WordPress Hosting Sites Announced
• April 6, 2011 – Using Free Shopping Carts for Your E-Commerce Website
• January 12, 2009 – The Essentials of E-commerce
• January 3, 2012 – Battle of the Giants: Linux and Windows Compared
• November 3, 2011 – Ubuntu 11.10 – A Linux Misstep?
• October 18, 2011 – coLinux: can Linux and Windows co-exist?

Think of it as the next generation of the Home Shopping Network, without the irritating announcers.  Amazing deals appear on products, but only for a limited time, with a timer usually right there next to the product.  The deals really are excellent, with 60-70% off discounts not uncommon.

So far so good

The early numbers indicate that it is definitely giving the E-commerce world a shot in the arm.  One study indicates that since 2009 visits to flash sale web sites have been more than doubling each year., with some of the central flash sale hub web sites quickly moving up the traffic rankings.  What’s more is that the same study indicated that these sites are popular across all income levels.

A greater sign that this is catching on is that the concept is spreading beyond the major flash sales web sites.  As usual, Facebook is leading the charge on the social networking front.  A plug-in already exists for Facebook store fronts to add flash sales to their site.  And major retailers themselves are now integrating flash sales into their own web sites.

The Danger – An exhausted consumer base

In addition to the fact that liquidity is becoming a thing of the past (ie, we’re all broke or in debt), the success of this trend has the potential to be its undoing.  One study reports that more than 50% of subscribes to flash web sites are finding themselves overwhelmed by the number of offers they are receiving.  Clearly this is an economic tactic that is more sensitive than normal to saturation.  The whole appeal to this type of tactic, after all, is its spontaneity.  When spontaneity becomes the expected it defeats its own purpose.

One solution – integration

If you are someone who is running a store front and thinking of integrating flash sales into your business, one suggestion that some observers remind you of is to link this idea with the power of socialization.  This does not so much mean a major networking site.  It simply means giving consumers a way to communicate with each other, to share thoughts about a product, as well as to just make it more of a social occasion.  There are more products out there today that integrate this into their ecommerce technology.

At the same time don’t shy away from social networking as a tool here.  Twitter, in particular, is especially attuned to being useful to these ends.  Nothing will help sales to your product like a shout out from someone to 500 people who trust them that a certain product a lot of them like is available for dirt cheap for another 4 hours.

In short, while there are always pitfalls to any new idea, the early verdict seems to be that flash sales as a marketing technique have serious potential; and thus, the serious ecommerce user should be taking a serious look at using them. In addition, make sure you pick reliable hosting for your ecommerce website.

Related posts:

• October 14, 2011 – How the Kindle Fire is a Catch-all Reflection of Current Web Trends
• September 25, 2011 – Linux and E-Commerce: The Top 5 Best Hosts for Two Long-term Trends
• September 6, 2011 – E-commerce and Social Media: No Longer Oil and Water
• June 24, 2011 – Preventing e-Commerce Shopping Cart Abandonment
• March 17, 2011 – How to Start a Web Hosting Business from Scratch
• February 25, 2011 – The Benefits of Using Multiple Domain Hosting for E-Commerce
• January 16, 2011 – Web Hosting in Today’s World
• January 16, 2011 – Web Hosting and E-Commerce
• January 16, 2011 – The Right Solution for Web Hosting is E-Commerce
• March 25, 2010 – Setting Up an eCommerce Website With Ease

Ecommerce has, of course, revolutionized business as regions and boundaries are harmoniously reached. Online buying and selling of products have opened up avenues one hardly expected even half a decade back.

The ecommerce industry is growing without any sign of a downslide. In USA alone, the growth rate has been put close to 17 percent. UK stands out as the leading ecommerce market at present. Countries like India too are catching up as a result of the massive benefits that are to be extracted from the concept. With convenience and reliability taken to the next level, ecommerce has certainly changed the way the game has been played. Ecommerce has engendered globalization in the purest form of the world.

The Top Benefits

Marketing and selling are no longer restricted to an area or regional zone. With ecommerce solutions available, the whole world is a viable market the can be tapped for business needs.

Ecommerce ensures complete and thorough visibility of products without you having to pay for establishment costs. Efficiency and cost savings are obvious benefit of this concept.

Not only does the business turnover increase but there is also a high degree of saving on time spent in conducting business as opposed to the more conventional techniques.

With a wider business base to exploit, ecommerce warrants a chance of building long term client relationships. Moreover, the chances of conquering newer markets are additional brownie points that are sure to make the propositions sound even more lucrative. . All these benefits await, and much more – simply by switching over to ecommerce.

If you had been considering taking a plunge into an ecommerce site, now is the time to make that dream a reality. Simply keep in mind the following tips for a successful ecommerce activity:

• Clarity regarding the products being offered.
• Convenience of use.
• Secure modes of payments.
• Easy ways to come across your site.
• Find reliable hosting for your ecommerce website.
• Proper and clear cut statement of all associated terms and conditions meant for users

Research well and visit some top ecommerce sites to gain an idea of the features to include. Good luck!

Related posts:

• January 14, 2010 – Three Steps to Choose an Ecommerce Hosting Plan
• October 5, 2011 – What to Look for in Your Shopping Cart Software
• September 1, 2011 – Premium Web Hosting and Security Features Available in the Public Domain
• August 30, 2011 – Improvements with Sitefinity 4.2 – Is it Now Read for Prime Time?
• August 23, 2011 – The Newest Way to build eCommerce Solutions
• July 29, 2011 – Is SSL Essential for eCommerce Sites?
• July 14, 2011 – eCommerce Affiliate Tax Law War
• July 13, 2011 – A Bundle of Content Management System, Cloud Computing and eCommerce
• June 27, 2011 – New Facebook Social Media Store
• June 24, 2011 – Preventing e-Commerce Shopping Cart Abandonment

This rule was strongly agreed upon and enforced by any means necessary until about five years ago.  It’s difficult to say exactly what happened to cause this shift.  Likely, it was a combination of a number of factors.  For one, there was a general sense that web site users were getting a bit of a free ride and that the money for web site owners to pay their bills had to come from somewhere.  Also, whereas businesses who wanted to find new customers before had to resort to reviled options such as direct email solicitation (forever etched in our vocabulary now as “spamming”), now alternate means exist, mostly through non-intrusive means found on social networking web sites.

Jump on in!  But do it right.

This means that those who are in new or growing businesses who want to use social media web sites to increase their customer base no longer have to worry about the blowback from treading in forbidden waters.  However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still certain rules that apply.  It also doesn’t mean that it’s just as simple as slapping down an ad and forgetting about it.

If you’re a business who wants to expand into the social networking world, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1) Work with the site, and the users

Since large social networking sites need your money to keep going, they’ll be in the best position to tell you what the lay of the land is like: they’re not going to want to see you set up shop just to get chased out of town for not following some social code you didn’t know of until you broke it.

Also, listen to user feedback.  While there will always be some trigger-happy users who find spam everywhere they look, generally you’ll get a good idea of what’s fair and what’s not from user reactions.  And if you actually asked, you’d be in such a rare category that you’d automatically earn a certain level of respect.

2) Follow the cool kids

Yesterday it was MySpace.  The day before that it was LiveJournal.  Today it’s FaceBook, but there are already signs that it might have peaked.  Tomorrow it will be someone else, possibly FourSquare, or likely Google Plus.  The “hot spot” changes at lighting pace.  You need to move just as fast.

3) The toys change too

In addition to new places on the web, you will need to keep track of new ways to access the web.  PCs aren’t exactly dying as much you might hear, but iToys are going to become more and more frequent.  These new technologies more and more often include in their embedded software ways for businesses to interact with customers without having to go through a web browser.

One last bit of advice: hire an IT guru.  Or if IT is your specialty, hire a marketer or secretary.  The point is that just keeping up with how your business does Ecommerce is enough to keep one person busy for well more than 40 hours a week.  You’re going to want to make sure that you have someone who can focus on that, and only that.  Social networking is no longer a no-business-class zone.  They can and do now coexist.  You just have to devote the resources necessary to do it right.

Related posts:

• April 30, 2009 – E-commerce Hosting and Web 2.0
• December 26, 2008 – Determining Your Niche Market
• December 13, 2011 – Top 10 Features of Facebook
• December 6, 2011 – Facebook vs. MySpace – The Battle for Supremacy
• November 30, 2011 – Facebook vs. Google Plus
• November 23, 2011 – Top 5 Social Networking Platforms
• November 4, 2011 – Life Blogging and the Web 2.0
• October 27, 2011 – How to Start Your Own Social Networking Site – And Keep it Up
• October 15, 2011 – Exploring The Social Networking World
• October 14, 2011 – How the Kindle Fire is a Catch-all Reflection of Current Web Trends

At the beginning of 2011, Telerik released the latest version of their content management system, Sitefinity 4.0 which was a major update for the product. It focused on user experience by adding several improvements such as a new SDK and integration with Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). At the time, Telerik also confirmed that they were in the process of including ecommerce functionality.

Months later, Telerik has done exactly that. Version 4.2 offers an additional level of integrating ecommerce into the system while fixing many bugs and improving Quality Assurance and automation testing. Additionally, the designers have refined the core content management experience for the user.

Unfortunately this release has not updated customer experience controls such as marketing dashboards, multivariate testing, Internet marketing campaigns, personalization, multi-channel management and rules engines. However, this is not really a major issue because the basics have not changed while ecommerce is exploding.

The most significant addition to the latest version is the ecommerce Module which gives users all the fundamental tools to be successful without being fancy. These resources include:

• Real-time shipping and tax calculation
• Reporting, statistics and metrics
• Product, department and manufacturer management
• Online payment processing through PayPal and Authorize
• Support for a variety of custom product types and other variations

Although the ecommerce Module was a major focus for this version, there are other improvements to the system. For instance, the media library system has extended its functionality by supporting storage providers. Also, localization support has been added to all templates. Furthermore, the filtering of feeds and advanced configuration of notifications has become granular which satisfies content managers.

Sitefinity also offers a respectable level of support for A/B testing and experience optimization. This relies solely on the integration of Google’s Website Optimizer which will greatly assist users with search engine optimization techniques.

Members of the Sitefinity team discussed that customer experience continues to be on their radar. However, the primary focus has shifted to improving quality, integrating ecommerce tools and providing a fantastic content manager user experience. The new focus brings an excellent set of goals and objectives for the corporation.

Related posts:

• October 5, 2011 – What to Look for in Your Shopping Cart Software
• September 10, 2011 – Ecommerce: Trends and Benefits
• September 1, 2011 – Premium Web Hosting and Security Features Available in the Public Domain
• August 23, 2011 – The Newest Way to build eCommerce Solutions
• July 29, 2011 – Is SSL Essential for eCommerce Sites?
• July 14, 2011 – eCommerce Affiliate Tax Law War
• July 13, 2011 – A Bundle of Content Management System, Cloud Computing and eCommerce
• June 27, 2011 – New Facebook Social Media Store
• June 24, 2011 – Preventing e-Commerce Shopping Cart Abandonment
• June 20, 2011 – eCommerce Shop for Specialized Web Hosting