When it comes to getting customers to review the products they ordered, there a few things to do, and a few things to definitely avoid. Here’s the 411 on getting this right the first time.

All the studies and reports are out on how the big box stores did on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, there is far less data when it comes to the smaller merchants and how their sales performed.

As we did last year when we examined Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales, we analyzed general order trends for a random sampling of our ecommerce clients for the start of this holiday shopping season.

Here are the results…

Groupon sure is the hot topic these days. And with Google’s “impending” multi-billion dollar purchase of Groupon, the buzz is almost deafening. But is it a good deal for a small merchant to offer a Groupon special?

When I heard one of our ecommerce hosting clients was going to run a Groupon promotion, I was quite interested in how it would turn out. Luckily, Teresa was more than happy to provide feedback and answer a few questions about the whole experience…

Ah, November. The start of the busy holiday shopping season. That time of year when merchants are busy gearing up for the mad rush of sales that follow Thanksgiving.

In between all the commotion, take a break to read up on a few highlights from this month that relate to ecommerce. Maybe a few tips will help makes this season better than last (at least in terms of sales).

As Black Friday / Cyber Monday fast approaches, ecommerce merchants cannot afford a major glitch in their shopping carts. Assuming you’ve accounted for the things you can control (no security issues, streamlined checkout, great search results, good code, etc…), what about the things not under your direct control?

Whether it’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or your busy season has already begun, having your website tuned up and ready for the influx of online shoppers is key to capturing the most sales. Just like Santa, checking your “list of things to check” is a good idea.

Here’s a few ideas of items to test and verify so your store is in tip top shape. Hopefully one or two help you with your holiday preparations.

Google loves to make the web a faster place. They are obsessed with fast websites. So obsessed that they’ve made page speed one of the ranking factors for their search index (but remember there are over 200 ranking factors, so it’s not the end-all and be-all of search ranking).

And now Google has released an add-on for web servers (Apache) that aims to make websites even faster.

Ordoro, a new order management and fulfillment company, offers a web based service to ecommerce merchants to manage their orders and inventory. Ordoro integrates seamlessly with the ShopSite ® ecommerce platform.

I’ve been working closely with Ordoro’s team to fine tune their integration with ShopSite. We also have a number of ShopSite clients using their service right now to manage orders. I’ve been impressed with what Ordoro has to offer small and medium sized merchants. Jagath Narayan, who is one of the owners, took a few moments to answer three questions I had about order fulfillment. Here is the Q&A.

Sending email campaigns to existing customers is an excellent way to increase recurring business – whether you’re sending out news that you have a new product, you’re running a special, or you’re sending a discount coupon – emails to your customer base allow you to keep in touch and remind them of your business.

Obtaining that list of email address can be cumbersome or simple – and with ShopSite it’s quite simple. In this article we’ll review what settings you’ll turn on to provide your customers with an opt-in checkbox and how to export the details of those customers so you can use them in your mailing list program.

Halloween is over, and all of the tricks and treats are behind us for another year. Tooth decay lies ahead… oh, yeah, and also the impending start of the holiday shopping season.

Here’s what I found to be of interest for the month of October. Hopefully you find a few “treats” to help your online store as well. Enjoy!