A DUNS number is a special number issued by Dun & Bradstreet to track a business so that information about that business can be reported to other institutions. Why would a business want one?

A lot of studies and reports came out after the holidays analyzing how the big online retailers fared during the holiday shopping season. We thought it would be interesting to take a look at how some of our smaller online merchants performed during the past few months.

Facebook found out that they could make their website faster and use less resources by converting their PHP code to compiled C++ code. The results were dramatic. If it’s good enough for Facebook, it stands to reason it’s probable a pretty good idea for ecommerce software as well.

Being on the Oprah Winfrey Show is a huge deal. Some would say it’s the ultimate advertising opportunity. Just being mentioned by Oprah can generate thousands of website visitors. How about if some your products are featured, and even modeled on the show? For one of our hosting clients, Cosabella, they found out what’s it like to be featured on Oprah.

Here are a few ecommerce related posts and articles from January that stood out… Enjoy!

It’s no secret shoppers want as much information about their intended purchases before actually completing a sale. Yet many online stores continue to hide all the costs such as shipping and tax, or make the customer wade through a number of screens before revealing this information. Why?

What looks good in one web browser can look horrible in another. Since we can’t force everyone to use Firefox, you must test your site in various web browsers to make sure all of your visitors are experiencing your website as expected. We’ll cover the basics and a few tips to keep your site looking as beautiful as you designed it to be.

Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates are the latest secure certificates that offer the highest level of “outward” security to the end user. Introduced in 2007, these new SSL certificates cause the address bar to turn green in a visitor’s web browser, and also to display the company name. EV certs have a more thorough application process, as each business is “vetted” prior to being issued an EV certificate. Is it worth it to have an EV SSL certificate?

ShopSite offers a truly robust customer rewards program that is easy to setup and easy for customers to use. In this post we take a look at the traditional “Buy One Get One Free” (BOGO) rewards program, and analyze two different approaches in its implementation.

There are a few simple things to consider when selling to overseas customers. If your online store ships orders to other countries, you will want to make a few changes to your store to be more “international friendly”. Here’s how.