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ShopSite Tip: Listing Products Grouped By Category

Posted on June 7, 2011, 7:02 am, by Rich A. and add to the discussion ».

Sometimes you want to display a simple list of products, but break the products into different categories. While ShopSite provides for different sorting options and you can even order the products on the page manually, there is no stock feature to break them into categories. However, this can be easily accomplished with 2 custom templates and an extra product field.

In this article we’ll review the settings, sample templates, and a demo page where you can see a working example.

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ShopSite 11 – What You Need to Know

Posted on June 1, 2011, 2:51 pm, by Robert Mangiafico and add to the discussion ».

The latest version of ShopSite ®, our favorite ecommerce software application, has been released. Version 11 brings a number of new features to the table. We’re very excited about many of them, and we think ShopSite merchants will be as well.

I thought I’d highlight a few of the big changes and some that might fly under the radar…

How We Helped eShave Handle 5,000 Orders in Under 4 Hours

Posted on May 25, 2011, 7:02 am, by Robert Mangiafico and received 3 Comments ».

Last Tuesday was an exciting time for one of our clients. It was exciting for us as well.

eShave, one of our ecommerce hosting clients, appeared on the Today Show segment “Jill’s Steals and Deals”. This news segment features a few select products that have extreme discounts. It is very popular throughout the country, and can result in 250,000 or more visitors to a featured website in a few short hours.

Why Do PCI Scanning Companies Make Things So Difficult?

Posted on May 17, 2011, 7:06 am, by Robert Mangiafico and received 9 Comments ».

PCI – The 3 letter word that is a 4 letter word to most merchants.

PCI Compliance has become a mandatory event for any business that accepts credit cards. But even after years of refinement and streamlining, it’s still an arduous task for many merchants. Especially the small business owners.

It doesn’t have to be this way…

How Choosing the Right Web Host Can Increase Sales

Posted on May 12, 2011, 7:01 am, by Robert Mangiafico and add to the discussion ».

Practical Ecommerce had a great article a few days ago about How To Increase Page Speed to Help with SEO. It has a number of tips and ways to monitor page speed.

Of interest to me was the end of the article where they list a few other areas for site improvement. These mostly focus on a site’s web hosting company. And this is often overlooked by many online merchants.

Unfortunately, it is one of the largest factors in improving site performance.

Newsletter Revenue Reporting With Urchin & Google Analytics

Posted on May 10, 2011, 6:43 am, by Rich A. and add to the discussion ».

Are you using email newsletters to promote your store, but you don’t know if they are generating sales? Both Google Analytics and Urchin support ecommerce tracking and provide reporting that show revenue generated by a “source” – such as a newsletter campaign.

In this article we’ll review how to use custom URLs to track visitors coming in from a newsletter and where to view the corresponding revenue report.

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Top Ecommerce Blog Posts and Articles for April 2011

Posted on May 3, 2011, 7:01 am, by Robert Mangiafico and add to the discussion ».

Ah, spring time has finally arrived! A welcome season unless you’re an allergy sufferer. 😉

If you are, stay indoors and read these great articles from April.

EV SSL Certificates Gaining in Popularity

Posted on April 26, 2011, 7:04 am, by Robert Mangiafico and add to the discussion ».

A recent report from Netcraft found that Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates continue to gain ground and are being used on more websites. This from data collected over a four year period.

Some reports point out that EV certs account for a only a percent or two of total SSL certificates in use. This is a misleading stat. This statistic includes free websites and very low traffic sites, which are not a good representation of ecommerce websites.

Netcraft found that almost one-third of the top 1,000 busiest websites that have an SSL certificate are using an EV certificate. That’s a number worth noting…

UPS Switches SSL Certificate to Comodo – Causes Problems for Ecommerce Stores

Posted on April 19, 2011, 7:07 am, by Robert Mangiafico and add to the discussion ».

Tweet Last week, United Parcel Service (UPS) switched their main www.ups.com SSL certificate from VeriSign to Comodo (both VeriSign and Comodo provide SSL certificates). What should have been a non-event instead caused headaches for many ecommerce merchants… Why the switch www.ups.com previously had a VeriSign SSL certificate that was up for renewal. It seems UPS […]

It’s the Little Things in Ecommerce… 7 Things Merchants Get Wrong

Posted on April 12, 2011, 7:07 am, by Robert Mangiafico and add to the discussion ».

I look at a lot of ecommerce carts and ShopSite ® installations each day. And I often see the same “little” mistakes repeated over and over.

The problem is, what a merchant may see as little and unimportant could easily be a deal breaker for a potential customer.

The good news is these small errors are easily corrected. Here’s 7 that I see regularly.