Spotting old technology being passed off as a Mobile Commerce Solution

With all the Buzz being generated about Mobile Commerce its no wonder everyone is jumping on the bandwagon with Mobile solutions but are they really "Mobile". There are a few simple things to look at/check to make sure you are not getting just a re-packaged set of small formatted PHP pages.

1. Performance: Mobile is all about speed. If your mobile site runs at the same speed or slower than your standard desktop site its not mobile optimized. Page size and speed matter to Mobile users. If your Mobile site takes longer than 1.5 seconds to load there is a problem. It's either the Mobile software or your pages are loaded with to much un-optimized content like images, JavaScript etc.

Check your page load speed here:
http://www.websitepulse.com/help/tools.php

2. Repackaged/Repurposed PHP website templates used for Mobile Commerce: While these sites can look quite nice on the outside an easy way to spot them is performance, typically they take a considerable time to load and if you look under the hood on several solutions one of the main problems is using HTML to resize product and UI design elements pulled from the main desktop website. This is a major shortcut that should not be used for a Mobile Commerce site and a good indicator the solution was not designed for Mobile devices.

3. Functionality: It's 2011 right? Why wouldnt your Mobile site support the most basic/common functionality like featured items, floating shopping cart, browsing history or anything else that improves the usability of your site for Mobile visitors? There are hundreds of millions of internet connected smart devices (and phones) that are capable of a full, rich small format experience. The answer yet again may be that the solution was not designed for Mobile devices in the first place.

4. Search: Many of the Mobile Commerce sites I have reviewed have search capabilities that appear to be at least five years old or older. In internet terms this is absolutely ancient. One of the most important functions of your website is search whether it be Standard or Mobile. Requiring exact match to return any product results is absolutely archaic. Great product search capabilities are an absolute necessity for Mobile.

Storehost Mobile Commerce Suite - Mobile Storefront

Storehost Mobile Commerce Suite is our new flagship, commerce enabled Mobile Website solution. Our new Mobile Commerce Suite places big budget Mobile website authoring with-in reach of all merchants who want to take advantage of the simply massive explosion in internet capable handheld devices.

Visit our Storehost Mobile Commerce Suite page for further details and avaibility of our new Mobile website service.

Yahoo! Store Mobile Website Service -

In the last several years Storehost OCS has come a long way but I would like to share some of the most recent developments. First up is our new Yahoo! Store Mobile Website Service this new Mobile Website service will generate a complete Mobile device version of a Yahoo! Store with advanced Mobile search capabilities. Private beta begins in November. 

Its been a while!

I'm back! Looking forward to sharing whats new with Xfactor Multimedia Inc.

Integrated RSS feed generator

Been a while since I've posted but I plan to try and post updated information more often. Storehost online commerce suite has an integrated RSS feed generator so your visitors can subscribe to product feeds. RSS product feeds include sale items, new items, featured items and most popular items. Its pretty sweet -

Level 2 Google Checkout integration -

Full Level 2 Google Checkout integration! Google Checkout helps you increase sales by:

Attract more leads.
Shoppers who see the Google Checkout™ badge on your AdWords ads will more easily find you when they search.
Convert more leads into sales.
A fast, secure checkout process helps persuade shoppers to buy on your site and buy more often.
Process sales for free.
For every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 in sales for free. For sales that exceed this amount or if you don't use AdWords, you can process them at a low 2% and $0.20 per transaction.
Protect yourself from fraud.
Our fraud prevention tools stop invalid orders from reaching you. And our Payment Guarantee policy helps protect you from chargeback's.

Sweet....

Exclusive Search Engine Spider Tracking System

Storehost online commerce suites exclusive Search Engine Spider Tracking System automatically knows when and where to put product page links so they will be seen by Google, MSN and Yahoo. This is a huge plus for making sure all your product pages get seen by the major search engines. This system is simply not possible with Ecommerce systems like Yahoo merchant services (Yahoo store) and puts its users at a distinct disadvantage. The competition is heating up will your Ecommerce site be one of the winners? http://www.xfactormm.com

Ecommerce soup Blog moved here!

For some reason I was not able to ever log back in to the old ecommerce soup so I moved it here - :)

Organic search engine results made easy with Storehost Online Commerce Suite -

Doing business online truly depends on one thing, visitors to your web site. You could have a million dollar website but if no one visits what does that say about your million dollar investment? There is certainly no shortage of SEO companies that are more than willing to spend your budget on getting you ranked in the search engines. A typical campaign can run into the thousands of dollars. Add this to the costs of the programmer that has to tweak your page code and you are looking at a pretty large chunk of change and its usually ongoing. Why not use an Ecommerce solution that will blow away your competition right from the start with excellent Organic indexability - http://shoppingcartdemo.xfactormm.com

This is a basic demo site that we spend absolutely "Zero" time on. Many of the items in this site show up on the first page of Google results. This is not a fluke, we spend a great deal of time automating SEO best practices into our Ecommerce solutions so they are there right from the start. You want great organics you need Storehost Online Commerce Suite -

Extra hour of sleep, priceless -

What if your Ecommerce solution was smart enough to detect changes in inventory, updated product information and be able to publish static HTML pages based on these changes, "automatically" without your having to sit up till midnight to push the button? How cool would that be? Take some of your life back, Storehost online commerce suite already does this - your family will totally thank you for it -

Several reasons automated, scheduled static HTML page publishing is great!
• Publish your Ecommerce sites static HTML pages fully unattended.
• Automatically update product inventory display for static HTML pages.
• Log of published HTML pages for later review.
• Early AM static HTML page updates are less likely to impact your visitors.
• The hearty laugh you get knowing your competitors are still "awake" using a different Ecommerce system that needs "baby sitting" -

Google GBuy! "revolutionary" rumor or eBay PayPal "killer"

We are really looking forward to this service becoming a reality. We have a team ready, willing and able to integrate when available! I wonder if Yahoo merchant services is going to offer GBuy as a payment option?

"For the last nine months, Google has recruited online retailers to test GBuy, according to one person briefed on the service. GBuy will feature an icon posted alongside the paid-search ads of merchants, which Google hopes will tempt consumers to click on the ads, says this person. GBuy will also let consumers store their credit-card information on Google."

Read about it here: webpronews.com http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/marketinginsider/wpn-50-20060206GoogleTestingPayPalKillerGBuy.html

Be afraid, be very afraid - If you are using a Yahoo merchant services or Y! legacy stores:

"Yahoo! and eBay have also agreed to collaborate on ways to increase the quality and comprehensiveness of Yahoo! Web search results for eBay.com and to provide Yahoo! search users with more up-to-date listings from the millions of products on the eBay.com marketplace, with the goal to create a better search experience by enabling shoppers to more easily find relevant eBay listings."

Old news, yes I know "but" its worth repeating. Yahoo saturating search results with more eBay listings is a good thing for users of Y! Ecommerce services? NOT! I am really looking forward to how supporting Yahoo store designers/developers try and put a positive spin on this one. Its always good to try and compete with a flood of competitors that sell products for less than "YOU" can buy them for right?

Read it all here: Yahoo sticks it to ya again! http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=198500

Open for business?

Internet shoppers are some of the most fickle consumers there are and when they are ready to buy your site better be ready to take their order. We have been noticing on many commerce application support forums where some really bad information is being posted that if followed is a recipe for failure, if your site is down a shopper may never come back no matter what anybody says to the contrary!

According to our research the instances of someone visiting your site and placing an order on a first visit are rare unless you are the only site that sells a specific item that can be found nowhere else on the planet. It is more likely that a shopper will visit your site multiple times before actually placing an order after researching other sites that sell the same or similar products.

Once they have made up their mind to make a purchase and it happens to be your site, availability, performance, customer service contact information, ease of use and a professional looking site are the primary keys to closing the sale. If your site is down or has page not found, poor performance, page errors and any number of consumer confidence killing issues chances are they "will" shop elsewhere and may never come back to your site.

eBusiness fact not fiction -All things being equal, item, price and shipping the store that is going to make the sale is the one that's open for business and able to service the shopper. If your site is down its pretty much like going to your favorite department store during business hours only to find the door locked and nobody home.

Storehost Froogle /Google Base feed format update -

Storehost Ecommerce suites integrated Froogle feed export has been updated to Google Base format. The Froogle/Google Base file generator is still point and click. We will be adding in support for more of the Google Base data fields and automated, scheduled file FTP as time permits.

Storehost online commerce suite: What is it? -

Storehost online commerce suite is a SE pleasing, feature rich, hosted "Point and click" Ecommerce site development system that doesn't take a degree in an exotic programming discipline to use. Not only is it supremely easy to use it will out-rank pretty much all other Ecommerce systems right out of the box (really). If you are using a system like Yahoo, Monster commerce or OScommerce be very prepared to spend a large chunk of your business budget on paying programmers for SEO and site functionality right from the start or your site will not be able to compete. You can take a look at our main site here http://www.xfactormm.com if you are interested in selling stuff online.

New Ecommerce stuff blog site

Figure I would start a blog where it would be somewhat safe to say whats on my mind :)