We are excited to let you know, we have been named as a finalist in Nashville Business Journal’s 2010 Best in Business Awards.

In the Best in Business publication in the Nashville Business Journal, they will celebrate 24 outstanding companies in five size categories.

They will announce the final winner on April 22, 2010.

Thanks again to all of our fantastic customers who make this possible!

Today we unveiled CoreCommerce 7.7, featuring the first ever mobile optimized online storefront, Mobile CoreCommerce™, which extends merchants’ online access to millions of smartphone and cell phone users.

“We strive to stay on the forefront in providing our customers with the latest in e-commerce features and capabilities, and introducing an optimized mobile storefront positions CoreCommerce well ahead in the market,” commented Matt DeLong, president and CEO of Sum Effect Software. “CoreCommerce 7.7 gives all of our customers, including small business retailers, the power to effectively reach the millions of smartphone and cell phone users in the global mobile marketplace.”

The mobile optimized storefront in CoreCommerce 7.7 automatically detects if a mobile device is accessing a CoreCommerce customer’s storefront. It then instantly adjusts and optimizes the display for the smaller screens on cell phones and mobile devices. The mobile storefront includes a convenient optimized front-end check-out and merchants can continue to use their existing payment processors for the mobile optimized storefront. Inline payment processors, such as Google Checkout, have already announced their payment solution is already mobile-optimized.

Other e-commerce storefronts display full size websites, showing only two or three square inches of the full size site at a time on mobile phone screens, requiring users to constantly scroll and move the image around to see the rest of the storefront. The CoreCommerce 7.7 mobile storefront eliminates all of that manipulation to make it fast and easy for mobile device users to buy online from anywhere, anytime.

The new Auto-Suggest feature in the search function of CoreCommerce 7.7 is designed to help e-commerce shoppers find items they’re interested in and wish to purchase. Similar to the search suggestion function of major search engines like Google, when a shopper starts to type, the CoreCommerce 7.7 search will display a drop-down list of suggestions the shopper can click on to execute the search. This minimizes typing and mistakes, and allows shoppers to find products fast even if they’re unsure of the name or correct spelling.

“Feedback and requests from our customers for new functionality are a primary driver of our on-going enhancement efforts,” added DeLong. “So, in addition to enabling them to reach the vast mobile market and making it easier for their online shoppers to buy, we also added features into the new version of CoreCommerce that give our customers more control over customizing their online storefronts and keeping them fresh and up to date.”

Every online store has buttons to facilitate shopping, like “check out”, “add to cart”, “save”, “view cart”, etc. CoreCommerce now comes with a rich library of 45 pre-designed button groups merchants can choose from. Each group has a theme look-and-feel reflected in button shape, size, font and graphical rendering. A merchant can simply choose a theme, and CoreCommerce automatically installs all of the buttons from that group throughout the storefront to give store owners total control over the look and feel of their sites.

Keeping online product offerings and images up to date is essential in e-commerce. To make this quick and simple, CoreCommerce 7.7 launched ccImagePlus!™ with Picnik, an easy to use web-based photo manipulation program. Store owners can upload product photos and use ccImagePlus!™ tools to resize, crop, touch up and edit images automatically, on the fly, then post them on their storefronts in real time.

Current CoreCommerce customers will automatically be upgraded to version 7.7 at no extra cost.

CoreCommerce’s comprehensive shopping cart system is the most affordable, flexible and easy-to-use shopping cart system designed specifically for the small business retailer. With enterprise grade hosting with Rackspace and fully-encrypted security, 24/7 ticketing support, live chat and flexible payment processing and shipping integration, CoreCommerce is ideal for businesses looking to add e-commerce to an existing website, replace their current shopping cart provider or build their first online store.

Hi again from your friendly CoreCommerce development team.

We have added a few new features to help your business.

Free Shipping Supports Customer Groups - This was a requested feature by several customers. You can set which customer groups (ie Wholesale,etc.) will be eligible for the eligible for free shipping feature in the shipping settings.

Widget Name Images - Again this was a highly requested feature. You can now upload specific images for the widget names. For example, if you are using the Category widget. The name in the widget itself on your store will say “Category”. You can now also upload an image to replace the name “Category” with an image of your choice. This allows for more design flexiblity. You can do this by configuring your active design, under the design drop down and then click on the fonts tab.

Product Tab Navigation - This feature was created due to popular demand. You can choose to use a tab format for your product detail pages for your description, related products, etc. You can do this by going to any product and clicking on the “Use Tab Navigation” checkbox under the description. This will allow you to have tab navigation for some products, while others can use the current layout.

Recently Viewed Widget Change - You can now change how many products are displayed and whether to show thubmnails for all of them, only the first one or none. You can do this under the Settings > Widget Settings.

Email Blacklist - You can now setup an email blacklist which will prevent customers from placing orders using certain email addresses. For example if you may not want to accept an orders from a yahoo.com email address. You can set this under Settings > Store Settings > PCI/Security Settings

Setup Fee Tax - You can specify if a setup fee is taxable or not taxable.

New Payment Gateways- SecureNet, PSIGate, Internet Secure (Direct)

Coming up in our next release will be some awesome new features. How does a sweet mobile commerce version of your store sound? We also are working on custom image button gallery for you to use and our brand new ccImagePlus feature which will allow you to edit images directly in your CoreCommerce account. Stay tuned for more exciting information in the coming weeks.

Your CoreCommerce Development Team

The bounce rate is one of your most important metrics you need to follow. The bounce rate is the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue to other pages within the same site.

The formula to calculate bounce rate is: Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page/ Total Number of Visits

A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on your site and the visitor leaves your site without visiting any other pages before a specific session timeout occurs. There is no set time by which a visitor must leave, that is determined by your analytics software like Google Analytics. A commonly used number is 30 seconds.

Now that we understand what a bounce rate is, how can it be used to determine the effectiveness or performance of a web page?

The goal is to get a low bounce rate and avoid high bounce rates.

Google.com analytics specialist Avinash Kaushik stated:

“It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”

So you need to shoot for under 35%.

To lower your number you need to make sure your pages are relevant to your links. For example, if you are selling women shoes, you could advertise for a keyword under “Shoes”. The problem with this method, you could see a very high bounce rate since you could have men clicking your link and then quickly exiting your page once they found out you only sell women shoes. A better methodology would be to focus in on specific brands of women shoes.

Another key place to focus on is your homepage. This is the place your visitors will see most often. You will need to make sure you homepage is relevant with appropriate data and you display products which you know can drive sales (ie top sellers).

Tip: Use Alexa.com to check the bounce rate of your competitors

We just released CoreCommerce 7.5. We have added many features you have been requesting (of course we have more in the queue). We have redesigned the admin interface based on customer feedback surveys. We thank each one of you who helped participate in that process.

* Drag and Drop Design Mode - If you are using generic design or any of our free templates you will be able to drag and drop any existing widgets in your store front. You will also be able to edit any word or phrase by simply clicking on the word and editing it right on the fly. Important Note: If you already have a pre-designed template installed you must restore it to use this new functionality. There is some extra code and css which is needed to be in your templates. If you do not restore the templates, the drag and drop will not behave correctly. Remember, restore will remove any design changes you made (it won’t remove products or categories, etc).

* Phone Order System - You can now quickly place orders on the phone directly inside of your store’s administrative interface.

* Template Stylesheet Management - You can now edit your css and header/footer templates without using FTP with our new code editing with syntax highlighting. To use this feature, just click on the configure active design under the design link on the top right of the admin. Then click on templates/css.

* Custom Dashboard Layout - The old admin main menu is now a drag and drop dashboard. You can create custom Key Performance Indicators, connect with RSS feeds and more.

* Google Site Search Integration - We have integrated with Google Site Search. You will now be able to have the search widget use the power of Google Search to power your store’s searching capability. This does require a fee to Google to use this service. To access this feature, put your mouse over settings in the top right of the admin panel, click on widget settings, then click on search result logic. There you will see the option to use this feature.

* 3D-Secure Integration - With PayPal Payments Pro, we have integrated with 3D-Secure to work with Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode.

* Auto Meta Tags - Have us do some of the meta tag work for you. We will auto-populate your meta tags to help improve your search engine results. This happens when you add a product, category or content page and leave the meta tags blank.

* Free Shipping Membership Groups - You can set an entire membership group to receive free shipping.

* Custom Lists Can Now Have Meta Tags - When you create any custom lists you can now set meta tags for each list.

* Recently Viewed Widget Update - The recently viewed widget will now display the product thumbnail image.

* Featured Product Update - Specify the number of products to display in the feature product widget (previously you could only have 1 at a time in the widget).

* Gift Certificate Expiration Dates - You can setup gift certificates to have expiration dates for your store.

* Shipwire Integration - We have integrated directly into Shipwire fulfillment.

* Upload a Photo to a Customer - You can now upload a photo on the admin customer form. This is typically used for folks who require a fax of an ID to prove they are over a specific age for certain products.

Thank you,

CoreCommerce Development Team

We are pleased to announce CoreCommerce is the leading Shopping Cart Software voted by ZippyCart. You can read the full CoreCommerce review here.

Here is an excerpt from the review:

“Our overall research and feedback from our customer reviews shows CoreCommerce to be the leading ecommerce software solution of 2010!….CoreCommerce has one of the most robust feature sets available in ecommerce software solutions. This, combined with their extremely affordable monthly fees, makes Core Commerce a highly sought after shopping cart solution. Merchants can rest easy when using CoreCommerce as their store will be in good hands, and they will always be a step ahead of the competition.”

As our customers know, we always strive to be one step ahead. We continue to add features and create even easier to use solutions to help drive revenue to our merchants stores. That is our number 1 goal.

CoreCommerce is one of a just a few finalist in the coveted 2010 Customer Service Department of the Year (IT) Stevie Award. They are learning what all CoreCommerce store owners already know about our outstanding customer service team.

The award winner will be announced in February 22, 2010 in Miami, Florida.

We run several internal programs and surveys to seek out customer feedback on how we can improve our ecommerce shopping cart software. The suggestions and feedback are a necessary survival instinct for us to implement new features, not only to meet our client’s needs, but to engage our customers and create dialogue. Most people don’t realize that we not only take customers feedback seriously, but we implement the majority of the feedback we receive (assuming it is a feature everyone can use) by creating a design “spec” that we give to our engineers to add the new features. This is so important to us that we typically release new features EVERY 2 WEEKS. This ensures an ever growing list of tools in your tool belt to help you make money online. Call up some of our competitors and ask them how often they do a “new release”? Chances are it’s “every quarter” or once or twice a year. How serious are they taking your feedback?

I want to let you in on a simple fact that I hear and see most of our customers overlooking. It’s so basic that you will kick yourself when I tell you what it is. Ok, here’s the most important thing in e-commerce…………wait for it…………. MAKING MONEY. Too often people spend way too much money on silly tools or try to get their store design “perfect” while overlook the obvious: MAKING MONEY. Most people would be shocked to find out that our best customers who generate millions in revenues each year on our Core Commerce ecommerce shopping cart software have very simple designs — not overly complex. Remember those business classes where they discussed the basic business principle of supply and demand? The best looking website will fail if what you are selling has no demand. This supersedes a great looking website. I’m not saying design isn’t important, what I am saying is that design is secondary to what is most important: MAKING MONEY.

We look forward to a prosperous New Year in 2010 with your help!

Matt DeLong
President/CEO
CoreCommerce

Here is another reason to use Twitter/Facebook for your ecommerce store. ComScore conducted a survey and found that 28 percent of those who have begun their holiday shopping this season said social media has influenced their purchases.

Seven percent of respondents said they followed a Facebook fan page to find special offers and deals, while 6 percent said they have been influenced by a friend’s Facebook status update referring to a particular product.

Five percent of those surveyed said they had followed a company on Twitter to take advantage of special offers and deals. Three percent said that a friend’s Twitter tweet helped trigger their product purchases.

Need real proof. Dell reported that it made $6.5 million in sales for PCs, accessories and software thanks to its promotional placement on Twitter.

The best news for CoreCommerce store owners, is you can tap into the power of social networking. With Facebook and Twitter integration directly integrated into your CoreCommerce store, CoreCommerce store owners will have a leg-up on the competition.

If you need a store which can drive sales and integrate directly into social networking, try CoreCommerce for free for 15 days. Remember no credit card is required.

Online shopping surges as consumers choose online ecommerce over brick and mortar stores.

Online retail sales grew 13.7% Monday and 35% on black Friday, according to web analytic firm Coremetrics.

Online retailing is led by great deals for consumers, free shipping or low shipping cost and tax free purchases. Consumers online also pruchased more per an order versus brick and mortar stores, according to Coremetrics.

Here are key metrics for Monday’s online retail sales from Coremetrics, including the year-over-year change from Cyber Monday 2008:

* Bounce rate (leave after viewing one page), 28.86%, 17.75%
* Put items in shopping cart as percentage of visits, 12.13%, 11.18%
* Placed orders as percentage of visits, 5.26%, 31.83%
* Page views per session, 8.8, -24.07%
* Minutes:seconds per session, 7:32, -10.14%
* Items per order, 5.92, 29.82%
* Average order value, $180.03, 38.23%
* Shopping cart conversion rate, 36.81%, -3.11%
* Shopping cart abandonment rate, 63.19%, 1.90%