CoreCommerce

One of the key rules of surviving in small business is protecting yourself from fatal mistakes. We put in systems, add redundancy and even buy insurance so that a single event like a fire does not lead to the demise of all we’ve worked so hard to build.

Using CoreCommerce has been a great decision for us, because they take a lot of the maintenance and responsibility of those things off of our shoulders. Here are 3 BIG reasons why CoreCommerce helps us not only SELL online, but helps PROTECT our company from catastrophic loss.

Customer Data securely stored OFF Site

Before we partnered with CoreCommerce, ALL of our customer data, including credit card information was at risk! Before a recent website redesign our shopping cart was hosted on our own website.  Based on a DotNetNuke platform, the web site contained both the informational content and the shopping cart.  Due to many limitations we switched to a new website based on the common Word Press Platform.  Since they did not have an integral shopping cart we searched for vendors that met all our needs and choose Core Commerce as our integrated, yet external shopping cart. Now that we use CoreCommerce, we do not have to be concerned about customer sensitive information (credit cards) being stored on our own server, and thus being liable had something happened to our site/server.

CoreCommerce can make a fatal day become nothing more than a bad day

In February of 2012 our site we host separately from CoreCommerce was hacked.  Our entire e-commerce site was down for 36 hours.  Thousands of visitors were greeted with an ominous warning page from Google.  Sales and revenue ceased.  It was the worst days of our company since we expanded from a local supplier of crutch alternatives to a national e-commerce leader. As bad as it was it could have been much worse.  It could have been fatal.

BUT, since we were now using CoreCommerce for our e-commerce platform, all of customer data, including the financial data was safe and untouched.  What was hacked was purely informational pages. This truly saved our day.

Long Term Impact can be positive

After building a brand and gaining ever increasing traffic through PPC and inbound marketing, we worried about the long term negative effect.  How many customers had been scared away by the warning screen? How many of our referring doctors had seen it?

Proactively we posted a blog and even an online video explaining to our customers and visitors that the worst had happened and they were safe.  The systems in place worked.

The feedback was surprisingly positive.  We received phone calls and emails, and in many cases, people acknowledged that they had seen the interruption and wondered what had happened.  The internet can be a scary place, yet they felt reassured that by choosing CoreCommerce, we had chosen partners that kept them safe.

Now 60 days after this event, we’ve put new security measures in place to keep from being hacked again. We’ve also continued to look for other partners like CoreCommerce  to partner with the best to keep from a bad day turning into the last day for our e-commerce company.

GoodbyeCrutches is the largest supplier of alternatives to crutches in the US.  Renting and Selling solutions like KneeScooters and HandsFreeCrutches they expanded from a local Michigan company into a national e-commerce leader  Since 2011 they have partnered with Core Commerce as they continue to expand and show people they “Don’t have to be condemned to crutches”.

Innovation is certainly not limited to one person or company. The greatest innovations happen when people work together, collaborating and sharing experiences and ideas. We at CoreCommerce strive to cultivate an idea culture in our company, plotting our future based on feedback from all departments and our customers. This often leads us to amazing features, products and services outside our own organization, helping us provide our customers with as many tools as needed to have an easy, fun and successful experience selling goods online. CloudFlare is an organization that we have recently discovered and have had a pleasure working with on a number of projects. With a number of tremendously beneficial features and such simple setup, it is very plain to see why so many are signing up for CloudFlare.

Improve Load Times
And it really does make your site faster too. All that security stuff and it is speeding up your site, not slowing it down. CloudFlare uses what they call a “next-generation” content delivery network, that “performs better than any legacy CDN you’ve tried before.” A recent customer reported on our CoreCommerce community that she had seen her time to byte decrease by half. This is no surprise given the cutting edge technology and the 14 CloudFlare data centers on 3 continents, from Los Angeles to London to Tokyo. This spreads your images, CSS, and other static site elements around the world, allowing the store pages to load faster and giving your store a global presence. Domestic and international shoppers will see the pages load faster and will be more likely to look at more stuff, increasing their chances to buy and decreasing the cart abandonment rate. The faster a page loads, the more likely a shopper is to make a purchase. Additionally, with the use of CloudFlare’s app called Rocket Loader and their JavaScript and CSS bundling, you don’t have to be savvy on the latest coding techniques to squeeze out a few more milliseconds of load time. CloudFlare takes care of that for you, multiplying the efforts of CoreCommerce to also speed up load times. If you add your own custom CSS to CoreCommerce, CloudFlare can automatically “minify” your CSS code for you too, with no work on your end. Quicker load times and a faster time to byte also assist with search engine optimization, as site load time is currently a factor in organic search rankings on all the big name search sites. When it comes to e-commerce, there is no such thing as “fast enough.”

Security Benefits
Malicious web traffic can cripple an e-commerce store, and if your site is down, you aren’t making money. This is where CloudFlare steps in. Oh, and it makes your site faster too, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The CloudFlare service is an additional layer between the shopper’s browser and the CoreCommerce server, filtering out malicious site visitors using technology that learns how hackers exploit web sites to keep your online store safe and running smoothly. This filtering provides protection against comment and product review spamming, denial of service attacks and other threats common to the online marketplace. And since CloudFlare is always learning, it’s dynamically protecting your site from the latest, greatest cyber attacks out there. It’s like insurance for your store, keeping it online and you making money.

Savings — in your pocket!
The last major benefit is the bandwidth savings. Since CloudFlare caches your static store content, much of the content is not retrieved from the CoreCommerce server, cutting down drastically on bandwidth usage. Shoppers get a large majority of data directly from the CloudFlare server closest (geographically) to him or her. We have observed customers on CloudFlare saving 81% of bandwidth usage. You reduce the chances of a bandwidth overage, if not eliminate the overages all together, keeping more money in your pocket.

Security, speed, and savings. You’re probably looking for the catch though, right? You’re wondering what the cost is and why we have taken the time to write up such praise for another service. Currently, CloudFlare is free, but if you want to secure the SSL side of your store or currently have a dedicated SSL, you will need to get their PRO plan for $20 per month. Not bad for security, potential conversion increases and lower bandwidth cost. CoreCommerce doesn’t charge anything to use it, either. So why are we on the CloudFlare bandwagon? It’s simple. We believe that offering our customers the best software and services possible is a great way to do business. And after the first couple stores were using CloudFlare and talking with the CloudFlare team, we realized they believe the same thing. We endorse their service because it helps us help you make the most of your CoreCommerce store. Additionally, it helps our systems run smoother, translating into faster stores for those who aren’t using CloudFlare. The more CoreCommerce customers that are using CloudFlare, the safer and faster it is for everyone on our platform. Everyone wins, and that’s no exaggeration. It takes a few moments to set up and their staff is super helpful. The CoreCommerce team is also familiar with CloudFlare and can help with the setup on our side, if any is even needed. Please, give them a try. I doubt you’ll be sorry if you do!

We’re excited about CloudFlare and ecstatic about what’s to come. Be sure to stay tuned!

Signup for CloudFlare Now

CoreCommerce customer, Basketlady.com was recently spotlighted on Internet Retailer. The article talks about CoreCommerce’s mobile store front feature and how it added $3,000 to their bottom line.

This feature is free on all ecommerce plans with CoreCommerce.

Read the article here:

BasketLady.com takes up a mobile offer from its e-commerce provider

We have launched our new “Get Satisfaction” community. This replaces the previous “forums” we had and will help us better manage customer feedback. Tell us what we are doing good at, where we need to improve or anything else on your mind. We would love to hear from you. We are migrating the old and new forums over the next month or so.

Old: http://forums.corecommerce.com
New: http://community.corecommerce.com

Congrats to one of our clients, Ready Set Go Kits, who won a yearlong marketing lab sponsored by Deluxe Corporation. Ready Set Go Kits uses CoreCommerce to power their online store. Some quick excerpts from the article:

“According to Sandoz, year-to-date figures show that the business’ revenue has more than tripled since 2009, when she started the business.”

“Sandoz built her business’ website with help from many people— including a friend who designed her logo—and a tech support team at CoreCommerce, her e-commerce platform, Sandoz said.”

Ready Set Go Kits has already found out why CoreCommerce gives you the edge over your competition. Give it a try yourself and get ready for success.

You can read the entire article here.

Scott and Lynde Hord founded Abba Java in October of 2008. The non-profit organization is dedicated to meeting the needs of orphans around the world through the sale of high quality coffee locally roasted in Franklin, Tennessee.

“We raise money for orphans in Zambia,” Scott Hord said. “Today we support 67 orphans in Ndola, Zambia. We provide food, medicine and help fulfill education needs.”

To help Abba Java meet its goal, they turned to CoreCommerce.

“CoreCommerce allows me to focus where I need to focus,” Hord said. “It frees me up to generate business, instead of spending time behind the scenes. I needed peace of mind in my business.”

Hord’s is using CoreCommerce to help push his business to the next level and meet their goal.

“We would love for there to be 1,000 Abba Java’s across the country,” Hord said.

Alison Moore started selling custom embroidered baby blankets and gift 12 years ago.  Their first online ecommerce store was with Interland and web.com.  “Web.com cost me so much money in downtime and they really could have cared less,” Moore said.  “I was beyond frustrated.”

She went looking for the right ecommerce solution for her online store babyobaby.com and found CoreCommerce.   Moore says what makes CoreCommerce stand out the most is their customer service. “Although I love the shopping cart and all the fabulous features, their superior customer support service and tech support is what I appreciate most!  They are always there and always provide a timely answer.”

For Moore she expresses how important it is to find an ecommerce solution provider who is there to help you be successful.

“They make it easy to do business on the web.  I feel like CoreCommerce is my partner.  I recommend them at every opportunity.  I just can’t express how refreshing it has been to deal with people who truly want to see me be successful.”

Bulk CCTV Store is managed by Jack Mason which markets to the CCTV / surveillance industry. They are also focused on telecom, networking, low voltage and computer products.

Bulk CCTV Store, has been in business since 2003. Nathan tried many ecommerce solutions before finding CoreCommerce.

“We tried several other E-Commerce solutions that were recommended by Google Checkout and we found that most of them had one thing in common. They were all very hard to setup if you wanted to use your own web server. The startup costs were very high. The back end features were not very user friendly. Lastly a lot of the companies we looked at didn’t include upgrades.”

Nathan continued his search until he found CoreCommerce.

“Our company did a lot of research on the different e-commerce companies before choosing CoreCommerce. After taking a look at many of the different companies we found the CoreCommerce was the easiest to use, offered the quickest setup time, had a lot of store layouts to choose from and we liked the administrator user interface. The product was very easy for my staff to learn and what we like best was you don’t need a full time computer guy on staff to use the program. Everyone from my sales staff, marketing team and my accounting department became quickly acclimated to using all the feature of the software.”

Nathans first experiences came with the CoreCommerce support team.

“CoreCommerce listens to the customer. We have sent in a few feature requests and CoreCommerce has always been very accommodating on trying to get those features added to the software. The biggest benefit to using CoreCommerce is the support they offer. Every time we have had a question or problem our matter has been resolved in about 30 minutes or less. Great support like this is very hard to find and we have been nothing but impressed with the support we receive from CoreCommerce.

WIth his store up and running using CoreCommerce, Nathan and his team has expanded their web presence and customer base.

“Our main avenue of sales has been the direct channels. CoreCommerce helped us to quickly gain a web presence and expand in a whole new market of customers. We have found that we have gained a lot of new, larger customers because of the website. This has been a great way for us to find dealers that we never would have been talking to if we didn’t have our products available for online ordering.”

Nathan is excited about the future plans of Bulk CCTV Store.

“Our current plan for our e-commerce store is to add more products and expand our marketing to the other major online marketing groups (Yahoo, MSN, etc). We are also looking in the next few months to have a custom store layout done. Now that we have proven the store works we are looking to spend more money to help improve the look and feel of our page.”

Nathan had some final thoughts for companies looking to sell online.

“I would say to anyone looking to begin to sell online that CoreCommerce is by far the best choice based on all the companies we looked at and tried. When you combine the ease of use, quick setup and outstanding technical support it was a very easy decision for us to make when we decided to use CoreCommerce.