Web sales, conversion rate and average order value are all up this year for online retailers, says a report released today by Forrester Research and Shop.org. And there is more e-retailers can do to boost results, the report says.
Read the entire story here
There was a very good article on Forbes about ecommerce and social media. One important piece to take away was this statement:
“So while traditional retailers have been struggling to survive, forward-thinking online merchants have unleashed a wave of innovation that is improving the economics of e-commerce.”
This is exactly why CoreCommerce store owners have a leg up on all of their competitors. We are always ahead of the curve, while the rest is always 6 to 9 months behind. For example, CoreCommerce ecommerce store owners have access to our Facebook Social Commerce application to post products directly in Facebook for a couple of years, we have integrated with Picnik, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, Twitter and more. We have had these features for a while, which gives CoreCommerce store owners a huge advantage. Just imagine the revenue you could be losing by being with another provider who is always playing catch up to CoreCommerce. CoreCommerce is the #1 forward thinking ecommerce provider and we continue to give businesses a huge advantage over their competition.
Currently a bill trying to get approved in the US House of Representatives would require online ecommerce companies to charges sales tax in accordance with the sales tax rate of the customers billing state. Even if you, the store owner, don’t have a physical presense in the state.
This change has been talked about before but is getting more attention now that so many states have budget deficits.
The main sponsor of the bill is Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt. The bill is called Main Street Fairness Act (HR 5660). A similar bill came late last year but wasn’t enacted.
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
