Holiday shipping is all about staying ahead of the curve. Everything gets hectic, and a misstep can leave you behind the competition. Customers may procrastinate their shopping, but you cannot procrastinate your shipping or order fulfillment—this is a case of “the customer is always right.”...
Read MoreDuring August we converted all our clients from Rackspace to Amazon Web Services (AWS). For most clients, this process was not noticeable and did not create any downtime or disruption. For others, some effort on your part was required to point your DNS or A record to AWS. Some clients experienced a sluggish Admin or even some downtime as we had a certain server giving us some issues, which we have since resolved. In any technical conversion that is a risk of unforeseen circumstances and for those that had an issue, I apologize.
Risk is part of doing business when selling online, but you can reduce your risk from chargebacks by subscribing to Signifyd, a partner of CoreCommerce. Signifyd gives you a 100% guarantee to pay you back for any chargebacks (plus chargeback fees and shipping costs) from approved orders and they have industry leading approval rates. Save time in the back office from doing research on customers, you can trust Signifyd’s data.
We have the changes in place for our clients and your customers, enhancing privacy to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This includes the ability to download and view personal data that may be stored, and the ability to erase the personal data. A cookie notification bar is also available for you to activate, notifying your customers and gaining their consent for the use of cookies. A full description of the steps we have taken and the screenshots are located in the email we sent our clients…. http://email.corecommerce.com/GDPR-rollout
As an eCommerce company, you may have heard about the European Union’s (EU) new regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It’s a new set of laws aimed at enhancing the protection of EU citizens’ personal data and increasing the obligations of organizations to deal with that data in a transparent and secure way. The GDPR applies not only to EU-based businesses, but also to any business that controls or processes data of EU citizens, which includes CoreCommerce, your hosting platform.
We are working to ensure that our practices are GDPR-compliant and helping you, our customers, be compliant as well. Between now and May 25, 2018, the GDPR deadline, we are committed to enhancing the platform to enable easier compliance with the GDPR. An example of how the regulations work is that “James” is a contact (or customer) of yours and an EU citizen. He’s called the “data subject,” and your company (let’s call you eComm Corp.) is called the “controller” of that data. If you’re a CoreCommerce customer, then we act as the “processor” of James’ data on behalf of eComm Corp. With the introduction of the GDPR, data subjects like James are given an enhanced set of rights, and controllers and processors like yours and ours, respectively, an enhanced set of regulations. Another example is rather than automatically signing a user up for a mailing list and later offering an unsubscribe option, companies now have to explicitly seek consent ahead of time. The default option when asking users if they want to subscribe must be “no.”
Here are a few items to think about as you consider the process to comply with GDPR.
• The GDPR has specific rules about enabling your contacts to specify exactly what they want to receive from you, so don’t send to contacts that don’t want to hear from you, and make sure the ones that do get to choose what they want.
• The GDPR requires increased transparency around data collection and processing which is the “right to access” and “portability,” which mean your contacts can demand a copy of their data in a common format. In other words, your contacts should be able to ask you what they’re signed up for, and receive an easy to understand answer.
• Contacts have the “right to be forgotten” and can request that you delete them from your database.
• The GDPR requires lawful basis for processing. Thus, you need a legal reason to use a contact’s data, like consent or legitimate interest.
Some self assessment questions to consider are:
* What personal data is collected/stored?
* Have we obtained the data fairly?
* Do we have the necessary consents required and were the data subjects informed of the specific purpose for which we’ll use their data? Were we clear and unambiguous about that purpose and were they informed of their right to withdraw consent at any time?
* Are we ensuring we aren’t holding it for any longer than is necessary and keeping it up-to-date?
* Are we keeping it safe and secure using a level of security appropriate to the risk?
CoreCommerce will provide additional instructions (including some screen shots of new features in the Admin) as we implement changes to your site to comply with GDPR.
Some of our client’s have requested to see an invoice reflecting their payments for the online store account. Rather than the simple one line on a computer screen for monthly services, the invoice is formatted for an improved presentation. This enables our clients to share the invoice with their accounts payable department and is also handy for a web developer who has multiple accounts (clients) and can use the PDF invoice to send to their clients.
Customers need options on where to have a product shipped, other than their home or work. Now there is fast, convenient way for your customers to find UPS Access Point™ locations, such as The UPS Store, local grocery stores, gaspetrol stations, and other local businesses that offer easy package drop-off and pickup. CoreCommerce supports UPS on a global basis, along with the other enhanced shipping options we already offer through the UPS integration.
An email was sent to our existing customers on May 11th, excerpts are below:
Effective April 1, 2017, the Checkout by Amazon payment option for your customers has been replaced by Amazon Pay. CoreCommerce has re-engineered the interface to Amazon, connecting your hosted shopping cart with this payment option. This offers an easy way for your clients that have Amazon payment options to checkout and pay on your site.
