Increase Sales Conversions, Join Google Trusted Store Program

Thinking of improving sales conversions, how do you bring the trust factor to your shoppers who are shopping online, you could adapt to add McAfee's Safe badge or BBB (Better Business Bureau) logo or SSL logo stating you'r verified and trusted business.

Google's new program "Google Trusted Store" launched early this year allows etailers to subscribe to their program and provide all your shipping information in order to verify that your business is legitimate and trusted vendor so they can allow to show the new "Google trusted store" badge.
The new Google trusted store program is part of Google Shopping,  this is free program available for merchants directly from Google, when shoppers see Google badge they know in a snap they’re shopping with a reputable retailer and they can feel confident making an informed purchase.

To get started, merchants need to fill up store information online, agree to Google program, submit data feed of shipments and add Google integration code to your website and wait for 28 days and 250 orders so Google can decide to make the badge visible on your website. Get started with Google Trusted Store

Google Trusted Store badge will make a huge difference in shopping, as shoppers search online via Google and find your website either through Google Search results (SERP's) or Google Adwords or Google Shopping and seeing the Trusted store badge will make their decision to shop and improve your sales conversions.

This new badge is clear indication of how Google wants to monopolize online sales and be able to track movement of goods and probably help  business drive sales and conversions. If it's free I would highly recommend to get your badge and improve your conversions and stay ahead of the curve.

If you would like to add Google Trusted Store logo on your eCommerce website, feel free to contact InfoSourcing Inc so we can customize your Interprise Suite Ecommerce website and take it live.

Interprise Suite - IRCE 2012 Conference Update

Internet Retailer Conference 2012, the upbeat was do more of everything to succeed, listen to your customers and reach our to your customers.

Fareed Zakaria CNN contributor spoke to the Internet retailers attending IRCE on the Main conference day along with Walmart CTO and Barnes and Nobles CEO, they all stressed the point to market your business across all fronts not just shopping cart but to reach out to customers across all channels of internet shopping, multi-channels such as Amazon, Ebay, Shopping feeds, SEO, Email marketing, Direct Marketing and offer your customers what they are looking for with great deals, reviews and tight integration of social media such as Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter and You tube.

Walmart is now offering various programs to bring its shoppers back to shopping not just to retail stores but more from web into stores by offering Shop Online and pick up from stores, shop online and pay at retail stores, pay by cash and much more initiative so they can tap the niche customers that are not tapped yet.

Barnes and Noble, largest book store company had to innovate itself into digital world as they saw the threat of online giant Amazon and it's Kindle offering and reached out to its own R&D to come up with Nook the largest selling e-reader today overtaking Kindle and iPad.

Such were success stories of the Fortune 500's who are leading the way to  many small and medium business/retailers who attend the show looking to innovate and use some of the niche products and services being offered at the show. The exhibition hall was packed with 100's of internet products and services Companies offering Ecommerce solution, Search solution, Multi-channel solution, ERP solution, Network solutions and more.

Interprise Solutions had their hands full with 2 booths showcasing their Integrated ERP solution with latest iPad solution and POS covering end-end solution for small and medium business to scale their business like the big companies do, place your order online and pick up the goods from retail stores or drop ship now possible through Interprise Suite.

We were fortunate to talk to several different business during the 2 day seminar that we attended and standing in the booth along with the team gave us a chance to meet prospects and business owners who were looking for integrated software or ERP solution, many of them still use Magento as their shopping cart and were looking to switch to integrated shopping cart system or tie into more powerful backend system such as Interprise as they see the reason to scale their business.

It was fun experience in midst of beautiful weather in Chicago.

Here are some pictures of the conference, we (InfoSourcing Inc) were part of Interprise tradeshow as trusted re-sellers and solution providers.

 

Interprise Suite Team with InfoSourcing team

  
Ezra and Iuval busy at the booth

John - Quilters Warehouse checking the new POS and iPad solution along with Ezra and Harsha 

Interprise Suite Version 7.0 - Sneak Preview

This summer coming soon to the awesome blossom Interprise Suite Ver 7.0 with whole lot of eCommerce features that will blow competitors and make every business owner at the edge of their seat to buy or upgrade to this new version.

• Our Biggest eCommerce Release To-Date: Dozens of major new features. I’ve provided some screenshots of a few of them below.
• Image Zoom 
• Address verification for online customer
• Gift registry
• Product Comparison 
• Remote shopping (B2B customers)
• New Payment gateway
• New! Connected Business Beta: Version 7 will include the first beta of our upcoming Connected Business Network. We believe that Connected Business will start a revolution in the way that suppliers and retailer work together. We can’t wait to launch it with the first round of beta customers.
• New! Import Manager: Completely rewritten from the ground up! 10x faster, far more powerful, tons more importable items, on the fly data correction and much more.
• New! Report Engine: Completely rewritten from the ground up! Much faster! New Report Center! Create Labels (thousands of templates to choose from!)! Ability to import / export! New, Calculated fields! New, Design Templates! New, Multi-Report Designer! New, Conditional formatting designer! And much more!
• New! Search Screen Designer: Create your own search screens! Includes the ability to “pre-filter” based on items like User Account, User Role, Team, Territory, Department, Location and more. This is great if you want to limit the records a user sees – i.e. sales people can only see the customers assigned to them OR if you want to create your own workflow – i.e. only show orders that are in the “Gary’s Approval” workflow stage.
• New! Server Side Job Service: This is a new pluggable server side service that our partners can use to create task that need to run at predetermined times – i.e. upload my orders to my fulfillment house every hour Monday through Friday. We will be moving our email service to this as well.
• Too many improvements to the other modules to list in a forum post. We will do a special webinar in the summer to go over the major ones.

Version 7 is scheduled to be released in the summer.

 
Image Zoom Built-in feature                   Online Zoom


 
iPad App                                            Address Verification online

  
 Product Comparison feature                 Gift Registry

 
   Request Remote shopping - B2B             Shipping estimate in Sales Order

Ecommerce 360 Plugin

Google Products - No more Free clicks

Google Shopping was the biggest free comparison shopping engine, Google has decided to kill free clicks program, no surprise there we expected this would come sooner or later.

Google announced today that it has begun testing and rolling out Google Shopping, which is designed to give shoppers more up-to-date information about prices and discounts, and give merchants more control over where their products appear, says Sameer Samat, vice president of product management, Google Shopping.

Google Shopping will be built on Google’s Product Listing Ads. “Ranking in Google Shopping will be based on a combination of relevance and bid price—just like Product Listing Ads today,” he says.

Instead of bidding on keywords for paid search ads, merchants buying Product Listing Ads bid on the amount they will pay if their product listings in search results attract clicks or result in sales. Product Listing Ads can include a product’s price, an image and the name of the retailer selling it.

No more free clicks from Google, that’s ending. There’s no firm date on exactly when the free ride will be over, other than it should happen by the fall of this year.

Merchants may continue to be listed within Google’s free web search results. That’s not changing. But those wanting to appear in a dedicated shopping search engine — and in the Google Shopping boxes that will appear as part of Google’s regular results — will need to pay.

Our integrated Interprise Suite shopping feed service OneStopFeed will continue to feed these engines regularly until we hear about the new merchant program.

You can read more about this on
Internet Retailer website.
Search Engine Land
Google Shopping, How much does it cost? 


Why The New Google Shopping Sucks for Ecommerce Merchants - SearchEngineWatch.com

• The new Google Shopping creates a rift to PPC management firms and merchants who are accustomed to using Google AdWords – bidding at the keyword level and creating product text ads for certain ad groups. The new Google Shopping will not work like that. Why?
• Merchants and Agencies will be required to use a merchant’s Google Product Search data feed to submit to the new Google Shopping. Most merchants and PPC agencies don’t have experience with data feeds.
• Bidding is product based, not keyword based. You can only submit your feed and bid via attributes in the feed in Google’s Product Listing Ads interface.
  
• Some small merchants won’t adapt fast enough to take advantage of the program and will lose out on traffic and sales.
  
• The potential for more sales is there, but at what cost? The new Google Shopping will require a high level of technical management with the data feed and constant optimization of the product bids in the campaign. This time and money suck will put a strain on merchants

Read more 

Internet Retailer Conference 2012 - Interprise Software Update

It's time of the year for the biggest eCommerce event "Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition" IRCE 2012 venue held at Chicago down town.

The best of best eCommerce products are on display the industry best speakers, consumers, developers and integrator's attending this conference makes it special to showcase your products and services.

Interprise Solutions is going to be there from Mon - Fri at Booth # 1707 and would be showcasing the new Interprise Suite version 7.0 along with the new iPad app, perfect for road shows like this one.
The iPad app will have the flexibility to connect to backend office while being on road and be able to take new orders, prospects on the go, kind of POS (Point of Sale) but on the go so love calling it as POS-Go app's.

Not to mention the powerful integrated Ecommerce the new version has whole lot of features, more than Magento, Aspdotnet Storefront out of the box which makes it even more affordable for small and medium business.

The event is geared towards showcasing new products, tech talks from speakers solving real world problems, how to grow your ebusiness, workshops to get your hands on Social media, web marketing and much more.

Read more about the conference here

Update: InfoSourcing Inc will be attending the IRCE 2012 at Chicago and will be visiting Interprise Booth to  demo Ecommerce 360 plugin.

Interprise Touch - New POS module

Interprise Touch, the new Point-Of-Sale integrated module for retailers is now bundled with Interprise setup Ver 6.0.3.13, developed using Microsoft Sliver light technology that let's you install on windows based PC's that has Silverlight installed.

Interprise Touch is fully re-written POS module by Ezra team, we have been beta testing it for few months now and the new release let's you integrate with your back-end ERP system so you can use it at cash register and run all your POS transactions and still be able to look up your customers orders, invoices and payments seamlessly.

You can have your customers place orders online from your website powered by Interprise Suite Ecommerce (ISE) and have them stop by retail locations and pick up the goods at your location, makes it look like bug guys but with limited pockets.

Here are some screen shots of Interprise Touch module.

Secret Deals, Exclusive Deals, Members Only, Restricted Access

Secret Deals, Exclusive Deals, Members Only, Restricted Access, VIP's only you have heard such terms before while shopping online.
To illustrate with an example consider having a website like Gilt.com which is restricted access to their product catalog unless you become  members of their site Or another scenario would be, a wholesale distribution Company and they want to show only certain products to retailers upon login and make them feel special about your program/offerings.

If your running eCommerce business and wondering wish we could offer such deals too. You want such features in your eCommerce website without spending way too much, your choices would be customizing your website by spending more $$$, right?

The good news with Interprise version 6.0 you can do secret deals with easy, no programming required, no need to spend a dime, just enable few preferences in back-end ERP and you could have all those secret deals and restricted access to your shoppers and look like a million dollar website.

Feature: Product Filters - That's right this new feature allows you to filter the products based on specific set of customers or group of customers whom you call VIP's.

Step 1: Create a new product filter let's call "Secret deals" from eCommerce --> Setup --> Product Filter
Step 2: Select the categories and products that you want to be restricted
Step 3: Now go to Customer profile (all those customers) who have access to this Secret deal and specify in the Setup tab and Contact tab --> Web option --> Product Filter tab
Step 4: Set the Application configuration preference "AllowProductFilter" to true indicating you want to enable that feature on eCommerce website.
Step 5: Surf your website those categories and products are not seen,  unless you login and then you get to view them.

You could always extend this feature and offer to all customers who register on your website or set of customers automatically by configuring your customer class template, so that way you don't have to do all those steps and get it going from day one, for existing customers maybe running a special SQL script in back-end would automate the process.

If you want detailed user guide how to enable this in Interprise then refer to Product  Filter online documentation from Interprise.

Stay tuned for more interesting features in Ver 6

SEO PInterest for better search results & conversions

SEO PInterest
Well now that you have the PinIt button on your website, it's time to look into optimizing your Pinterest boards so those links can start working for you in the organic searches.

1. Organize your boards 
Just like categories, boards are unique way to categorize your interest, so from business stand point you would have boards just like you have categories in your eCommerce website. Your boards might look like "Shoes For Men" or "DSLR Cameras" or "Electric Brake pads" or "Plus-Size-Lingerie".

By doing so your board URL would be http://www.YourDomain.com/Company-Name/Board-Name this gives unique identification and also search engine friendly URL which contains pin-ups of images and description of products and this my friend search engines love indexing coz of relevant information.

2. Publish your "PinIt" 
Publish the Pinit button across all product pages next to other social media buttons Facebook Like It, Twitter and others.

PinIt button ties into Facebook and Twitter accounts, so it pulls traffic from your friends and other shoppers who are Re-Pin your Pins and has far reaching effect since picture speaks more than words.

Another note when you publish your pictures also publish the description of the product with few keywords so that also helps in your SEO, any description is worth reading too.

3. Profile description
On Pinterest edit your profile and relevant keywords that you use so they are keyword rich something on these lines "YourDomain sells electronics, cameras, digital cameras and DSLR's for any budget with some great camera deals"

4. Follow us on Pinterest
Add the Follow us on Pinterest button on your home page so you catch the attention of your shoppers and have them follow you. Don't miss any opportunity to publish your Pinterest links via emails, newsletter and other media.

Pin it up and Socialize your interest - new Social media website

So you have an interest in cooking recipes or quilting or designer clothes or home improvements, well your interest can be anything that you like finding it on the web and wouldn't be a cool to "Pin" it up somewhere and share it with your friends and family and grow your interest with people of same interest ...

Yes there is a website which has caught its attention in the Social media, it's so hot that every PR websites are publishing about it and it has surpassed Google and Facebook visitor traffic in just couple of months, that's right the new Social media website called "PInterest.Com"

 So it really helps Ecommerce websites to share their products with "Pin It" button so shoppers who have the interest in your products can pin it up and share it with their friends and like minded people. The website is currently in beta and you need to request the access but do get it and share your interest.

We just customized our client Hips and Curves so they could offer the Pin It button on their product catalog of plus size lingerie and shoppers can pin up their sexy lingerie products, take a look at their Pin Up website

Pin It, is great Social media button you shouldn't miss adding it to your website especially if your customers are females since Pinterest.com 90% of customers are female who are pinning up their interest, so it's time to share your brand, product and pin up finally.

What's New In Year 2012?

Happy New Year 2012 !!!

We look forward for a thrilling year, year after year online business is soaring high and business are moving towards "OnCloud" environment, On demand infrastructure this pushes the way we do business and the way we interact online on Social media websites. Some of the changes we have noticed past few months worth jotting it down ...

I. Google Analytics - Real Time Dashboard:
Google Analytics introduced a new feature which was long overdue and Google got it right, real time dashboard unlike any other analytic website offers. Real time dashboard is available only in the newer version of the website.

To view proceed to Google analytics website & click on Home tab and on the right side navigation you should see options to view real time, the real time graphical representation of shoppers (visitors) on your website or blogs and feel good abt it.



II. OnCloud Hosting Plans:
Rackspace online hosting provider is now offering OnCloud hosting plans starting from 1.5 cents/ Hr, this changes the way we used to buy hardware and software now we can avoid those and just rent it till we want it or ramp up the memory or hard disk when we need it and scale down the bandwidth when its not required, read more

Interprise Solutions also offers similar hosting plans compared to Rackspace for ERP application hosting, it makes much more easier to have Interprise host your ERP software one less headache to manage.



III. Ecommerce 360 - Be noticed.

InfoSourcing solution provider for Interprise Suite has packaged a new plugin for Version 6.0 "Ecommerce 360" which would change the way you do business online,.

The new plugin offers value for money, it has packed with features that gets every business owner interested, from organic search engine optimization to social media everything you need to be successful online.

SEO Dashboard, Comparison Shopping feeds, Marketplace, Social Media and Analytics all-in-one plugin its 2012 killer.

We will be soft-launching this plugin by Feb 15th 2012 if you want to get on our beta do let us know.

IV. Interprise Suite Ver 6.0
As the new version 6.0 gets rolled out , Companies are slowly making their move towards upgrading to the latest version 6.0.1.3 and get familiar with the new features, we are in the process of making that change too, so stay tuned for more updates.