Why Blueport for E-Commerce?Blueport.com

When it comes to evaluating your ecommerce hosting site options, you have a lot to consider. And perhaps the most important question to answer is whether you should host your own website or work with a hosting provider. This article from Practical eCommerce goes into the specifics of whether or not you should host your own site, and it makes good points supporting the merits of both options.

When examining ecommerce hosting sites, the point is that you always want your website to be running -- efficiently, quickly and securely. Maintaining your own server in-house can be more inexpensive and gives your business the control to make sure your site is performing as you and your customers demand it to be. On the flip side, using a hosting provider gives you access to people who specialize in servers, so if a problem arises, it will likely be able to be fixed more quickly.

More to Know About Ecommerce Hosting Sites

If you decide to go with a hosting provider, you should be aware of these options so you can decide which would make the most sense for your ecommerce business:

• Shared hosting: This is when your website gets space on a physical server, sharing it with other websites. Keep in mind that with this hosting solution, problems on another site that lives on the server can affect your site.
• Virtual dedicated hosting: This option still has your website living on a server with other sites, but it acts as if it is on its own standalone hardware. If one of the other websites on the server crashes, your site would not be affected.
• Dedicated hosting: Dedicated hosting would give your website and any of its subdomains its own server. Reasons to go with this option would be if you have a highly trafficked site or if your website offers audio and video downloads, which can require a lot of bandwidth.

As you delve deeper into considering Internet hosting providers, you will also want to know about their contingency plans should anything go wrong, as well as how their customer and technical support works.

Blueport Commerce hosts the entire technology platform for its ecommerce clients, including server hardware, maintenance, expansion, upgrades and secure, PCI compliance, leavgiving our customers valuable peace of mind. You can learn more on our Hardware & Secure Hosting solutions page.
 

Ecommerce is an excellent way to bring a new stream of sales revenue to your retail business as well as to gain awareness for your brand. However, if your retail business is composed of franchises, you face a number of unique challenges. That means you need a unique franchise commerce solution for operating on the Web.

The International Franchise Association outlined a number of issues franchise companies may face as they consider ecommerce. Among them:

• Who establishes pricing and the terms of purchase with the customer?
• What are both the franchise company and the franchisee each responsible for when fulfilling orders? Customer support?
• Who gets credit -- and revenue -- from the sale?
• Who is responsible for billings and collections?

And because of these concerns, the International Franchise Association suggests that franchise companies looking to try ecommerce “consider adopting ecommerce models that…actively involve franchisees.”

Our Franchise Commerce Solution

Blueport Commerce embraces franchises. In a previous blog post -- “Ecommerce for franchise retail: Can it be done?” -- we discussed how our ecommerce solution specifically works for the franchise model. We are able to help you centralize much of the heavy lifting around merchandising, catalog, marketing and technology with the parent brand, while each independent franchise dealer retains local control of the online store content, pricing, marketing and fulfillment.

More than 900 independently owned and operated dealers use Blueport Commerce to offer their local customers a best in class franchise retail experience online. Find out why.
 

Back around 2001, it was common for retailers with brick-and-mortar stores to bring their retail model online. The point was to have the website work just like the store. The whole endeavor was based on bringing in a new revenue stream for the retailer with little actual thought given to the medium and how consumers’ expectations and needs might be different. Very few thought about an online retail strategy.

Defining Your Retail Strategy Today

Now that it’s 2010, we can look back at those sites that have done ecommerce right (Amazon.com, of course) and remember those sites that did it wrong (may they rest in peace). But even with this knowledge, you still see new ecommerce sites popping up with little regard to ecommerce’s nuances and unique demands.

There is hope for companies that are interested in adding an online dimension to their businesses but do not have the ecommerce expertise in-house. Just take a look at Blueport Commerce’s solutions. We can help you with every facet of your retail strategy -- from online merchandising to email marketing and security considerations -- especially if you are working with the additional challenges of big-ticket, considered purchases.

Learn more about the advantages of partnering with Blueport Commerce to address your retail strategy needs today.

 

What is the big win in a consumer being able to find a product at local stores that has always been easy to find? Sure, it’s fun to be able to do a local inventory search right from your smartphone. It’s also a lot of fun to update your Twitter and Facebook accounts on-the-go as well.

But this StorefrontBacktalk article points out that the true value of local inventory search is really yet to come, and that most of what could be found is already findable via numerous search engines’ regular search platforms.

“If the consumer already knows the manufacturer’s name -- or a specific model and make -- the manufacturer’s site is generally quite helpful,” reads the piece. “Certainly if the store is already known, that store’s site can deliver those answers. The value -- and extreme value it is -- comes from an engine finding products that simply cannot be found otherwise.”

So if you're a retailer selling unique products or hard-to-find items, running the gamut from private-label furniture to antique radios, local inventory search won’t necessarily help consumers find you. And for the folks looking to buy your product, local inventory search will be that more frustrating.

When Local Inventory Search Works

Here's what does work: at Blueport Commerce, we’ve been providing our customers with fast, accurate local inventory search as part of our core localization strategy since 2001. In our case it works, as the search is specific to the customer's location and is tied right into the retailer's inventory systems. For the customer, and the retailer, that's a very big win indeed.

Learn more about our ecommerce solutions.
 

Beyond the hardware for your ecommerce site, you need to make some decisions about your ecommerce shopping software. Here are some things to keep in mind as you conduct your ecommerce software comparison.

There has been a flurry of open-source ecommerce shopping software options, but does that make them the right option for your business? While open-source options initially appear to be more cost-efficient, they are pretty barebones. Often a technical background and/or programming knowledge is needed for customizing the software to meet your business’s needs.

In contrast, hosted ecommerce shopping software often comes with a complete package that includes a number of options so you wouldn’t have to worry about them. These include technical support, security updates, hosting, automatic upgrades and more. So when choosing which software option is best for you, you should investigate the technical resources you have or are willing to bring on, as well as what you want your company to focus on.

For our customers, Blueport Commerce handles all the details of hardware and software hosting, upgrades and security. We worry about keeping your ecommerce shopping software up and running, so our retailers can stay tuned in to their key business.


 

If you are looking to add an ecommerce component to your business, you need to conduct an ecommerce software comparison. With so many ecommerce software providers out there, this may seem like a daunting task.

Mighty Merchant offers 13 techniques for evaluating which companies might be right for you and your unique business needs. Here is a quick look to help you get started with your ecommerce website software comparison:

1. Look at and use real websites powered by the ecommerce software you are considering.
2. Note the visual design of these sites, including whether they all use the same template or if there is customization.
3. Does adding items to cart require creating an account?
4. Check the sites’ Google PageRank.
5. Look for the sites using major search engines.
6. Evaluate which features come with the base package and which are add-ons.
7. Carefully examine what is included in the setup costs.
8. What merchandising tools are available?
9. What are the administration tools like?
10. How easy or hard is it to add additional pages and make site changes?
11. Is this solution hosted by the provider, or do you need to manage that?
12. Get references on the ecommerce website software provider.
13. Call the provider to gauge customer service and support.

At Blueport Commerce, we create ecommerce website software solutions that specifically meet the unique needs of big-ticket retailers. You can learn more about our solutions here.


 

Downtime is never good for a website, and for an online retailer it's seriously detrimental. Time is money, and your customers depend on being able to access your site whenever might be convenient for them.

And with the holidays approaching, the impact of downtime dramatically increases. One large warehouse retailer recently experienced three hours of downtime during a Labor Day sale.

So what can you do to prevent a disaster on one of your busiest days?

Talk to your hosted ecommerce software provider now. Do not wait until there is an issue to see how they respond. Your hosted ecommerce software provider should have a contingency plan should anything go wrong. Become familiar with how it would work, who you would need to contact and what the escalation process would be.

Blueport Commerce's hosted ecommerce software solution ensures uptime even during the busiest shopping seasons. We provide around-the-clock support, giving peace of mind to our retailers and their IT staff, and letting them focus on their sales, not damage control.



 

For example, a recent Huffington Post review of mydeco offers a phenomenal example. Using a highly visual format, shoppers can discover products through images of rooms, mood and idea boards, and 3D mockups.  Users can shop the room images or design their own 3D room to envision themselves living in the newly decorated space. All these tools are designed to help the consumer not just shop for furniture online, but get design ideas, feel inspired and most importantly – visualize how these items would look in their homes so that they want to purchase them through the ecommerce store. Let’s also not forget the fun factor -- rather than a daunting exercise, purchasing a sofa from this site is a fun, exciting, high-sensory experience.

Developing such a rich site experience may not be an immediate option for every big-ticket retailer.  But understanding the importance of feeding your customers' senses through rich imagery, elaborate product descriptions and innovative technology to make the shopping experience more immersive and exciting is something any retailer can take cues from.

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

• As the influence of the online retail channel on consumers continues to grow, retailers will need to shift spending to this channel -- or risk losing sales.
• Consumers' interactions with retailers will move beyond just the website to include mobile phones, iPads and other innovations. According to Walker, many of these innovations will be built on proprietary technology requiring that retailers "develop systems that can easily integrate and support these existingm -- and emerging -- customer experiences in order to compete and capitalize on changing customer expectations."
• Consistency of information, policies and fulfillment across channels will be a must for retailers as they expand their touchpoints with consumers

We’re thrilled to share with you the new site for RoomStore, a long-time customer and one of the largest furniture retailers in the country with more than $325 million a year in sales. We launched the first RoomStore site more than five years ago and, since then, we’ve continued to evaluate and make changes to the site on a regular basis. 

But with this major re-launch, we have leveraged our unique B2B e-commerce solutions to improve the online customer experience to drive cross-channel sales. Among the new features:

• Precision Localization: The site automatically adjusts based on a user’s location, dynamically providing inventory, pricing, promotions, delivery details and more create a seamless cross-channel shopping experience.
• Live Chat/Click-to-Call: Shoppers can now choose how they want to communicate with customer service representatives -- via online chat or phone. Dynamic icons reflect real-time availability of customer service reps including when they’re able to chat, connect via phone or request a call-back.
• Collaboration Bar: Social media and other enhancements are available via a single tool on product pages, giving customers the additional resources they need for big-ticket purchases, like sharing an item with a friend, live chat or printing a store-ready page.
• Shoppable Images: Interactive information tags are displayed on room settings, allowing shoppers to get information on the items in the room and add them directly to their shopping carts from the image. This feature allows customers to be as few clicks from purchasing the items they want as possible.

That is just a taste of what the new RoomStore.com offers. To learn about all of the innovative features, check out the press release.

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce