Innovate Your Fashion!

Gone are the days when you prepared yourself with patience and cash to go out on a shopping spree. In today’s modern world, we have found much more convenient ways to fulfill our shopping needs, having the Internet technology to thank for that. The advent of this technology has led to an unbelievable growth of online shopping, a lot of people preferring to use the Internet for such purposes. The industry of e-shopping has developed to the extent that we can buy anything we like from the Internet, benefiting from the most incredible prices and additional discounts.

It is hard to say when did online shopping started to gain so much influence but today we certainly cannot do without it. With just one single click, you can browse through a wide variety of products, ranging from appliances, clothing, computers and jewelry. Apart from the diversity offered, there is one other interesting aspect brought on by the development of e-shopping, meaning the shopping engine. There you can check out all the categories, comparing all of your options and making sure that you took the right decision. One of the essential things of online shopping is to be aware of having purchased a product that speaks of high-quality and that also has an affordable price.

And if you are wondering what are the advantages of comparison shopping, then you should know that there are more than you can imagine. Ever since the first virtual shop opened its gates, consumers were dazzled with the variety of products and offers. They are not sure where to find the best products and also the best price. Comparison shopping has come as an important resource, helping consumers to take improved purchasing decisions and increased the popularity of online shopping even more. The online market is extremely competitive and customers need to know where to find the most affordable products, not to mention a reliable shopping engine. The need to be informed came with the appearance of online shopping and it must be fulfilled no matter the costs.

A shopping engine can grant access to products from diverse categories, along with their price and detailed descriptions. Comparison shopping has the main benefit of rewarding consumers with multiple choices, allowing them to examine the same product under different producers. They can check the product details, its accessibility and also the opinions of others who have purchased the exact same products. In general, they can make sure that the money they pay represents the value of the product bought.

Shopping has evolved a lot in the past few years, especially since the introduction of virtual shopping sites and the development of comparison shopping. We do not have to settle for the first and most obvious choice any more, having the possibility to search for the product we want and choose the most convenient one. A shopping engine can offer both the lowest price and the best value, allowing us to perform our daily shopping right from the comfort of our own homes, sitting in front of the computer and benefiting the most from this technology. Orders are placed quite easily and they are completely secure, the consumer benefiting sometimes from free shipping or really low shipping taxes. Is the Internet great or what?

The reason why online shopping has grown to this level is because we do not have time anymore to go around the stores and shop. We prefer to check all of our options sitting in front of the computer and use comparison shopping to compare both products and services. The Internet seems flooded with products and a shopping engine can certainly help us take better decisions. As a consumer, you do not have to search intensively for the products you want, as you are sure to find something you like quickly. The problem lies in finding the product at an affordable price and at the quality level you requested.

You may find a lot of great deals but you must not let yourself tricked by those that sound too good to be true. Always go for reliable and reputed shopping portals, allowing yourself to take pleasure in comparison shopping. Shopping is an essential activity for us as a human beings and it is even more fun when it is done on the Internet. No matter if you search for a brand new computer, the latest fashion in clothing and accessories or some really cool electronics for your home, you are bound to have a great experience when it comes to online shopping. Just go ahead and find a shopping engine to your liking!

As EVP at MerchantAdvantage, one of my responsibilities is to analyze multiple shopping cart technologies before integrating storefront data into our Channel Management system.

This is an essential process as it ensures that an online merchant’s data is compliant with our data transport system from which we easily distribute data into various marketing channels, such as shopping comparison sites, comparison shopping engines, marketplaces, such as Amazon, Shop.com and Underbid, and other unique marketing channels such as m-commerce sites, such as iSave.com, mPoria.com, mShopper.com, and review and coupon sites, such as PowerReviews.com and MyCoupons.com.

As I do this, I have established 3 points of analysis to make the process as reliable as possible. As technology changes, and new marketing outlets emerge, I think it is important for each merchant to look at their shopping cart infrastructure and analyze the ease of portability of their data into other systems in order to keep ongoing marketing integration “surprise-less”.

Merchants should perform this type of analysis in between the busy season; let’s say before or after March – ergo after the holiday season and before the summer rush. My suggestion is that a technical person should compile a list of questions to ask their shopping cart vendor, in order to ensure that the online merchant fully understands the “power” and “limitations” of their shopping cart technology and how it allows the online merchant to utilize many other software technologies to help the online merchant grow their business.

To begin, here are some definitions to consider – just so we understand each other.

Portability: A shopping cart’s capacity to integrate into a totally disparate system without losing product data impact.

Data Impact: The scale of impact that product data has functioning independently within an online merchant’s or marketed outside of an online merchant’s website. Product data contained within a an individual shopping cart, and website, may have “high impact” on marketing — as product descriptions, manufacturing names, pictures, pricing, and general marketing is robust and current.

However, if incorrectly formatted and mapped to an outside “software system”, the robust product data will have a “low impact” if it is taken out of its current shopping cart technology infrastructure and put on/within a marketing. In order to maintain product data’s “high impact” it is essential to ensure that the original data is mapped to correspond to the required elements of a marketing channel. This might include updating and creating: varied coding requirements, dropping/eliminating symbols, dropping/eliminating line breaks, adding varied prices and inventories levels, changing pictures and product names, and updating marketing descriptions.

An example of something that can cause “low impact” data on marketing channels is a shopping cart’s capacity to output a “new” product file on a scheduled basis, without encoding or symbols. This type of “new and daily export” yields usable data and not blank columns, or duplicate columns, in a data feed to marketing feed, that then will be rejected.

Marketing Outlet or Channel: A separate system used to market product data and drive sales into an online merchant’s site or on another site on behalf of the online merchant.

Marketplace: A marketing channel where the purchase is made outside of the cart and orders are fulfilled by the merchant. The order may be processed by the marketplace or the merchant, but the merchant is somewhat invisible during the view and ordering process. Examples would be Amazon.com, Shop.com, and Underbid.com.

CSE: Comparison Shopping Engine, a.k.a. Comparison Shopping site. This is a marketing channel where the goal is to drive a consumer back to your shopping cart to complete the purchase there. CSEs may charge the merchant a pay-per-click pay-per-lead or commission from all sales referred by the CSE to the online merchant, such as couparison shopping sites do.

Parent /Child Relationship, Options: Many products have options associate with the product before a final purchase is made, i.e., size, color, etc. This is especially true with clothing. These options show up on web pages and the website directs the consumer to select certain options related to a product before the consumer proceeds to checkout. This is great when the purchase happens on the merchant’s website, but how does an online merchant handle all of these options when exporting data to marketing channels and having to deal with a myriad of taxonomy and mapping issues as they relate to each marketing channel?

To answer this, the online merchant must assess:

1. the origination point of the data within their shopping cart technology

2. the options available to access the date therein

3. portability issues (i.e. ease of output and export)

…ultimately forcing the online merchant to analyze how the data is stored in its rawest form in the original database.

Just because a shopping cart technology can export data does not mean that that data is exported in the “form” that you need it exported. For instance, some shopping cart technologies export feature creates new line items for each option; some may create a field with every possible color/size possibility, while others do not.

Essentially shopping cart technologies, while trying to “play well with other,” simply do not and export features inherent in many shopping cart technologies are not designed to sync easily with the many requirements that are essential to working with marketing channels.

This lack of syncing of data is why we created MerchantAdvantage – to make the communication between systems seamless – and is the NUMBER ONE BREAKING POINT for online merchants to work with, and integrate with, systems and marketing channels out side of the their shopping cart technology.

So what should an online merchant be asking themselves to work effectively and efficiently with marketing channels and other systems out side of their shopping cart technology?

Remembering the definitions I outlined above, here are the questions I ask of online merchants about their shopping cart technology before transporting their data to ensure that we have the same “highest impact” data on/within marketing channels. I would be glad to do it with any online merchant, just give us a call at MerchantAdvantage, or you can do it on your own.

5 Questions to ask about your company data & company to see if your shopping cart is portable:

1. Where will this data be used to market? Marketplaces, CSEs, other marketing channels?

2. Is there a unique identifier for each product that stays the same all of the time?

a. Is that unique number for joined products (options) referenced in all joined products (i.e., do child products reference parent – see definition above)?

3. Are there Product URLs and Image URLs? And do they work?

4. Are there encoded characters, ASCII Characters, Line-breaks, or data anomalies?

5. Can any product data export process be automated?

a. Is the location to where exports are updated and pushed to always available on the internet

b. Is the location updated on a scheduled basis that parallels your shopping cart technology cart updates and changes?

5 Questions to ask to see if your portability is optimized:

1. Is each piece of necessary data stored in separate fields or columns, i.e., manufacturer, manufacturer part number, or availability, and not all clumped together in one general description.

Special Note: Some marketing channels require this data in different orders and formatting unique to their marketing channel.

2. Are the marketing descriptions sensible and concise, containing all important data at the front of the description (within first 100 characters)?

Special Note: descriptions can be indexed/searchable and are usually trimmed to the first set of 100 characters.

3. Is the “Cost Field” present in the export?

Special Note: Adjustments to the “Pricing” and “Marketing” fields may be made at any time of the product data dispersion process.

4. Do the unique identifiers match competitors’ unique identifiers?

Special Note: Consumers will and can see your items when viewing competitors’ products on CSEs.

5. Does my data meet all of the requirements of each requested marking channel that I am trying to get/feed to?

Special Note: Each marketing channel requires different types and formats of data delivery.

Okay, now what?

My suggestions:

1. after each question has been answered and each possible point-of-failure has been addressed then you can move onto the planning and process of into which marketing channels you want to work with and feed your product catalog data.

2. You have taken the most important step of data feed integration and marketing, namely understanding what your shopping cart technology allows you to do and not to do and, most important, understanding what you need to do to make sure that you create and market the “highest impact” data to your marketing channels.

3. Integration is ready to be achieved.

Good luck and if you would like to make your life a lot simpler, give us a shout at MerchantAdvantage, we would be glad to work with you, and start feeding and having fun with over 100 marketing channels, cost effectively, with the most uptime, least surprises and zero technician’s heart attacks!!

Happy Holidays!

– Chip Arndt

chip@eTaildTail.com

chip@merchantadvantage.com

Ever since Bill Gates unveiled his ASP technology (Active Server Pages) in the 90s, programmers and web developers have gone to great lengths to incorporate their web pages to streamline with this advanced technology. Of course, ASP is already a thing of the past, per say, as around 2002 the Microsoft Corporation unveiled their handy .Net Framework which offers unparallel and streamlined data efficiency never before seen. And with this amazing new addition to the already great Active Server Pages encoding comes the ASP.Net Shopping Cart, which is literally the technology of tomorrow, available today. The ASP.Net Shopping Cart is a more efficient, far more secure and much more affordable modern day version of the ASP shopping cart, only the ASP.Net Shopping Cart lauds the technology of being multi compatible between both browsers and servers, and most importantly different types of operating systems.

In enters the major credit cart batch processors who service the major credit card corporations and banks around the world. Considering the topic of security is always fresh in the minds of banking executives, many favor the newer, more secure and more data efficient ASP.Net Shopping Cart. This is for several good reasons. First and foremost, it packages the data in a more secure manner, offering a higher level of encryption and a faster rate of delivery to the main servers that process the batch date.

This equals less chance of the confidential data becoming compromised and allows for the credit card companies to easily process the data batches without having to worry about hackers stealing personal information from thousands of E-wallet purchases. As of just recently, the major credit card companies have issued a requirements list for all vendors who are planning on using the efficient ASP.Net Shopping Cart method for securing and processing payments, a strict code of compliance gauged to virtually eliminate identity theft in the age of tomorrow.

Visa’s Payment Application Best Practice assessment, or commonly referred to by industry insiders as the acronym, PABP, mandates that all online shopping carts must be an ASP.Net Shopping Cart, compliant to their high security standards by the end of the fiscal year 2008. For many older merchants who have been using the dated and aging ASP standard technology this means that an upgrade is definitely in order sometime within the next few short months. For those who refuse to comply with this mandated security update, they may have some harsh penalties to face.

Because data integrity is the main theme of credit card and online security companies as we head into the next calendar year, many are cracking down on the lazy practices of the past; practices that have allowed hackers repeatedly to compromise large portions of data and contribute to their growing losses and large portfolio write-offs each year due to online theft. And from the customers’ point of view, the more secure the better. With an ASP.Net Shopping Cart not only are merchants assuring the consumer that their personal data is secured during processing, but they are also protecting themselves from liability should that data become compromised.

As one can see, the ASP.Net Shopping Cart is not only here to stay, but it is clearly the most promising shopping cart of tomorrow, available today. Considering that no other shopping cart offers such inter-compatibility, online security or data transfer capability, it should be no wonder why the purveyor of such a great technology origins from the guy who created the most widely used operating system ever, Mr. Bill Gates.

Online technology has in a way exposed everything around the globe. Online shopping technology comes as a major breakthrough benefiting majority of the population through their online services. It has become the fashion of the day to buy products online marking it to be a status symbol.

Online shopping gives us great offers especially for some of the best brands and the stores available online. To buy on their popularity quotient they offer massive discounts and services with wide variety offering coupons as well. These coupons are also available in bulk especially during the festive seasons. These coupons are available only on the specified sites and further one can download them from the sites through a coupon code system. In most of the sites, they calculate the total cost after deducting the coupon discounted amount from the actual cost. These online discount coupons are meant to facilitate the shoppers to utilize the best of the advantages of shopping online. It is in record that one avails the commodity with the best lowest price available.

The effervescent growth in the internet users have also fueled the expectations of the people conquering the online shopping market. Since the inception of the internet millions of ordinary people have taken upto the internet technology reaping their best from the online shopping phenomenon. Financially, or not even in the wildest of imagination had anybody gasped that shopping would become so easy that is possible with just a click of the mouse. As per statistics worldwide, the owners of online shopping business proclaimed that they shared a profit of some 20 billion dollars in sales and inflated to the figure of 22 million dollars within a year. Online shopping also comes as a relief to those who are least bothered and interested and hardly have time in going out to shop.

Selling the information regarding products and the sites that sell the products in general are just doing the way they want to as their target is to sell their products. The best part of free online shopping is that one just needs to get out of the bed and get one’s favourite beverage and login to the online shopping site which really saves us from the hassle of bargains, crowds, traffic and offcourse the fuel consumption. Truly considering, it’s a boon relaxing on the bed while you shop.

span style=”font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”;”>Current economic recession has changed the shoppers’ behavior during the year (2008). Generally speaking, people prefer to buy inexpensive and simple products like the Wii and the Flip, over competing gadgets richer features
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Going some places we found that Nintendo has sold more than 30 million Wii game consoles since they were introduced two years ago. Best Buy promoted the Wii in its efforts to get holiday shoppers into buying instead of big-screen high-definition TVs. Similarly the games of the Microsoft Xbox 360 are outselling the more expensive Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3 combined by almost 2 to 1. The Flip camcorder is also simple, and two to three times cheaper than camcorders made by Sony or JVC. Pure Digital Technologies says it has sold more than 1.5 million Flips since it unveiled the product line in 2007.

This visible shift in consumer preference to the cheaper electronic devices could well be a reaction to the recession. It is not just the economics of a shopping-fatigued nation at work here. Consumers found the simple devices, which don’t need instruction manuals to set up and use, more appealing.

This shift in shoppers preferences could be mirrored anywhere. Remember, competition and the effects of price hick force sales down.

The one defense that seemed to work during the year was to offer a new product at the same price as the old one — but with more features. The laptops got better graphics, the hard drives spun faster, the cameras picked up more detail, the memory cards held more.

Current economic recession still going on, only time will tell how shoppers are going to fare in coming year.