Since we took on Interspire as our main shopping cart platform we have achieved many customizations.

Below is a list of some of the modifications which Interspire e-commerce doesn’t facilitate which we were able to master.

•    One page checkout (downloadable products/ membership and subscription)

Any situation where there’s no product which needs to be shipped – non tangible products.

Custom forms for check out which require specific information…ie: image upload, logo submission, in additional yoga classes/fee, gym memberships, rental products, resort rentals. Rental/booking sites collection, golf booking and dues.

No shipping functions or needed.

•    Mass capture (pre-authorized payments) -

Assign a payment gateway to a specific account. Ie: multiple vendor stores with multiple gateways.

•    Multiple gateway instances one cart

•    Payment processing leader pages

pick payment process/ options prior to cart.

•    Product specific gateway selection

Product can attach to different payment gateways: ie country, autoship, perpetual billing. “autoship”

•    Product specific shipping

Different shipping for different country’s…or different vendors.

•    Product bundles

select multiple products –add up and check out….ie: custom build gift baskets, wedding stationary kits, custom bulk…

•    Buy 2 get a free product (category specific) – custom rules.

•    Bulk purchase discounts category level/ Bulk purchase discounts on products variations.

•    Country specific products – assign product to country . limits view of user to only products in their selected country.

•    points discount system

•    Timed auctions.

•    Country specific gateways

•    full language conversion

•    Multi vendors

•    Affiliate system with split payments (payflow pro)

•    Rocketgate multi currency merchant (SSO)

•    Custom administration area for on-line shoppers (CRM, CMS).

•    Multi-step forced cart admin system

•    Contact extractor. – Evite center with csv upload

•    Booking Calendars. Ie: classes, services – with payment.

•    Vacation rental/booking engine

•    Product as classes for online booking of services

•    Price Club for private pricing . Specific price discounts on specific products.

•    Membership lockout. Private paid member

•    Free coupon code modification – URL coupon injection (affiliate)

•    Affiliate integration with affiliate pro.

•    Dealer network site setup

•    Gateway transaction management. Ie: auto decline, tracking…

If you have some questions about our services, please feel free to contact us.

Ray McDonald
888-992-2761 x 702
www.beapartof.com

We have completed Zencart shopping carts, Yahoo shopping carts, Joomla, Drupal and others. Can’t say we have been impressed with any of them. To be honest, not only from a developer point of view, but from our customers point of view, Interspire is the best out there. It’s made to sell and does just that.

Take a look at these features below.It’s amazing what they have to offer.

Interspire – Compare Licensed Editions

see more features here>>>
Compare the different editions for the licensed version of Interspire Shopping Cart below.If you have any questions about features, please contact us.

Call for pricing	Starter	Professional	Ultimate
General Features
60 Day Refund Guarantee
100% Open Source PHP Code
Easily Customize PHP Code
Private Label Capabilities
Number of Products	50 100	500 5,000	100,000 Unlimited
Number of Staff Logins	2	3	20
Sell in Multiple Currencies
Mobile Commerce
Checkout
Secure Checkout
Single Page Checkout
Custom Form Fields
Customer can search and browse order history
Real time customer order tracking
Guest/anonymous checkout option
Forced Registration Checkout
Quote Cart, i.e. Ordering disabled, prices replaced with “Call for Pricing”
Customer Registration
Customer Accounts
Agree to Terms During Checkout
One Click Re-Ordering
Sell Products With Delivery/Event Dates
Order Management
Set Min/Max Order Quantities
Accept Pre-Orders
Sync to Quickbooks
Order Messaging System
Export Orders (CSV/XML)
Global Store Tax Calculation
International Orders
Per Country/State Tax Rates
Order Notification Emails
Order Notifications via SMS
Order Notifications via Windows Live
Order Status Change Emails for Customers
Tracking Number for Orders
Limit Shipping to Certain Countries
Specify Order Handling Fees
Invoices & Packing Slips
Affiliate Conversion Tracking
Bulk Import Tracking Numbers
Supported Payment Methods
Over 50 payment providers supported
Selling/Comparison Integrations
List your products on eBay
Export to BizRate
Export to Shopzilla
Export to Beso
Export to NexTag
Export to PriceGrabber
Export to Shopping.com
Export to MySimon
Supported Shipping Methods
Australia Post
Canada Post
FedEx
Intershipper
UPS
USPS
Flat-Rate Per Country
Flat-Rate Per Order
Free Shipping
Fee Per Item
Ship by Weight
Ship by Order Total
Easy Integration With Other Shipping Methods Via Modules System
Returns Management (RMA)
Customers Can Submit Return Requests from Your Store
Customizable Return Instructions
Customizable Return Reasons
Customizable Return Actions
Advanced Returns Processing
Returns Notifications by Email for Store Owner
Returns Status Update Emails for Customers
Issue Store Credit for Returns
Inventory Control
Per-Product Inventory Levels
Per-Variation Inventory Levels
“Out of Stock” Messages
Low Stock Warning Emails
Easy Inventory Management
Product Management
Sell Physical & Downloadable Products
Photos Per Product	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bulk Product Editing
Product Variations
Files Per Downloadable Product	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Limit Access to Downloadable Products
Expiry Dates on Downloadable Products
Product Reviews
Product in Multiple Categories
Set Product’s Cost, Retail & Sale Prices
Automatic Thumnail Image Creation
Per-Product Free Shipping
Automatically/Manually Specify a List of Related Products
Per-Product Custom Fields
Specify Sort Order
Choose Different Product Layout Files (HTML)
Full SEO Customization
Hide Pricing Per-Product
Tabs on Product Pages
Customer Management
Advanced Customer Search
Customer Order History
Import Customers (CSV/XML)
Export Customers (CSV/XML)
Store Credits System
Customer Groups w/ Discounts & Access Permissions
Promotions & Marketing
Discount Rules
Banner Management
Integrates With Any Live Chat Software
30 Day Free Trial of LivePerson Express (Exclusive to Interspire customers)
Coupon Codes
Newsletter Subscriptions
Easy Interspire Email Marketer Integration
Easy Interspire Knowledge Manager Integration
Newsletter Subscribers Export (CSV)
Google Products Export
Fully Modular Addons System and Framework
Content Management System
Create Web Pages
Contact Form Creation
Syndicated Web Pages
News Management
Analytics Integration
Google Analytics
Easy Integration With Other Analytics Package Via Modules System
Statistics and Reporting
Store Overview
Top Customers
Best Selling Products
Customer Location (via Google Maps)
Orders by Revenue
Orders by Items Sold
Popular Products
Inventory Reporting
Customer Signups
Revenue Per Customer
Search Statistics
Search Keyword Performance
Search Term Corrections
In-Store Features
Sell Physical & Downloadable Products
Pictures for Products	5	5	5
Wish Lists
Quick Search Box
Order History
Active Order Tracking
Unlimited Billing & Shipping Addresses
Ship to Multiple Addresses
Recently Views Products List
Newsletter Subscriptions
Order Messaging System
Add Multiple Items to Cart at Once
Gift Certificates
Enable/Disable Functionality
Choose Which Gift Certificate Values You Sell
Custom Gift Certificate Values
Expiry Dates
Customizable Themes
Settings, Maintenance & Logging
Built-In Backup System
Remote FTP Backups
Automatic Backups (CRON)
Built-In System Log Files
Database Error Logging
Staff Action Logging
Per-Staff Permissions
Import from CSV
Custom Export Templates
Views (Saved Searches)
Order Views
Customer Views
Product Views
Gift Certificate Views
Return Request Views
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Friendly URLs
Site-Wide Meta Keywords
Site-Wide Meta Description
Category Page Titles
Category Meta Keywords
Category Meta Description
Product Page Titles
Product Meta Keywords
Product Meta Description
Brand Page Titles
Brand Meta Keywords
Brand Meta Description
Web Page Titles
Web Page Meta Keywords
Web Page Meta Description
XHTML/CSS Standards-Based Markup
Store Customization & Layout
Drag and Drop Page Design
100% Template Driven
CSS-Based Layouts
Download New Store Designs from Control Panel
Store Designs to Choose from	20+	20+	20+
Integrate an Existing Store Design Easily
Customize Included Store Designs
Browser-Based HTML & CSS Editor for Store Designs
Localization
Fully Translatable Store
Configure Currency Settings
Configure Number Formatting
Configure Date Formatting
Configure Weight Settings
Configure Measurement Settings
Other Features
Built-In Help Documentation
Inline Help Tips
Browser-Based Installation Wizard
Browser-Based Upgrade Wizard
Customize Email Messages
Built-In WYSIWYG Editor
Customer Address Verification
Get Started

Online storefronts for retail goods are popping up all over Facebook, with the social network fast becoming a virtual shopping mall. Today, BigCommerce, a company that provides ecommerce software to online retailers and merchants, is adding the ability to create a storefront on Facebook pages.

Called SocialShop, the application allows merchants to display products on a Facebook Page. Merchants just have to add the application to their page, enter their store URL and then choose which products they want to display on the page. The retail platform will show up in a “Shop Now” tab on the page, and allows visitors to share products with their friends Facebook users can then click on a product to learn more but in order to buy the product they will be taken away from Facebook to the merchants store (which is also powered by BigCommerce).

The one drawback to BigCommerce’s application is that the actual transaction needs to take place on the merchant’s BigCommerce website instead of within Facebook. But Mitchell Harper, CEO of BigCommerce, says that this can also draw more traffic to the merchant’s main storefront.

BigCommerce helps small businesses power anything and everything related to an online storefront from search to inventory to online payments to marketing and SEO. And the price for the software is affordable for small businesses, with basic plans starting at $25 per month. The company is currently powering online storefronts for 4000 businesses and faces competition from Yahoo Stores and eBay’s ProStores.

Originally posted at  http://andrewbleakley.com

The two biggest hosted shopping carts (or e-commerce platforms if you want to impress girls)  offer incredible feature’s, years of development and award winning customer service. This review will have to look at how each feature is implemented to split the difference.

Price

Both offer free trials. 14 days for Volusion and 15 days for BigCommerce.

Both start at $24.95 a month – Volusion hide the link in the footer which always concerns me. Neither charge transaction fee’s – take that Shopify

Setup Cost:

Big Commerce is $49.95 to Volusion‘s $49.00 – not worth mentioning except that some Volusion fan boy will cling to it and mess up my comments.

So what price difference’s are there ?

The basic (cheapest plan) at Volusion allows 25 products and 1 Gb or data – BigCommerce give you 100 products and 2 Gb data

On price BigCommerce trumps Volusion.

Look and Feel – Front End

If you have  a designer on board that is going to customize your shop or integrate it into your existing design – skip this section now. I am going to say some truly awful things about the templates in Volusion and if you aren’t going to use them you might as well save yourself the blushing.

READ MORE >>>

Found this article about our preferred shopping cart solution platform and just wanted to share.

BigCommerce Bring Transparency to Ecommerce

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That’s what the two co-founders of the shopping cart/ecommerce platform Interspire thought back in 2003. At the time, Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani ran separate software companies. “We were both building content management systems when we met and decided we’d get more done if we joined forces,” recalls Harper.

From the start, Interspire was an international operation. Harper and Machaalani are both based in Australia; Harper had created a software platform for one of Australia’s biggest online computer stores. Harper decided to do the work himself because, in his words, “all of the existing ecommerce software offerings were lacking features or were too hard to use. Eddie was freelancing at the time and was frustrated with off-the-shelf ecommerce software because of its complexity and cost, so that’s where the initial idea came from.”

The word “complexity” is key because, from the start, Harper and Machaalani wanted to create a service that merchants with no technical abilities could use easily. So it’s no surprise that ShoppingCartReviews.com uses the word “slick” repeatedly in its very positive review of the ultimate version of the Interspire Shopping Cart package. That’s exactly what the two former competitors were looking for. “It’s as easy to use as Gmail and doesn’t require a user manual,” says Harper.

read full article

Merchants can now use BigCommerce to sell on eBay and via mobile devices; new version of ecommerce platform also offers integrated social commerce, automated email marketing and many other ways for online merchants to increase site traffic and boost sales.

AUSTIN, Texas, July 30 /PRNewswire/ — BigCommerce, a leading provider of multi-channel ecommerce software for online merchants, today announced the latest release of its ecommerce platform that enables small and mid-sized merchants to sell and promote their products across multiple channels from one integrated platform. With BigCommerce 6.0, merchants can now sell on eBay and via many popular shopping comparison sites, as well as on mobile devices and Facebook® Platform. The new version of BigCommerce also offers advanced email marketing capabilities and allows merchants to easily integrate social commerce into their online stores, in addition to many other features that help merchants drive traffic, boost conversion rates and streamline store operations. BigCommerce provides these enterprise ecommerce features at a small-business price, with packages starting at just $24.95 per month.

“Our customers have told us that the hardest thing to do when it comes to selling online is attracting quality traffic to their ecommerce stores. With BigCommerce 6.0, we’ve integrated traffic-driving tools such as selling on eBay, Shopzilla, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber and Facebook so that our merchants can literally click a few buttons and get their products in front of tens of millions of potential customers,” said Mitchell Harper, co-founder and co-CEO of BigCommerce.

Major new sales and marketing features in BigCommerce 6.0 include:

* eBay Sales Integration: In a matter of minutes, BigCommerce customers can now get their products in front of the massive eBay buying community, while managing the entire process from a single platform. Using BigCommerce, merchants can make their products available for auction or sale on eBay with just a few clicks; when a product is auctioned or sold on eBay, a new order is automatically created in the customer’s BigCommerce store. Customers can process both eBay and regular orders directly from their BigCommerce control panel.
* Social Commerce: In addition to promoting their products to the more than 400 million consumers on Facebook, BigCommerce merchants can now also make their own sites more social by adding “like” buttons for every product in their store and taking advantage of BigCommerce’s integration with Facebook’s open graph personalization profiles. Merchants are now also able to integrate the popular IntenseDebate and Disqus commenting systems into their sites with just a few clicks, enabling site visitors to use their existing social media profiles to login, post and share their product reviews and comments with friends.
* Mobile Commerce: BigCommerce now offers customizable mobile store templates that make it easy to attract new customers looking to buy products on the go. With an iPad-specific mobile store as well as a webkit-based mobile design that looks great on iPhone, Palm Pre and Android devices, BigCommerce enables any store owner to sell products via many of today’s most popular mobile devices.
* Shopping Comparison Integration: BigCommerce merchants can now list their products on shopping comparison sites such as Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, Shopzilla, MySimon, Beso, Bizrate and more. With an affordable pay-per-click model, these sites offer merchants a powerful way to drive thousands of extremely targeted visitors to their online stores.
* Automated Email Marketing: BigCommerce’s new “SmartList” technology allows online merchants to develop and manage a robust email marketing program with little time or effort. For example, merchants can now automate their email list development by creating rules that define how newsletter subscribers and customers are added to their email lists in MailChimp. This means that someone who just purchased an Apple product can be automatically added to an “Apple Customers” list and at the same time removed from the “Non-Customers” list. Merchants can also set up auto-responders and automated promotions in MailChimp to follow up with customers and share a coupon code after their purchase.

In addition to these sales and marketing features, BigCommerce 6.0 also offers new capabilities that streamline the process of operating and managing an ecommerce business:

* Clickstream analytics: New “Customers who viewed this product also viewed…” feature allows merchants to look at the way their site visitors interact with and search for products to increase conversion rates and keep shoppers in their online store longer.
* Integration with Shipworks: Three-click integration with Shipworks allows customers to manage their UPS, USPS and FedEx shipping labels, rates, quotes and packages quickly and easily.
* Pre-order functionality: Accept pre-orders for products and easily find and ship orders containing those items when the products are released.
* Advanced tax rate calculations: Create multiple tax rates which can be “stacked”, a key requirement for companies selling internationally and even dealing with local state and county taxes.
* Minimum/maximum order quantity: Merchants can now set a minimum or maximum order quantity required to purchase each product.
* Picnik.com integration: Edit product photos directly from the BigCommerce control panel using Picnik.com, the world’s most popular web-based image editing software.

“Like salesforce.com did for CRM, BigCommerce is innovating at a pace which other ecommerce platforms simply cannot match. We built useful, innovative features that would typically only be found in seven-figure enterprise offerings like GSI Commerce. These features help our merchants make more money and compete head-on with the Goliaths in their respective industries,” added Harper.

Enterprise Features at a Small Business Price

With packages starting at just $24.95 per month, BigCommerce 6.0 gives tomorrow’s ecommerce leaders an integrated set of advanced capabilities that allow them to quickly and affordably grow their business online.

“The old days of paying more for enterprise features are dead. The Internet, and especially SaaS, has leveled the playing field, and we want all BigCommerce merchants to have access to enterprise-level features that make them more successful, regardless of their industry, budget or experience,” said Eddie Machaalani, co-founder and co-CEO of BigCommerce.

ABOUT BIGCOMMERCE

BigCommerce is the fastest-growing ecommerce software platform in the world. A unique combination of enterprise-level features — including multi-channel retailing, automated email marketing and inventory control — and unmatched ease-of-use make BigCommerce the preferred ecommerce platform for both new and established businesses looking to outsell their competitors, reach their financial goals faster and automate as many business processes as possible. BigCommerce has been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, Practical Ecommerce and Internet Retailer. For more information or to try BigCommerce for free, go to http://www.bigcommerce.com.

SOURCE BigCommerce

BigCommerce’s Mitch Harper is interviewed by Forbes Magazine’s Jim Blasingame

Mitch and Jim discuss how every small business can have an e-commerce website.

“Mitchell Harper and Jim Blasingame to talk about the importance of having an e-commerce component on your website and why it’s easier to do now than ever before.”
see more BigCommerce in the news.

Click the images below to listen to their discussion

Jim Blasingame

As we’re very grateful for the business we’ve gained through Interspire’s hosted platform BigCommerce, we’re always on the lookout for new and great things they’re doing in the industry. Just so happens that they have made www.Inc.com’s 44th fastest growing company.

Considering Interspire started BigCommerce in August 2009 and has had a growth of 5,000%, there has to be something said for their Hosted e-commerce platform.

Read the report>>>

At times we receive inquires for an e-commerce design with BigCommerce. While doing our fact finding to assess the customer needs it’s revealed that many – most really – are under the impression that a template yields sales. Also it’s as if they’re making the design decision of “if you build it they will come”. Well, to be candid, you have to be crazy to think this.

I would think that the only exception to this lofty assumption is that you already have traffic from a brick and mortar store or Google ad words or some sort of external traffic. However, even though you may have traffic, your UX design (user experience design) will increase conversion of sales. After all, the nicer your design, the easier it is to use, the more thought you have put in to the design and ultimately what you would like your customer to do, the more sales you will make.

Elements one needs to consider when designing a e-commerce business strategy.

1. Do you have a call to action, do you know what a call to action is?
2. What’s your unique selling proposition – experience is irrelevant – and how are you different that your competitors?
3. How do you justify a return on investment?
4. How do you stay in a customers head?
5. How do you keep them coming back?
6. What’s in it for the user.
All this can be achieved with a proper assessment of your target market and initiating a development wireframe to initiate a UX.

Well, here it is, the break down of what you HAVE to do when you developing a successful UX shopping cart design.

So now we ask, what is a UX design? curtsy of http://uxdesign.com

User Experience Design (UXD, UED), Interaction Design (IxD), User Interface (UI) Design and other web/application design professionals use the term User Experience Design to refer to the judicious application of certain user-centered design practices, a highly contextual design mentality, and use of certain methods and techniques that are applied through process management to produce cohesive, predictable, and desirable effects in a specific person, or persona (archetype comprised of target audience habits and characteristics). All so that the affects produced meet the user’s own goals and measures of success and enjoyment, as well as the objectives of the providing organization.

User Experience Design (UXD, UED), Interaction Design (IxD), User Interface (UI) Design and other web/application design professionals use the term User Experience Design to refer to the judicious application of certain user-centered design practices, a highly contextual design mentality, and use of certain methods and techniques that are applied through process management to produce cohesive, predictable, and desirable effects in a specific person, or persona (archetype comprised of target audience habits and characteristics). All so that the affects produced meet the user’s own goals and measures of success and enjoyment, as well as the objectives of the providing organization.

This is not the only definition of User Experience Design. The term was coined by Don Norman while he was Vice President of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple. In his own words: “I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow. I wanted to cover all aspects of the person’s experience with the system including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual. Since then the term has spread widely, so much so that it is starting to lose it’s meaning… user experience, human centered design, usability; all those things, even affordances. They just sort of entered the vocabulary and no longer have any special meaning. People use them often without having any idea why, what the word means, its origin, history, or what it’s about.” 1

read more >>>

Well…It seems Mitch certainly comes out with some gems of information which is certainly valuable when developing your on-line store.

Profiling your prospective customer is really if one of the many tools you’ll need to measure your conversion of visitors into sales. Really though, it’s in the top 5 of important understandings to on-line marketing. The benefits of customer profiling allows you to really dial in your sales strategies and cart layout and focus more on the quality of sales vs. visitors. For example: say on an average day you sell 10 of one single product based on 100 unique visits. Ideally if you are able to capture the metrics of those who buy that product (they could all be different in their reason for buying, new customers, gift purchases, repeat customers etc…) you can now govern your website, newsletter, blog, facebook and twitter account to cater to more of that one product and customer type and intelligently know why they bought. I know this sounds very brief, but once you get going into measuring your conversations while maximizing profiling you’ll certainly see a much bigger picture.

That said, here’s Mitch’s video…….after watching Mitch’s video, please feel free to give us a call to discuss other main key components to creating a successful on-line store. here’ out BigCommerce Partner page to learn more about How Be A Part Of’s