Email Marketing Essentials - download

Are you thinking about getting started with email marketing, but not sure where to begin? Download the free Email Marketing Essentials Handbook from VerticalResponse and learn how to:

• Grow Your Email Opt-In List
  
• Design Great Emails
  
• Craft Successful Message Content
  
• And much, much more!
  

VeriSign helps Yahoo! Shopping merchants maximize sales

VeriSign has just launched a new solution that helps both merchants and consumers get the most out of Yahoo! Shopping and shopping comparison sites like it... the VeriSign Verified Seal for Comparison Shopping.
Consumers turn to comparison shopping engines to help find the best deal. Even during tough economic times, the best deal is not always just the lowest price. Fundamentally, people do not make the decision to buy on price alone. Plus, one is often faced with search results that return a multitude of offers that look virtually the same. It is not always easy to make a choice.

Meanwhile, merchants need a better way to stand out and then maximize sales through shopping comparison engines. Even the biggest online retail brands can easily be lost in the crowd despite their name and the value they deliver. VeriSign and Yahoo! understand these issues and have deployed the VeriSign Verified Seal for Comparison Shopping as the answer.

Shoppers buy from merchants they trust

Shopping comparison sites are an excellent way for to people to find products at the best prices, but the experience is not always perfect. Have you ever tried to search for iPhone or Nintendo Wii or LCD TV? Even the best shopping comparison engines give you a bazillion results that all pretty much look the same. Plus, the ludicrously low priced listings of $149 for 52" Plasma TV usually fill the first results. Yep, "Bob's Shady TVs" and "AAAA+++ TVs" are probably not the safest places to spend your money.

Consumers already have ways they can determine if an online retailer is safe to buy from once they are on a merchant's website. The green bar that is show for a site using EV SSL and the VeriSign Secured Seal are the most well known. However, shoppers do not have a great way to gauge trust before they click through on a comparison shopping link. Until the VeriSign Verified Seal that is!

Did I mention retailers can get the seal FREE for 90 days?

Ecommerce sites promoting their products via shopping comparison engines face the flipside of this dilemma. They need a way to stand out from the crowd while reinforcing trust to drive sales. When shoppers arrive at a "compare" page on Yahoo! Shopping, they get a great visual cue that draws their attention to any online retailer with the VeriSign Verified Seal.

Certainly there are other methods to build your brand image, like huge TV and media campaigns, product placements on the Today Show, or have Tiger Woods be your celebrity spokesperson. Once you have spent the your vast, unlimited marketing budget on that, you have a better (but not ironclad certain) chance of having a consumer have warm fuzzies about buying something from you.

I've got a better idea. Yahoo! Shopping merchants normally pay just $14.99 per month for the VeriSign Verified Seal. If you sign up right now, you can display the seal for FREE for 90 Days. Hey, that means more Holiday sales for you!

For more info, check out the press release or the VeriSign Verified Seal webpage.

Sanal mağazaların sahtekarlığa karşı yapabilecekleri şeyler - İngilizce

Fraud - sahtekarlığa karşı önlemlere ilişkin güzel bir doküman
Reduce Fraud: Stop Fraudsters Before They Strike

Effective Project Management Interview Questions

Question 1: Describe a recent project where you were responsible for managing multiple people or teams. What were some of the key challenges and how did you handle those challenges?

This question demonstrates a result-oriented leadership behavior. Project managers need to demonstrate delivery and a desire to attain the end goal. Staffing project managers who simply point out problems but do not help resolve them will not drive the project to completion. Effective project managers demonstrate how they’ve managed a project, coordinated across multiple teams, overcame obstacles and delivered the project’s goals.

Question 2: Describe a time when you implemented a new idea without being asked or pursued a new opportunity that could improve the project or company.

Demonstrating courage and a willingness to take action without being asked is a key delivery characteristic of effective project managers. Project sponsors entrust the project’s goals, budget and their own reputations on their project managers. Project sponsors don’t have all the answers and need intelligent and motivated people to solve problems, identify new opportunities and take action without being prompted.

Question 3: Describe a scenario where you had to balance competing customer demands with project constraints. How did you ensure customer satisfaction while maintaining the goals of the project?

Maintaining a customer focused approach while ensuring the project deliverables are completed on time is a delicate balance. Business partners don’t understand all the technical details required to turn business processes into software solutions. They just want the system to work and accommodate their changing business needs. Effective project managers build rapport with their business partners, seek to understand the underlying needs and proactively address their concerns. It is a difficult balance as project managers commit to delivering the project scope while addressing a business customer’s changing requirements.

Question 4: Describe a time when you had to balance quality management with a challenged project schedule.

As projects execute and schedule variances occur, there is a tendency to shorten the quality testing cycle to maintain a project end date. In some projects, the end date can be extended, and in other projects the end date must be maintained. Effective project managers recognize the importance of quality management in the software development cycle and prioritize the test cases and test cycles that deliver the project’s critical functionality. These project managers successfully commit to a quality mindset and ensure defects are resolved or mitigated.

The project manager should also recognize the challenge of managing the triple constraint and maintain a commitment to quality. Recognizing delays in the schedule early will help project managers adjust testing schedules so the support team isn’t called in from a day off or a holiday.

Question 5: Describe a time when you had a difficult situation working with a vendor or another peer? What was your approach to resolve the issues while maintaining a positive relationship?

Without a cohesive team, a project manager can not be effective. Projects often depend on vendors and supplier team members to provide services. The nature of the client-vendor relationship emphasizes mutually beneficial goals. However, the vendor doesn’t always prioritize the client’s interests as heavily as their own. The ability to effectively develop teams across corporate borders is critical to project delivery. Clients will always try to maximize services at a minimal cost while vendors are motivated to increase costs for additional services.

In a challenged project with strained vendor relationships, it becomes even more important to focus on the critical issues to work together and deliver the end goal. The same skill is needed when working with other peers who are not necessarily motivated to help the project team. Strong relationships help solve problems and support project delivery. The best project management system, tools and techniques cannot replace the power effective relationships have across multiple teams.

From http://www.gantthead.com/article.cfm?ID=245817

Ecommerce Tracking Plugin

The MailChimp Ecommerce Tracking plugin is a new feature designed to help you measure the ROI of your email campaigns. By syncing our MailChimp API with your Ecommerce shopping cart solution, you can now track when people click from your email campaigns, visit your website, all the way to purchase. Even better, MailChimp then aggregates the information and displays it on your MailChimp campaign report!

The Ecommerce Tracking plugin is a free add-on that is available for installation from your account. We currently support Magento, Zen Cart, osCommerce and PrestaShop, or if you’re a developer, you can even create your own.

The plugin collects only the details of the order, and none of your customer’s private data. (If you want to check it out for yourself, you can download the appropriate plugin and take a look at the code or bribe your web geek to do it.) The details collected include:

• Order number
• Total amount
• Tax amount
• Shipping amount
• Product category
• Product id(s) and name(s)
• Quantity of each item
• Cost of each item

Once the add-on is installed (through your MailChimp account), we will automatically add some tags to links inside the campaigns you send. Then, those tags will be picked up by a plugin installed in your E-commerce store. The plugin will then track users who have followed the links in your campaign, and when a user completes a purchase, the plugin will quietly send the basic details of the order– products ordered, product categories, shipping, tax and order totals– back to us via an API call.

Ecommerce Implementation - A case study

Document Introduction

This document presents the analysis of an e-commerce implementation in the CanCric, a Canterbury based company that sells cricket products to sports stores around the UK. This document will aim to give a more inside picture of the e-commerce implementation the management has envisaged and will provide a basis for the feasibility analysis of the project.

Document Audience

This document has been prepared primarily for the senior management. However, as there are no current employees who have sufficient in-depth expertise to develop the application ‘in-house’, it is likely that a commercial service provider will be contracted for the job. This document will provide the basic understanding of “what to do” for the contractor.

Document Contents

This document contains analysis of the CanCric e-commerce implementation and following artefacts will be included in the overall report.

· Project Introduction

· Project Benefits

· System Requirements

· Implementation Plan

· Risk Assessment

· Conclusion

Project Introduction

CanCric is a Canterbury based company that sells cricket products to sports stores around the UK. Their products include crickets equipment (gloves, helmets, balls, bats, pads, shocks etc.) and memorabilia (flags, T-Shirts, prints etc.)

CanCric is a market leader because of its high quality products and listening to its customers. The company wants to further improve the quality of its products and create a stronger relationship with its customers by implementing an e-commerce system.

Project Benefits

The project will bring following envisaged benefits to the company:

1. The new website will provide a better marketing place for the company to capture much more business by publicizing their products on internet.

2. The company will be able to increase its profit by the increasing sales. Increase in sales is part and parcel with the e-commerce implementation.

3. The company will be able to expand the size of the market from regional to national or national to international. Currently the company is only selling its products within the UK.

4. The company will be able to decrease costs in different areas elicited below:

a. Costs of creating the product

b. Cost of Marketing since online marketing is cheaper than other print media

c. Costs of distribution in few cases, like providing online brochures will reduce cost of printing and shipping information to prospective clients

d. Costs of processing orders from the customers are the most important cost reduction the project will achieve. The online application will ease the repeating activities and information processing for the overall order processing.

e. The cost of handling customer phone calls will also be reduced by providing online discussion forums and suggestion boxes which most of the customers will willfully accept.

f. Online presence of information will decrease the manual handling of sales inquiries, thus reducing a lot of cost in terms of time and resources.

g. E-commerce project implementations can be enhanced to perform thousands of other operations to provide the user with very rich information. One is the inventory forecast. E-commerce systems can be enhanced to forecast the sales in the upcoming months by analyzing the past trends. This can greatly reduce the cost of extra inventory management.

5. Electronic content management services will be provided to reduce the cost of content retrieval and provide security and controlled access rights features.

6. Websites provide easy change management. The point here is that with a web site, you can have the prices listed, and change them - you simply edit the web page - whereas in a printed catalogue you are stuck with the expense of printing a new version if you need to change many of the prices.

7. Websites enables customization of products if CanCric ever want to support it.

8. The project will enable CanCric to build more collaborative and stronger relationships with its suppliers. This includes streamlining and automating the underlying business processes, enabling areas such as

a. Online procurement of material

b. Replenishment

c. Information Management

d. Reduced inventories due to efficient information exchange

e. Reduced delivery delays.

System Requirements

Given below are the requirements of the system, listed with respect to the modules in the system

Web Site

1. The website of the system should be very user friendly

2. The website should show the overall mission statement and vision of the company

3. The website should clearly give a complete catalogue of all products the company is manufacturing, along with the pictures of the product.

4. The website should also highlight the future plans of CanCric about the product expansions.

5. The search functionality should be provided on the website

6. The website search should be to display the closest results to the search strings

7. The search functionality should support input of multiple search criteria.

8. The functionality to display the whole site map of the website should be provided.

9. The website should also be maintaining the sponsored players’ information

10. The sponsored players’ information should be shown in the column form

Discussion Boards

11. The website should also have functionality of online discussion boards

12. The registered users should be able to participate in the discussions

13. Any visitor can see the discussions

14. The system should be able to maintain discussions in the form of tree and chronological order

15. User should be able to delete the post from discussion boards

16. User should not be able to edit the discussion posts

17. Administrator should be able to administer the discussion boards.

Online Order Processing

18. The website should allow users to maintain their user profiles.

19. The website should make sure that the user information will not be misused.

20. The website should provide the facility to the user to pre-enter the credit card information of the user for the future use by the user

21. The website should allow the user to maintain a shopping cart along with its profile

22. The user should be able to add cricket products in its shopping cart.

23. The user should be shown the overall cost of the current selection in the shopping cart

24. The user should be able to delete entries from the shopping cart

25. The user should be able to preview the shopping cart any time it want to

26. The user should be able to save the current shopping cart for future use

27. The facility to buy the items in the shopping cart should be provided with complete security measures.

28. The shopping cart should be empty after the transaction

29. The delivery options should be shown to the user.

30. The user should be given option to choose a courier company of its choice.

31. The user should be able to change the billing details any time during the whole procedure of online order processing.

32. The payment options available should include:

* Payment through personal credit card
* Payment through company credit card
* Payment through the monthly billing option

Research and development

33. The option to host a online survey should be provided

34. The data collected from surveys should be available for reporting and analysis purposes

35. Support to generate reports on given criteria should be provided in the system

36. Multiple types of reports should be available in the system

37. The sales data, the visit history on the websites and the survey results; all should be available for the analysis purposes.

38. For the analysis purposes, application should support technologies like data mining and data warehousing.

Implementation Plan

The iteration from current business to new computerized system will take following steps to be completed:

1. Training of resources who will be using the new application

2. Development of confidence for the new system among the CanCric employees

3. Web Hosting Plan


Web Hosting

E-Commerce Web hosting is adding an e-commerce application to a Web hosting package, which is what allows you to have a store on the Internet. To have a Web site or store on the Internet we will need a Web server. Unfortunately, owning a Web server can be very costly and requires technical expertise that CanCric lacks. So, we will have to outsource this management and hosting to some Web Hosting Company. Web hosting companies will provide the equipment and other technical resources.

I have identified these ecommerce packages and hosting plans as suitable for CanCric’s needs.

Hosting:

1. http://www.bluehost.com – This site offers 10 GB of storage and 250GB of transfer each month as well as SSL, PHP and MySQL, which are commonly required for a lot of ecommerce applications. It also has an excellent account administration system that incorporates management of databases and private server settings. The package also comes with free wiki and forum software that can be easily integrated. Bluehost is available from £30 per year.

2. http://www.newnet.co.uk – Newnet offers hosing packages from £57 per year and collocation from £150. Although our needs don’t require co-location yet, having the option to upgrade to co-location on the same premises will be an asset. The host offers scripting and SSL services necessary for ecommerce and a managed back up timetable to secure our businesses data.

3. http://www.ukip.co.uk – UKIP is a broadband provider that also offers hosting services. They offer the same hosting scripting services as Bluehost and Newnet, they also offer support for active server pages and java server pages which will allow us to consider a wider range of ecommerce applications.

Ecommerce:

1. http://www.actinic.co.uk – Actinic is one of the most popular systems currently available with over 10,000 users in 40 countries. Actinic can integrate with dreamweaver MX and has a range of features not just suitable to the ecommerce but also to many other facets of business management such as stock monitoring. Actinic Business is suitable for our level of development as cost £799 per license. Actinic is also capable of both B2B and B2C practises.

2. http://www.storefront.net – Storefront is an API that can be integrated into dreamweaver or front page or used independently. It provides mechanisms form displaying products and managing a shopping cart. It is designed to allow maximum creativity for the designer while still taking part of the technicalities such as shopping and paying.

Risk Assessment

There are also a few risks associated with the e-commerce system implementation at CanCric, which must be mitigated to make the project successful.

1. The hardware and network infrastructure should be sufficient to run and access the system

2. A level of confidence must be built within the company for the usage of the new system. The employees are expected to resist to such change in the organizations.

3. Customer fear of personal information being used wrongly. Such issues should be catered in the system.

4. Rules and regulations must be redefined according the new system.

5. Security and privacy must be handled carefully since the CanCric system involves online transaction support.

Conclusion

The e-commerce implementation will definitely provide CanCric an excellent opportunity to capture the international markets of cricket goods. However, there are few things we should take care of; first of all we must avoid over-expecting e-commerce lest we create a backlash when its promises are not fulfilled. E-commerce will not, in and of itself, correct all the businesses problems. Secondly, the benefits of e-commerce will be restricted if we do not recognize its full system implications, and instead implement it in limited ways that only partially meet its requirements.

Ecommerce Implementation - A case study

Güzel bir proje yönetimi blogu

cazh1: on Business, Information, and Technology

PrestaShop Free Open-Source e-Commerce Software for Web 2.0

Eğer Sanal Mağaza çacaksanız en iyi ope nsource çözümlerden birisi: PrestaShop Free Open-Source e-Commerce Software for Web 2.0

Wigix Storefronts Lets You Create Customized Shops - Mashable

Wigix Storefronts Lets You Create Customized Shops - Mashable:

Wigix is an online marketplace with an interesting business model - it doesn’t charge buyers or sellers for items listed under $25, and starts charging different fees above that, depending on the price. Today the service has a new feature out called Storefronts. It enables both buyers and sellers to create their own customized online shops with their own branding.

TEYDEB Proje Başvurularında E-imza Kullanılacak

Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu (TÜBİTAK) ile Teknoloji ve Yenilik Destek Programı Başkanlığı’na (TEYDEB) bundan böyle yalnızca İnternet üzerinden başvuru yapılabiliyor.

29.08.2008 - BTDünyası

1 Temmuz’da hayata geçirilen bu yeni uygulama, TÜBİTAK-TEYDEB’in destek programlarına proje önerisinde bulunmak isteyen kişilerin elektonik imza sahibi olmalarını zorunlu kılıyor.

Yeni uygulamaya göre;
• 1501 – Sanayi AR-GE Projeleri Destekleme Programı,
• 1507 – KOBİ AR-GE Başlangıç Destek Programı
• 1509 – Uluslararası Sanayi AR-GE Projeleri Destekleme Programı

kapsamında TÜBİTAK’a yapılacak proje öneri başvuruları yalnızca elektronik ortam aracılığı ile yapılabiliyor. Başvuru sahiplerinin kimlik doğrulama işlemlerini gerçekleştirebilmeleri için de e-imza sahibi olmaları gerekiyor. Yeni sistemle birlikte TÜBİTAK-TEYDEB destek programlarının değerlendirme ve izleme süreçlerinin iyileştirilmesi hedefleniyor.

Yeni sistem ayrıca, kurum ve firmalar arasındaki ıslak imza gerektirmeyen yazışmaların İnternet üzerinden yapılmasına, başvuruda bulunan kişilerin değerlendirme süreçlerini elektronik ortamdan izlemelerine, gerekli revizyon işlemlerinin kısa sürede gerçekleştirilmesine ve ilgili hakemlerin Proje Değerlendirme Formu’nu yine İnternet üzerinden doldurmalarına da imkân sağlıyor.

1 Temmuz 2008 tarihinden itibaren yukarıda belirtilen destek programlarına proje başvuruları sadece internet üzerinde http://eteydeb.tubitak.gov.tr adresinden TÜBİTAK'a sunulabilecektir. 30 Haziran 2008 tarihine kadar basılı olarak hazırlanan AGY100 formları da kabul edilecek olup, bu tarihten sonra TÜBİTAK’a gönderilen basılı proje başvuru dosyaları ilgili firmalara iade edilerek, elektronik ortamda yeni bir başvuru sunulması istenecektir.

Çevrimiçi başvuruların sayısal güvenliğini sağlamak için alınan diğer önlemlerin yanında isteyen firmaların kimlik doğrulama işlemlerinde "nitelikli elektronik sertifika" ve e-imza uygulaması kullanmaları mümkün olacaktır.

TÜBİTAK-TEYDEB destek programları değerlendirme ve izleme süreçlerinin iyileştirilmesi amacıyla elektronik ortama aktarılması ve 1 Temmuz 2008 tarihinde kullanıma açılacak sistemle aşağıdaki işlev ve iyileştirmeler sağlanacaktır:

1. Şubat 2008 itibariyle internet üzerinden başvurusu yapılabilen 1501 Sanayi Ar-Ge Projeleri Destek Programı ile birlikte 1507 KOBİ Ar-Ge Başlangıç Destek ve 1509 Uluslararası Sanayi Projeleri Destek Programlarına internet üzerinden elektronik başvuru yapılması,
2. TÜBİTAK ve firmalar arasında ıslak imza gerektirmeyen yazışmaların elektronik ortamda yapılması,
3. Firmalara, başvuru yaptıktan sonra değerlendirme sürecini internet üzerinden izleme imkanının sağlanması,
4. Değerlendirme sürecinde gerekli durumlarda istenen revizyon işlemlerinin internet üzerinden yapılması,
5. Basılı dosya ile proje başvuru kabulünün, 1508 Tekno girişim destek programı dışında tamamen durdurulması,
6. Projelere hakem atama süreçleri ve ilgili yazışmalarının elektronik ortamda yapılması,
7. Proje başvurularını değerlendiren Hakemlerin Proje Değerlendirme Formu'nu (AGY-200) elektronik ortamda doldurmalarının sağlanması.

Bu uygulamanın devamı olarak desteklenen projelerin izleme süreçlerin de (AGY300) elektronik ortama taşınması çalışmaları devam etmektedir. E-teydeb süreçleriyle ilgili duyurular ve bilgilendirme http://www.teydeb.tubitak.gov.tr adresinde yer alacaktır.

Copyright Law for Ecommerce Merchants

The Internet makes copying photographs, artwork, and words easy, since a relatively unsophisticated user can just browse the web saving or copying nearly anything that suits his fancy. As an e-business owner you’ll want to both protect your photographs and, conversely, ensure that your employees are not taking protected work of others. After all, a copyright violation could cost thousands of dollars in legal fees, time, forced subscription fees, and potential fines.

U.S. copyright protection extends to all forms of “expression” including software, written papers, charts, digital files, music, video, and presentations. This protection begins the moment a work is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression,” and copyrights are federally enforced. Generally, ideas, short phrases, facts, slogans, and useful articles are not copyright protected, but most everything else is.

The owner of a copyright protected work enjoys six exclusive rights:

1. The right to reproduce the work.
2. The right to prepare derivative works based on the original.
3. The right to distribute copies to the public.
4. The right to perform the work publicly.
5. The right to display the work publicly.
6. The rights to copy, publicly distribute, and prepare derivative works that are digital audio sound recordings.

The owner of the copyright protected material can control who copies the work, how much will be charged for copies, and whether or not to allow the public to use or make derivative works of the original.

Many e-business owners and their employees operate under the false belief that if they find something on the Internet, they have a right to use it for free. There is no distinction as to whether the website is a commercial or non-commercial website, the content on the website still enjoys copyright protection and permission may be needed to use the content.

Imagine an online toy store selling action figures. The store’s owner hires a professional photographer to take dozens of compelling product shots of the action figures, and then posts those images online. A competitor, who sells the same brand of action figures, see the photos, copies them, and uploads them to her site. This action is theft, and is punishable under copyright law.

Protect Your Site

Relatively inexpensive software is available that allows a copyright owner to search the Internet and see if his content is being used illegally by another website. Additionally, many websites put digital tags on their pictures which allow them to track the use of the image. And sometimes, just placing a copyright symbol and date on the work is enough.

The Penalties for Violating Copyright Law

The penalties for violating copyright law can be severe with the following civil infringement damages available:

1. Actual damages (the amount you would have to pay to license the material from the copyright owner).
2. Statutory damages of $750-$30,000 per work.
3. If the violation was willful—up to $150,000 per work.
4. At the court’s discretion, attorney fees.
5. Embarrassment.

What is Allowed Under the Law

It is permissible to copy a link to a website and email the link to someone without violating copyright law as you are not copying anything other than the Universal Resource Locator (“URL”). In some instances it may also be permissible to use portions or all of the copyright material under a doctrine called “fair use”. However, keep in mind that in order to utilize the defense of fair use you must first admit to using the copyright protected work and thus if your defense of fair use fails, your case is lost.

Fair use of a copyrighted work means that one can copy or post that work for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research. It should be noted that this list of purposes is not exclusive, but any fair use analysis will need to look at four factors. These are (1) the purpose and character of the use, (2) the type of work copied, (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion copied as compared to the original work, and (4) the effect of the copying on the market for the copyrighted work. These factors are all considered in any given case and no formula exists for weighing them.

Ultimately in close cases it can come down to a judgment call. In all cases where there is any degree of doubt, it is strongly recommended that you not engage in any copying and seek legal advice before doing so. It is better to purchase photographs or take your own than copying those images from the web. Some businesses may also sign contracts with various organizations which allow them to copy protected work or perhaps a manufacturer can grant permission to use their product images on an ecommerce site. In instances where a contract or agreement exits, terms should be followed exactly.

In today’s digital age, e-business owners or their employees may intentionally or unintentionally violate the copyright of another with more ease. This may leave the organization vicariously liable for the employee’s actions and cost a great deal of time and money.

How to Read Your Visitors Minds With 100% Accuracy

If I told you that you could perform 5 easy steps that would allow you to read the mind of your website visitors you would want to hear them wouldn’t you?

Well guess what. I have a secret that is right under your nose and enables you to do just that using Google Analytics.

Google added a new feature to Analytics in October of this year. It’s called Site Search and by default, it is turned off. But you can turn it on in just 5 easy steps and with it, start tracking each and every keyword search performed on your website. In essence, you will be able to read the mind of each visitor to your website with extraordinary accuracy.

The result provides valuable insight which can help drive your business forward.

From creating new products or product variations that fit demand to properly listing products you already offer. Tracking site search (the actual search terms they enter into the search form on your site) can provide you with that and more.

It’s one thing to know what search terms visitors use to find your site in the search engines. It’s another thing entirely to know what search terms they use once they have arrived.

Look at This Basic Example

Let’s say you sell widgets and your widgets are provided in Red and Blue. You get a lot of what you think is qualified traffic to your website, however, not many of them and up purchasing. After analyzing your statistics, including site search, you find that the visitors are qualified, however 70% of them are searching for Silver widgets — and you don’t offer those.

It might be a good idea to start offering Silver widgets based on this data alone. By adding Silver widgets, you could meet the demands of 70% of the visitors to your website and providing the rest of your website contains the proper elements to convert them, the result should be an increase in sales.

5 Easy Steps to Enable Google Analytics Site Search Tracking

Enabling Site Search is very easy and anyone with a search form on their website can benefit from its use.

Step 1. Login to your Google Analytics account

If you don’t have a Google Account already, click here to create one. If you already have an account, simply login.

Step 2. Edit your profile settings

On the Analytics Settings page, click on the “Edit” link to the right of the website that you want to add site search tracking to. (Found under the “settings” column.)

Step 3. Edit your profile information

For the Main Website Profile Information section, click on the “Edit” link to the upper right.

Step 4. Enable site search

Under the Site Search section, select the radio button next to the option that says “Do Track Site Search”.

Step 5. Add your query parameter

This is the only step that requires a little more intervention on your part. It requires you to know the variable that represents the search query string passed from your website search form.

Sounds complicated huh? Well, it’s actually not. Here’s how yo find it.

View your website in a browser window just like any other user would. Now, perform a search using your search form for any word you want. Maybe try “wubanub” as the term.

After the search has completed, look at the address bar of your browser and find the term “wubanub” in the address. The variable just before that term is the “parameter” you are looking for.

In the example shown below, the bold red term is considered the search string parameter. Forget about everything else before and after it.

http://www.yourwebsite.com/?categories_id=&keyword=wubanub&x=11&y=19

Now that you’ve got your search string parameter, you simply add your query parameter in the text box that shows, and click Save Changes to complete.

Web Hosting - A Guide for Beginners | Thaidoweb 2008

So you’re looking to learn about web hosting and what it has to offer or you may not know much about web hosting? There is no shame in not knowing this information. Everyone has to start at the beginning at some point. On that note, lets begin learning about web hosting.

First off, what is web hosting and how does it work?

Web hosting is the business practice of providing space and
bandwidth on a high-powered computer server that is connected to
the Internet at very high speeds. Hosting companies maintain
large networks of high-powered web server computers in a
physical location known as a data center. These computer servers
are connected to a very fast, and generally redundant, Internet
connection. The data centers have primary and backup power, a
fast connection to the Internet, and a security monitoring staff.

The web hosting companies provide a share of disk space and
available bandwidth to a customer for a monthly fee. Once the
customer is signed up, they can upload files to their personal
space on the web server and the information is then viewable to
anyone interested on the Internet. The monthly fee the web
hosting company charges is much less than what it would cost to
run a server out of your own home or data center. This is the
reason these companies exist. They take care of all the
hardware, software, and other technical needs for you.

Types of web hosting

There are many different types of web hosting offers, but the
main three are shared, reseller, and dedicated. Each type of
hosting is for a different purpose.

Shared Web Hosting

Shared web hosting is the most popular form of hosting. Shared
hosting is a portion of disk space and bandwidth provided to you
by the web hosting company on a high-powered server. There are
many other web sites hosted on this server, and the hosting
company is likely to have quite a few of these servers in a
large data center. The resources of the server are shared by as
many other websites as are allocated to that computer.

Shared web hosting is the best form of web hosting if you are
looking for a great price and don’t have more than a couple
thousand daily visitors to your site.

Reseller Web Hosting

Reseller web hosting is a popular, low-cost solution to starting
your own web hosting business. There are two types of reseller
hosting, private-label and a reseller of services.

The private-label is the best type of reseller plan because it
allows you to retain full control over your customer’s websites.
A private-label plan allows the reseller to keep the full
monthly payment of the web-hosting customer, but the reseller
must pay a monthly fee to the larger hosting company for the
reseller space. The more hosting accounts a private-label
reseller can sell, the higher the profit for them. Private-label
hosting allows you to host many more websites than if you were
using shared hosting for each. This is a great solution for
someone who has many sites they need to host in one location to
save money.

The reseller of services plans resell the regular web hosting
plans of a larger web hosting company, but you get a discounted
price for providing the customer and earn a monthly fee for as
long as they remain a customer. This plan does not allow control
over customer web sites and you only keep a portion of the
potentially monthly revenue.

Dedicated Web Hosting

Dedicated web hosting is the most powerful and cost effective
solution of hosting a busy web site without resorting to buying
your own equipment and paying hundreds of dollars per month for
a fast Internet connection. Dedicated hosting consists of single
server with no one else hosting on that computer. This allows
for the greatest of configuration options. Anyone who has a busy
website will find dedicated hosting is the necessary choice.

Web Hosting Considerations

Wondering about all the other information listed in web hosting
plans? In this section, I will explain the most important
considerations in choosing a good web host.

Price

The price of web hosting services is one of the most important.
There are many hosting companies out there with cheap hosting
packages, but they may be lacking in other areas. Don’t let the
price of a hosting package fool you. There are some hosting
companies out there who have great prices and the other features
are just as good. Price may be one of the most important
decisions of a web hosting plan, but there is much more to
consider in choosing a quality web host.

Disk Space / Storage Space

Disk space is the amount of physical storage space a web host
gives to you to store your web files. Hosting companies these
days have plans with disk space being measured mostly in terms
of gigabytes, but some are still offering plans in the megabytes
for storage space. Depending on your needs for file storage
space, you may need more or less. Generally the more disk space
offered, the better.

Bandwidth / Data Transfer

The amount of bandwidth available can make a big difference in
choosing a quality hosting plan. In general, the more bandwidth
a hosting company makes available to you, the better. This means
you can support more traffic to your web site as your business
grows. Be wary of web hosting companies that offer unlimited or
unmetered bandwidth. While many of these are legitimate offers,
there are some out there who are overselling their bandwidth in
hopes the average user won’t use much.

Customer Support

In any business, it is very important to provide exception
customer service. Web hosting is no exception to this. Many of
the hosting companies are available all day and night in case
you have a problem with your web site, but there are some who
are just available specific hours of the day. If your web site
goes down in the middle of the night when they′re not available,
this means lost revenue for a business. You should make sure the
web host you select is always available for support.

Money Back Guarantee

Most web hosting companies will provide a thirty-day money back
guarantee. Some will provide one even long, but be wary of the
ones who offer no money back guarantee. I would not purchase web
hosting services from a company who does not offer at least a 30
day money back guarantee, unless they have proven themselves to
be a leader in the industry and have an excellent reputation.

Operating System

An operating system is a piece of software that controls the
interaction between the computer user and the physical hardware
of the machine. A vast majority of all web sites on the Internet
run on the Linux operation system. Linux is generally much more
stable than Windows. Stability is critical in running a web
site. For this reason, I prefer to host my web sites on the
Linux operating system. Some sites have specific requirements
that only the Windows operating system can satisfy, but there
are always alternatives to those requirements.

Backup

A good web hosting company will have a regular schedule to
backup the data on all the web servers. The more often the data
is backed up, the better. At the very least, a web hosting
company should backup web site files daily.

Control Panel

The control panel is the point of contact the web site
administrator will have between the host server and their own
machine connected via the Internet. It is essential to have a
well organized and easy to use control panel interface. My
favorite control panel is cPanel, which is one of the leading
web hosting control panels out there today. Plesk is another
good one, and many companies will create their own control panel
for you to use. Most web hosting companies will provide a link
to a demo of the control panel they use with their hosting
plans. The control panel used is a matter of preference, but it
should be user friendly.

Email

Email is essential part of communication on the Internet. Most
web hosting companies out there will give you more email
addresses and more space to hold email messages than you will
ever need. What you need to watch out for is the companies that
have decided to be a little strict on their email accounts and
only offer a small number or a small amount of message space.

Uptime

Uptime is a term used to describe how often the average web site
hosted by a company is available online. No company should be
expected to provide an exact 100% uptime. This is impossible due
to things such as hardware, software, and power failures. A vast
majority of the companies are very good with uptime, and they
guarantee it. It is still a good idea to be conscious of the
uptimes posted by the company. If it is not at least 99.5%, it
is probably not worth hosting with that company.

Statistics

As a webmaster, it is nice to know how many visitors you’ve had,
where they came from, how long they stay on your site, and how
much bandwidth they′ve used. This information is collected by
the web server and is placed in a log file. A statistics
software package can read this data and provide meaningful
information to the webmaster. The information gathered from
these logs can be very valuable in improved services to the
viewers of the web site.

FTP

FTP stands for file transfer protocol. It is a way of quickly
uploading or downloading many files to and from a web server.
Most web hosting companies will allow their customers access to
their web hosting accounts via FTP. FTP is very useful and is a
great feature to have when paying for a web hosting account.

Scripting

Since the World Wide Web began, many scripting languages have
been created and have evolved into the dynamic and interactive
environment we enjoy today. A scripting language is a way of
adding functionality to a web site, whether it be to calculate
numbers or to load information from an external database.
Scripting languages have made electronic commerce possible. Some
of these languages include PHP, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion, VBscript,
Javascript, and Perl. I won’t go into the details of these in
this article for the sake of complexity. If you know how to use
these languages, you should know what to look for in a web
server for them.

Databases

A database is a place to store data that can be used in a large
variety of ways. Databases are used on the Internet for
applications such as shopping carts, message boards, and product
catalogues. The more databases the web hosting provider allows
you to create, the most applications you can deploy on your web
server. Databases are used by the more advanced web master, but
information is freely available online should you be interested.

Conclusions

Web hosting can be a very difficult decision with the many
thousands of hosting companies out there. It is critical to find
a plan that fits your needs and to have a good hosting company.
I hope this article was useful in making your decision about
which company to host with. Happy Hosting!

Choosing a Web Hosting Company

Web hosting is a big business on the internet nowadays…so big, in fact, that it can be difficult to choose from amongst the myriad of options.

How do you know you’re going to get reliable service and customer support at reasonable prices? And how do you compare what one company offers versus another?

A web hosting review site can help you sift through the multiple options by showing you the good, the bad and the ugly of web hosts. A good review site like http://www.hosting-review.com basically does the homework for you - you can compare prices and packages easily in one place, as well as read detailed information about various web hosts, as written by webmasters who have both user experience and customer feedback on the different hosting companies.

Still not sure what to do? Let’s go through some of the different criteria you should consider when evaluating the best web host for your needs:

Space & Bandwidth
Your needs for space and bandwidth will depend on how large and/or graphics-heavy your site is, as well as your expected volume of traffic. Most plans typically offer at least 50 MB. However, make sure that you are not going to get charged extra for features such as mail, system programs, and other elements of your web site as these may or may not be included in disk space limit provided. The same goes for bandwidth - 500 MB is typical for many average-sized sites, but you may need more or substantially less.

Price
How much does the hosting package cost? (remember, the lowest price is not necessarily the way to go here). Is payment monthly or annual? Is a contract required? Some hosting companies offer substantial discounts when you sign up for a multi-year contract. What price implications are there if you go over your bandwidth limit? Read the fine print!

Scalability
If you run out of space or use up all your bandwidth and need to upgrade to a more robust package, what are the implications? Are you able to upgrade packages easily if required?

Technical Support

What types of help are offered, what are support hours, and is support free? You’d be surprised - web hosts range from offering virtually no support all the way up to free phone, fax, email and chat support 24 hours, 7 days a week. Also, beware that some hosts charge for certain types of support. This is more info you’ll get from those hosting reviews.

Domain Registration

Does the web host supply domain registration services or must you register your domain yourself? How portable is your domain name? You will want to be able to take it with you if you ever change hosting providers.

Additional Services

What additional services are offered with your package? This can include free scripts, web traffic statistics tools, shopping carts, design help, and many other features and functions. Many of these can be very useful and are worth checking out. On the flip side, try not to pay for what you won’t use.

Speed &amp Uptime

Above all, you want a reliable site that does not bog down or go down. It is a nightmare to have visitors leave your site because it is not working or it is so slow that they lose interest. A good web host will have an uptime guarantee and will notify you of any scheduled downtime.

Email Addresses
Ensure that your chosen web host package gives you enough email addresses for your needs. Remember, too, that if you’re a one-man show, it can′t hurt to have multiple email addresses (eg. sales@mysite .com, customerservice@mysite .com, etc) - even if they all go to your inbox, you look like a bigger company, which can add to your credibility.

Choosing that hosting company can be time-consuming and complicated, so use hosting reviews to your advantage - after all, these are webmasters who have used different hosts themselves!

Hosting-Review.com is an independent source for finding the best web host to match your needs. Find out the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to web hosts. Our professional webmasters regularly review web hosting companies and their packages to help make your web hosting choice easy!

Electronic checks

This week we launched a new feature for users of our QuickBooks Merchant Service - the ability to process checks electronically! We’re really jazzed about this feature for a few reasons

1. Most small businesses we’ve talked to accept checks (even more so than credit cards) when invoicing
2. It’s important for a small business to get paid FAST. Waiting even days for a payment on an invoice to arrive can really hurt the bottom line.
3. Processing checks electronically will allow you to get paid instantly!

All Billing Manager users who sign up for QuickBooks Merchant Service will now get electronic check processing capability in addition to their existing credit card processing. For your customers, all they’ll have to do to pay you with a check electronically is enter their routing and account number along with their personal info. Take a look at the screenshot below:

What do you Recommend? A Guide to Ecommerce Cross-sells | Get Elastic

Cross-sells and up-sells are popular because they can increase average order size for a single customer. But can they be distracting and hurt conversion? Many online retailers avoid placing cross-sells or up-sells at sensitive buying stages such as the start of the checkout process. …

But let’s go back a bit: Tracking your visitors’ every move on your ecommerce site to understand what they liked, disliked, browsed to, selected, etc. (behavior tracking, personalization) can be considered to be either:

1. Really cool because visitors may feel they have their own personal shopper that will continue to recommend other items they may enjoy
2. Intrusive because every movement the visitor makes on the site is tracked and recorded
3. Annoying because the selling just won’t stop

Retail Examples of Cross-Sells and Up-Sells

Cross-sells and up-sells are used on the majority of ecommerce websites, and are rather successful. In the most primitive cases, an ecommerce store will manually set up cross-sells and up-sells via product catalog administration. In the more complex scenarios, ecommerce companies rely on recommendation software that monitors a customer’s activity on the site from what they are browsing, to what items they select to place inside their cart. Based on that activity the recommendation software suggests cross-sells and up-sells to the site visitor.

Below is a cross-sell on a product page of Lancome.com:

In this case, I was looking at the product page for eyeliner product. Lancome successfully recommended complimentary items.

When I added the eyeliner to my cart, again Lancome successfully displayed cross-sells recommendations under a title “Complete this Product with.”

Amazon.com bases cross-sells and up-sells on information they gather from the activity of other customers who purchased or viewed the same items being viewed or selected:

On the product page of a denim skirt I wanted to purchase, Amazon.com displayed the following recommendations:

After I placed the items in the cart: two types of recommendation displays appear:

1. Recommendations for items across our store…
2. Customers who bought items in your shopping cart also bought…

So when I place a denim skirt in my cart, I am presented with:

• 2 other non-denim skirts
• A whitepaper (which is really random)

Sometimes the recommendations are repeated, but the above screen shots display the standard Amazon response to cross-sells and up-sells.

Where is it most effective place to display cross-sells and up-sells?

Clearly, with every ecommerce company, there are variations to when and where to suggest recommendations for the user.

Common practices of placing cross-sells and up-sells:

• Product page
• Shopping cart view
• Initial stages of the checkout process
• After an order is placed

Many ecommerce companies in general feel that displaying product recommendations during the checkout process can increase cart abandonment rates and lower conversion significantly.

A deeper look at Shopping Cart Cross-Sells:

Studies show that visitors who enter their shopping cart and decide to continue shopping may not return 75% of the time. Offering customers cross-sells could potentially encourage customers to navigate away from the shopping cart to view the items, possibly to never return.

However, a study conducted by MyBuys.com based on the experience of 1,345 ecommerce shoppers indicates that the majority of consumers expect online merchants to make additional recommendations. Additionally, 77% of consumers have made additional purchases when encountered with personalized recommendations.

Let’s examine two e-tailers different approaches to shopping cart cross-sells:

When I was ready to complete my order at Victoria’s Secret, I was directed to my shopping bag, the first step in the checkout process. Victoria’s Secret offers an exclusive sale item pop-up right within my shopping cart. The Cotton Rib Henley Sale item was an attempt at a cross-sell:

I click on the “Buy Now” button on the pop-up, and I am re-directed to the Cotton Rib Henley Shirt Page:

I was navigated away from the shopping cart, and I simply can’t add the Cotton Rib Henley Sweater! I have to scroll down through the other cross-sells in order to add to cart and get back to the shopping cart (and be bombarded once more with additional pop-up cross-sells).

Lancome.com does it a bit differently. My shopping bag opens up alongside the product page and indicates that I can “Complete this Product with” a variety of different items. If my cursor scrolls on top of the recommended cross-sell products, a pink icon “Quick Shop” appears.

After clicking on the icon, I haven’t navigated away from the cart nor the product page, but another pop-up with the newly selected product appears.

Each approach is completely different; Victoria’s Secret directed me to their product page ultimately navigating me away from the checkout process. Lancome’s approach, although untraditional, kept me on the first page of the checkout process in the background and I actually completed the order.

What product selection should you recommend within the shopping cart?

a. Complimentary items: Ecommerce companies and recommendation specialists find that listing complimentary items is the most effective way to avoid raising cart abandonment rates and raise average order size. I was interested to see what type of cross-sell recommendations I would receive at an electronics ecommerce site such as BestBuy.com. Not surprisingly, a cross-sell to purchase their service plan pops up:

Best Buy could benefit from including an add to cart option immediately within this pop-up rather than forcing the user to click on the service plan details, get to another pop up page and add the item. I realize Best Buy’s struggle — there are details related to the service plan that must be addressed by the buyer before the actual purchase. When I clicked on the service plan cross-sell, I am presented with another pop-up that describes the service plan and asks me to select my state before I can add it to my cart:

They do not force the user to navigate away from the cart, which is a plus.

After seeing what ecommerce electronic stores do, I moved onto a very different category: pets. Petsmart.com offers complimentary items on the right side of the shopping cart.

By giving consumers complimentary recommendations you are helping them avoid going back out to the online store and locate these items. However, I am forced to navigate away from my cart being directed to the product page to view the selected item.

b. Mismatching items: Offering items that are unrelated to the shopping cart contents can be more challenging. After arriving on the Stacksandstacks website, I added “mini basting brushes” to my cart:

Stacks and Stacks offers unrelated cross-sells within my cart, such as a closet shoe rack, wall tie organizer, etc. The issue from the perspective of the buyer is that when a buyer visits a site with something in particular in mind (a list of what he/she wants to buy), cross-selling with unrelated items may not be an effective approach. MyBuys.com research found only 2% of visitors felt that product recommendations related to them.

If you decide to offer unrelated cross sells within the cart keep a few things in mind:

• Offering sale items is more lucrative and encouraging for the buyer to consider
• Offer items with “Free Shipping” option can also be an incentive to purchase
• In our tests, we noticed that instead of labeling the recommendations as “You May Also Like”, you can do a lot better by using the phrase “Customers who purchased your item also enjoyed.” The second phrase draws more attention the site visitor because you are combining common interests which appeals to the humanistic visitor. Of course there are no set rules, so test both labels and see what works better for your site.

I visited Headsets.com where I added the Plantronics noise-canceling wireless headset to my cart:

Headsets.com recommends a list of items that are mix between mismatches and items that are complementary. They also have the recommendations labeled as: “Customers Who Bought the Above Item Also Bought” which again is a helpful way of creating feelings of commonality and association.

c. Recently Viewed: Amazon sums it up best by offering on the right side of my shopping cart a clear display of all the items I browsed through during my shopping experience. Any reluctance that I may have had in selecting one of the recently viewed items might be rehashed, encouraging me to go back and explore the item once more. Amazon.com has always pushed the fold in ecommerce implementations and design:

Notice that the items are just listed without the images except the “featured item” at the bottom of the list.

d. Matching Items or hybrid: If I’ve recently viewed golf gloves and made a selection, offering me more golf gloves may not be effective since I just placed a pair in my cart.

Golfsmith.com offers a hybrid of choices. I had selected a pair of gloves, and the cross-sells included a different pair of gloves. There are also complementary items that may appeal to a golfer in general: golf balls and a pack of tees. Usually, adding an item such as golf-gloves is because of a need that I have for them, so offering me more gloves may not be useful.

One of the biggest fears of displaying items in the shopping cart is losing the customer to a growing statistic of cart abandonment. However, if you are able to increase average order size by understand what appeals to your site visitor through optimization and testing, cross-selling is a great way to accomplish that.

YouTube teams with iTunes, Amazon to offer e-commerce feature | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

That’s why you’ve seen the launches of music streaming services within MySpace and Google’s AdSense program extended into Web-based video games. Now, YouTube has partnered with Amazon and iTunes to to incorporate an e-commerce element into its video pages. The idea is that, with a click, you can buy and download anything from music, books, games and other products related to the content within the YouTube video directly from the YouTube platform.

The company said its eCommerce Platform will be rolled out on a larger scale over the coming months to allow a number of industries - music, film, TV and publishing - to identify a new channel for selling their content to consumers who are already engaged with it - without having to click away from it. For now, it’s only available in the U.S.

Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube not quite two years ago but the video site, while a popular destination and brand name, has not had a solid revenue model for monetizing that brand equity. Sure, there are some ads on the site itself, but a good chunk of YouTube’s traffic - and appeal - stems from the feature that allows users to embed YouTube videos into their own blogs and Web pages. In those instances, there are no ads.

The traffic and the eyeballs are already in place. If a user is tuning into music videos or movie clips on YouTube, there’s a fair chance that the user might actually like what he or she is hearing or seeing enough to make a purchase. They may not be inclined to go search for that song or DVD on iTunes or Amazon. But if it were right there in front of their face - just like the candy bars at the grocery store - suddenly, that translates into a quick sale.

Deloitte and Sterling Commerce Enter Strategic Alliance to Help Companies Transform Their Cross-Channel Selling and Fulfillment Processes - MarketWatch

COLUMBUS, OH and NEW YORK, NY, Oct 08, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Deloitte and Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc company, today announced a strategic alliance agreement. Under this alliance agreement, Sterling Commerce software solutions and Deloitte's advisory and implementation related services have been brought together in a market offering designed to help companies in their effort to improve their multichannel eCommerce selling and fulfillment processes.

"Virtually all retailers are in a race to improve the profitability of their ecommerce channel along with their traditional brick-and-mortar stores and, in some cases, their catalogue operations," said Dave Gully, principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP and Deloitte's Sterling Commerce alliance leader. "We also believe that retailers who are committed to growing multichannel capabilities could have the potential to realize better and more profitable customer relationships than those developing channels independently."

Working together, Deloitte and Sterling Commerce can offer retailers, direct-to-consumer manufacturers and other multichannel companies a combination of products and services to help them address specific business problems. Deloitte provides process, strategy and technology-related consulting capabilities, focused on key industries and has access to audit, tax and financial advisory services capabilities, as well.

Deloitte combines its industry experience, broad capabilities and deep alliances to help companies transform the way they do business around the commerce lifecycle with their customers, alliances and suppliers.

Sterling Commerce products include Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite and Sterling Commerce integration solutions for managed file transfer and business-to-business (B2B) connectivity and collaboration.

"Deloitte brings world-class capabilities and deep local experience, knowledge and skills to help clients in their efforts to succeed wherever they operate," said Joel Reed, senior vice president, Corporate Marketing and Strategic Alliances, at Sterling Commerce. "The synergies between Deloitte and Sterling Commerce build on a strong track record of success in helping companies through transformational processes."

First Data and CardinalCommerce team on alternative payments

First Data, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment services, and CardinalCommerce Corporation, the worldwide leading provider of payment brands, have joined forces to bring First Data merchants a complete eCommerce solution for authentication programs and alternative payment brands.

Through this agreement, First Data becomes the first payment processor with the ability to offer all major alternative payment brands to their 100,000+ eCommerce merchants. This solution provides one of the fastest, easiest technical integrations for merchants, backed up with 24/7/365 support from CardinalCommerce. In addition, First Data will offer payer authentication service that leverages online payment verification offered by both Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode programs.

"First Data is focused on developing robust and secure Software-as-a-Service payment solutions for our expanding online merchant community," said Souheil Badran, senior vice president and general manager, First Data eCommerce Solutions. "We're pleased to add the CardinalCommerce established solution to our scalable suite of services. Our goal is to offer a positive return on our merchants' investment while continually mitigating their fraud risk."

Now First Data merchants will have access to the most comprehensive online payment options available in the marketplace to increase sales and average order values, minimize fraud and the costs of order acceptance, and to help customers make eCommerce purchases with confidence. Through the First Data Global Gateway service, merchants will be able to receive the benefits of Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode, as well as PayPal, Google Checkout, and more.

"Cardinal is extremely excited to work with a company as distinguished in their field as First Data," said Mike Keresman, CEO, CardinalCommerce. "We're thrilled that the world's largest payment processor has confidence in our Cardinal Centinel technology and we look forward to assisting their aggressive growth strategies in the eCommerce sector."

EU proposes increased rights for Internet shoppers

EU proposes increased rights for Internet shoppers

(AP) -- The European Commission wants to give Internet shoppers more rights and better protection, in an effort to boost Internet shopping across the continent and provide consumers with more competitive prices."