Measure the performance of your eCommerce provider

During the globalization process, almost any software vendor outsourced the ordering process for his software products; thus, the electronic software distribution (or ESD) become a very tough niche for all companies which are providing this kind of services.

Outsourcing the entire ordering process will cut the operational costs bringing specific services such as multi-language, multi-currency, 24x7 support, etc. I will not dwell on outsourcing benefits here but on how to measure the performance of your e-commerce partner. In order words, what is the performance ratio of your ordering system and how to measure it?

A very basic method is to compare the number of visitor you have with the number of completed orders but this is a very primitive method.

A most suitable method is to create a script which will handle any redirect from your website (e.g.: mywebsite.com/buyredir.php?product=ABC&vendor=Avangate). At the end of the week the consolidated reports will show the number of redirected users vs number of completed orders.

Using such measuring system, you can see at any time how your ordering system performance is affected by the prices, website design or your e-commerce platform, helping you to take the best decisions for your business.

Notes:

• a "user" means an unique session redirected to the e-commerce provider
• in case that you are using more than one e-commerce provider, for the same session the shopper must be redirected to the same ordering system
  

Enjoy :)

P.S. Having more that one e-commerce provider can confuse your customers but we will talk about this in further discussions.

Order interface - layout control by using CSS

Two weeks ago, we released a new order interface with a fresh HTML code supporting CSS for each element. Thus, every Avangate vendor can control the look and feel of his order interface.


Some examples:

• Internet Caffe Software (by Antamedia) -Avangate default template
• PixExpose - commercial license (by Cream Software)
• ConvertXToDVD (by VSO Software)
  

How to use the new features?
Simply download the default CSS stylesheet, modify it and upload it into your Avangate Control Panel account :)

Related links

• Avangate eCommerce platform
  
• Learn CSS
• CSS Working Group Blog
  

Czech language for Avangate order interface

Avangate released the Czech language for order interface. Customers from Czech Republic are automatically detected and the interface will display the Czech language and Czech koruna as prices currency.

The feedback from shoppers has been very positive and the sales are going up.

My recommendation for all Avangate vendors is to update their templates for the order interface to support the Czech language; also, all multi-language descriptions must be extended to support the Czech language:

• product descriptions;
• electronic delivery instructions;
• interface templates;
• order additional fields;
• etc.

The final goal is to increase the orders from Czech Republic, of course :)

Google: Underscores are now word separators

According to Matt Cutts who spoke Saturday at WordCamp 2007, Google is treating (or will treat very soon) the underscore used in URLs as word separator. This is a great news and a new challenge for SEO professionals. Blog softwares such us TypePad or Movable Type are also affected because, by default, the underscores are used instead of hyphens.

Other presentation highlights:

• Google treats URLs with a query string the same as static URLs.
• The number of slashes in URL does not affect Google rankings.
• The file extension from URL won't affect the rankings

And a final tip: if you want to have your blog included in Google News, the first condition is to be a multiple user blog ;)

Quick guide: Instant Payment Notification

Avangate has a very "sexy" feature called IPN (Instant Payment Notification). For every approved order, the software vendor can receive to a specific URL an automated confirmation containing all order information (order details, products sold, customer data, etc).

What can you do by using IPN:

• add order information to internal database
• add license to an internal application
• create specific tasks (custom emails, specific alerts, etc)
• etc (read: "use your imagination")
  

Every time when a colleague of mine or a software vendor asks me if it's possible to implement a specific action when a order occurs, I am getting a smiling face and I am giving the same answer: "Of course, you can do everything you want by powering the IPN feature" :)

P.S. I am writing this post to send a quick link to all related feature questions.

Avangate promotes e-commerce services in USA

Avangate attended Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. The overall feeling is that the conference is a "place to be" for any software business company. The audience is from Microsoft integrators/developers area and the first objective for everyone is to make a good business.

Avangate made a star from the myAvangate platform (Reseller Management System) by promoting the most powerful sales concept these days: combining the online sales channel with classical distribution channels.


SIC 2007
Avangate had also a good presence at SIC 2007 (also by sponsoring the conference). The conference is also a "place to be" for every software business or service provider for this area.


In my opinion the conference is still in the beginning stage. The majority of the people are from the US but the international presence seems to grow from year to year.

The conference is a great opportunity to build new partnerships, to discover new business concepts and to promote your products or services of course.



Adriana had a very good presentation about "Web metrics". The audience learned how to "read" the business behind the numbers showed by any website tracking system, how to calculate and interpret the bounce rates and conversion rates, etc.

Affiliates - a questionable business

The affiliate concept seems to be a revolutionary way to expand your business but if we are looking at what is happening in the real world we will see that the market is full of useless affiliates.

Everyday we are receiving spam from affiliates that are waiting the sales to happen or we are landing on websites made by some affiliate that doesn't care if the products he is promoting will be sold or not. Why did they do that? Because it is free! It cost them nothing to get the affiliate statute. At this point starts your role to sort out who you are doing business with.

Looking to the software industry I can say that these affiliates are more than useless; they spoil the "free to try" concept by adding thousands of download portals that are not helping the users at all but confusing them.

Of course, we have hundreds and hundreds of affiliates that are doing a great job. They are 100% involved in promoting the products and supporting the potential customers; the sales are going very well and everybody is happy! Our duty is to improve the relationships with these real affiliates and to ignore the rest of them.

In my previous article about the affiliates business I spoke about how to improve your sales through the affiliates channel.

In conclusion, the affiliates business can be a very good sales channel if we are permanently paying attention to the business relationships and we are not happy just to have thousands of affiliates (but doing nothing for real for our business).

When did you contact the last time your affiliates?