Another great article about Elastic Path customer ElectricShopping came out today (November 28th, 2006).

This one by Steve Rowen for Retail Systems Alert/Top of The Net entitled provides a narrative history of the challenges faced by a pureplay retailer while growing a successful online store.

Specifically, the article discusses the efficiencies created by improving the order fulfillment process which, in turn, builds customer brand loyalty. The full article “Electricshopping.com Upgrades E-commerce Infrastructure” requires a subscription and password but, … here are a few snippets beginning with the set-up:

After overcoming several challenges with their e-commerce platform, a growing London-based internet retailer is on the path to success.

Electricshopping.com is an internet retailer selling home appliances and merchandise. Since its debut in 2001, the company has built its business by offering low prices and free shipping on all of its electric merchandise to UK-based customers.

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AJAXWorld News Desk Nov. 28th article catches readers up on recent Elastic Path news and achievements including noted consultant Gord Janzen (heard on Get Elastic podcast #8) joining Elastic Path fulltime as Chief Operating Officer as well as chronicling some recent accomplishments this past year at EP.

Check out the whole article “AJAX Pioneer Elastic Path Expands Executive Team; Announces 60% Fiscal Revenue Growth” - here’s a snippet to get you started:

Elastic Path Software, a pioneer of flexible ecommerce software, has announced a record close to the fiscal year, marked by strong revenue growth, new customer acquisition and technology innovation. Additionally, the company has expanded its executive team and appointed IT industry luminary Gordon Janzen as chief operating officer to oversee company operations to meet growing customer demand.

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Intelligent Enterprise - part of the TechWeb Business Technology Network - published a great article (dated Dec. 1, 2006) about a major conundrum faced by online retailers: How to balance the immediate results of a Pay Per Click search strategy with the long-term viability of cultivating high “organic” search rankings?

The article “Three Ways to Drive Traffic from Search Engines,” written by Penny Crosman, frames the challenge and then EP’s VP Marketing, Jason Billingsley lays down some easy and proven strategies point companies towards the path to profitability by dominating organic search results.

How do you make your Web site “organically” pop up in the first five results of a potential customer’s Web search? Elastic Path Software’s Jason Billingsley offers three suggestions for improving a site’s organic search results.

Ten times as much money is spent on paid ads on search services like Google as is invested in search engine optimization, yet both methods convert browsers to buyers at approximately the same rate, according to Jason Billingsley, vice president of e-commerce technology vendor Elastic Path Software. What’s more, he adds, free listings are clicked on up to 200 percent more often than paid ads.

After that intriguing introduction, you are probably wondering what the three tips are, right? Well you *should* really read the entire article for tips on driving traffic with search rankings but, in brief:

1. Search-engine-optimize your press releases - {Note: the folks at PRWeb do a great job of this as discussed in Press Releases are fun with PRWeb post}

2. Use Froogle - free product inclusion into Google’s comparison shopping engine to boost your “Google Juice”

3. Blog or otherwise contribute to community sites - Ergo: “Writing rich content for syndication to sites pertaining to your field delivers traffic and increases search-engine optimization,” Billingsley says.

The article continues on with real world feedback from “I Want One of Those” (yes, they are an Elastic Path ecommerce software customer and were featured in a Vidcast with CEO Harry Chemko). Anyhow, IWOOT.com’s Sagar Vadher breaks down the search engine scenario.

U.K.-based gift and gadget retailer I Want One of Those turned to search-engine optimization to get its site noticed. “Our previous Web site architecture had search-unfriendly URLs,” explains Sagar Vadher, the company’s head of IT. “The way that Google works, we would rank low.” Although every page on the site contained product information and keywords, the page URLs contained no keywords or product names. Instead they were “really horrible” alphanumeric strings containing unrecognizable product ID numbers. After using Elastic Path software to help rewrite the URLs, each page URL contains a category name and product name. “Having those terms right in the URL makes it simple for Google to find,” Vadher says.

This is a brief introduction to my new blog… Add to Cart. Previously, I had contributed in an ad hoc fashion to our company blog Get Elastic, but we have recently added multi-person blogging capabilities. What does this mean? Simply, more specialized content focused on online retail, conversion techniques, ecommerce best practices, etailing industry trends, search engine marketing, etc.

The beauty of having this new blogging platform is Elastic Path employees will now be able to communicate their vast knowledge to the world easily. Our PD department will likely be getting technical with their posts, sales will talk about general industry buzz (ear to the street), marketing/product management to discuss specific ecommerce issues, and of course we will also keep a line on general company happenings.

So, stay tuned by visiting often and subscribe to the feeds most relevant to you. We will be adding bloggers in the coming weeks.

BToB Online published an article today (Nov. 13, 2006) by Richard Karpinski called, “What exactly is Web 2.0?” The articles’ aim is to educate business on the bevy of “rich” web apps and maturing technology paradigms available to enhance user experience and create efficiencies for business.

Starting with an overview, Karpinski sets the landscape by saying,

For starters, Web 2.0 is clearly about a more interactive Web that looks and feels more like an application than a static Web page or Web site. At the heart of this is the concept of AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML-a combination of long-standing Web technologies that, when joined, yields something different than a series of point-and-click Web pages. The classic example is Google Maps, where users can manipulate graphical maps in real time, zooming in and out and pinging the app for landmarks, directions and more.

The article talks to a number industry of sources including Jason Billingsley here at Elastic Path who says:

“The technology is not new, it’s just been recently re-named,” said Jason Billingsley, VP-marketing at e-commerce vendor Elastic Path. “Once people acquire the skills to do it, they can roll out applications that are much richer experiences for users.”

In discussing the Elastic Path One Page checkout tool, Karpinski writes,

In November, Elastic Path introduced a new component of its e-commerce application that uses AJAX to let users go through an entire shopping cart check-out experience on a single interactive screen. The application does real-time ZIP code look-ups, allows users to edit their shopping carts, validates form errors and tallies final prices, shipping costs and taxes-all without a trip back to the server.

To which Jason adds,

“It really eliminates the wait-and-see process at check-out,” Billingsley said. “It has the potential to reduce shopping cart abandonment rather significantly.”

The article continues with discussion about user experience, community building and user involvement, remix culture, vulnerabilities and risks. He wraps up with an example of “web 2.0″ tools in a business to business context citing an example of a major car manufacturer introducing a blog component to interact with dealers.

Apparel Magazine’s article “Elastic Path Offers e-Tail Solutions” fills their readers in on Elastic Path’s offerings to clothing retailers and Jason Billingsley offers observations on growth and defines EP’s target market:

“The company, which is based in Vancouver , British Columbia, told Apparel it is focused on helping clients set up very user-friendly product searches and check-out functions for their online stores.

Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing, said Elastic Path has a base of apparel clients and sees an opportunity to ramp up its apparel clientele.

The company’s target client is a mid-market retailer, which it defines as a business that has between $5 million and $75 million in online sales. Elastic Path estimates that this would be a retailer with about $30 million to $500 million in overall sales. Any mall-based retailer is a good target customer for Elastic Path,” Billingsley said.

Customer specific e-mail marketing is the topic with the enthusiastic Ephraim Diament, Sales Director for Bluestreak, who chats with host DaveO about campaigns and scenarios which can increase revenue and conversions for savvy companies.

Additionally, they discuss the importance of A/B testing, the joys of simplicity, vendor cooperation, open APIs, company stability and good questions to ask e-mail marketers.

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[photo of Bluestreak massage booth at
eTail midmarket by DaveO]

I came across Alex Fletcher’s candid comments about Elastic Path and cannot resist mentioning it since Alex really has a handle on what Elastic Path does and clearly understands the “hows and whys” of using Open Source components to make a proprietary product.

Alex is an analyst for Entiva Group and points out right off the start that Elastic Path are not clients. He writes his personal/professional thoughts at Open Source Unleashed (self-described as “rambling”) including a description of his meeting with Elastic Path in September.

Not only is Alex dead accurate, he is also very polite and complimentary enough to make us stand up and holler “Right on!”

Here are a few snippets:

Elastic Path has emerged as a prime example of how open source is changing not only the dynamics of software production and distribution [see: the emergence of pure open source software companies in the marketplace] but also how proprietary companies compete and differentiate themselves.

The company itself is not open source, but remains refreshingly candid about expressing how open source powers the heart of what is a compelling product. After reading about the company and their product I was immediately impressed by the fluidity with which several mainline open source products had been woven together into a scalable solution.

They have succeeded in merging open technology into their revenue model by creating bi-directional value outlets that benefit their bottom line as well as that of customers. Even more so than the pure open source approach to the software business, proprietary companies who openly embrace and leverage open source within their product lines are the wave of the future, with more to follow.

He even includes the (sharply done, thanks Tom) Elastic Path architecture diagram.  I advise you subscribe to Alex “All Bets Off” blog feed or at least read the relevant blog post about open source enterprise software.

India isn’t just for outsourcing! With a market of over a billion people, youthful Cory York - Business Development Manager for ecommerce vendor Novator’s India division - is actively engaging in opportunities with emerging Indian businesses entering the burgeoning ecommerce market, plus he’s learning and living a new culture along the way.

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[Cory York at eTail Midmarket,
photo by DaveO]

Jim and Wade of Forge Business discuss leveraging affiliate marketing programs to drive traffic plus sort out how to manage channels, mitigate risk and increase conversions. Additionally, they opine on the search power of blogs and how passionate online writers can increase audience and monetize blogs.

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[Wade and Jim of Forge Business at eTail
Midmarket, photo by DaveO]