Ecommerce Gurus

Global warming, governmental bail-outs, even the economical downturn could not hinder consumer spending on the much anticipated Cyber Monday. Those who felt like the consumer spending had decreased must take a step back and look again. The statistical numbers are available and will make some ecommerce solution providers happier than ever.

Since we are no longer consist of being a Brick-and-Mortar dependent country, sales have risen on the Internet spending spectrum. Coremetrics Benchmark, reports that Cyber Mondays sales grew 24.1% over Black Friday this year and consumers generally spent more per on-line order than ever before. Compared to 2008's Cyber Monday, 2009 sales increased 13.7%. Blame the increase on a slight improvement in our economy, Holiday Specials, or deeper spending pockets, we believe its because of the great use of Ecommerce Retail Stores.

In order to better understand the extreme growth of the Cyber Monday extravaganza we must understand why the consumers spent their hard earned cash. Being a company that specializes in the on-line retail software solution we understand what was a factor in generating consumer spending. Holiday discounts, marketing promotions, gift give-a-ways, and BOGOF sales all contributed to the increase of spending. Successful Internet retailers understood what it took for consumers to buy and how to appeal to those consumers. Cyber Monday is a chance for eRetailers to make a big push for their ending revenue goal, but those campaigns, sales, and discounts should not end at the strike of midnight on Cyber Monday. Those specials should be presented every day, making your Internet business a popular store for great deals.

With the holiday season approaching quickly, many e-retailers are spending sleepless nights trying to better understand how to bring customers to their sites and ultimately, have them spend money. There is no simple answer to this question, only advice on how to better prepare your e-retailer for a holiday boost.

In order to have an effective drive of traffic to your site there must be a constant and time consuming effort to reach out to new customers. A very popular and appropriate solution to this is email campaigning. This is a cost effective tool that can reach hundreds, thousands, even millions of retailers simultaneously. For the e-retailer this means their time will be consumed by creating the email, finding a list, and promoting their sales. There is a perfect solution to this headache.

Sigma Micro offers a full Marketing Relationship Management (MRM) solution that provides an ecommerce platform for the e-retailer to offer their customers a specific marketing email. Sigma Micro has been a ecommerce solution provider for many years offering a full range of services and products, including the MRM. Specific to the campaign management, Sigma Micro provides undivided attention to target specific campaigns to each channel, including web, catalog and call center. By having Sigma-Micro professional design detailed and specifically targeted campaigns, this drives more traffic to your site while the e-retailer spends more time concentrating on their business.

Now I assume that we all understand in order to start a company the first step would be to find a product and or service to offer consumers to purchase. After all, the main point of running a profitable business is providing a much needed product or service. If your company offers the consumer a product but yet the consumer must buy additional services for that product from another business, your company losses out on the service purchase. This will not allow your company to grow as much as it could by offering both product and service.

To this long drawn out introduction, my point is simple. Companies who offer one single product or service are missing revenue streams from other areas of their business. There must be innovation, creativity, and an expansion of what companies offer. Sigma-Micro understands that business cannot be conducted by just one product. They offer a full range of necessary services to make their customers more profitable with less hassle. From the ecommerce platform and warehouse management to providing customer relationship management and multi channel software, Sigma-Micro pioneers the complete product fulfillment industry.

With Sigma-Micro’s entrepreneurial mind set, they continue to provide both product (retail software solutions) and services (product data management, CRM, catalog fulfillment, etc…) to companies that need and benefit from Sigma-Micro to make their company a success. The first step for diversifying a company is to provide consumers with multiple product and service avenues. The second step is calling Sigma-Micro to help grow your company in every aspect of the ecommerce industry.

One thing all retail ecommerce companies understand is that during the busy holiday season, their company has a chance to experience high volumes of traffic to their sites. The sometimes difficult part of the on-line retailer is that they do not just want visitors, but instead they want buyers. Here are some tips on how to better your ecommerce platform and ultimately convert visitors into buyers.

The first thing that needs a close examination is the search engine optimization (SEO). According to Lisa Wehr of practicalecommerce.com, there should be more than keyword mining, pay-per-click campaigns and link building. The on-line retailer should also try new tactics to convert browsers into buyers. The on-line security company, McAfee has found that out of 163 million shopping transactions they tracked, 65% shoppers completed their purchase after waiting for a day or more. So the question is, how do you convert web browsers into purchasers.

In order for the retailer to benefit from their ecommerce platform they must be able to entice the customer into buying their products. Some ideas on how to do just that include selling products at a discount. Every person buying products on-line loves to buy on discount. In the case of shopping cart abandonment or just to get the customer to commit to the buy, lure them back by offering the product at a discount or for free shipping. Another tactic is to use email campaigns to get the on-line retailers' products out there while also offering great deals. The email blast also gives viewers another avenue in order for them to refer back to the website. Safety can also be another way transform viewers into buyers. In order to make the consumer feel secure, the on-line ordering system must also be secure. Since identity theft is so prevalent these days, safety of the consumer's personal information must be a top priority. Having a website that is safer than Fort Knox will provide the viewer the confidence in ordering products form that company.

For this holiday season, ecommerce retailers should show that their online ordering system is safe and secure while also offering great prices, discounts and incentives for people to commit to buying products.

The implementation process of outfitting a company with a full ecommerce solution provider can be a difficult move. We at Sigma-Micro understand that any doubt or worry about switching to a full ecommerce platform must be removed at the beginning so that we can make a quick and easy transition.

Since Sigma-Micro is entrusted with handling the core elements of our clients' business we strongly believe that we should provide them with the best client support possible. Our support is available 24/7 to handle any questions or concerns that may arise. The standard hours of operation is 8:30am to 7:00pm EST, which provides our clients with 10.5 hours of a fully devoted, hands on support team. Unlike other companies we want to make sure that if an error occurs, it is fixed quickly and the first time. That is why we require our support team to research the problem until it is fully resolved and make necessary steps to ensure the problem does not happen again.

For our company to be able to provide full client support we prioritize problems at hand to be able to ensure the problem is fixed. Calls that are urgent are received and handle immediately. The support staff tries to handle all other calls immediately but in the event of a back up of phone calls, there is a maximum of 30-minute call-back time.

Sigma-Micro prides themselves on providing the greatest products to both on-line retailers and those they serve. That is why we are a trusted ecommerce solution provider and maintain our reputation through the services we offer our clients. Our company-client relationship continues to strengthen by the way serve our clients while continuing to provide them with the greatest support out there.

The process of switching out the back-end core of a multi channel software can be tedious and sometimes troublesome. Sigma-Micro understands that the ecommerce platform must be stable in order to provide the on-line retailer with a profitable and efficiently ran business. That is why we at Sigma-Micro understand the need for an error free transition period. In 25 years of business we have implemented our Sigma-Micro Development Process (SMDP) in every partnership and gained a 100% success rate on instillation of multi channel software.

Sigma-Micro firmly believes in a close relationship with the company we are working with,
the Sigma-Micro Development Process is no different. We gain the close relationship through all steps in the ecommerce solution from the concept and planning phases to design, development and testing.

For our clients to better understand the importance of the SMDP, they must feel their company is gaining valuable benefits from our process. The Sigma-Micro Development Process accelerates the time the multichannel software gets to market helping our clients become profitable quickly. We also believe that an important factor in our success is that we involve our customer in every phase of every project. This benefits our clients in ways that they understand the process better and what the partnership of their company and Sigma-Micro is accomplishing in a full retail software solution. This approach to development helps ensure that the project is completed on time with little interruption to their daily operations.

In order to have a company collect revenue there must be a simple system that can handle the daily transactions from customer to company. This systems solution will be in charge of handling the customer and product information along with facilitating orders and refunds. Sigma-Micro customizes a specially developed retail software solution that performs all the necessary tasks in transaction purchases.

Sigma's retail software solution provides customer information that collects data on a customer and organizes it so that the retailer can access the information quickly. The customer's last transaction can be quickly located and viewed with the date of that last purchase. This section of the Point of Sale software will record phone numbers and email addresses along with enhancing customer service with insight into the customer's previous purchases and preferences.

The retail software solution also harbors product information that makes product search and view easier and more reliable. The Point of Sale software makes the product data management easier by giving the retailer access to products by item name or identification number and also allows viewing those product details (with product image), number, type, status, price, return policy, and promotional pricing, along with much more.

Sigma-Micro has also devoted part of the retail software solution to the orders and refunds portion of point of sale. In order to keep the customer satisfaction at a constant high and return and ordering errors at a low, Sigma has made it easier on the retailer. The software allows multiple forms of payment, the security of viewing and tracing returns of original purchases and organizes daily transactions in a end of the day summary of those daily transactions.

At Sigma-Micro the main purpose of our software solutions is to make every day tasks easier to handle with the least amount of stress. Sigma-Micro takes the worry away while creating an organized and efficient customer centered Point of Sale retail software solution.

There are essential tools that are to be considered when building an on-line retail website. Website design, functionality, and cost are all main factors in determining how to construct a working attractive website for the on-line retailer. That responsibility is often passed on to a company that specializes in building websites and ecommerce platforms. Sigma-Micro is the ecommerce solution provider with a fully integrated management system for the on-line retailer that offers full access and management of customer and order related information. Sigma-Micro's ecommerce platform also builds the bridge between the customer relationship management application and the eccommerce site.

The ecommerce site (eStore) involves many different tools that make it easier for the manager of the on-line retail store to use in order to increase effectiveness of their site. Sigmacommerce will provide the on-line retailer with over 100 eccomerce drag and drop controls which provides a better and easier way to manage and control the on-line retailer's website. Sigmacommerce also develops over 50 built-in page templates at the on-line retailers disposal or the chance to create a custom template from scratch. Sigma-Micro's ecommerce platform also allows the on-line retailer to use our Search Engine Optimization Toolset so they can get their company name across a better array of publicly viewed search engines.

Sigma-Micro has specialized in being the ecommerce solution provider in building, customizing and managing the on-line retailers' websites for many years. The integration capabilities, ease of use, and versatility of Sigmacommerce create a competitive site for any on-line retailer. 

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The idea of selling only a product to a company is a thing of the past. Companies do not just want a product or service but instead the sense of importance and meaning with the company they buy from. Here at Sigma Micro we make collaboration a main priority. We understand that without relationships, growth as partnerships and growth of our multi channel software will not happen.

Sigma Micro provides four themes or processes in the collaboration of our customers. These include: User Conference, Advisory Board, SigmaCommerce Road Map and Research and Development.

The User Conference is an annual event which allows our clients to learn from industry experts, business partners involved with Sigma Micro, and other customers within our organization. At this event we share information on new catalog fulfillment features, our future company goals and directions and what our clients’ needs are.

Our Advisory Board acts like an internal consultant in that we individually meet with clients on a more personal basis to get a better understanding of their business. The Advisory Board of Sigma Micro wants to better understand the functions our clients would use and excel in those areas.

SigmaCommerce Road Map provides a detailed vision and timeline of the evolution of SigmaCommerce. We believe in holding nothing back and in the SigmaCommerce Road Map we reveal every major event in the growth of Sigma Micro and our future plans on features of SigmaCommerce.

We continue to invest heavily in Research and Development of future multi-channel direct marketing, so we can remain a leader in our industry and help prepare our clients for future growth.

We as a company firmly believe that the relationship between Sigma Micro and our clients be positive and continually grow.

Sigma Micro has been making multi channel software for retailers since 1982.  Right now it's nearing the end of 2009.  If my math is correct, that means that Sigma Micro has been in the business of serving retailers with technology for about 27 years.

Not bad, if we do say so ourselves.

Enter: Stark Bro's Fulfillment Services.  Stark Bro's has been providing multi channel retailers with outsourced warehousing and fulfillment since basically the beginning of time.  Or, the early 80's anyway, just like Sigma Micro.  Of course, back then, "multi channel" described only two channels; brick and mortar and catalog.

So, rooted in catalog fulfillment and innovating to the latest technology demands of online retail, these two companies represent the very best of technology solutions and services for retailers.  Learn more at www.Sigma-Micro.com.

Online retail is on a constant growth spurt in the US. There are many contributing factors to this increase in online activity like continual product update, real time inventory numbers, and ease of researching products. For the retailer themselves, this can be a stressful experience. The online retailer wants an ecommerce platform that will serve every purpose of the company. Many ecommerce companies provide different attributes of an online retail software solution.

Imagine, if you will, that you are an online retailer in need of an ecommerce platform. Your company will need software that handles an order management system, warehouse fulfillment and a product data management system, along with other applications that all perform in sync to facilitate your ecommerce needs. Let’s also pretend that you get your order management system from Company A, warehouse fulfillment from Company B, and all others from Company C. These companies represent different pieces to a puzzle. Remember you are the online retailer and you are trying to make your company run as efficiently as possible. How much of a hassle would it be to understand the different software, much less use the software effectively to accommodate your needs?

Sigmacommerce provides all the necessary tools for a successful ecommerce business. Merchandising, call centers, warehouse fulfillment, marketing, finance, web design, and much more are all offered through one company (Sigma-Micro). We not only provide you with all necessary tools but also help implement it into your company without costly down-time. Sigmacommerce has over 25 years of experience when working with the logistics of a retail company. In order to correctly piece the puzzle together, go with a company that provides all aspects of ecommerce business.

Recently we've come across a fantastic ecommerce tool called Doba.  For around $60 per month depending on which plan you choose you'll have access to over 200 different wholesale suppliers and millions of their products.  You can sell any of these products on marketplace sites like eBay or use your own ecommerce platform to see them on your own website.

The beauty in Doba is that you don't pay for any of the products until your customer actually places an order to purchase it.  Then you use you take the customer information from your order management system and enter it into Doba.com.  Then the wholesaler will dropship the product directly to your customer.  You can set your own retail prices, and use all of the product images and descriptions directly from Doba.  Your breakeven point is only $60 per month, and Doba makes it so easy to paste any product onto your website.  Depending on what ecommerce solution provider you use, it may be directly supported for seamless integration.  Check it out, and let us know what you think!

Submitted by: Bryan Povlinski

Forrester Research has projected that by the year 2012 two thirds of the public will research future purchases through the internet. Consumers will shift focus from in store researching to the internet in order to save time and energy. In order to keep the focus and interest of the consumer on the product, many online retailers have concentrated on merchandising. Sigma-Micro has the retail software solution.

Product Data Management (PDM)

The product data management creates an easy to use Wizard for the online retailer. The PDM enables the business to change and publish photos, pricing, and even use cross-selling tools without paying a Web developer or IT specialist to construct. The PDM also allows the online retailer to bend with the flexibility of customer purchases by allowing the configuration of rules-based pricing engines.

Sigma-Micro specializes in simplicity for the online retailer and proves it with the product data management system. The PDM enables retailers to edit products and images more easily while also publishing the products to the ecommerce site or call center (or both) with just a check of the box. The product data management system stores keywords for easier search options for the consumer and creates better Search Engine Optimization.

Sigma-Micro understands the growing importance of customer awareness of a product and develops software that can handle the changes while helping grow the online retailer as a business. The product data management system provides an easy to use solution to the changing customer focus.

For many people “change” is simply the substitute of one thing to another, but “change” to the online retailer might mean a major headache. Take for instance, software. For online retailers their online ordering system is what allows viewers to explore and compare products, add items to the cart, purchase and ultimately ship to the end consumer. For those online retailers who have existing software that contribute to repeated problems, change is necessary.

Sigma Micro has developed an implementation processes that makes change simple and completely worry free. Our implementation methodology is the only one in the industry that understands the retailers’ worries and designs the process in accordance with the online retailer. In the implementation methodology there are seven steps to complete transitional success and in 25 years of business Sigma Micro has never failed an implementation, and never will. These steps include: plan, build, install, educate, train, activate and optimize. Our implementation methodology is a proven way to help the online retailer change from troubled existing software to Sigmacommerce, a retail software solution. To better understand the seven steps of our implementation process please check out www.SigmaMicro.com and explore the implementation section.

A major component of a successful ecommerce website is the use of website analytics data to make decisions to improve the site.  A retail software solution is important to get products on the site and everything up and running, but it's not going to help you make decisions after you start.  Here are a few key metrics to watch when using an ecommerce platform.  All of these can be computed

Per Visit Value
You can compute your per visit value by dividing your revenue by your number of visitors.  This will tell you how much each eyeball is worth to your site.  Now, if you are looking to purchase a banner ad or any other kind of marketing campaign you will have a reliable estimate of how much that ad will be worth to your sales.  You'll have to take into account that ad costs are usually based on impressions (which are not the same as visits) but you can easily calculate this based on the average number of pageviews each visitor has on your site.  Now you can make a calculated decision on whether or not the ad will be profitable.  If you're working with an ecommerce solution provider they should be able to set this up for you.

Breakdown of Traffic Sources  
Just as a lot of companies choose to diversify their sales channels by using multi channel software for catalog and web sales, it's important to have various sources of traffic to your website.  An email list is critical because these will be your most loyal customers.  Ones that choose to receive information from you voluntarily, and will keep coming back to the site after they receive emails from you.  However, if you only rely on these core customers for sales it's likely that you'll start to see a major drop-off as time goes on.  Think about improving your sites organic search rankings by using search engine optimization strategies.  Social media and pay per click advertising are other opportunities that should be viable options for any ecommerce website.  Use an analytics package to see exactly where your customers are coming from and spend some time diversifying your marketing strategy.

Bounce Rate
If your bounce rate is starting to increase there may be a disconnect between your marketing efforts and your content.  Investing in a content management tool might be useful, but it may be your marketing message that needs to be refined.  You also might have an issue with broken links or missing pages that are causing users to land on a page that's not there and then they leave right away.  Bounce rates will tell you how relevant your site is to people who find it.  You can check the keywords that users search for to get to your site and make content changes based on the most popular keywords.

Cart Abandonment Rate
It's useful to analyze the amount of customers you're potentially losing who find it difficult to get through the checkout process on your site.  Most ecommerce sites will have a defined process that a user goes through to purchase a product.  They will first put an item in the shopping cart, then be directed to a page to create an account, review their order, and then get to the order confirmation page.  You can set up a goal or "funnel" in your analytics platform that referneces each of  these pages and then you can see where customers might be falling off the path.  Maybe there's a large percentage of people that get to the review order page, but don't continue on to the order confirmation.  Maybe you have shipping rates on your review order page and your customers aren't happy with your rates.  That type of insight would let you know to make that change.

All of these metrics can be found with a free software application like Google Analytics, but there are many other solutions like Fireclick and Omniture that are even more powerful.  Your ecommerce platform should integrate easily with any of these programs

Multi Channel Software is designed to unite information across two or more business operations; specifically, retail sales operations.

When most people hear the phrase "retail sales" they think brick and mortar retail.  In fact, any transaction in which a product is purchased by a consumer from a business is a retail sale.  Therefore, retail sales operations occur not only in brick and mortar locations, but also over the phone and online, often driven by paper catalog mailings.

Sigma Micro has been designing and building multi channel software solutions since 1982, first with a product called Controller, and most recently with a program called SigmaCommerce. 

These two order management systems represent over 27 years of expertise in unifying the information that comes from selling through two or more retail sales channels.  This kind of software allows a retailer to track, manage, and measure its entire business with a single, comprehensive tool.

Learn more at www.Sigma-Micro.com.

Not all catalog fulfillment solutions are created equal.  Stark Bro's Fulfillment Solutions (SBFS) offers such services for retail companies who sell direct to consumers through a catalog.  These services include warehousing and shipping, outsourced call center services and unbeatable freight rates that individual retail businesses could never negotiate alone.  Stark's shipping volumes allow them to negotiate rates with major carriers like Fed Ex, UPS, and the US Postal service. 

Stark takes these responsibilities and their related costs off the plate of a retailer and manages all of them independently with sophisticated order management systems build exclusively for direct retailers.  Learn more about Stark Bro's Fulfillment Solutions at www.starkbrosfulfillment.com.

Sigma Micro takes your operation to the internet.

You've got great customers in your stores and they'd like to shop with the convenience of the internet at home as well.  Both your current and your future customers are searching online for the products they want.  Internet search has become the first resource for finding products and services, and internet access is almost completely ubiquitous.

Go where your customers have gone with Sigma Micro.  As an ecommerce solution provider, Sigma Micro will help you build your online store from the ground up.  Our multi channel software connects your existing operation seamlessly with an internet operation, managing inventory, financials, and all other business data in the same easily accessible environment.

Supporting retailers of all kinds with enterprise software for over 27 years, Sigma Micro (www.sigma-micro.com) knows what you need to succeed online.