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While there are several articles out there that talk about Search Engine Optimization in general, very few are tailored to web stores and eCommerce sites. While the basic concepts of SEO are similar, there are fundamental differences in the execution that are required. Over 10 years of building Ignify eCommerce, our focus has not been just to be an eCommerce transaction engine but to be a marketing engine that drives additional revenue for merchants. Hence our mantra – ‘Rev Up Your Revenue.’

Let’s be clear – Investing in Search Engine Optimization for an eCommerce merchant has one and only one primary reason – and that is higher revenue. However, revenue is a function of three factors. At a basic level – here is the formula:

Web Store Revenue = Web Traffic In Unique visitors X % Conversion Rate X Average Size of Order

So for example if my Average daily traffic is 1,000 visitors a day, my conversion rate is 1% and my average order size is $60 dollars then my average daily revenue is $600 (1000 X 1% X $60). Now let’s talk about how we can really Rev Up your Revenue. It’s a little obvious but I have to increase the numbers on all 3 counts. Each of these revenue drivers has different things that influence it though

#2 Revenue Driver – % Conversion Rate: This is a function of two things a. how easy the site is to buy from b. How attractive the products, pricing and promotions are for the end customer to make a purchase. Point a is effectively Usability and the shopping experience. For example in our store deployments we will typically enforce that the buy button is always much bigger in the check-out page than any other button.

#3 Revenue Driver – Average Size of Order: The most effective way to increase your average size of the order is to have great upsell and cross-sell. For example the merchandising functionality in Ignify eCommerce automatically recommends products to a customer based on what they have in the cart + past history of shoppers who have bought those products.

Let’s go back to our example – if I can increase my average daily traffic by 40%, double my conversion rate and increase my average order size by 20% – what does this do to my revenue? Incredibly – it actually more than triples revenue. ( 1,400 visitors per day X 2% conversion X $72 per order = $2016 per day Versus $600 per day prior to the Rev Up your Revenue formula).

In my next blog article, I will go into more details of how you can increase revenue by positively impacting each of these revenue drivers and more than double your revenue by following these simple tips.

Sandeep Walia is the Chief Executive Officer at Ignify. Ignify eCommerce is the only PCI certified eCommerce solution in the market that integrates with the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Sage ERP solutions. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for four years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine. Ignify was ranked in the Red Herring 100 finalists for 2010 – this list represents the top businesses in North America with disruptive and innovative technology.

One of our team members asked this question to me yesterday and I thought it was interesting enough to write about. The context is a solution for the requirement of an eCommerce web portal. I’ve done a comparison of the two below and this would be a good read for any Dynamics AX customer looking at Enterprise Portal for meeting their eCommerce needs.

I’ve listed down the features that an eCommerce site requires and listed how both Enterprise Portal and Ignify eCommerce stack up. We sell both solutions and I believe there is a fundamental difference. Enterprise Portal is a great Intranet and an Extranet but not an eCommerce Engine. It is ideal if you need customers to view information and make minor edits. It is not a solution that is built to take on a high order volume and provide configurability and flexibility to make for a sleek website. This table below will show why.
 

Web e-commerce Requirements	Ignify eCommerce	Enterprise Portal
Product Catalog for Customers to view publicly without login
Product Catalog for Customers to view with login
Customers get pricing specific to them based on Price List/ Price Level assigned to them.
Advanced Search capabilities to find items with multiple parameters
Auto-fill type capabilities to help customers get to the right items
Search Engine Optimized Web site links and Page URLs
Search Engine Optimized Alternate Image descriptions
Multi-level category in the Catalog
Customers can have multiple logins for a single customer account
Customers can view and update their address book
Customers can maintain a credit card wallet or manage their payment methods
Customer information is stored in a PCI compliant manner
Customers can request a credit line increase
Customers can view Sales Orders
Customers can place orders without a login e.g. B2C customers
Customers can place basic orders with a login
New Customers can request a login and go through an approval process if required
Orders can be configured based on business rules
Ability to have coupons and promotions on orders that can be applied with a coupon or promotion code
Customers can request a return on an order
RMA number automatically provided based on whether the item qualifies for a return based on parameters such as the order date
Customers can make online payments for an order at the time of submitting an order
Customers can view invoices and open balances
Customers can make payments for an open invoice

An important point is that Enterprise Portal will just not support a B2C site as it is built for working with a login as opposed to also being a site that requires an anonymous login. If you were even a business to business site and you need customers to login to place an order you may still be challenged by Enterprise Portal. For example most B2B sites will expose their catalog publicly with list or retail pricing without any order entry capability but will need a login to see pricing specific to the customer. Even that scenario is not supported by Enterprise Portal.

Clearly Enterprise Portal is not an eCommerce platform though there is some light functionality in there that allows it to be used as a very unsophisticated order entry tool if required. However, I’ve not seen any customer do that successfully. In fact several of our customers who moved to Ignify ecommerce are those that tried Enterprise Portal and realized it will not do a good job for them and needed to move to a real eCommerce platform.

If you have any questions on this topic please email our ecommerce information team at ecommerce@ignify.com and we’d be happy to provide detailed answers.

Sandeep Walia is the Chief Executive Officer at Ignify. Ignify eCommerce is the only PCI certified eCommerce solution in the market that integrates with the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Sage ERP solutions. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 3 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine. Ignify was ranked in the Red Herring 100 finalists for 2010 – this list represents the top businesses in North America with disruptive and innovative technology.

I still recall the days when shopping at Gap was only possible in the mall. Banana Republic was across the way and Old Navy was in the outdoor shopping plaza across the street with other discount retailers, like Marshall’s. Since the creation of shopping online, shopping for my favorite family of brands gets easier and easier to the point where I prefer to shop online rather than go through the trouble of driving to the mall.

A couple years back, Gap.com merged their family of brands by creating a multi-store website. Each of their clothing brands along with two online-only stores (Piperlime and Athleta) are all available with a click of a tab.

Just like shopping in the store, the look and feel of each brand remains independent of each other. Banana Republic remains subdued and sophisticated; click on Old Navy and it’s young and colorful. Customers have the option of signing up for store-specific emails, so as a customer, you don’t need to be bombarded by the brands you’re not interested in. Of course, Gap does take advantage of cross selling their brands. The email sign-up includes the option of receiving updates for their other brands.

While shopping the Maternity – New Arrivals category on the Old Navy store, the footer banners display Gap Maternity and Gap Kids – categories relevant to where I was currently shopping. At other times, the banners display ads for Piperlime and Athleta. Also, Quick Links float off to the side, ready to take the shopper to a corresponding category on another store.

Jumping between stores really is as easy as the click of the tab. The site is also smart enough to remember what department you were browsing in Gap when you left to check out Old Navy. Clicking on Gap takes you back to that department or that item. To top off the shopping experience, there’s only one shopping cart and one checkout. No waiting in lines at each store; no reentering of address and credit card information. Once you’ve created an account, the checkout process is so fast that you have to slow down to check any impulse shopping at the door.

With the multiple stores, Gap offers flat shipping rate across the stores. Piperlime products ship for free, keeping in step with the trends in other ecommerce shoe stores, like Zappos and Shoebuy. Just like shoes need to be tried on before purchasing, I believe clothes do, too. I’d like to see Gap offer more free shipping incentives since online purchases do still bring me back into the stores to make returns. Their store credit card holders can get free shipping with $100 purchase; a lower minimum purchase would definitely make me more checkout-happy!

Gap also ships four of the brands from the same warehouse so that items from those stores come in the same box – a win-win-win for customers, Gap, and the environment.

When I found out that Ignify eCommerce began supporting the ability to run multiple store fronts, I immediately thought of Gap, the first place I’d seen it. It’s worked well for Gap and perhaps your business fits a similar model and can stand to benefit from running multiple stores from a single instance of Ignify eCommerce.

However, I also realized that multi-store can mean different things. In Gaps case, there is one shared shopping cart, one shared login and even the web address domain name is shared – all the stores are actually sub-domains of gap.com e.g. oldnavy.gap.com. One would almost argue that this is not ‘true multi-store’ because as a customer the other ‘stores’ work more like departments. Ignify eCommerce supports the Gap multi-store model where each store is like a department as well as a more delineated model where each store is completely different. In the latter model you can’t tell that all the stores run on the same multi-store framework – the look and feel is totally different, the domain names are completely different and the shopping cart experience for each store is unique and does not have to be shared across other stores running on the Ignify eCommerce multi-store framework. While the Gap.com model may work for some merchants, other merchants may need a more unique experience for each store. Ignify eCommerce is one of very few eCommerce products in the market that supports a true multi-store experience through a single store manager panel.

What's Good about Gap.com:

• Easy, shared checkout
• Remembers where you were in each store
• Look and feel of each store is independent

What’s Not So Good about Gap.com:

• Could offer more free shipping incentives
• Signing up for multiple stores’ emails means more spam in your inbox. An option for a single email digest could be helpful.

Katie Lee is a Team Lead in the eCommerce group at Ignify. Ignify eCommerce is the only PCI certified eCommerce solution in the market that integrates with the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Sage ERP solutions. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 3 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine. Ignify was ranked in the Red Herring 100 finalists for 2010 – this list represents the top businesses in North America with disruptive and innovative technology.

I am very proud to announce the release of the Ignify eCommerce Roadmap and Statement of Direction. The roadmap sets detailed features for our 15th major version Ignify eCommerce Version 5.0 and also lays down the broad vision for the product for the next 3 years. Our upcoming version due in the second half of 2010 will reflect a cumulative investment of over a million US dollars in the product.

The roadmap in addition to our statement of production also re-affirms our commitment to continue to invest in the product for at least the next five years. Ignify eCommerce already has leadership in the mid-market due to multiple reasons – some of these are listed below. Existing customers will continue to gain from the investment being made by our product development and research teams while new customers can feel confident that the Ignify eCommerce is not only the leader today but will continue down this path.

Some Capabilities that differentiate Ignify eCommerce today are:

1. Native Search Engine Optimization to improve page rankings and increase revenues with very minimal optimization effort from a merchant.
2. PCI Compliance and PA DSS 1.2 Certification to the highest security standards by the PCI Standards Council.
3. Advanced Personalization for Consumers and Business buyers with product recommendations, personalized catalog, personalized promotions.
4. Zero Touch Order Fulfilment that allows for no touch to an order except when the item is ready to be shipped with functionality such as Auto-fraud checks, native Integration to the ERP and to shipping systems
5. Social Media Integration with Twitter and Facebook with ability to automatically tweet/ post updates for promotions.
6. Multi-store Catalog: With the latest release of Ignify eCommerce – the product now provides the ability to full manage multiple stores from a single store management framework with a single login.
7. Item Variants and Attributes: Ignify eCommerce supports unlimited attributes such as size, style and color.
8. Multi-parametric Search with Auto-fill and Search within search Results: Auto-fill for keyword search supported with ranged parameters. Rich ability to filter within search results with automatic 'narrowing' of search results.
9. Multiple user logins per account: Ignify ecommerce remains the only product that provides multiple user logins per customer account with the ability to set different levels of permissions for the various customer users e.g. view orders only, view and place orders, update address book etc.
10.  Subscription: Rich subscription functionality that enables automated periodic billing, payments and if necessary order shipments.
11.  Product Configurator: Ignify eCommerce provides a rich product configurator that allows for rules and multiple components and combinations.
12.  Returns Management: Full cycle returns management with ability to define returns policies and return reason codes. Provide end-customers with ability to start an online return transaction.
13.  Rental Service: Offer rental on a SKU to your customers with ability to define rental duration and payment frequency.
14.  Instalment Payments: Provide flexibility to your customers to pay in instalments. Flexible instalment plans with automated charging of stored credit card or direct debit of bank accounts per instalment schedule.
15.  eCheck as Payments: Accept eChecks as payment. Built in check clearance and automated payment integration with ERP.

The future is bright. For example, our work on the integration with the Dynamics AX for Retail POS means that online customers can place orders for pick up in the store that is convenient to them. Similarly customers in the store can place subscription orders that can then be fulfilled through the online infrastructure.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me via email at pankaj@ignify.com or email the product support team at ecomsupport@ignify.com or via phone (562) 219-2002.

Pankaj Kumar is the Chief Technology Officer of Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of ERP, CRM, and eCommerce software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify eCommerce is the only PCI certified eCommerce solution in the market that integrates with the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Sage ERP solutions. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 3 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine. Ignify was ranked in the Red Herring 100 finalists for 2010 – this list represents the top businesses in North America with disruptive and innovative technology.

 In last four months, we have been hard at work restructuring support services for our flagship software solution – Ignify eCommerce. We have been looking deep internally after our public announcement to become the best customer service of all technology companies. This post shares my experiences working with our support customers, our customer support team, as well as my own support requests where I am a receiver of support and not a provider. Feedback and comments are most welcome as we continue to strive towards “wowing” the customer.

There were two fundamentals for our customer support strategy that we agreed upon at the very outset 4 months back:

1. End User (not necessarily same as customer) is the king. If end user isn’t satisfied, customer support has failed.
2. We would treat every customer as a SAAS customer even if the customer has purchased an on premise license and is operating Ignify eCommerce in their own facility. After all the customer and end users are interested in the service that the software provides and not the software itself.

We also established three simple metrics around customer satisfaction. These included – First Call Resolution, Turn Around Time (Measured as average time taken to close an issue) and Total Open Issues at any point of time for a Customer.

Putting end user at the center of affairs cleared confusion around scope of the work. In quiet a few cases Ignify eCommerce is customized to meet specific customer’s business needs. Customer support earlier had questions whether these customizations have to be supported as a part of Ignify eCommerce Enhancement Plan. Since Enhancement Plan is charged as a % of license cost, it was an obvious question. The answer we arrived at was – “yes, we would support all customizations since the end user really doesn’t understand this difference between standard and customized. He cares about his day to day opeations”. This led to a challenge around retaining knowledge around these customizations. There is usually only one support analyst who is familiar with such customizations, in case this analyst becomes unavailable then knowledge retention as well as end user experience is impacted. We solved this problem by putting a minimum of two support analysts who would know each customization. It did over the short term increase the cost of support but led us closer to our goals of wowing the customer.

Treating all on premise licensed customers as SAAS customer threw a serious challenge of managing environments. Maintaining any software usually requires maintaining multiple environments – a DEVELOPMENT environment where troubleshooting and fixing can be done, a TEST environment where quality assurance team can provide sign offs, a UAT environment where end users can sign off and finally a PRODUCTION environment. While some of our customers were maintaining these environments, most of them didn’t have all four environments in place.

To avoid burdening our customers with environment creation (Note that in a SAAS solution, that burden doesn’t exist), we took an initiative to create DEVELOPMENT and TEST environment for all of our support customers. For DEVELOPMENT, we leveraged Front Page Extensions to create a single environment for multiple support customers and support analysts to troubleshoot / debug on. Each eCommerce Solution was extended using Front Page Extensions, these extensions enabled remote publishing and debugging of multiple eCommece solutions. For TEST – a new virtualized environment using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper V on Dell PowerEdge R 905 with Dell MD3000i was created for several hundred eCommerce Solutions. An automated build and deploy process was configured to build these web solutions every night so QA can provide sign off without any dependency from developers.

This solved our DEVELOPMENT and TEST environment problem but we still had to push any software releases on UAT and PROD environment manually. This was done via a semi-automated custom built tool that took care of these deployments.

While working on customer satisfaction metrics, I came across a January 2008 article published by Wired Magazine. This was similar to various other customer feedbacks that we found on user experience with support services. Wired magazine spoke about support being a problem since support analyst is not “emotionally invested” in customer's business. It also spoke about an average customer service rep being uncreative, having low incentive, and demonstrating limited empathy. We took some specific action items to ensure that we do not fall in the same trap:

1. We decided that 50% of our support plan revenues would be invested in customer support salaries.  This allowed us to design attractive incentive plans and compensation structure for our support analysts.
2. We took our entire support team through a battery of presentations to explain how they play a role in our customer’s day to day operations. “The emotional investment” came from the pride taken by increasing store revenues. A reward system based on such a revenue trend helped improve the emotional investment.

The results have been extremely encouraging; we have managed to improve our First Call Resolution by 50%, Turn Around Time (Measured as average time taken to close an issue) by 70%. And average Open Issues have gone down to 0.5 from 5 – almost a 90% decrease.

Are we done with this journey? Not quite – customer support is a fulcrum that can swing end user experience either ways. While we see a much larger debate going on support contracts and their value, we continue to quietly move towards our goal of becoming the best customer service technology company around. How close are we towards that goal? – only our customers can tell .

Pankaj Kumar is the CTO of Ignify. Ignify is a technology provider of ERP, CRM, and eCommerce software solutions to businesses and public sector organizations. Ignify eCommerce is the only PCI certified eCommerce solution in the market that integrates with the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Sage ERP solutions.  Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 3 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine.