eCommerce Web Site Design Solutions - Gproxy Design Blog

Blog vs Newsletter: Content is King

2011-10-31T15:01:00.000-04:00

Basically, it's not about having one or the other, both a newsletter and a blog will keep your customer within "your environment", which will eventually translate into more sales. You do both. Take advantage of multiple ways to reach your audience the way they want to interact. Newsletters and blogs share a common objective: to build credibility and an ongoing relationship with your customers and prospects so that your product or service is top of mind when they're ready to buy. Content is always a great online marketing strategy

A NEWSLETTER IS GOOD FOR:

Building a base of loyal customers.
People who opt in for your newsletter are highly interested in listening from you.

Share quick news with your customers.
Present your customers with product news (product arrivals, exclusive opportunities). You would write a few lines and point the customer to the product page or to further info on your blog/site). Tip: including photos in your newsletter turns into high click through rates (i.e. customers clicking to learn more).

Share "exclusives" with your customers.
Those who opted in for your newsletter should be given special treatment. Reward them with special news/opportunities/service previews/product previews/discounts/invites, etc, that will (or not) be released to the rest of the public a few days later (on your blog).

Newsletter = content. Search engines love content.
It's about re-purposing your content. Your newsletter can have both an email and an online version. (note: if your newsletter features "exclusives" only targeted at subscribers, it makes sense to take it online a few days/weeks later)

Increase traffic to your site.
Once you have built a good fan base, any time your release a newsletter you'll see spikes in your site's traffic. That traffic may not be interested in what you're offering through your newsletter but may be interested in other products, may bookmark a page for future reference, or may consume (and share) content from your blog. Again, you keep them within your "environment".

Followup marketing.
Of course it depends on the market, but research proves that it takes 7 followups to convert a prospect into a customer. Basically what this means is that you may not be able to have your customer buy on the first try, he/she may have to be exposed to several newsletters before buying from you.

Regular contact.
Your newsletter is something your subscribers expect to get on a regular basis, maybe once a week/month. Regular contact strengthens the relationship between two parties.

Immediate sales.
This applies to one-of-a-kind products. You would release your newsletter to your subscribers with an "exclusive opportunity". Include complete contact details (even the name of a person customers should call/email) in order to close the sale asap.

A BLOG IS GOOD FOR:

Show you're the authority.
Become an authority in your niche by providing how-tos, product reviews, informative articles. Shoppers will look to you for answers, and will eventually buy from you.

E-commerce + information.
Search engines give more weight to informative sites with fresh/quality/useful content. Show Google your eCommerce store is not here just for the money, you also want to share your knowledge.

Please Google.
Google is now able to identify and favor "engaging" websites. The more interesting your content is, the more it'll be shared on social networks and the more time users will spend on your site.

Companies are run by humans.
Show your human side. Blog about personal/company stories, anecdotes, and other topics that show there's human beings behind your site. Putting a face to your company will help you connect with your customers and strengthen the relationship.

Make announcements.
Get the word out about events, new products, site improvements, etc.

Site structure.
Improve your site's internal link structure. Each post is an opportunity to point links at your product pages. Search engines favor sites with a good internal link structure that helps them crawl and index your site easily. Improve your sites usability with in-content links that allow users to navigate your site in a natural way.

Showcase your content.
Show other bloggers/site owners the kind of content you're able to produce. This will open the door for future guest blogging opportunities (i.e you posting your content on their blog, it's a win-win proposition: they get authoritative content while you spread the word about your site)

Universal Watch Co Releases Custom Jewelry Creator Developed by Gproxy

2011-10-05T17:56:00.003-04:00

UWC was founded in 1994 supplying both retailers and customers with a variety of high end watches and jewelry. Currently, the company has 4 leading brands in the market; Boccia Titanium Watch line, TeNo Stainless Steel Jewelry, The TitanFactory Collection and Steel Blaze.

They came to Gproxy looking for an eCommerce solutions partner, who could help them in creating their new NetSuite eCommerce store, encompassing all their brands and their particular messaging.

Along with these requirements, one the most prominent areas of this project was bringing to life within the NetSuite platform their YuKoN Creator; a configurator under which customers are able to create and customize their own bracelets and necklaces in an interactive format.

The end result is a dynamic, interactive feature that will undoubtedly be a crowd pleaser for all TeNo shoppers. You can head on over to TeNo's Website to check it out.

To find out more about how we can contribute with your eCommerce project, CONTACT US HERE!

MOBILE COMMERCE, CAPTURING SALES ON THE GO.

2011-08-17T10:56:00.003-04:00

Today we came across an article from Shop.org in regards of the importance that Mobile Commerce is having these days and specifically in the fashion industry. I have to say we agree. M-Commerce is what e-Commerce was 10 years ago, the hottest and fastest growing commerce vertical in the world. Take a look at the article below.

Just when everyone thought e-commerce was the next great selling tool, along comes m-commerce, capturing sales on the go. It’s quickly becoming a digital priority for the fashion industry, and accessories are rising as a hot category.
Flash sale site Rue La La has had a mobile app since April 2010. M-commerce has grown to become on average 18 percent of its business on weekdays and 30 percent on weekends, according to president Steve Davis. Accessories perform about 20 percent better than any other sector on the site. “Accessories are easier to make a quick decision on,” he says, adding that handbags are especially strong mobile sellers.

Net-a-Porter’s accessories buying manager, Sasha Sarokin, reports that with m-commerce, more “everyday” and “wear-now” accessories, like friendship bracelets or small pendant necklaces, are big sellers. Higher-ticket items sell as well, particularly those that pack a strong photographic punch. Even smaller brands sell quite well if they are visual, through either e- or m-commerce. CLICK HERE TO FULL ARTICLE

Contact one of our Consultants to receive more information about Gproxy Mobile Commerce Services.

POWER UP YOUR NETSUITE ECOMMERCE!

2011-08-10T11:59:00.005-04:00

With our help, your NetSuite eCommerce store will be invincible!

eCommerce Add-Ons Module
Feature reach bundle that includes: wish list, gift registry, quick order, recently viewed items, quick view, mini-cart, advanced zoom, image browser, product reviews and ratings, back in stock notification.

CHECK OUT THIS MODULE HERE: SKINTREATMENT - KASK HELMETS - TENO

NetSuite M-Commerce by Gproxy
Gproxy's mCommerce for NetSuite gives you the possibility of having your eCommerce and mCommerce website running under the same backend you run your website; take advantage of all the features that the NetSuite Cloud Platform offers to your business also at the mobile channel!

VISIT THESE STORES FROM YOUR MOBILE AND EXPERIENCE MCOMMERCE: SKINTREATMENT -TREADMILL DOCTOR

Facebook Commerce
For online merchants it's no longer good enough to just have a Facebook fan page. Now it's a matter of how well you support these channels - do you have deep functions to drive conversion? With Gproxy's F-Commerce for NetSuite, you can expand your sales channels beyond traditional web stores to other places where your customers are.

EXPLORE FACEBOOK COMMERCE BY VISITING LIONEL NASCAR'S FACEBOOK STORE

CONTACT US and don't miss this great opportunity to leverage your NetSuite eCommerce with our premium features at a discounted rate!

New Magento eCommerce Website by Gproxy: SupplyBuy.com

2011-08-03T11:19:00.007-04:00

SupplyBuy.com was founded in 2009 with the goal of becoming an online supply superstore. Today they offer over 100,000 of the latest and highest quality auto, home, industrial, and office supplies, representing all the popular and trusted brands.

They came to Gproxy looking for an eCommerce solutions partner, who could help them creating their new Magento eCommerce store. The main objective of the project was to design a user interface that was clean, look great and at the same time offers a pleasant user experience.

SupplyBuy’s new website counts with a unique design that counts with a simple navigation and integrates today’s eCommerce best practices, together with Magento Professional’s functionalities. They provided great product pictures and our team of professional designers made a great selections of bright colors to match the company's brand image.

One of our partners, SearchSpring, contributed in this project by implementing their site search solution.

The final result of this project is very good and we are sure this online store will be a total success! Congratulations to our team and SupplyBuy!

If you want to learn how we can contribute with your eCommerce project, CONTACT US HERE!

E-commerce Design Tips: When call to action buttons matter

2011-07-28T12:19:00.011-04:00

When we say “call to action buttons”, we refer to any elements of a page that prompt any kind of action of the user. Of course, there are some actions that are more desirable than others, for example you will prefer your visitors to click on the “ADD TO CART” button, rather than clicking on “follow us on Twitter”. That’s what we (user interface designers) have to pay attention to: not all call to action buttons are the same. As your buttons could significantly impact your customers’ behavior it is imperative to get it right!

Here’s a list of pointers to take into consideration if you are planning to improve your click-through rate:

- Try wth different button shapes. Sometimes breaking the norm can get the users attention.
- Contrast buttons colors against it’s backdrop.
- Use bold, clear text and great typography.
- Humor is good. Also informative taglines or references.
- Make your button clickable and irresistible!
- Introduce design elements like highlights, drop shadows, borders, indents, textures, patterns... these can make your button stand out.

Contrast of colors
Make the button stand out by using a color that makes a real contrast with the background. Make it brighter than the background, use colors that are attractive and that look good on top of the color used for the background.

Simple works
Specially in the e-commerce world, simple messages always work. There’s no need to get to creative when working on a “Add to Cart” button. Just place it in the correct place, make it stand out and give a clear instruction.

Try new shapes
When there are “too many things going on” a page, try using shapes different to the norm. The shape you use, together with the tools (highlights, shadows, etc) you choose, will make your button stand out from a busy background.

Hope you found these e-commerce design tips helpful. If you need help with your website or you are interested in getting some advise from the experts, contact us HERE!

Pilot Pen Launches New Online Store Designed by Gproxy

2011-07-25T14:10:00.002-04:00

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gproxy Design Inc., an interactive agency leader in Commerce Solutions, announces the launch of Pilot Pen’s re-designed e-Commerce store. The new web store, was developed to reinforce Pilot Pen’s spirit of innovation and quality

PilotPen.us online store offers a great user experience while browsing and attractive user interface, created for a recognized brand such as Pilot Pen. Gproxy’s Design and Usability team defined layouts according to today’s e-commerce best practices, always keeping in mind the importance of generating brand awareness. The good use of fonts, an engaging color pallet, high quality images and ROI oriented site navigation are key factors in the success of this project.

“The success of the web site has been beyond our expectations. We receive complements daily from people who use our site. We could not have asked for a better design” – Pilot Pen.

Pilot’s new e-commerce store comes with several functionalities that are integrated to this new modern user interface. All these were aimed to help users to instinctively navigate Pilot’s store, which will result in higher conversion, leveraging the user experience while browsing their extensive catalogue.

“We are very happy to be the eCommerce design firm chosen by Pilot Pen,” says Mario Colla, CEO of Gproxy Design. “It is always exciting to work for worldwide recognized brands such as Pilot Pen; it is very motivating for our team to participate in projects of such dimension. The blend of good communication, appropriate tools and experience, together with the professionalism of Pilot’s team, resulted in a great new site and plans for many future projects to come.”

Visit www.pilotpen.us to see the result of this e-commerce project.

Follow Gproxy’s E-commerce Blog and Gproxy’s Twitter for more updates about upcoming e-commerce projects.

About Gproxy Design

Gproxy Design Inc. is a leading Interactive Agency specialized in Online eCommerce design solutions that integrate quality design with targeted user interfaces that ultimately provides optimized user experiences (UX/UI). Gproxy offers "Best of Breed" services such as web site design and development, enterprise search engine optimization, UX/UI consultancy, M-Commerce development, Facebook Commerce, online business strategies and social network strategies. Gproxy's 11 years of professional Interactive Agency experience and reliability, together with an extensive portfolio of over 300 clients that run across the 5 continents helped Gproxy Design become one of the market leaders in the eCommerce world. For more information about Gproxy Design Inc., please visit www.gproxy.com

About Pilot Pen US

Pilot Pen is the third largest writing instrument company in the United States. Established in the U.S. in 1972, Pilot is the fastest-growing writing instrument company in the country. The parent company, Pilot Corporation in Tokyo, was founded in 1918. It is the oldest and largest writing instrument manufacturer in Japan. Pilot Corporation of America prides itself on being a leading manufacturer and marketer of quality writing instruments in the United States. Our sales continue to grow year after year because of the quality of our products, and the innovation of our Research and Development teams. Our spirit of innovation has always focused on serving consumer’s writing needs and making writing a pleasure. www.pilorpen.us

Online Marketing: 10 things about Google+

2011-07-19T12:48:00.002-04:00

Google+, obviously operated by Google, was launched on June 28th in an invite-only "field testing" phase. Even though it is still in a testing phase, everyone is talking about Google+.

Do we need another social network? Do we want to get into it? Is it mandatory for online retailers online presence? While trying to figure these questions and investigating this new tool, I found an interesting article published by Forbes, which lists 10 things you need to know about Google+ and will help you understand a few things about it.

1. A social network made by Google impacts search
2. Google+ evolves from Gmail
3. Business pages are coming
4. 10 million users in the first two weeks
5. This blends personal and business
6. Google+ is already indexed and searched by Google, making marketing searches much easier than other platforms
7. Lots of companies block Facebook.com
8. Don’t think “social network
9. Google is committed to this platform
10. First movers win

To read full article by Chris Brogan CLICK HERE.

The History of f-Commerce

2011-07-14T16:53:00.007-04:00

I just found this image, which graphically tells the evolution of Facebook Commerce (or f-Commerce) from the birth of Facebook until today.

Hope you find it helpful.

If you want more info about our F-COMMERCE SERVICES, please contact us HERE!

Gproxy eCommerce Tip: Images help you sell more!

2011-07-13T15:24:00.007-04:00

E-commerce platform; checked. Hosting service and domain name; checked. Product line to be sell online; check. Brand and logo; checked. Design and implementation for your e-commerce store; Gproxy. Now that everything is on wheels, what do I have to do to make my e-commerce succesful?

Even though Gproxy’s E-Commerce Consulting Team can help you defining strategies and exploring different methods to make sure you boost conversion rates in your online store, here is one of the “must-do” tips for a successful e-commerce business, and for free!

IMAGES ARE IMPORTANT.

Having high quality images in your website is imperative. It’s not only about having good promotional banners in your homepage, or having a designer get cool images about your industry from an images bank. Yes, that’s definitely important. However, is even more important to count with high quality and varied pictures of your products.

The pictures that you display in your website, are the first contact your client have with your products. It is the first thing they see and it will actually be the only thing they will see until they complete a purchase. It is evident that those pictures have to be appealing, informative and convincing, as they affect your client’s buying decision.

If you display poor images in your online store, it's not only going to affect how your website looks, but it is also affecting your customers' impression about your website. After all, if you don't worry about how your products look, who can assure a client that you do worry about your products quality.

GPROXY'S EXAMPLES

Under our portfolio we have great examples of online retailers doing a great job with their product images, offering high quality pictures and a good variety of images for each product, giving their clients the possibility of seeing different version of the products they are broswing and from different angles.

Here are a few screenshots, but you can also visit our PORTFOLIO to see more.

PACKARD’S ON THE PLAZA

ONLY HEARTS CLUB

LILLA P

RUFFWEAR

If you are interested in our e-commerce consulting and design services, please CLICK HERE and contact us!

Latin America’s e-commerce in numbers

2011-07-08T15:44:00.003-04:00

It’s no news that Latin America celebrates its strongest performance of the last 20 years. However, it is new, that the Latin American market is increasingly shopping online and that e-commerce growth rates will be higher every year.

The numbers speak for themselves. I’ve read some articles and researches performed by Internet Retailer, Forbes, Forrester, comScore, among others and this is the info I found:

About 113 million Latin American consumers accessed the Internet in January 2011, which represents up 15% from the same month a year ago (comScore Inc).

Brazil stands as the region’s largest online market, with 40.53 million web users, up 20% from last year.

Venezuala’s online population increased 27% year over year, to 2.91 million.

Colombia’s online population grew 24% in January, to 12.41 million.

Mexico had a growth rate of 21%, to 18.11 million users.

On average, web users in Latin America spent 24 hours online in January, visiting the web 50 times during the month and viewing 1,795 pages of content. Brazilian consumers spent the most time online, 25.8 hours, and viewed the most content, 2,077 pages, and had the highest average monthly visits per consumer, 55.5. Consumers in Argentina also exceeded the monthly average for time spent online, with 25.5 hours, as did consumers in Mexico, with 25.3 hours. Consumers in Puetro Rico spent the least amount of time online, 18 hours.

So, if we take all this information and compare it with stats and numbers generated by the US population in the same period, the first thing that pops up is that Latin America is exactly where you have to be now that e-commerce is blooming!

As per an article published by Internet Retailer: “E-commerce sales in Brazil will reach $22.0 billion in 2016, up 178% from $7.9 billion in 2010, according to a new study from Forrester Research Inc. Forrester’s Latin American Online Retail Forecast says much of Brazil’s near-term e-commerce growth will come from sales of consumer electronics, which now account for about 37% of online retail purchases. The report notes that the country’s 81 million web users are active in social networks and expect free shipping offers and interest-free payment plans for their online retail purchases. Mexico also appears poised for significant e-commerce growth. Online sales will reach $3.4 billion in 2016, up 209% from $1.1 billion in 2010, the report says. The report estimates that about a third of the Mexican population, or about 40 million consumers, are online, and that many Mexican consumers remain worried about being defrauded by online retailers.”

Forrester advises that “eBusiness executives looking to expand online sales into Latin America must pay attention to import-duty hurdles, focus localization efforts on language, payment, and fulfillment options, as well as watch local and national events that can affect online sales and business overall.”

Evidence shows that Latin America is a promising online market place, that will keep growing and growing. If you are looking into expanding your business to this region, the moment to act is now!

Contact us HERE to learn more about our eCommerce services for Latin America.

Mobile ads to increase Facebook likes

2011-07-06T14:15:00.001-04:00

Reading the Mobile Marketer (a great resource if you are into the mobile commerce or mobile advertising industry) I found an interesting article about Budweiser tapping mobile ads to increase Facebook Likes.

As the article explains: "The company is running mobile banner ads within the Pandora iPhone app. In addition to taking users to its Facebook page, it also redirects them to the Budweiser “Here’s to the Heroes” radio station."

The article also explains that this isn't Budweiser's first foray into mobile. In 2009, they agreed to sponsor The St. Petersburg Times mobile site to tie in with its Super Bowl ad campaign.

Read the full article HERE and learn more about this interesting case from a world-wide leading brand!

To learn more about Gproxy's mobile commerce services, contact us here!

Gproxy's S.U.M. The Secret Sauce of On-Going Success.

2011-06-30T13:43:00.004-04:00

Support, Upgrade & Monitoring services are vital for your business success. As Commerce evolves every day, your site also needs to continue evolving. After launch continue improving your online commerce based on your customer's feedback, trends and keeping up with new technologies and user behaviors.

Our S.U.M. plan is an excellent way of keeping your website up to date and in perfect shape. Aside from a general update, your site also requires regular scheduled support and stragetic commerce planning to ensure scalability and performance.

Contact one of our Account Managers about S.U.M. plans at 305.513.3922.

NetSuite Clients Can Now Benefit from A.A.E. 2.0

2011-06-27T18:40:00.002-04:00

Gproxy has just made the A.A.E. Module even more complete for NetSuite clients by adding two new features: MINI-CART and QUICK VIEW.

MINI-CART: Adding a mini-cart to your website allows shoppers to quickly see all of the products they have added to the cart without leaving the page they are navigating in! Just hover over the cart icon at any time while browsing the website. Example: www.didriks.com

QUICK VIEW: Enable your customer to place the mouse cursor over an item image and get a peak of that product info and images with the possibility of adding the product directly from the quick view window to the cart. Example: www.shop.onlyheartsclub.com

A.A.E. 2.0 features include: Wish List, Gift Registry, Product reviews & Ratings, Quick Orders, Advanced Zoom, Image Browser, Back in Stock Notification, Recently Viewed Items and now Mini-Cart and Quick View.

Gproxy's NetSuite eCommerce Examples

2011-06-17T19:07:00.003-04:00

It's Friday and we are all tired of reading. So let's take a break today and let's just browse different websites that look great!

Only Hearts Club - http://shop.onlyheartsclub.com/

Packards On The Plaza - http://www.shoppackards.com/

Skin Treatment - http://skintreatment.com/

These are all websites that are part of Gproxy's NetSuite eCommerce Portfolio. All of them were custom made and developed under our professional working process.

If you have questions about any of these websites or about our services, please contact us HERE.
Happy Friday!

Mobile Commerce: 58% of mobile shoppers are age 18-34

2011-06-15T17:13:00.004-04:00

According to an article published by Internet Retailer earlier this week, mobile shoppers are young, and more affluent than mobile web users overall.

This article was based on a research perfomed by comScore, which results showed that 52% of mobile shoppers use their phones to help determine if a product is needed.

Here's some more information we'd like to quote from that article:

The study finds that mobile shoppers skew young. 36% are age 25-34, 22% are 18-24 and 5% are 13-17, say web and mobile web measurement firm comScore Inc. and mobile advertising technology and research firm Millennial Media. 21% of mobile shoppers are age 35-44, 11% are 45-54, 4% are 55-64, and 2% are 65 and older. The numbers add up to more than 100% due to rounding.

Mobile shoppers tend to be more affluent than mobile web users overall, the study says. 34% of mobile shoppers and 27% of mobile web users make $100,000 or more a year. 18% of mobile shoppers and 15% of mobile web users make $75,000-$100,000. 21% of mobile shoppers and 20% of mobile web users make $50,000-$75,000. 16% of mobile shoppers and 23% of mobile web users make $25,000-$50,000. And 11% of mobile shoppers and 16% of mobile web users make less than $25,000. The numbers for mobile web users overall do not add up to 100% due to rounding.

The study also found that mobile shoppers use their phones for a variety of shopping activities. 52% of mobile shoppers use their phones to help determine if a product is needed, 42% to perform research to help decide which products fulfill a need, 38% to make a purchase, 29% to comparison shop for a specific product, and 12% to evaluate a product after purchase, the study says.

Read full article HERE

Find more information about our Mobile Commerce Services here

The Evolution of Digital Life. 2010 vs 2015

2011-06-09T13:18:00.002-04:00

Today I came across the Laughing Squid Link blog, and found this video from the 2011 MRC eCommerce Payments & Risk Conference, which was held in Barcelona last month.

The video is an analysis and comparison of 2010 eCommerce and mCommerce stats vs. 2015's.

It is very interesting to see how digital life will evolve and the internet world may totally change in only 5 years . A couple of facts that really amazed me:

- Internet traffic generated by 20 homes in 2015 = Total Internet traffic in 1995
- Mobile-only Internet population in 2010 = 14 million. In 2015 = 788 million.

Here's the video. Hope you find it as interesting as I did!

Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.

eBay Agrees to Acquire Magento

2011-06-06T14:54:00.003-04:00

Magento is an eCommerce platform that combines the flexibility of open-source technology. Magento and Gproxy have been partners for 3 years and worked together in the development of many eCommerce projects.

Today we are sharing with you a blog published by our partner Magento, about eBay acquiring this industry leading eCommerce platform. We hope you find this information useful, to better understand today's industry!

The past several years have been an amazing journey for Magento, as we've grown from a new open source platform into an eCommerce leader. Along the way, we've built not only a platform, but a company and a worldwide community. Together, we've identified opportunities, taken risks, innovated, struggled, succeeded, and changed the face of eCommerce. Today marks a milestone on this journey as we announce the most exciting news in our company's history.

Magento has reached an agreement to be acquired by eBay Inc. We believe this move will open incredible opportunities for the entire Magento ecosystem.

The Big Picture
Why is this acquisition so exciting for all of us? eBay is evolving to become a strategic commerce partner focused on delivering new ways for merchants of all sizes to drive innovation. As a centerpiece of this strategy, they are building a global, open commerce platform that leverages the worldwide developer community. And Magento will be at the core of this new, open commerce platform, called "X.Commerce."

Magento & eBay
As many of you know, Magento has had a relationship with eBay for some time. In March 2010, eBay became our first outside investor. Over the past year, eBay has gotten to know our platform, our culture, and our community. They have experienced the passion of the Magento ecosystem, and they are eager to harness the power of this ecosystem to create the next generation of eCommerce innovation.

Moving forward: the details
How will this acquisition impact our organization, customers and partners? It's too soon to know all the details, but there are a few things we know. Following the closing, Magento will continue to operate out of Los Angeles, with Yoav Kutner and me as its leaders. We'll continue building our team and enhancing our product line, including the Magento Community, Enterprise, and Mobile Editions, as well as Magento Go and the Magento Go Platform. And we'll continue strengthening our training, education, packaged consulting services and support efforts around the world.

Through it all, we'll be collaborating with our colleagues at eBay on developing the X.Commerce platform and defining the next generation of eCommerce innovation.

Yoav and I recorded a short video about the acquisition – I hope you'll take a few minutes to watch it. We have also prepared an FAQ with answers to many of your questions about this announcement.

Creating the future together
To all the members the Magento family: we thank you for all the passion, expertise and hard work that you've invested in Magento. Thanks to you, Magento finds itself exactly where we've always aimed to be: at the core of eCommerce. We are thrilled about becoming part of a larger organization that recognizes – as we always have – that the future of eCommerce is global, innovative and open. We look forward to creating that future with all of you.

Cloud Computing: Jobs will present iCloud next week

2011-06-01T12:47:00.004-04:00

We've analyzed and discussed about the benefits of Cloud Computing. Here at Gproxy Design we are big supporters of it and we are currently working in different initiatives with partners like Intel and NetSuite. To learn more about our cloud computing initiatives, visit our website CLIDES.net

Social Networks, major business portals and publications are all talking about iCloud. What is it? When is it going to be available? All these questions and more will be answered on June 6th by Steve Jobs, in what will be his second appearance of this year.

Here's an article published by Bloomberg yesterday, that gives more information about Apple's iCloud:

Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs will address an annual conference on June 6 to unveil a service that lets users store content online and tout a new version of the software that runs the iPad and iPhone.

Jobs, in the midst of his third medical leave since 2004 as he battles a rare form of cancer, will deliver a keynote address at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the Cupertino, California-based company said in a statement. It will be Jobs’s second appearance this year, after the iPad debut in March.

Apple follows rivals Google Inc. (GOOG) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) in creating services to make it easier for customers to store and access music and other content via the Internet. So-called cloud computing lets people keep their songs and other content on remote servers rather than a hard drive. Cloud options will help the iPhone compete with phones powered by Google’s Android software, said Mike Abramsky, an analyst with RBC Capital.

“In the face of rising market share from Android, sustaining Apple’s advantage in user experience is going to be very important in terms of sustaining its smartphone growth,” said Abramsky, who is based in Toronto.
Apple said it will demonstrate features of the new iOS software that powers the handheld devices, as well as Mac OS Lion, the eighth major update for the operating system for Mac laptops and desktops.

‘Tightly Coupled’
“The two platforms are going to become much more tightly coupled to one another,” said Carl Howe, an analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston. Apple may also include in iOS a new notification system for getting alerts, an upgrade that developers have been asking for, Howe said.

Jobs has used the conference in the past to introduce new gadgets such as the iPhone. This year, the company won’t be showcasing a new iPhone at the gathering, people familiar with the matter said last month. Instead, the new phone will likely be revealed in the fall, Abramsky said.
The new cloud offering -- to be called iCloud -- would be an overhaul of Apple’s MobileMe product, which was introduced in 2008 so users could pay $99 per year to store e-mail, calendar, photos and other content on Apple’s servers. The service from early on faced shortcomings, including an inability to receive or send e-mails.

The company has built a $1 billion data center in North Carolina that could be used to store content for a new cloud service, Howe said.

iTunes Changes
The new service may involve changes for iTunes. Apple, the world’s most valuable technology company, has reached agreements with three major record labels to let users of its new music service access their song collections from handheld devices via the Internet, people with knowledge of the deals said this month.

Apple would follow Google and Amazon.com in letting users stream music from the cloud instead of downloading it to a hard drive.

Jennifer Bowcock, an Apple spokeswoman, didn’t immediately return a call or e-mail seeking comment.

Apple’s shares rose $10.42, or 3.1 percent, to $347.83 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has climbed 7.8 percent this year.

SOURCE: Bloomberg

Gproxy is now FFC Verified!

2011-05-30T14:51:00.002-04:00

As many other industry leading companies, this month Gproxy Design received the FitForCommerce Verification!

FitForCommerce Verification or “FFC Verified” is the process by which FitForCommerce, with expert knowledge in eCommerce businesses and website functionality, evaluate and validate select eCommerce technology provider claims about a specific eCommerce solution. A certified FFC analyst has reviewed functionality for pre-defined criteria, witnessed proof points of each feature or capability (e.g. live online, actual output, or client testimonial), and deemed the provider’s claims as “verified” or
“contested”.

The goal of FFC Verified is to establish a recognized industry wide standard for evaluation, verification and certification for providers and their offerings. All of which, will be centrally located and displayed on eCommerceKnowHow.com. eCommerce providers who have passed the FFC Verified evaluation process will differentiate themselves with a “seal” of approval on EK.com and throughout their marketing material. An eCommerce solution may have been “verified” but each criterion has its own
“verification” flag.

Congratulatios to our Business Development Team who worked hard to make this happened!

To learn more about FFC or Gproxy, please CLICK HERE to contact us!

Recorders.com launches their new website designed by Gproxy

2011-05-24T14:36:00.001-04:00

Recorders.com is the leading supplier of digital dictation equipment in the United States. They have been in the dictation, transcription and voice recognition industry for over 10 years.

They came to Gproxy looking for a website redesign, which will be implemented in the OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Platform.

One of the objectives of this redesign was to integrate today's eCommerce best practices and functionalities, which our design team was able to incorporate without interfering with the store's style.

Recorders.com also needed to present a clear and simple to navigate products catalog, including smart navigation by industry, rich product information, one-click support, and other features to offer a successful user experience.

Our first-class designs together with the OrderDynamics Platform functionalities came out as a great blend for the Recorders.com website.

Special thanks to our partner OrderDynamics for a smooth integration!

If you want to learn more about our eCommerce website design services, please CONTACT US HERE.

Gproxy Design Launch their first F-Commerce store

2011-05-19T18:28:00.003-04:00

Last week the team at Gproxy Design launched their first F-Commerce website for a client. Lionel Nascar Collectables are NetSuite clients and had worked with Gproxy Design to launch an eCommerce website that was designed and integrated to the NetSuite platform.

Here is the NetSuite ecommerce website that our team originally designed for Lionel Nascar
Collectables:

Following the successful completion of that initial project they then came back to discuss a strategy for the growth of their online business via Facebook.

Our team then went away and started work on a Facebook commerce (F-Commerce) store that could be used to drive sales via the Facebook platform that also had the convenience and security of being 100% native to the clients existing NetSuite account.

Here is the F-Commerce version of the store we launched:

All the information from both commerce sites is stored in the clients NetSuite account for easy access and management, and of course security.

We are now in the process of working with the client on a number of online marketing strategies that have been optimized for needs of their specific niche market and are designed to deliver the maximum ROI for the work we have done together.

Visit Lionel NASCAR Collectibles' F-Commerce Store HERE.

Contact Gproxy Design for more info about ther Facebook Commerce Developments HERE.

Gproxy Announces Three Online Sales SuiteApps For NetSuite's SuiteCloud Computing Platform

2011-05-11T14:50:00.002-04:00

SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)--

Gproxy Design Inc., an interactive agency leader in Commerce Solutions, today announced three new Ecommerce NetSuite (News - Alert) (NYSE: N) Applications for the NetSuite SuiteCloud Computing Platform. Gproxy's solutions include Facebook Stores, Advanced Add-ons for E-Commerce v2.0, and the latest version of the company's mobile solution. Built using NetSuite's SuiteCloud development platform, the new SuiteApps can help NetSuite customers increase their online revenues by reaching more customers with higher-performance online functions.

The announcement was made today at SuiteWorld 2011, NetSuite's inaugural conference designed for NetSuite customers, solution providers, independent software providers, developers and system integrators. SuiteWorld 2011 is being held in San Francisco.

NetSuite's SuiteCloud is a comprehensive offering of on-demand products, development tools, and services designed to help customers and commercial software developers take advantage of the significant economic benefits of cloud computing. The complete SuiteCloud offering includes NetSuite's multi-tenant, always-on SaaS (News - Alert) infrastructure; the NetSuite Business Suite of applications for Accounting/ERP, CRM and Ecommerce; and comprehensive development tools to create cloud-based business applications on top of NetSuite.

"Gproxy's Facebook (News - Alert) Stores let online merchants sell through Facebook," said Mario Colla, Gproxy's CEO. "The new advanced add-ons bundle includes features that can increase conversion rates, and the mobile solution includes improved usability for the Android and iPhone (News - Alert) OS. All together they give the online merchant a powerful means of expanding business."

The Gproxy Facebook solution lets merchants use Facebook as a marketplace, while the add-ons include new functionalities such as the mini cart and quick view, which add to other functions such as product reviews and rating, wish list, recently viewed, quick order, back in stock, gift registry and image zoom and browser. The mobile solution extends the user's Website to popular mobile devices.

Working with NetSuite

The new NetSuite Applications are managed from within NetSuite. The Facebook SuiteApp and Mobile SuiteApp let NetSuite customers use NetSuite's catalog, checkout function and customer center. Separately or together, the SuiteApps can help NetSuite online customers extend feature-rich Webstores into these important and fast-growing channels.

"For online merchants it's no longer good enough to just have a Facebook fan page or a mobile enabled web site," says Guido Haarmans, Vice President of Developer Programs and Business Development at NetSuite. "Now it's a matter of how well you support these channels - do you have deep functions to drive conversion? Do you support the major mobile operating systems? With Gproxy's SuiteApps, NetSuite eCommerce customers can expand their sales channels beyond traditional web stores to other places where their customers are."

Visit www.suiteapp.com for more information about NetSuite applications.

About SuiteCloud

NetSuite's SuiteCloud is a comprehensive offering of cloud-based products, development tools and services designed to help customers and commercial software developers take advantage of the significant economic benefits of cloud computing. Based on NetSuite, the world's most widely used cloud computing business management suite, SuiteCloud enables customers to run their core business operations in the cloud, and software developers to target new markets quickly with newly-created mission-critical applications built on top of mature and proven business processes. The complete SuiteCloud offering includes NetSuite's multi-tenant, always-on SaaS infrastructure; the NetSuite Business Suite of applications (Accounting/ERP, CRM and Ecommerce); the NS-BOS Development Platform; the SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN), a comprehensive developer program for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs); and SuiteApp.com, a single-source online marketplace where customers can find applications to meet specific business process or industry-specific needs. For more information on SuiteCloud, please visit http://www.netsuite.com/developers.

About Gproxy Design (News - Alert)

Gproxy Design Inc. is a leading Interactive Agency specialized in Commerce solutions, providing solutions to NetSuite customers including online Commerce, software integration, SuiteScript development, Web design and Online Marketing. Gproxy's 11 years of professional Interactive Agency experience and reliability, together with an extensive portfolio of over 300 clients that run across the 5 continents helped Gproxy Design become one of the market leaders in the Commerce world. For more information about Gproxy Design Inc., please visit www.gproxy.com

Social marketing has rules marketers must follow

2011-04-21T17:52:00.002-04:00

Today I'd like to share with our followers a very interesting article published by Internet Retailer. This article describes some rules that today's Social Marketing impose in the competitive world of eCommerce.

This article was written by Mary Wagner, one of Internet Retailer's senior editors.

Social networks developed as places for friends and colleagues to share information and make plans. And now retailers are participating in social channels to help build communities around their brand, support customer service and even drive sales, says David Berkowtiz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at digital marketing agency 360i. He will speak at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2011 in a session called “Social marketing finishing school: Learning the right approach and the right things to say”.

He says the session will help online retailers understand how to use social networks and what consumers expect out of a relationship conducted via social media. “I'll bring case studies representing a core set of best practices that all retailers can follow, including tips on how to build vibrant digital communities and inspire your fans to become active participants in your brand's story,” Berkowtiz says. “I'll also share some emerging opportunities for innovative brands looking to pave the way in social."

Retailers and marketers must follow a code of acceptable behavior when using Facebook and other social networks to promote or engage customers, lest efforts backfire, he says. For instance, marketers must learn when to sell and when to simply provide information to consumers. Marketers also must cultivate relationships with fans and friends and figure out what information those consumers want and will respond to. Marketers also must understand how often to provide information and what makes a compelling Facebook offer.

Internet Retailer’s editors asked Berkowitz to speak because he’s a veteran of the emerging realm of social marketing. At digital marketing agency 360i, he develops social media and mobile programs for marketers spanning the retail, media and entertainment, travel, and consumer package goods industries. An acknowledged expert on media, marketing and technology trends, he is a frequent industry speaker and prolific blogger. Prior to 360i, he was director of marketing for Viewpoint's rich media advertising group Unicast and interactive agency iCrossing. Previously, he served as editor and head of media relations with research firm eMarketer.

Gproxy Design's the NEW Pilot Pen US Online Store Design by Gproxy!

2011-04-08T17:52:00.007-04:00

Pilot Corporation of America prides itself on being a leading manufacturer and marketer of quality writing instruments in the United States.

Pilot Pen is the third largest writing instrument company in the United States. Established in the U.S. in 1972, Pilot is the fastest-growing writing instrument company in the country. The parent company, Pilot Corporation in Tokyo, was founded in 1918. It is the oldest and largest writing instrument manufacturer in Japan.

They came to Gproxy because they needed help with their eComerce web design. That was when our team started wotking with them, and our partner OrderDynamics to develop this successful online store that was launched this week.

Even though Pilot Pen is a very well recognized brand world-wide, it was very important to keep the brand's identity throughout the store but also it was necessary to enhance the products' specifications and characteristics.

We also took this opportunity of re-designing their website, to incorporate some web 2.0 concepts to insert the store in today's social community. For example, we added some videos to their product pages, Twitter, Facebook accounts, among other things. .

The Gproxy Design family is very happy with the final result of this project and we are delighted to count with such a big brand like Pilot within OUR PORTFOLIO!

Gproxy Design Sponsoring Suite World 2011 #NSW11

2011-04-08T17:10:00.004-04:00

Gproxy Design will be Gold Sponsor at NetSuite's upcoming event Suite World 2011, to be held in San Francisco from May 8th thru May 12th.

In this first edition of Suite World, NetSuite clients will have the chance to network with NetSuite experts, product managers, executives and partners.

Learn, Connect, Develop, Explore.
Reserve your spot today to learn more about the latest in cloud computing, connect with the NetSuite Community, develop your expertise with workshops and in depth training sessions and explore the best practices and opportunities to take your business to the next level making the best out of your NetSuite platform.

More information about Suite World 2011:
- PRICING AND REGISTRATION
- AGENDA
- Follow #NSW11 to join the SuiteWorld conversation on Twitter

Join us at Suite World 2011, and experience the best commerce solutions with Gproxy! We invite all our clients to CONTACT US HERE if you are planning to go, so we can schedule some time together at the conference.

Gproxy Design @ Demandware XChange 2011 Conference in Boston

2011-03-30T19:12:00.003-04:00

The Gproxy Design Team will be represented this week in Demandware's XChange 2011 Conference in Boston, MS; the largest Demandware clients, partners and employees gathering from across the US and Europe.

This event is been held at the InterContinental Boston until March 31st and we are sponsoring this event, showcasing our eCommerce web design and Demandware Storefront Development services.

Here are a few pictures of the first day of this event. We will share some more tomorrow!

Demandware Kicks Off Inaugural Conference on Wave of Strong Market Momentum

2011-03-29T18:07:00.000-04:00

Global Demandware community gathers together in Boston to collaborate on the present and future of digital commerce

Burlington, Mass. – March 29, 2011 – Demandware, Inc., a global leader in on-demand ecommerce, today kicked off its inaugural Demandware XChange Conference on a wave of strong market momentum and client revenue growth. The sold-out Conference, being held March 29-31, 2011 at the InterContinental Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, will host more than 300 members of the global Demandware community for a super-charged idea exchange on the present and future of digital commerce.

The event takes place on the heels of another record year for Demandware in 2010 with 113 new ecommerce sites launched on the Demandware Commerce platform. In addition, Demandware clients outperformed the industry in 2010 with 34 percent average year-over-year quarterly revenue growth, more than three times that of the industry quarterly averages reported by research group comScore.

The Demandware XChange Conference is an opportunity for Demandware clients to tap into the collective talent of the Demandware community and emerge with new information, ideas and actionable strategies for taking their businesses forward and further accelerating growth. The conference features keynote presentations by leading retailers, industry experts and Demandware executives and developers who will share market insights, innovative multi-channel commerce growth strategies and important developments regarding Demandware products and services.

Guest keynote presenters include John McCarvel, CEO and President of Crocs, Inc.; Kemper Seay, Director of eCommerce, Carter’s, Inc.; Mike Willoughby, President of PFSweb; and Brian Walker, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research. Attendees can also choose from more than 20 breakout sessions on various business and technical topics ranging from social commerce to Web APIs to international expansion.

“We are delighted to host our clients and partners in Boston for our inaugural conference,” said Tom Ebling, CEO of Demandware. “Our business model, partner ecosystem, and close client relationships all contribute to our spirit of collaboration and innovation. We are excited and confident that this event will mark a point of acceleration for all of us, as we look beyond just ecommerce to enabling retailers to provide branded experiences across all consumer touch points, including social networks, mobile, call centers and stores.”

A summary of major developments and accomplishments for Demandware in 2010 include:

113 new ecommerce sites launched on the Demandware Commerce platform, including 72 sites in North America and 41 in Europe and Asia
New client relationships encompassing more than 65 retail and consumer brands across apparel, consumer goods, health and beauty, and luxury industries
34 percent year-over-year average quarterly revenue growth across Demandware clients
More than 40 new product features and enhancements delivered automatically to all clients
The launch of Demandware LINK, a partner community providing Demandware clients with pre-built integrations to leading third-party technologies. Since launching in April 2010, Demandware LINK integrations have been shown to reduce the cost and complexity of ecommerce integrations by 75% as compared to enterprise license applications.
99.98 percent platform availability, not including scheduled maintenance
Expansion of U.S. headquarters to new offices with 31,000 square feet of space in Burlington, Massachusetts.Expansion of European sales operations with new offices in Paris, France and Utrecht, The Netherlands, in addition to existing offices in Jena, Germany
Recognition by industry analysts as the leading on-demand ecommerce platform

Connect With Us!:

Twitter – http://twitter.com/demandware
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/demandware
Demandware Blog - http://blog.demandware.com/

About Demandware, Inc.
About Demandware, Inc. The trusted, global leader in on-demand ecommerce, Demandware revolutionizes how businesses deliver customized shopping experiences to consumers in the digital world. Only Demandware combines the on-demand ecommerce platform rated #1 by industry analysts, an open ecosystem of partners that extend the value of the platform, and measurable commitment by its employees to enabling client revenue growth. Demandware continually sets industry standards for market innovation and client satisfaction. Demandware clients include industry leaders such as Bare Escentuals, Barneys New York, Columbia Sportswear, Crocs, Frederick’s of Hollywood, OtterBox, Jones Apparel Group, Brooks Sports, Michaels Stores, Panasonic, Reitmans and Theory. For more information about Demandware, visit www.demandware.com, call 888-553-9216 or email info@demandware.com.

Great Digital Sales Tips by iMedia Connection

2011-03-23T14:15:00.000-04:00

I'd like to share with our readers a very interesting article written by Patricia Clark at iMedia Connection, with some interesting Sales Tips for the Digital Age.

Salespeople sometimes get a bad rap: They are intrusive, not really knowledgeable about their product, annoying... well, you get the picture. But here's the thing. While there are times that the labels are true, there are also times where salespeople may not have learned how to approach clients in a way that they will be comfortable with. Here are some tips on how to approach your clients if you want to be the person whose calls they want to take.

Be direct and concise
Don't make them guess what your intentions are from vague voicemails or emails with subject lines that make no reference to why you are approaching them. You should have a well-thought-out plan before you approach.

In your elevator pitch, you should be able to briefly state the benefits of your product and why you think it's a fit for this particular client (target, technology, ground-breaking idea, ability to solve a business challenge, good results with their competitors, etc.). You should show how you can give them value and request a meeting at their convenience.

Make good use of your time, and don't waste theirs
Timing really means learning and being sensitive to the client's time. It's rare that a marketer or media person is ready to listen to a detailed pitch the minute you decide to call, so help make it easy for them. After you've given your well-thought-out elevator pitch, ask if they will meet with you. If they are receptive to further discussion (and so that you can be prepared for the meeting), learn more. Ask where they are in their planning cycle. What is their fiscal year? Do they plan on a calendar basis, a quarterly basis, or an ongoing basis? Do they have objectives and strategies in place and are they looking for media selection? Are they formulating strategies that, further upstream, you might be able to help them achieve? If the plan is done, will they consider optimization? Be respectful of their time, gain knowledge that you can use to best help them, and then plan your strategies accordingly.

Understand your audience
It's key to not only understand who's on the team, but also what their roles and responsibilities are. Some salespeople call only low-level contacts and thus miss the chance to be part of the bigger picture. Some call only high-level contacts and thus miss the on-the-ground work to get on an actual plan. If you are new to the game, learn the roles of marketer and agency players, and be sure and call comprehensively to understand and speak to each on his or her level. Each may have different needs at different levels. Some of the media team will need a lot of detailed tactical information, whether it be ad serving details, specs, screenshots, or requests for proposals in a specific format. Some of the executives will have more-strategic questions about how you can help them solve business challenges. Understand your audience's needs and tailor your approach accordingly.

Find out how they prefer to communicate
There are dozens of communication avenues open now. Learn what your clients like and expect. It's hard to go wrong with the simple approach -- a phone call followed by an email requesting a meeting or a call. Once that goes through, take their lead and see if other channels are open. There are people that are open to being approached on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. There are also people who may feel that some of these channels are intrusive, or may simply want to manage their communications in one area.

Depending on what category they are in, your approach may look much different than you had planned. Marketers or agencies might ask for pitches on Twitter, or expect you to communicate specifically, depending on both your respective products. So when in doubt, ask what they like. Salespeople will usually respond to a client request via any channel it comes in on. Marketers are not always comfortable being approached that way.

Research
You should know about them before you call. Take the time to research the potential client ahead of time and show them why they should meet with you and what exactly you can bring to the table. Study your subject. It has never been easier to get information on companies. You should know what they are doing, key players, key business needs, recent press, etc. Ask smart questions on the pre-meeting call. They may not want or be able to answer all questions on a pre-call, but try and learn what will help you help them.

It's not all about the money
What else do you bring besides asking for money? Too many reps believe that the only thing that matters is getting the order. It's not all or nothing. If you get turned down on a buy, you want to leave a good impression for the next buy -- or for when the client moves to another agency or brand. You can handle objections, you can be passionate about why your property should be bought -- but do it respectfully.

Think about what else of value you can provide. Perhaps you can help them by providing research or case studies. Find out another good time to meet and prepare your next approach. Learn why you didn't get the business so you can improve and also provide good feedback to the product and executive teams. Learn how to handle objections and rejections professionally so they want to engage with you again.

Don't pester
Don't call three times a day. Don't call and hang up three times a day. Don't email twice a day. Don't stalk people on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Don't inappropriately escalate because you don't hear from someone in a day. Give your prospects confidence that you are a good person to work with. Don't oversell or under deliver. Don't disappear once the deal is done and let account management handle it all from there. Your responsibility doesn't end at the insertion order. Don't be the cliché.

How do you know your efforts are paying off?
You'll know. The recruiter calls will start coming. The referral calls will start coming from agency members, agencies, people on the marketing team, and other marketers. Other salespeople will ask your advice on how you are always able to break through. And you'll be the one whose call they want to take.

CLICK HERE to learn more about our eCommerce Design and Consulting Services

NetSuite eCommerce Redesign - Inola Castings Before and After

2011-03-16T15:29:00.001-04:00

Inola Castings, a leading custom belt buckles, key tags, pins producer has been working with Gproxy for a while now under our Maintenance Services.

Our last project together was the redesign of their NetSuite eCommerce Store.

Let's take a look at the “before and after”:

BEFORE

AFTER

As you can see, the changes are substancial! New design is more modern, adapted to today's eCommerce best practices and it looks prettier! This new user interfaces gives Inola Castings the possibility of better displaying their products, which results in a better shopping experience for their clients.

We at Gproxy Design and the Inola Castings crew are very happy with the result of this project, we hope their users are happy as well!

Gproxy Showcases Innovative Rich Media Cloud Based Business Portal Based on 2nd Gen Intel® Core vPro Processors and “Client-Aware” Cloud Technology

2011-03-10T13:03:00.003-05:00

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gproxy Design, a leading Interactive Agency specialized in eCommerce solutions that provides eCommerce design, usability, online marketing and UI/UX consulting services, today showcased a concept for cloud portal that recognizes the characteristics of client computing devices -– PCs, tablets, smart phones, netbooks, handhelds -- and tailors its content to optimize application delivery. The prototype PC utilizes 2nd generation Intel® Core™ vPro™ i5 processors as the design point along with Intel-developed interface technology that responds to the cloud server with key characteristics to help ensure a perfect match of compute, context, and capabilities for the best possible user experience.

GproxyBusinessPortal.com uses this Intel “client-aware” technology, called application programming interfaces (API) in technical parlance, that allows detection of client CPU, Network Connection and Video Capabilities among other specifications, based on the clients capabilities the right user interface (UI) will be delivered.

Used on a 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5 or i7 processor, this High Version UI includes HD video, Interactive 3D Charts, Video conference capabilities. The Standard Version developed in HTML 5 runs on lower CPUs configurations, but cannot support the same level of immersive experience

In the detection of the device capabilities, Gproxy also uses CLIDES (Client Device Score) services, developed in the past year by Gproxy. This service not only provides Device classification, but also provides statistics about the different devices that request services from a web page.

“This advanced rich media business portal demonstrates how more capable client devices can access more fully featured user interfaces which in turn enable an enhanced user experience. The client's CPU is now part of the cloud as they are an important part of the work, such as rendering 3D graphs and video decoding,” said Mario Colla, CEO of Gproxy Design.

“Innovative companies, such as Gproxy, are enabling cloud-based applications to capitalize on the computing performance, capabilities and context of end-point devices to deliver applications that are both immersive and cost effective,” said Rick Echevarria, vice president, Intel Architecture Group and general manager, Intel Business Client Platforms Division.

GproxyBusinessPortal.com concepts can be used in future developments and many of the services available with the high resolution version can be developed for business and eCommerce portals by Gproxy. Colla explained that “GproxyBusinessPortal.com was created to show how a user interface can be optimized according to the device, and how the device can enhance the user experience when taking advantage of client based attributes to enable capabilities like 3D rendering or video decoding.”

Along with a strong client aware development environment and tools, Gproxy offers UI/UX Consulting Services providing excellent use of the Intel web API. This service is oriented to analyze your website from a usability point of view. While still considering the importance of positioning your brand and generating awareness across your website, Gproxy’s Consulting experts will analyze the utility and efficiency from the user perspective, with the objective of defining what type of UI is more appropriate to your user's profile versus merely defaulting to the lowest common denominator of compute device.

Gproxy Design and its ecosystem of industry-leading partners, are leading the way to the new era of Cloud Computing, delivering the best user experience through intelligent client-aware solutions.

About Gproxy

Gproxy Design Inc., is a leading Interactive Agency specialized in eCommerce solutions that integrate quality design with targeted user interfaces that ultimately provides optimized user experiences (UX/UI). Gproxy offers "Best of Breed" services such as web site design and development, enterprise search engine optimization, UX/UI consultancy, M-Commerce development, online business strategies and social network strategies. Gproxy's 11 years of professional Interactive Agency experience and reliability, together with an extensive portfolio of over 300 clients that run across the 5 continents helped Gproxy Design become one of the market leaders in the eCommerce world. For more information about Gproxy Design Inc., please visit http://www.gproxy.com/.

Contacts

Gproxy Design, Inc.
Alfonsina Pastori, Marketing & PR, 305-513-3922 ext 113
alfonsina@gproxy.com

Intel's Client Aware Cloud Based Applications Developed by Gproxy Design

2011-03-08T17:03:00.003-05:00

Check out this demo by Intel, where they showcase GproxyBusinessPortal.com, a website that was created as a prototype using Intel's web APIs and Gproxy's Design Services and Client Device Score (CLIDES), together with NetSuite's backend.

Gproxy Design @ Intel's Day in the Cloud

2011-03-04T14:32:00.002-05:00

This week we visited Intel's campus in Portland, OR to attend their Day in the Cloud event, in which Intel's Cloud Builders partners like Gproxy Design, Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, among others shared their solutions built atop Intel Cloud Reference architecture.

Talkin' Cloud shared today a great summary of the different partner solutions display during the event. I'd like to share here what they written:

"Here’s a quick list of solutions demonstrated at the conference…

1. eCommerce specialist Gproxy Design has whipped up a way to make the browser aware of the specs of the device accessing it (right down to laptop battery power remaining) and deliver content accordingly. For example, a new, top-of-the-line laptop computer with a built-in webcam was able to access a browser portal with 3D graphical representations of data pulled from NetSuite, built-in video chat, and high-definition video playback. But a slightly older machine got only the bare essential data and video played in 480p. It’s still in beta, but GProxy’s solution shows a lot of promise.

2. Storage specialists EMC and Oxygen Cloud are delivering a joint solution that brings IT policy management and control to a very Dropbox-like file management solution. Much like the consumer offering, it uses simple drag-and-drop to keep files accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection. But by making sure the storage and retrieval stays compliant with regulatory standards., it’s the best of both worlds.

3. Intel itself has whipped up a way to automatically manage VMware vCloud environments based not on CPU usage, but power consumption. If a workload consumes too much power, as defined by administrator policy, it just shunts it elsewhere. It works between facilities, and can help keep power usage even across all resources no matter how far apart, among other use-cases. Intel has apparently offered said plug-in to VMware, but no word if it’ll see wide-spread release.

4. Citrix showed off Open Cloud Bridge, a way to open secure tunnels and move data from private cloud to public cloud — apparently, a widely-requested feature. In the demo, Intel engineers were actually able to move a workload from a remote private cloud to the public cloud test lab hosted on the premises in the span of a few minutes. And once it was complete, the Citrix XenApp deployment worked just as it had previously. They call it “managed cloudbursting.”

5. HyTrust and VMware are leveraging Intel TXT secure virtualization technology, which prevents malicious software from getting into a virtual machine before launch, to pool trusted and untrusted VMs and enforce policies on each. The goal is to prevent the administrator from causing any damage to the cloud, whether that damage is because of malware or a misclick.

6. NetApp attended to show off their 10 gigabit networking solutions, which they had rigged up to carry iSCSI as well as TCP/IP. Basically, NetApp says, they can deliver up to ten gigabits of whatever protocols you need, drastically reducing the need for cabling in the data center.

Intel divides their Cloud Builders initiative into two parts: creating the cloud and managing the cloud. Most of the solutions on display yesterday seemed to be geared around the latter part. But make no mistake, as much lip service was given to the former as the latter."

Facebook makes eCommerce more social

2011-03-03T17:33:00.002-05:00

Internet Retailer published an article about Facebook latest announcement. This announcement explains the latest update they released to Facebook's Comments Box plug-in, which now enables retailers to add Facebook comment boards to their product pages (or other website pages) by including a simple code. This means that, for example, retailers are now able to place comment boxes on product pages so consumers can express their opinions about that particular product.

I'd like to share with you IR's article below, to better understand the benefits of this features for the eCommerce world.

Facebook is no longer content just to have consumers click that they Like a particular e-retailer, product or news article. It now wants the items that consumers share to spur conversations.

The social network announced yesterday an update to its Comments Box plug-in, which allows online retailers and other web sites to add Facebook’s comment boards to their pages via a single line of code. A retailer could, for instance, place a comments box on product pages where a consumer could comment that she likes the fit of the particular pair of pants.

The feature now uses what it calls “social signals” to increase the relevancy of the comments that a consumer sees by more prominently displaying comments posted by the consumer’s Facebook friends or friends of friends, as well as the most popular or active discussion threads. Facebook says it also will hide comments marked as spam.

Moreover, to boost consumers’ engagement with those comments, Facebook’s default setting will simultaneously post online discussions started on web sites using its Comments Box plug-in on the commenter's Facebook wall as long as the consumer is logged in to Facebook. The commenter’s friends will see a post on their news feeds that shows the comment, and the post will include a link to the site where the original consumer posted the comment.

That means that if a consumer named Suzie posts a comment in the comments box on a retailer’s web site, those comments would appear in the news feed of her friends’ Facebook pages. Moreover, when one of Suzie’s friends goes to the retailer’s web site, Suzie’s comment would appear higher than other shopper’s comments because of their connection.

Consumers don't have to be logged into Facebook to post in the Comments Box because the social network is allowing sites to offer visitors the option of logging in with other non-Facebook account credentials. However, if the consumer is logged in to Facebook, her comments may be accompanied by her name, the friends she shares with the consumer viewing the comment, work title, age or current city, depending on her privacy settings in Facebook.

“Liking an article was a way for you to signal to your friends that this is something they might be interested in and reading,” says Dan Rose, Facebook vice president of partnerships and platform marketing, in a video posted on Mashable.com. “Now you can comment on the article and have that same effect of sharing the information with your friends and creating a conversation that builds both ways.”

Along with the more social comments feature, Facebook says it has improved its moderator tools based on developers’ feedback. Now retailers can choose to blacklist particular words and ban certain users.

The announcement comes a day after Facebook began adding information to the news feed summary of an item that was Liked, such as a thumbnail image and product summary. The effort, Facebook says, is to give items that consumers Like more visual prominence.

Learn more about Gproxy eCommerce Web Design Services and how we can help you integrating this new Facebook feature to your online retail website!

Google's goal: give people the most relevant answers to their queries as fast as possible

2011-03-01T17:58:00.003-05:00

Google just enhanced its search algorithm and declared war on Content Farms.

In a blog posted last week by Google Engineers Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts, explain that the update, which is estimated to affect 11.8% of all search results, "is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful."

The blog post continues explaining: "this update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

Please CLICK HERE to access to the complete version of this blog post to learn more, or contact us HERE and one of our Online Marketing Consultants can help you.

Gproxy Design Announces up to 356% Conversion Increase of Their Clients after Project Completion

2011-02-25T10:05:00.001-05:00

ORLANDO, FL. --(Business Wire)-- Gproxy Design, a leading Ecommerce solution provider, today at Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability 2011 Conference, announced impressive conversion results of their clients after using Gproxy Design´s Services that go up to 356% increase.

Gproxy's clients SkinTreatment, PinPros, Novatech and RuffWear registered a significant improvement in their conversion rates and sales after using Gproxy's web design and consulting services. From complete redesigns to full on and off page search engine optimization services, these companies started working with Gproxy with different objectives, but at the end the same positive outcome: Results improvement.

"Gproxy Design counts on a great team of experts who are passionate to reach our clients goals. With that passion, together with a strong team spirit, highly skilled professionals and a strongworking process, is that reaching this high conversion rates increase was possible," said Mario Colla, Gproxy Desing's CEO. "SkinTreatment increased their sales by 31% after redesigning their eCommerce and building their mCommerce with us, we are proud of reaching this kind of results together after all our hard work building their online brand identity."

Other results that Gproxy's customers achieved with their ecommerce web design services, include industry players like Ruffwear, who increase their website's visits by 32%; Novatech increased their leads by 16%; and PinPros increased their PPC conversion by 356%.

About Gproxy Design
Gproxy Design Inc. is a leading Interactive Agency specialized in eCommerce solutions that integrate quality design with targeted user interfaces that ultimately provides optimized user experiences (UX/UI). Gproxy offers "Best of Breed" services such as web site design and development, enterprise search engine optimization, UX/UI consultancy, M-Commerce development, online business strategies and social network strategies. Gproxy's 11 years of professional Interactive Agency experience and reliability, together with an extensive portfolio of over 300 clients that run across the 5 continents helped Gproxy Design become one of the market leaders in the eCommerce world. For more information about Gproxy Design Inc., please visit www.gproxy.com

Contact Info
Alfonsina Pastori
Marketing & PR
alfonsina@gproxy.com
+1-305-513-3922

Gproxy Design at IRWD 2011!

2011-02-24T14:51:00.003-05:00

We at Gproxy Design would like to thank all our clients and partners for visiting our booth at Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability 2011 Conference, which was held last week in Orlando, FL.

This conference is the only one in the industry 100% dedicated to the design and usability of eCommerce user experiences, and consolidates all industry-leading vendors in one place offering online retailers the chance of learning about how can they take their business to the next level.

This was the first time that Gproxy Design exhibited at the IRWD and it was a great experience! We were able to share some of our success stories, offer one-on-one consultations to people interested in our eCommerce web design services, as well as our onlin e marketing consulting opportunities and invited all attendees to have some fun playing soccer! Some of our clients also visited our booth like Treadmill Doctor, Pilot Pen and Mud Hole.

Some of our partners were also present in this event, some of them as attendees, speakers and others such us OrderDynamics, SearchSpring , SLI Systems and FitForCommerce were there as exhibitors and did an excellent job with their booths!

Here are a couple of pictures of our booth, hope to see you there next year!

Mobile Commerce is a Top 2011 Priority for B2C Companies

2011-02-11T11:24:00.002-05:00

Internet Retailer published last week an article with information about the top new area of investment in the online retail industry: mCommerce.

We have a team of experts working on this specific area and we have developed several mCommerce stores already, but it is great to see that trends indicate that the mCommerce channel will kepp growing and growing!

I'd like to share the full article with you, it's interesting to see what industry leaders are doing...

Online revenue and traffic for business-to-consumer companies rose in 2010, according to a new survey of companies that sell directly to consumers via the web. 72% of respondents reported higher online revenue, and 77% reported increased traffic, with 61% seeing more natural traffic and 50% reporting higher traffic from paid search, finds the survey of 430 business-to-consumer companies by search technology and services provider Endeca Technologies Inc.

To further business goals in 2011, the companies say investment in the web experience for consumers is their top priority. 64% report are prioritizing improving their web sites with features like enhanced search, navigation, product content and overall ease of use, the survey says. Elements that build consumers’ confidence to make a purchase such as customer reviews, online communities and personalization are also an area of focus.

Mobile commerce is the top new area of investment, the survey finds. 35% of companies say they have a mobile program in place, while 30% are in the early stages of implementation and 25% are investigating options and plan to have a live mobile program in 2011. Less than 5% reported no mobile initiatives planned in the next 12 months.

Half of business-to-consumer companies struggle to understand when to integrate into their e-commerce platform additional systems for functions such as customer reviews or site search, the survey says. 45% say integrating technologies is difficult for technical teams managing a growing backlog of initiatives.

And improving and leveraging product content is a top 2011 priority identified in the survey. 44% of respondents say building out complete product content, including images, data, video, user guides and more, and using it across all channels is a priority this year.

“Consumers are demanding content-driven, multichannel commerce,” says John Andrews, vice president of product marketing, e-business, at Endeca. “The majority of B2C organizations we surveyed are attempting to deliver dynamic user experiences, but are finding it hard to do so consistently across channels.”

Endeca surveyed 430 retailers, consumer brand manufacturers and media companies.

To learn more about Gproxy Design's services for mCommerce CLICK HERE, or contact one of our Sales Consultants HERE

Top 500 analysis: It was web-only merchants and then everyone else in 2010

2011-02-03T18:13:00.000-05:00

Stats info published by Internet Retailer are great news! Read full article here:

It’s early in the data analysis for Internet Retailer’sforthcoming 2011 Top 500 Guide, but one trend is already evident—web-only merchants took business away from the rest of the market in 2010.

Combined revenue for the 87 merchants that have so far reported annual web sales increased 32.9% to $46.53 billion in 2010 from $35 billion in 2009. In comparison, total retail sales grew year over year about 3% to $2.4 trillion last year from $2.33 trillion in 2009, according to the National Retail Federation.

Fueled by Amazon.com, web-only retailers grew the most in 2010. Among the 55 web-only retailers who have reported their revenue so far, sales were up 37.8% in 2010 to $39.47 billion from $28.64 billion in 2009.

Without Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guidewhich grew sales year over year by 39.5% to $34.20 billion from $24.51 billion, the remaining 54 online-only merchants grew revenue 27.6% to $5.27 billion in 2010 from $4.13 billion in 2009.

The analysis of the 55 web-only retailers, 15 catalog companies, 14 chain retailers and three consumer brand manufacturers also reveals:

Even with only a handful of companies reporting e-commerce sales thus far, consumer brand manufacturers continue to see the Internet as a vital sales channel. Top 500 manufacturers posted combined sales of $340.4 million in 2010 from $233.2 million in 2009, an increase of 46%.
Store-based retailers continue to generate more business online. The combined web sales of chain retailers grew 13.8% to $4.30 billion last year from $3.78 billion in 2009.
Catalogers posted the lowest growth rates among all Top 500 merchant types in 2010, growing web sales 3% year over year to $2.41 billion from $2.34 billion.
Without Amazon, the remaining 87 merchants experienced annual growth of 17.5% from sales of $10.49 billion in 2009 to $12.33 billion in 2010.

NETSUITE APPOINTS ANDY LLOYD GENERAL MANAGER OF ECOMMERCE PRODUCTS

2011-01-28T15:09:00.002-05:00

SAN MATEO, Calif.—January 27, 2011— NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced that Andy Lloyd, an online retail innovator and Ecommerce expert with more than 15 years of experience in the Internet and computer software industry, has been named NetSuite's new General Manager of Ecommerce Products. In this role, Lloyd spearheads the Ecommerce efforts both from a product and new business development perspective. For more information about NetSuite's Ecommerce solution, please visit http://www.netsuite.com/ecommerce-solutions.

"Andy Lloyd's innovative and creative thinking has helped to pioneer social commerce," said Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite. "NetSuite can benefit from Andy's leadership in the Ecommerce space, and his ability to consistently execute new business initiatives and cultivate strategic product development, to further NetSuite's Ecommerce leadership."

Most recently, Lloyd was the CEO of Fluid Inc., where he led the company's strategy, innovation and growth. Under his leadership, Fluid Inc. more than doubled its annual revenue and improved profitability year-over-year. In addition, Lloyd drove new business, adding key brands to the portfolio, as well as driving geographic expansion. As an entrepreneur, Lloyd was the founder and CEO of Chariteam, which provided a SaaS solution for online fundraising companies. He was also a founding team member of Diba Inc. Earlier in his career he was the Director of Marketing at Kintana, which is now owned by HP.

"The opportunity to combine my Ecommerce experience with NetSuite's resources and industry leading cloud-based business suite can allow us to improve not just how companies sell online but also to improve how they engage with their customers. The opportunity to have a profound impact on the industry while driving new business for NetSuite was an opportunity that I could not pass up," said Lloyd.

Lloyd has a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Stanford University, where he was also captain of the swim team, leading the Cardinal swimmers to an NCAA championship and setting the records for the largest margin of victory and the highest point total in NCAA history. Lloyd was ranked among the top 25 swimmers in the world in 1991, and competed in the Olympic Trials in 1988 and 1992.

NOTE: NetSuite and the NetSuite logo are registered service-marks of NetSuite Inc.

Contact:
Mei Li
Senior VP, Corporate Communications
NetSuite, Inc.
Phone: 650.627.1063
E-mail: meili@netsuite.com

Meet Gproxy Design at IRWD 2011!

2011-01-27T12:17:00.002-05:00

The Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability 2011 Conference, as described in their website, is the perfect event for anyone responsible for the development and sales performance of retail web sites. This event focuses on issues that are at the core of web performance and provides practical tips for improving online sales with better web designs.

The Gproxy Design Team will be exhibiting at this event, which will be held from February 14th thru February 16th in Orlando, FL, and we would love to meet you there!

We would like to extend this invitation to all our partners and clients and offer you this $100 discount for your registration at IRWD 2011. Here are the steps you need to follow depending on what type of registration you need:

REGISTRATION

INDIVIDUAL REGISTRATION:
Registration URL: CLICK HERE
Discount Code: EC110037
Booth Number: 214

GROUP REGISTRATION:
Select the New Group Registration button. If you register for 3 or more attendees using the group registration button, you will receive a 25% discount on all passes (in lieu of the $100 discount). If less than 3 attendees register using the group form the $100 discount will automatically be applied.

We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!

Contact us HERE to learn more about Gproxy Design’s Services and coordinate a meeting at IRWD 2011!

Gproxy's latest Joomla Website

2011-01-19T17:29:00.003-05:00

Solar Libery is a company that designs and installs solar electric systems. They are committed to promoting energy independence through widespread installations of grid-tied photovoltaic solar energy systems.

They trusted Gproxy Design as their online presence solutions partner, and we've started working together in this first project about 2 months ago. SolarLiberty.com is a B2B website, which uses Joomla as their CMS. Our team of experts prototyped, designed and developed this site, according to our distinctive working process.

When designing a B2B or corporate website, generating brand awareness is one of the most important objectives of the project, together with presenting content in a way that is clear and easy to follow for the site's users. Our team of professional designers did a great job in this site, which presents a clean, easy to navigate, modern and SEO friendly user interface.

We are still working together in two other websites; one corporate site and and a NetSuite eCommerce website. Stay tuned to see how those other two come out!

Gproxy Design Exhibiting at IRWD 2011

2011-01-11T15:28:00.002-05:00

Gproxy Design will be present at the Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability 2011 Conference in Orlando, FL next February. The IRWD is the most relevant Web Design & Usability Event for e-retailers in the US.

I'd like to share with you Internet Retailer Publisher Jack Love's invitation to this event, where is clearly explain who should attend and why.

Hope to see you all there!

Welcome to IRWD 2011: E-Retailing's "Hidden Gem" of a Conference

There are many e-commerce conferences for e-retailers to attend. Internet Retailer offers three of our own, including the largest e-commerce show in the world--the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition to be held in San Diego next June.

But there is one conference—and only one—that is focused exclusively on the task of helping e-retailers and their web developers to enhance the design of retail web sites to make them easier to find, more convenient to use and compelling for online shoppers to browse, locate and buy more merchandise. That show is the 2011 Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference, now in its fourth year.

I confess this is my favorite online retailing show, because it's the one where I learn the most about what I am certain is the single most important ingredient in a successful retail web site—a design that uses the latest market intelligence, proven techniques, and the newest tools to make a web site easier to find, navigate, and submit orders—the secrets to creating a web shopper's paradise.

The Evolving Secrets of Retail Web Design

Those secrets are exactly what the 43 experts speakers at IRWD 2011 will provide during this three-day event. The secrets to excellent web design are not carved in stone; they evolve continuously thanks to new technology, the expanding experience of the e-retailing market, and the requirement to meet the changing needs of the web shopper. And at IRWD 2011, speakers will focus on how web design must address the needs of the post-recession shopper, a very different being than the pre-recession buyer. More than ever, web shoppers—a demanding lot even in good times—want convenience, information, price, speed, selection and quality before they buy. Excellent designs provide all of that; IRWD 2011 speakers reveal the secrets to excellent designs.

An Interactive Experience

But IRWD 2011 does not merely present information in a static conference room. It provides real-life examples, frank design critiques, and lots of interactive sessions in which attendees ask questions, submit their own designs for peer and speaker review, and seek advice to resolve their unique web design challenges and opportunities. This isn't a sit-back-and-listen conference; it's a roll-up-your sleeves, participate and learn conference. And because everyone at the show is focused on one subject—retail web site designs that work—the networking opportunities are particularly rewarding.

Two Free Consultation Sessions

Now for the clincher. All paid conference attendees at the 2011 Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference receive two free 30-minute private consultations with their choice of 24 web design experts. Other shows have tried to emulate this unique feature of IRWD but none deliver a consultation experience like IRWD does. We let you choose a consultant (picking two of the 24 based on their background descriptions) and schedule your preferred time to meet with them for a private consulting session in a room equipped with a high-speed web connections and monitor. All web design consultants are provided in advance the company names of the attendees they will meet with and each consultant reviews the attendee's site in advance so the consultation can be more productive. Design consultants are forbidden to make sales pitches. Their sole purpose is to analyze the design and usability of your site and suggest ways to make it a more powerful sales generator.

I'm not alone in signing the praises of the Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference. Take a look at the stellar attendee ratings this show gets and you'll get a better understanding of how attendees feel about the value of this unique retail web site design event. If you attend IRWD 2011, I will bet that you'll come away from it armed with web design intelligence that you will put to use as soon as you return home. This isn't the biggest or even best known e-commerce show. But each year, hundreds of attendees return home agreeing with Schlomo Weisman, a VP of Fidelity Payment Services and, an attendee at IRWD 2010. Says he: "This show is a hidden gem."

Kindest Regards,

Jack Love

Publisher

M-Commerce: 7.3 million mobile phone users shop via mobile monthly—3.9 million weekly, 2.1 million daily

2011-01-07T13:05:00.002-05:00

Internet Retailer published this week some stats about mobile commerce. It is interesting to see how this new channel for retail keeps growing and growing, and also what the industry leaders are doing for m-commerce.

Read the article below and let us know your comments!

Data from web and mobile web measurement firm comScore Inc. show that what retailers and experts alike have been saying of late about mobile commerce is true: 2010 was a breakout year for m-commerce.

7,296,000 mobile phone users accessed mobile commerce sites and/or apps one to three times a month on average for the three-month period ending November 2010, comScore finds. That represents 3.1% of the 234 million U.S. mobile phone users age 13 and up. 3,853,000 accessed m-commerce sites and/or apps at least once a week, comprising 1.6% of mobile users. And 2,120,000 went mobile shopping almost every day, representing 0.9% of users.

8,632,000 mobile phone users have accessed a mobile commerce web site. 3,952,000 have accessed a mobile shopping app.

Of m-commerce sites and apps, following are the 10 most-visited retailers and the average number of unique monthly visitors for the three-month period ending November 2010 (totals include both sites and apps):

Amazon.com Inc., 8,604,000
Walmart.com, 2,722,000
Best Buy Co., 2,659,000
Target Corp., 2,458,000
eBay Inc., 1,748,000
BarnesandNoble.com Inc., 1,526,000
Overstock.com Inc., 1,493,000
Buy.com Inc., 1,128,000
Apple Inc. (excluding the App Store), 934,000
Newegg Inc., 133,000

For a complete chart, click here, then click on Mobile Commerce Traffic (November 2010).

Interested in learning more about Gproxy Design's M-Commerce Services? CLICK HERE to contact us!

In Gproxy the New Year Starts with New NetSuite Stores Live!

2011-01-04T12:28:00.005-05:00

Packard's on the Plaza is located in Santa Fe, NM and houses a unique collection of international art including jewelry from local artisans to New York designers.

They came to Gproxy looking for a partner to design and develop their online store using the award-winning NetSuite eCommerce platform.

As indicated in our working process, we started with prototyping the store, analyzing what features will be included and generating a structure and navigation in a way that could guarantee a pleasant and effective user experience.

Once the site’s structure was ready, our team of professional designers created the store’s look and feel, always with Packard’s on the Plaza branding in mind, but also considering today’s eCommerce best practices.

This website was developed in close collaboration with SearchSpring, as they integrated their narrow search onto our NetSuite integrated website. This functionality allows Packard’s shoppers to browse products in a very simple and intuitive way, and contributes in creating a smooth shopping experience, which will result in higher conversion rates for this store.

The final result of this NetSuite eCommerce Store is very satisfactory and we are happy to have Packard’s on the Plaza in our portfolio!

Happy Holidays!!!

2010-12-23T11:52:00.002-05:00

Gproxy's Latest NetSuite eCommerce Store Now Live!

2010-12-22T17:00:00.005-05:00

Headquartered in Southern California OHC Group LLC is the creator of the Only Hearts Club®, Horse & Pony Club™, So Small Pets™ and Only Hearts Pets® brands. The company specializes in the design, development and production of innovative toys for the specialty toy and gift market.

They came to Gproxy looking for a site re-design, with their branding as top priority, but always with the objective of creating a good user interface to offer a pleasant user experience.

Their NetSuite store was pretty straight forward and uncomplicated; the challenge was the timeline that we had to manage. A total of 9 weeks were spent on this project as per the client’s indications. They were very cooperative throughout the process and the team really pulled through in providing rapid response to every feedback and concern, so what is to me most remarkable about this project is the quality of the team work that was achieved!

Congratulations to our team of experts and to Only Hearts Club for their great looking NetSuite eCommerce store!

If you are interested in receiving more information about our NetSuite eCommerce Services, please click here.

Top mobile commerce opportunities for 2011

2010-12-17T15:17:00.002-05:00

Mcommerce has definitely been the star of 2010. Everyone was interested in exploring this niche opportunity. Today, according to the experts, mcommerce is no longer a "nice-to-have offering", but is now a MUST HAVE.

The importance of offering multiple device accessibility to a virtual store will be crucial for your business success next year.

I'd like to share with you an interesting article published today by Mobile Marketer, that analyzes the mcommerce opportunities for 2011:

The merchant opportunity

In 2011, mobile devices will provide an alternative to credit cards, especially for purchases under $25.

Merchants want to offer consumers easy access to their products and services via the mobile medium, but securing separate deals with dozens of different carriers is difficult.

The process can be streamlined when a company like OpenMarket eliminates the hassle and enables merchants to transact across many different wireless carriers, per Mr. Emmet.

“Some hurdles between merchants and operators still exist, including transparency into payment systems, revenue share distribution and legal risk,” Mr. Emmet said. “However, in 2011, we’ll see further movement to resolve these complexities, with efforts from operators and merchants alike.”

Commerce-enabled mobile Web

Matthew Poepsel, vice president of performance strategies at Gomez, the Web performance division of Compuware, said that retailers should concentrate on launching a mobile commerce presence in 2011.

For those that have one in place, it is important to work on the performance of the mobile site.

Gomez, through numerous consumer surveys as well as its most recent holiday Retail User Experience (UX) Index, has found that overall, mobile Web performance is still no match for the traditional PC Web.

Mobile sites are reminiscent of where the overall Web was 10 years ago, performance-wise.

So while consumers are increasing their use of mobile devices to augment the shopping experience – checking product availability in stores and comparing prices – they will still likely abandon mobile purchasing on sites that are not optimized for the on-the-go experience, similar to shopping cart abandonment in the early days of ecommerce.

“We believe that any major increase in mobile commerce transactions this holiday season and into early 2011, are likely going to be the results of mobile apps,” Mr. Poepsel said. “The key to getting consumers to actually buy items on mobile sites is to deliver a great mobile Web experience.”

Mobile apps for commerce

Mobile applications offer retailers another valuable opportunity to connect with customers, particularly by pushing coupons and sales.

Retailers must measure and optimize the performance of mobile applications as part of their overall mobile Web strategy, particularly in anticipation of heavy deals and incentives periods like the holidays.

“If your mobile site or apps are slower than your competitor’s, you give your competitors a chance to score impulse purchases from your would-be customers,” Mr. Poepsel said.

Source: MobileMarketer.com

Gproxy Integrates Mobile-Commerce Software With NetSuite's SuiteCloud Computing Platform

2010-12-14T18:07:00.002-05:00

Integration Helps NetSuite Ecommerce Customers Optimize Shopping and Buying Experience for iPhone, Android, and Other Mobile Devices.

MIAMI, Dec. 13, 2010 -- Gproxy Design, a leading Ecommerce solution provider, today announced the integration of their M-Commerce Solution with SuiteCloud, the NetSuite Inc. ( NYSE: N), cloud computing platform. Gproxy's new mobile-commerce software and related services extend a company's Web presence to create a site specifically adapted for serving users of mobile technologies such as iPhones, Android and other mobile devices. Built using NetSuite's SuiteCloud development platform, the Gproxy M-Commerce Solution for NetSuite can help NetSuite Ecommerce customers add to online revenues by optimizing the shopping and buying experience.

"Global usage of smartphones is growing very fast, and mobile devices are accounting for more and more online purchases," said Mario Colla, CEO of Gproxy Design. "Our M-Commerce solution lets NetSuite customers present both Ecommerce and M-Commerce stores running on the same inventory and back-end solution, so it's perfect for merchants looking to expand to new markets and reach their customers anytime and anywhere."

With the Gproxy M-Commerce Solution, product displays, shopping cart, and checkout capabilities are all automatically redesigned for mobile shoppers. The solution provides a mobile-optimized product image browser and supports product ratings, customer reviews, wish lists, among other features. The user interface is completely customizable, so it can be adapted to the fast-changing capabilities and constraints posed by ever-evolving mobile devices.

Working with NetSuite

The Gproxy M-Commerce Solution for NetSuite works with the NetSuite Ecommerce multiple-Website feature to automatically create an optimized M-Commerce website that's fully integrated with the same NetSuite backend as the Ecommerce website.

NetSuite Ecommerce customers can employ the M-Commerce site "out of the box," or they can add consulting and setup services from Gproxy. Once activated, the M-Commerce solution integrates with NetSuite's built-in analytics to automatically profile mobile browsers and shoppers, making it easier for marketers and merchandisers to understand the behavior trends of each audience. With this insight, merchants can further enhance and differentiate their M-Commerce presence to gain maximum business value from their online presence.

"The Gproxy M-Commerce Solution for NetSuite is an elegant solution to a difficult challenge," said Guido Haarmans, Vice President of Developer Programs at NetSuite. "Mobile devices are proliferating, and Ecommerce websites are getting more sophisticated every day. This solution is pre-integrated with the NetSuite backend just like a regular NetSuite Ecommerce website so NetSuite customers can extend their sales to mobile devices with minimal investments and without any changes to back-end operations."

Visit our website www.gproxy.com/mobile to learn more on Gproxy's mobile solution.

About SuiteCloud

NetSuite's SuiteCloud is a comprehensive offering of on-demand products, development tools and services designed to help customers and commercial software developers take advantage of the significant economic benefits of Cloud computing. Based on NetSuite, the world's most widely used Software as a Service business application suite, SuiteCloud enables customers to run their core business operations in the Cloud, and software developers to target new markets quickly with newly-created mission-critical applications built on top of mature and proven business processes. The complete SuiteCloud offering includes NetSuite's multi-tenant, always-on SaaS infrastructure; the NetSuite Business Suite of applications (Accounting/ERP, CRM, Ecommerce); the NS-BOS Development Platform; the SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN), a comprehensive developer program for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs); and SuiteApp.com, a single-source online marketplace where customers can find applications to meet specific business process or industry-specific needs. For more information on SuiteCloud, please visit http://www.netsuite.com/developers.

About Gproxy

Gproxy Design Inc. is a leading Interactive Agency specialized in eCommerce solutions that integrate quality design with targeted user interfaces that ultimately provides optimized user experiences (UX/UI). Gproxy offers "Best of Breed" services such as web site design and development, enterprise search engine optimization, UX/UI consultancy, M-Commerce development, online business strategies and social network strategies. Gproxy's 11 years of professional Interactive Agency experience and reliability, together with an extensive portfolio of over 300 clients that run across the 5 continents helped Gproxy Design become one of the market leaders in the eCommerce world. For more information about Gproxy Design Inc., please visit www.gproxy.com

NetSuite, the NetSuite logo, SuiteBundler, SuiteCloud, Suitelets and SuiteScript are service-marks or trademarks of NetSuite Inc.

Gproxy is a trademark of Gproxy Design, Inc.

Online holiday sales are up 12%

2010-12-09T00:45:00.000-05:00

As reported today by Internet Retailer, Consumers have spent more than $17.5 billion online this holiday season. This are great news for the Gproxy Design online retailers community indeed!

I'd like to share with you the article they published this morning analyzing online shoppers behavior for the rest of the month.

The holidays are proving to be the most wonderful time of the year for online retailers, with e-commerce sales having passed $17.5 billion, a 12% jump from the corresponding days a year ago, comScore Inc. reported today.

Consumers have spent more than $800 million on four different days since late November. Leading the way was the Monday following Thanksgiving weekend, Nov. 29, also known as Cyber Monday, which was the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.03 billion. The following day, Nov. 30, was the second heaviest day of spending when consumers spent $911 million.

"We anticipated that the post-Cyber Monday period would experience a slight hangover after many of the retailers' most aggressive deals and promotions expired, but we can expect to see activity begin to pick up again next week as we get into the middle part of December," says Gian Fulgoni, comScore chairman.

The web measurement firm says free shipping is helping shift consumer spending online. Since Nov. 1, more than 50% of all online orders have included a free shipping incentive, with the offer peaking at 55.1% of all orders for the week ending Nov. 28. That’s a 20.8% increase from the same week a year ago, when 45.6% of online orders included free shipping. For the week ended this past Sunday, Dec. 5, 51.4% of orders shipped for free, compared with 43.8% in the comparable week in 2009.

“Without a doubt, free shipping has become a critical driver of e-commerce purchasing, with the majority of consumers indicating that they will abandon their shopping carts if they get to check out and find that free shipping is not included,” says Fulgoni. “Retailers have increasingly responded to this consumer demand, with market leaders Amazon and Wal-Mart, for example, both offering free shipping on virtually all transactions this season.”

Retailers are offsetting the margin loss from offering free shipping, he says, because the average order value for transactions with free shipping are an average of 30% higher than those without.

Gproxy's Portfolio in the Latin-american Market!

2010-12-07T11:48:00.000-05:00

MD Hogar is a successful retailer in Venezuela. They cover different niche markets from cell phones, LCD tvs, kitchenware, bedding, among other things. They are a very successful online retailer in the Venezuelan market.

They came to Gproxy looking for a vendor who could assist them in maintaining their Magento website and that could also give them assistance in Spanish. With our experience in that platform, our branch office in Montevideo, Uruguay and our team of Spanish-speakers eCommerce professionals, Gproxy Design resulted their best business partner.

This store offer all Magento out-of-the-box features, enhanced with a good design and user friendly navigation. The use of good images and clear information about each product, help buyers to make an informed purchase, and as a result MD Hogar has a high level of customer satisfaction that reflects in their conversion rates.

If you are interested in receving more information about our MMU Programs or our services for the LATAM Market, please CLICK HERE to contact us and start working with us in taking your eCommerce to the next level!

Google brings local store availability to mobile phones

2010-12-03T13:32:00.000-05:00

Google Inc. announced it is now showing mobile phone and desktop users not only stores nearby that carry the items they are looking for, but also stores where the item is in stock.

InternetRetailer.com published an article describing this Google announcement and how it will impact the online and mobile retailers world. Here's the article:

Finish Line is one of the first to use the new Google feature called Local Availability. The mobile version of the tool is available in Google’s Android app called Google Shopper as well as on the mobile version of Google.com. The feature uses a smartphone’s GPS geolocation detection capabilities to recognize where a shopper is and show her nearby stores where an item is in stock so she doesn’t waste a trip. Shoppers also can enter a ZIP code if they want to search inventory in stores near a different location. For each store, Google offers directions, a map, a phone number and a link to the retailer’s web site.

The Local Availability feature in the Android app offers a few handy extras in the way a shopper can search for an item. App users can search by text, bar code scanning and voice. And for some items such as books and music, consumers can search by taking a picture of a product.

“Mobile shoppers want what they want, and they want it now,” says Sam Sato, Finish Line’s president and chief merchandising officer. “We are happy to team with Google to give mobile and desktop users a fast and easy way to find the shoes they want—in the right size and the right color—in stock now at their nearby Finish Line store. It’s a great way to bring customers to our stores for immediate shopping gratification and will take holiday shopping to a new level of ease this season.”

Right now about 70 retailers are sharing product inventory with Google to help drive shoppers to their stores. Retailers can submit local inventory data directly to Google via a data feed, or they can use adaptors for their retail software built by JDA Software Corp., Epicor Corp. or Oracle Corp. to provide the data, Google says.

The service, which is free for retailers, is open to merchants of all sizes. However, many on board now are large retailers with the sophisticated inventory management systems needed to provide Google with instant stock updates. Google says it will soon launch tools to help small and medium-sized businesses more easily share real-time inventory data so they can use the service as well.

Google says despite online sales growing at a quicker clip, 93% of shopping is still done in stores and 7% online. It says it’s trying to combine online shopping benefits of being able to research and locate items with the store shopping benefits of seeing and testing or trying on an item in person.

“This holiday season, and going forward, we’re excited to be working with leading retailers to help shoppers find the perfect gift in a store nearby, whether they’re searching from their laptop or their phone,” says Sameer Samat, Google product director for shopping.

It's Cyber Monday All Week!

2010-11-30T15:46:00.000-05:00

With Christmas around the corner, online retailers must learn from the stats of the past Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s important to analyze your customers behaviour, how much the spent in online shopping, at what time of the day they shopped, their demographics, etc.

At the same time, it is very important to take a look at your competitors, industry leading companies and the market in general. Learn from their experience just by observing how your competitors acted and what kind of actions they took for each specific holiday.

I’d like to share with you an article published at CNBC.com, where writer Christina Cherddar Berk, makes a good analysis of what happened on Cyber Monday:

First Black Friday became a whole weekend of deals, now it looks like it's Cyber Monday all week.

Several retailers have announced extensions of their Cyber Monday discounts into Tuesday or for the entire week.

Wal-mart Stores may have led the way, when it announced last week that its Web site was planning to mark down prices for a "Cyber Week" of deals.

"The minute they went public with that, they created a shift in the marketing mindset," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at market researcher NPD Group.

Cohen said many of the extended sales are "clearly reactive rather than proactive."

"Retailers have realized that if they don't compete, they are not in the game," he said.

In addition to Wal-mart, other retailers that have extended Cyber Monday offers include Toys 'R Us, which will extend its discounts until 1 p.m. on Tuesday; Target, which is planning a week's worth of price cuts, and Sears and Kmart, which will offer Cyber Monday promotions until Thursday.

Cohen expects the deals to keep coming throughout the rest the shopping season, both online and at the stores. Many of the hardest pushes will come early in the season, he said, adding that he expects many to attempt to create some urgency by pitching the deals as "limited time only," "one day only," or use the "magic" words "door buster."

For example, online jewelry retailer Blue Nile kicked off a "holiday exclusives" promotion on Monday. Each day from now through Dec. 23, a piece of jewelry will be sold on the retailer's Web site for as much as 44 percent off. The items will be revealed at midnight and the sale will last for 24 hours or while supplies last. The items will range in price from $50 pearl cuff bracelets, which had originally sold for $85, to as much as a 28-carat opera diamond necklace marked down to $39,000 (It regularly sells for $65,000), the company said.

Although there have been reports of strong shopper traffic both in stores and online since Thanksgiving, the extended sales may be a sign that sales were not as robust as some retailers were expecting, said Kevin Strawbridge, CEO of the couponing Web site Dealtaker.com.

Strawbridge saw retailers such as J.C. Penney and Buy.com unveil new offers or sweeten existing deals on Monday. Among the late-breaking discounts were boy's fleece pajamas that were marked down to $9.99 from $29.99 at jcp.com, Strawbridge said.

Gproxy Design can certainly help you with an online marketing strategy to boost sales this Christmas season. Please contact us HERE to learn more!

Customer Service Tips for eCommerce Stores

2010-11-24T13:46:00.002-05:00

Today I read a very interesting and effective approach to Customer Service for eCommerce stores at Ecommerce-Guide.com.

This article clearly defines 5 useful tips that all online retailers could find interesting. Here are the tips they listed:

1. Make Complaining Easy

A good online business makes it easy for customers to complain if they have issues. Make sure you place your customer-service contact details clearly on your website in a place that is easy to find.

Include customer-service details in emails confirming the customer's order, so they can easily find this information. Where possible include a customer service phone number, and if you can't, make sure you view and answer your emails regularly. You must give customer complaints very high priority. It's very poor customer service to hide behind an email address and not respond to problems.

Another small business technology you can use it an online complaint form. Make it simple to complete, and make sure you acknowledged that you received it, and then deal with the issue promptly.

2. Listen First, Speak Later

Customers who contact you to complain are a valuable asset to your eCommerce business. Treating your complaining customers as such will only benefit you. Treat them with courtesy, and listen carefully to their problem. Once they've explained, make sure that you understand the exact nature of their complaint. And they need to know that you understand, so be sure to reassure them.

3. Apologize. Don't Make Excuses

Once you understand the problem, it's time to apologize. This is an "I 'm sorry that this happened to you" apology, not an excuse-laden apology listing exactly why the problem occurred. Complaining customers don't want excuses; they want to be understood. You need to say "I'm sorry that this happened. It shouldn't have happened, and I'm going to do whatever I can to help you."

4. Fix the Problem

The next step is to ask the customer what he or she want in compensation for the problem. Sometimes, all the customer wants is to be heard. In other cases the customer isn't going to be satisfied regardless of what you offer, and that's unavoidable.

Happily, in most situations, the customer will tell you what he or she considers a reasonable trade off in the situation. You need to accept a reasonable solution. Remember this is a customer is taking the time to complain, which gives you valuable information about how your online business is performing and how some customers perceive it

After you reach a mutual agreement on what constitutes a reasonable resolution, make sure you follow through and see the solution through to its conclusion.

5. Say Thank You

It may seem obvious, but thanking dissatisfied customers for taking the time to tell you about the problems and for giving you a chance to correct the situation is a vital part of good customer service.

If customers take the time to complain it's usually because they care enough about your ecommerce site and their relationship to it to help you identify problems and to fix them. These are people who have purchased from you, who have experienced difficulties and who are giving you a chance to understand those problems and make good on them. Thank them for it.

Bonus: Win Their Loyalty

The good news about a customer who complains is that not only do you get to see where your small business ecommerce processes might be failing to meet expectations, but you get a chance to win back this person as a loyal customer. Statistics show that in almost all cases if you can solve a dissatisfied customer's problems she will continue to use your business.

If you treat complaining customers with respect and you quickly resolve problem situations, you have a good chance of turning unhappy customers into loyal customers.

TO READ FULL ARTICLE PLEASE CLICK HERE

To learn more about Gproxy Design's services for eCommerce, please click HERE

Gproxy's Latest NetSuite eCommerce Store Now Live!

2010-11-23T18:20:00.000-05:00

Since 1969, Covermaster Inc. has delivered on a wide variety of products designed to protect indoor and outdoor sports surfaces. Whenever a sports facility needs to be converted for a multi-use purpose, be it a school gymnasium, a sports field or a stadium,

COVERMASTER® has the right cover to protect the playing surface.

They came to Gproxy looking for a partner to help them with their NetSuite eCommerce website design and implementation.

Our design team did a great job transmitting brand awareness across the online store, but always considering eCommerce best practices and taking advantage of NetSuite features. They used a flash banner for giving good exposure to promotional products in the homepage, which can move automatically or manually from one slide to the other.

Covermaster.com has all features that an online store needs to have, multiple images gallery, product image zoom, tabbed content organization, matrix options selector, social media tools, among other features. Some of these are NetSuite out-of-the-box features, some of them are Gproxy custom made and some others are part of our AAE product.

The final result is a good user interface, which offers great user experience and 100% hosted in the NetSuite platform, allowing our client to make use of the advantages of this cloud platform.

If you want to learn how Gproxy can help you take your business to the next level CLICK HERE to contact us!

Google to take over Fashion with new site Boutique.com

2010-11-19T16:15:00.002-05:00

Google launched last Wednesday a new e-commerce site that will deffinetly improve how fashions is presented and sold online.

The website is www.Boutiques.com and, as it was reported by The New Yorke Times, is a collection of hundreds of virtual boutiques merchandised by designers, retailers, bloggers, celebrities and regular folks. You can shop in the style of, say, the actresses Carey Mulligan or Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen — among the celebrities who signed up — or you can build your own boutique and amass followers who can comment on your taste.”

Boutiques.com offers a personalized shopping experience and uses visual technology to help fashionistas discover and shop their look and creates the opportunity for designers to showcase their collections and latest inspirations online.

The website was built on technology developed by Google’s team of “fashion experts who work with engineers to “teach” the system to understand various patterns, pairings, and genre definitions. When signed into your account, Boutiques.com learns about your style and preferences and in turn, provides you better results and recommendations over time. Ultimately, Boutiques.com will provide shoppers with a much richer and interactive shopping experience and help drive traffic to retailers' websites.”

In The New York Time’s article, they analyzed how Boutiques.com might be a game-changer, because of the way it analyzes your preferences to give you what you requested. As many online shoppers know, search engines tend to give you stuff you don’t really want. A request for fern-colored shoes might yield fern shoes, plus fern-print blouses.

Boutique.com was developed using the technology originally developed by Like.com, which was bought by Google a while ago.

Click HERE to access to the full article published by The New York Times, and learn more about this revolutionary website.

Sources: The New York Times and Boutiques.com

Twitter’s Official Analytics Product Has Arrived

2010-11-18T18:38:00.000-05:00

Yes, that right. Twitter launches their official Analytics product!

I'd like to share with you Mashable's article about this new product launch, which includes a clear explanation of the functionality and some screenshots.

Twitter has started inviting a select group of users to test a new analytics product, Mashable has learned. Such a product has been rumored for some time, and a Twitter executive said earlier this year that Analytics would debut by the end of 2010.

With Twitter Analytics, users will be able to see a plethora of data about their account; for example, information about which tweets are most successful, which tweets caused people to unfollow, and who the most influential users are that reply and retweet their messages.

In the images below, you can see how some of this data is charted. A bar graph over

6-hour increments shows you mentions, follows and unfollows, for example, and you can filter tweets by categories that are defined as “best,” “good,” and “all.”

In what will no doubt come as a blow to the third-party vendors that are already providing similar tools, we’re hearing that the product will be free and that Twitter has no immediate plans to charge.

We’re working to gather more information, but we may hear more about it later this afternoon, when Twitter’s Evan Williams takes the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Stay tuned.

Source: Mashable.com

Gproxy Design Participates in NetSuite’s SDN Partner Event in Denver and Toronto

2010-11-16T13:58:00.001-05:00

Last week our team participated of NetSuite’s SDN Partner Event in Denver and Toronto, to share some quality time with NetSuite’s team and the Suite Cloud Partnes network.

In this event our team presented our new Mobile Commerce Solution for NetSuite; the first 100% hosted in NetSuite solution that gives you the possibility of running your mCommerce and eCommerce stores under the same backend. With Gproxy’s Mobile Commerce Solution for NetSuite you can take advantage of all the features that the NetSuite Cloud Platform

offers to your business also at the mobile channel!

It was great to spend some time with our friends from NetSuite and our fellow partners. Check out some pictures of the event here!

If you want to learn more about Gproxy’s Mobile Commerce Solution for NetSuite, please CLICK HERE and download our brochure, or CONTACT US here to receive more information.

Gproxy Design latest NetSuite website is now live!

2010-11-12T14:57:00.004-05:00

CheapPins.com is a seller of custom made, inexpensive, good quality lapel pins for everyone that may have a need. This company had previously worked with Gproxy Design in the design, development and marketing of other online stores: PinPros.com and InolaCastings.com

This time they came to Gproxy looking to design and implement a new website in the NetSuite platform, CheapPins.com.

The main objective of this website was to offer a trendy look and feel with similar navigation and functionalities that the other 2 website have, but using a new brand. Our professional designers did a great job building this user interface, using bright colors, innovative design elements and an intuitive navigation structure.

CheapPins.com is 100% hosted in NetSuite and our developers created an advanced form for the "Request a Quote" area. When you complete the form, a new lead is generated in NetSuite, and you could also assign a Sales Consultant to that lead based on the region,

type of service, or any criteria that you want.

The final result of this project, is a third successful store of the PinPros group, that offers a pleasant shopping experience and that counts with a robust platform like NetSuite.

Congratulations to our team for this great job!

If you want to learn more about our design, development or online marketing services, please CLICK HERE to contact us.

Why your customers want this Holiday Season

2010-11-10T14:39:00.003-05:00

Shop.org recently published this article about what customers want from your online store for this Holiday Season. They are analyzing this Holiday's best practices from a User Experience point of view.

Please find below shop.org's article, which are alligned with today's ecommerce best practices, and what we believe are required in an online store to provide a good user experience.

Every year before the holiday season, we explore with consumers what really matters most to them when choosing to do business with a given online retailer. While the bulk of development and site features for holiday are now firmly in place, there are a number of things that consumers look for on retail sites that can certainly still be woven into messages in email, the home page, social media outlets, and so forth.

In this vein, last month we asked consumers to rank the importance of a number of site features (5 was “very important”, 1 was “not important at all”). (Shop.org members can download the full results of the 2010 eHoliday pre-holiday consumer survey, conducted with partner BIGresearch.) Top ranked features that emerged:

Seeing the final shopping cart total prior to check out: 4.7. Clearly this is not the time for any pricing surprises as customers head into the check out process. If you don’t already offer this functionality as part of your cart, add clear links to shipping cost info throughout the site, including product detail and check out pages.

Clear product descriptions: 4.6. It’s likely not too late to give these a last once-over. Have you “sanity-checked” the descriptions with friends or family members who aren’t involved in your business every day the way you are? What do the product reviews for an item tell you to emphasize or clarify in the description? Have you tapped experienced store associates for each category to make sure your copy editors haven’t inadvertently left out pertinent details?

Value for money: 4.5. As experienced retailers know, this doesn’t automatically mean sale prices – this simply means that customers want to know they’re getting the best and right product for that price. Is the toy made with BPA-free plastic? Is that cashmere from an Italian mill? Is the book a rare edition or signed by the author?

Product available to ship immediately: 4.5.I know, should be obvious. Still, consumers want to be reassured. Manage their expectations up front on the product page about availability (I like the color-coded chart that Boden USA uses when ordering a given size and color combination for a product). As a last resort, don’t show the item at all until you do have stock again.

Guaranteed on time delivery: 4.4. Again, hardly a surprise, so I’m guessing (hoping!) a lot of retailers recently have been having heart to hearts with their fulfillment teams and shipping partners. If you’re confident about your ability to deliver when you say you will, turn that into a selling point: tell customers that it really is “guaranteed” and how you will stand behind that assertion.

If you need help in setting up your store for this Holiday Season, please CONTACT US HERE!

Gproxy Design attending AdTech 2010 in New York

2010-11-04T14:29:00.007-04:00

Gproxy's team is attending this week to AdTech 2010 Conference in New York, at the Javits Center.

This event is one of the biggest interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibitions. AdTech, oriented to digital marketers, is a good combination of keynote speakers, topic driven panels and workshops that provide attendees with the tools and techniques they need to compete in today's digital world.

Representatives from our Online Marketing team, which offers SEO, SEM, Social Media and full online marketing plan services, are representing Gproxy at the AdTech Conference. We are eager to hear about the new trends and techniques they've learned about!

But while we wait for them to come back from New York next week, we have a few pictures they've sent to share with you!

If you want to contact one of our Online Marketing Experts please CLICK HERE.

Gproxy Design’s Research & Development Team Participated in Google DevFest Buenos Aires 2010.

2010-11-03T11:44:00.004-04:00

This week, our Research & Development team participated in the last edition of the Google DevFest event in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The event was held at the Catholic University of Argentina from November 1st to November 2nd, 2010.

DevFest events are organized by Google, and are free to developers worldwide. Other editions of the DevFest are held in India, Japan, United States, Germany, among other countries and regions.

Google’s DevFest are a great chance to learn about Google technologies and developer products. The event also give you the opportunity to meet developer advocates and engineers who work on those products.

DevFest Buenos Aires, the only edition for Latin America in 2010, covered topics about web and mobile technologies like; Android, HTML5, Chrome, App Engine, Google Web Toolkit and more.

We hope that the new information and techniques that our team incorporated during the event, will have a positive impact in our services and will allow us to develop new functionalities and applications!

To learn more about Google DevFest, please CLICK HERE.

Gproxy Design Inc. Launches Their Latest Product CLIDES (Client Device Score)

2010-11-01T14:05:00.002-04:00

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Gproxy Design, a leading Interactive Agency specialized in eCommerce solutions that provides design, development, online marketing and UI/UX consulting services, launched last week their latest product CLIDES (Client Device Score).

CLIDES is the first client device scoring method for learning more about the client device’s capabilities. Through installing a free-of-charge script in a website, CLIDES can provide information about the visitors’ CPU, bandwidth, screen resolution, among other details.

“This online-based service was created to work within the Client Aware cloud, which means that it is able to recognize and make a smart use of the capabilities of the end point device”, said Mario Colla, CEO of Gproxy Design.

CLIDES allows the optimization of user interfaces according to the users device’s capabilities, taking advantage of the device’s attributes to offer a richer UI or adapting it to a lower performance device to offer a good user experience according to the device‘s capabilities of performance. This concept, can be applied to all type of devices like laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc and in all industries that have an online presence.

While working in the CLIDES project, Gproxy developed a demo site, gproxycommerce.com, in which you can see CLIDES working and also access one of 3 different user interfaces depending on your device’s performance capabilities. Colla explained that “gproxycommerce.com was created to show how a user interface can be optimized according to a device’s score. This demo-store offers 3 different versions;: low, medium and high resolution, and you will see the one that better adapts to your device’s score.”

Aligned with the client aware concept and making a good use of CLIDES and their team’s experience, Gproxy offers UI/UX Consulting Services. This service is oriented to analyze your website from a usability point of view. While still considering the importance of positioning your brand and generating awareness across your website, Gproxy’s Consulting experts will analyze the utility and efficiency from the user perspective, with the objective of defining what type of UI is more appropriate to your user's profile.

Gproxy Design and its ecosystem of industry-leading partners, are leading the way to the new era of Cloud Computing, where the user is now considered a relevant and smart player.

About Gproxy

Gproxy Design Inc., is a leading Interactive Agency specialized in eCommerce solutions that integrate quality design with targeted user interfaces that ultimately provides optimized user experiences (UX/UI). Gproxy offers "Best of Breed" services such as web site design and development, enterprise search engine optimization, UX/UI consultancy, M-Commerce development, online business strategies and social network strategies. Gproxy's 11 years of professional Interactive Agency experience and reliability, together with an extensive portfolio of over 300 clients that run across the 5 continents helped Gproxy Design become one of the market leaders in the eCommerce world. For more information about Gproxy Design Inc., please visit www.gproxy.com

Contact

Alfonsina Pastori, Marketing & PR

305-513-3922 ext 113.

alfonsina@gproxy.com

Gproxy's Team Celebrates Halloween!

2010-10-29T12:20:00.004-04:00

Gproxy and NetSuite Unveil the Client-Aware Cloud

2010-10-28T13:23:00.004-04:00

SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc. ( NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced that it is taking advantage of the new Intel® Web API to enhance user experience on NetSuite's Ecommerce platform to create the client-aware cloud. With client profile data obtained from Intel Web APIs including CPU, battery life, and network connection, the NetSuite Ecommerce platform can be instantly optimized to provide the optimal shopping experience, boosting online revenue and reducing cart abandonment.

This unique convergence of leading-edge cloud computing, targeted user interface designs, and customer intelligence enables online merchants to establish a competitive advantage with optimized user experience site designs and merchandising, perfectly tailored to shoppers' needs as well as the capabilities of their chosen connected device. The client-aware cloud represents the perfect answers to the high expectations of today's Ecommerce shopper. Websites which take too long to load can result in negative brand perception, and a significant loss in overall sales. According to the August 2009 Forrester Research report "eCommerce Web Site Performance Today," poor site performance leads to shopper dissatisfaction and site abandonment, and slow-rendering websites lead to lost online sales. One-third of shoppers who abandoned a recent shopping session were dissatisfied with a retail site's performance, and 79 percent of online shoppers who experience a dissatisfying visit are likely to no longer buy from that site.

With the power and comprehensive capabilities of the NetSuite Ecommerce platform, and the new, in-depth metrics made possible by Intel Web API, e-tailers can now create and deliver the optimal shopping experience with multimedia interactivity, without sacrificing performance or delivering sub-optimal experience. Merchants do not need to compromise the design of their site to accommodate the low-end CPU and connectivity; the user experience can now be customized to meet the capabilities of the shoppers' device.

"Connecting NetSuite with Intel Web APIs demonstrates our commitment to help our e-tailers better serve their online customers," said Glenn Griffin, Vice President of Business Development at NetSuite. "NetSuite e-tailers can now enhance their user interfaces and the user experience."

"By incorporating the Intel Web APIs, NetSuite is able to offer a powerful and agile e-commerce solution," said Andy Tryba, director of marketing for Intel Web APIs. "With NetSuite's new offering e-tailers obtain the enhanced security, scalability and reliability of Intel Web APIs."

Joining NetSuite in the client-aware cloud initiative is Gproxy Design, a leading Interactive Agency specialized in Ecommerce. CLIDES, short for "client device score," was built by Gproxy using Intel's Web API service to determine the best user interface for a shopper. This personalized client-aware approach can ultimately drive improved results for merchants and service providers thanks to the crucial data provided by CLIDES. For more information on CLIDES and adoption practices, please visit www.clides.net, and visit www.gproxycommerce.com for a demo of CLIDES.

"Our CLIDES offering extends the benefits of Intel for NetSuite e-tailers," said Mario Colla, CEO of Gproxy. "The Intel client-aware concept provides a 360 degree view of the cloud. Using the client device capabilities the cloud is empowered. We are proud to be part of this new era of the cloud."

NetSuite's collaboration with Intel and Gproxy to revolutionize Ecommerce personalization represents another milestone innovation for NetSuite Ecommerce. NetSuite has been positioned in the visionaries quadrant of the "Magic Quadrant for E-Commerce" by Gartner, Inc. NetSuite Ecommerce offers e-tailers one system to run their core ecommerce operations from online marketing, customer service, Web analytics to shopping cart, shipping and inventory management.

Intel's web APIs allow web developers to create web applications that deliver a richer web experience. The APIs allow web applications to detect end point information including CPU, battery life and network connection. This information is used to optimize application delivery and user experience that may take advantage of better quality web content. These APIs are easily integrated by developers using their existing web development tools.

About NetSuite

NetSuite Inc. is the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials/ERP software suites. NetSuite enables companies to manage core key business operations in a single system, which includes Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Accounting, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Ecommerce. NetSuite's "real-time dashboard" technology provides an easy-to-use view into up-to-date, role-specific business information. For more information about NetSuite Inc., please visit www.netsuite.com.

About Gproxy

This article was originally published by PRNewswire

Cloud Computing & the Web: Intel Web API for the Client Aware Cloud

2010-10-27T13:21:00.002-04:00

Check out this video to learn more about Intel's client aware concept and how Gproxy Design and NetSuite have contributed, as cloud ecosystem members.

Intel, Other Top Companies Unveil New Cloud Mission: Open Data Centers

2010-10-27T12:40:00.003-04:00

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Intel Corporation today unveiled several new initiatives under its “Cloud 2015” vision aimed at making cloud-based Internet computing more interoperable, secure and simplified.

Intel’s Cloud 2015 vision has three key elements: a “federated” cloud that allows enterprises to share data across internal and external clouds; an “automated” network that automatically allows the secure movement of applications and resources to significantly improve energy efficiency in data centers; and PC and device-savvy “client-aware” clouds that know what types of applications, commands and processing should take place in the cloud or on your laptop, smartphone or other device – thus taking a user and specific device’s unique features into account to fully optimize an online experience.

Intel will support these goals by creating software and building new capabilities into Intel® Xeon® processors, which include features such as Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) and Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (Intel® TXT) that form the basis of cloud computing today.

Open Data Center Alliance

As a step toward Cloud 2015, Intel helped create the Open Data Center Alliance, a coalition of more than 70 leading businesses that together represent more than $50 billion in annual IT investment and that have cloud research or projects underway. Alliance Steering Committee members include BMW*, China Life*, Deutsche Bank*, J.P. Morgan Chase*, Lockheed Martin*, Marriott International, Inc.*, National Australia Bank*, Shell*, Terremark* and UBS*.The alliance will lay out future hardware and software requirements that lead to more open and interoperable cloud and data center solutions. Intel plays a unique advisory role within the alliance, whose initial membership is focused on end user companies rather than technology providers.

Intel embraces the Open Data Center Alliance’s vision and goals and plans to deliver products and solutions consistent with these goals. Intel will work with its hardware and software partners, engaging the industry to innovate on open standards, delivering a faster ramp to the next stage of the Internet, and delivering an open, interoperable and secure cloud that will empower the next generation of business, movies, gaming, music, social media and other yet-to-be-invented Web services.

“The industry has an opportunity to accelerate the potential of cloud computing, delivering even better industry economics through this transformation,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager, Intel Data Center Group. “With the Open Data Center Alliance we now have the world’s top businesses focused and actively engaged with Intel and the high-tech industry, accelerating solutions to the cloud’s key challenges. The server industry has gone through an amazing transformation since the Intel Pentium® Pro’s introduction in 1995; our goal is to ensure that cloud computing continues to deliver breakthrough economics based on the same fundamental principle —innovation on open, interoperable standards.”

Intel Cloud Builders

The goal of the Intel® Cloud Builders program is to provide a path to the Cloud 2015 vision. Intel announced a significant expansion of this program that brings together leading system and software solution partners to provide proven cloud building recipes and practical guidance on how to deploy, maintain and optimize a cloud infrastructure.

While the alliance will determine future requirements for cloud infrastructure, the Intel Cloud Builders program will help bring these requirements to life with full solutions. The program now has a total of 20 reference architectures with several more on the horizon. It represents a community of the most critical providers of technology in the cloud, including Canonical*, Cisco*, Citrix*, Dell*, EMC*, Enomaly*, Eucalyptus Systems*, Gproxy*, HP*, IBM*, Intel, Joyent*, Microsoft*, NetApp*, NetSuite*, Novell*, Parallels*, Red Hat*, Univa* and VMware*.

About Intel

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.

Intel, Xeon and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the impending death of the term Ecommerce as we know it.

2010-10-26T00:42:00.002-04:00

by Nick Grant -- Gproxy Design

Now I am not much of a historian, or having said that, a naturalist. But, I do have a reasonable grasp of evolutionary theories as written back in the 1800’s by my fellow Brit, Charles Darwin.

In its most basic terms, he wrote that all species evolved from one common ancestor and that the strong outlives the weak and then ultimately replaces them.

Now I am guessing you are wondering what this might have to do with ecommerce?

Please allow me to explain. Shopping as we know it started in the markets and then the malls and has evolved to include a vast online business since its inception on the internet. Now, we are seeing the next evolution of the process because ecommerce has a newer younger brother biting at its ankles in the form of m-commerce.

So, if we were to take Mr Darwin’s view, then these three primary shopping environments should be competing toe to toe with each other until one or more are forced into extinction. However, this is not the case and should not be the case for any business looking to market and sell products to online consumers. In actuality, the exact opposite needs to occur.

People like to look and touch products in a store, but while there they will use their mobile device to compare prices with competitors, compare a range of similar products for their specifications and see how other shoppers have reviewed those products via websites, blogs and social media platforms. Following this investigation they will either buy directly from the store or go away to consider their options, heading home or back to the office where they can make their purchase from the comfort of their desktop, tablet or note book computer where they can also select a delivery date, pay via a secure transaction and wait for their product and/or products to arrive at their door.

Today online retailers need to have all bases covered in order to offer their shoppers the easiest and best possible ways to make a purchase. It is not simply a case of having a fantastic website design and rock bottom prices in order to attract traffic, but creating a seamless product display that marries retail, ecommerce and mobile commerce into a unified presentation of brand, products or services.

Internet marketing is one key area for this via SEO, PPC and other online channels such as affiliate marketing, link building and of course making the best use of social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s not just about getting the message out there; it’s also about listening to your customers and potential customers and then adapting quickly to meet their needs.

Ecommerce business’s specifically need to consider the best ways to display their products online so that they are easy to see, search for and purchase from within the wide range of different devices that are available for browsing the internet.

Today, standard practice is to try to find a happy medium in regards to developing a website that is accessible and easy to view via all hardware devices, maybe the next evolution of online commerce will be websites with the intelligence to tell how they are being browsed and then being able to adapt accordingly?

With that in mind, I suggest that maybe ecommerce and m-commerce as terms are going the way Charles Darwin would expect and that for the online business a term like On-Commerce is a better way to describe the essential areas that a business needs to cover in order to maximize sales in today’s competitive market place?

To contact the author, please click here

Mobile Marketing using Mobile Location-based Services

2010-10-22T17:52:00.004-04:00

I read this article from Mobile Commerce Daily today, where they shared some interesting numbers about smartphones and mobile marketing. It looks like users are quickly adopting social networks such us Foursquare, by which marketers can provide offers and gifts to redeem on store.

I'd like to share with you some details from this article, because I think that we are facing a revolutionary way of marketing!

Users of location-based services in the United States, which includes registered users of location-aware social networks and monthly subscribers to carrier-based family tracking and navigation services, could hit 33.2 million at year-end, up from 12.3 million in 2009. SNL Kagan points to increased smartphone adoption as pivotal to the upward trajectory of location-based services.

Smartphones on the rise

By the end of 2010, 41 percent, or 118.1 million, of U.S. wireless subscribers will be using smartphones, which is expected to rise to 50 perecnt next year.

The SNL Kagan study reveals that location-aware social networks are starting to attract consumer interest, with the leading six companies combining for a total of 18.1 million registered users as of September 2010.

Foursquare is the fastest growing service, with an average quarterly growth rate of 273 percent since second-quarter 2009.

Ad revenues

SNL Kagan indicates that advertising is still in the nascent stage for location-aware social networks, with 2010 revenues only expected to total $11.9 million for the top six combined.

Cashing out from checking-in will largely come from advertising and promotions as the services have a unique ability to communicate with users while they are on the town with wallets and purses in tow.

For now, most social location networks are currently pursuing a land grab and focusing on growing users to attract advertisers.

“Advertising and promotions are critical for the long term viability of location services like Foursquare,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Deal per city, per day service Groupon is expected to generate $150 million in revenue this year and already has comfortable margins.

“Many of the services profiled in the report can reach consumers while they are out on the town with purses in tow,” he said. “So marketing through location-aware social networks has the potential to generate hot leads, not just warm leads.

“It is worth nothing that Foursquare’s user growth is the highest of the top six social location services highlighted in the report. But the future of location-aware social networks is probably a cross between Foursquare and Groupon: a marriage of check-ins and healthy incentives through digital coupons.”

Source: MobileCommerceDaily

Gproxy’s Partner Magento and its Platform for Mobile Commerce

2010-10-21T18:42:00.002-04:00

Mcommerce has grown quickly and it has definitely not reached its limits. It started as a plus that only leading brands could offer, but today is a must have for all retailers.

This aroused the need of having a platform that could offer easy optimization of an eCommerce site to smartphones, and Magento, a pioneer in this area, also lead the way in the mCommerce world.

They launched Magento Mobile about a month ago with great acceptance of its community, after months of beta testing of a large number of merchants.

After the launch of this platform, Magento shared through their blog some additional info about their mobile platform:

Why Magento Mobile?

Mobile commerce has been growing quickly, and there is significant demand for merchants who want to mobilize their business. And although Magento has provided mobile web optimized themes (WAPs) since 2008, a majority of retailers want engage their customers with the rich & personal features that only mobile apps provide. However, the cost and time to build, integrate, deploy and manage these native apps for various popular devices is significant, and therein lies the basis for our product. Magento Mobile will enable our over 70,000 merchants to easily create branded, native storefront applications that are deeply integrated with Magento’s market-leading eCommerce platform. The product includes a new administrative manager (available for free on Magento Connect), a native iPhone app that is fully customizable (colors, images, buttons, etc), and a service where Magento manages the submission and maintenance process for the iTunes App Store. Magento Mobile is compatible with previous versions of Magento, including Community Edition 1.3+, Enterprise Edition 1.6+, and Professional Edition 1.8.

Here’s a list of Magento Mobile product features and benefits:

- Seamless Storefront Integration including store’s catalog, checkout, inventory, reporting, and much more.

- Manage Multiple Devices. Coming later this year, easily extend your mobile presence to the iPad and Android devices.

- Hassle Free Submissions

- Fully Customizable

- Engage Your Customers with geo-targeted push notifications ir immersive native experiences, mobile apps, etc.

- Low Cost of Ownership

If you are interested in receiving more information about Magento Mobile or any of the Magento Commerce Platforms (community, professional or enterprise) please CLICK HERE and one of our Consultants will help you!

GET SOCIAL WITH GPROXY DESIGN!

2010-10-19T17:17:00.002-04:00

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Today’s most popular Social Media channels are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, among others.

At Gproxy Design, we like to think of social media like a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.

SOCIAL NETWORKING IS GETTING BIGGER

We count with a team of experts that can assist you on the basic social media techniques that are must-haves in today’s commerce world?

Statistics say that Twitter processed more than one billion tweets in December 2009 and averages almost 40 million tweets per day. Do you want to miss that chance of reaching out your target clients?

Over 25& of U.S. internet page views occurred at one of the top social networking sites in December 2009, up from 13.8% a year before. Wouldn’t you want your business to be on those sites to have a bigger exposure?

OUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES

All services we offer in the social media area, are covered by our Online Marketing team. Some of the strategies that we cover are:

Blog design and set up
Twitter campaigns, profile design
Facebook page set up, Facebook advertising, and fans campaigns
Integration of your online store to the different social networking sites
Functionalities to push your products in Facebook and Twitter
Reporting, and more!

Contact us to learn more about Gproxy Design’s Strategies in Social Networking and start working with us to boost your sales conversion rates!

*Source: wikipedia.org

NFR’s last Holiday Shopping Stats

2010-10-05T15:47:00.003-04:00

NFR (National Retail Federation) published their last research on Holiday Shopping.

In their research you will find all you need to know about 2009’s holiday shopping behavior in the United States.

I’d like to highlight some facts from their research results and found really interesting:

42% of Americans shopped online for holiday purchases in 2009
One in ten shoppers plan to purchase their last holiday gift on Christmas Eve
58.6% of shoppers say they enclose a gift receipt most or some of the time
96.5 million Americans plan to shop online on Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday Spending Shifts to Mornings, Evenings as More Shop from Home
Up to 134 million people may shop Black Friday weekend
One-third of shoppers purchased toys on Black Friday 2009
One-fourth of holiday shoppers will use cash and 43% will use debit cards

Source: NFR.com

Gproxy Design Maintenance Services for Magento Website Unicycle

2010-10-04T18:09:00.004-04:00

Unicycle.com is an Atlanta, GA based dedicated commercial unicycles store. In their store they offer multiple unicycle brands and provide quality information about unicycling and unicyclists. You can see their ads in several cycling magazines and publications and have a strong network of dealers in the US and abroad.

They’ve came to Gproxy a while ago with the need of building a new Magento eCommerce website. Following our Professional Working Process, we worked together through all the project’s phases until the site was ready. The final result was an online store that transmited brand awareness as well as the company’s values. With our team’s experience in the eCommerce industry and the Magento platform, we built a website that offered a easy-to-navigate UI, which offered a pleasant shopping experience. Once the site was launched, Unicycle decided to join our MMU Program (Maintenance Measure & Upgrade) to keep their online store updated.

Under the MMU Program they were able to incorporate to the site advanced functionalities that the store didn’t count with at the time of launch. Some of the features that you can find at unicycle.com are recently viewed items, product zoom, wishlist, product compare, and filtered search among others.

We invite you to learn more about our MMU Program and see how we can help you take your existing online store to the next level through our creative ecommerce design services, smart UX development and ROI-oriented marketing strategies.

Click HERE to send us an email or go to Gproxy.com for more information!

Gproxy Design services to make the best out of Cyber Monday

2010-10-01T18:17:00.004-04:00

The term Cyber Monday was created in 2005 when 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Statistics report that:

Online shopping spending jumped 25% on 2006’s Cyber Monday

Online shopping spending climbed 21% on 2007’s Cyber Monday

Online shopping spending increased 15% on 2008’s Cyber Monday

Online shopping spending even in 2009 grew 15% on 2009’s Cyber Monday*

What do you think is going to happen in 2010’s Cyber Monday?

And the question that follows that initial question is... is your online store ready to capture all that Cyber Monday Traffic?

ROI-ORIENTED ECOMMCERCE SOLUTIONS

At Gproxy Design we can help you developing different strategies to capture the additional traffic that Cyber Monday may bring to your store.

Our Online Marketing Team can advise you on which technique would be more appropiate and effective for your targeted market.

Gproxy's wide range of services goes from email marketing campaigns, season-oriented promotional banners and decoration for your site’s theme, eCommerce add-ons like wishlists or gift registries, to Social Media campaigns management and SEO oriented to capture that specific traffic. These among other actions, that our team of experts has to share with you, can make the difference in your sales this Cyber Monday!

Contact us to learn more about Gproxy Design’s Strategies for this Holiday Season and make the best out of your traffic! CLICK HERE and start working with us to boost your sales conversion rates!

*Stats source: Wikipedia.org

What Retailers have learned in Shop.org 2010!

2010-09-29T16:54:00.002-04:00

Shop.Org 2010 has shared with everyone on their blog, attendees opinion on what they've learned at this year's Summit.

Sarah Rand posted: "While attendees waited in line to have their pictures taken on the 50-yard line at Cowboys Stadium, I jumped at the opportunity to interview a captive crowd. When I asked retailers to share one thing they had learned so far from the conference, their responses covered social media strategies and mobile commerce, as well as the fact that there are more grandparents on Facebook than high school students."

Check out the video!

Source: Shop.Org

Mitch Joel calls Google Reader the NORAD to his life at Shop.org 2010

2010-09-28T18:54:00.002-04:00

Yesterday at the beginning of the Social Media Boot Camp, that operated as the kick off activity of Shop.org 2010 in Dallas, TX, Mitch Joel shared a video from Common Craft called “RSS in Plain English”.

For those who don’t know what RSS means, Wikipedia explains that it stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it “is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed",[3] or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.”

As mentioned in Shop.org’s blog, RSS was the first of many “tools of the trade” for tracking social media. Mitch Joel called recommended creating an environment for yourself, through a tool like Google Reader, where all the information you want can be centrally located. This central location, Mitch said, is the NORAD to his life.

Below you can see the video that Mitch shared at Shop.org 2010 , the biggest eCommerce-industry Summit, in which Gproxy Design is participating from September 27th to September 29th. This video was posted on Shop.org's blog.

Sources: Shop.org & Wikipedia

Most Online Retailers Project Higher Conversion This Holiday Season

2010-09-24T16:58:00.003-04:00

The Internet Retailer Magazine, published today an article analyzing information of a survey of more than 250 e-retailers by market research and consulting firm The E-tailing Group. According to this survey, most online retailers project higher conversion this holiday season than the last one, but just 31% expect growth of more than 10%.

“Respondents confirm that e-tailers have a cautious yet positive mindset and are prepared to meet the challenges ahead,” says Lauren Freedman, president of The E-tailing Group.

Here are the findings of this research, which was published on Sep 21st, that Internet Retailer published on their website:

• 61% of e-retailers surveyed describe themselves as cautiously optimistic about the upcoming holiday season, and 18% say they are optimistic. 9% are somewhat pessimistic and 2% pessimistic, with the remaining 10% characterized as unchanged in their expectations.

• 79% expect their sales to grow, but most of them project growth of no more than 10%. Here’s the breakdown of the 79% who expect higher sales: 1-5%, 22%; 6-10% 26%; 11-20%, 17%; 21-30%, 8%; 31% or more, 6%. 12% expect sales to be flat and 9% believe sales will decline relative to the 2009 season.

• 85% will make some free shipping offers this holiday season. Here’s the breakdown: unconditional free shipping the entire season, 13%; unconditional free shipping at times during the season, 26%; free shipping on certain products throughout the season, 27%; free shipping on certain products at times during the season, 19%.

• 38% have mobile initiatives planned for the season, breaking down as follows: mobile site with shopping cart, 25%; will text message about sales or specials, 8%; information-only mobile site, such as one offering ratings and reviews, 8%; mobile app only, 6%. Retailers could have multiple responses in this category.

• 91% of retailers responding will market through social networks this holiday season. 37% will market more aggressively than they did in 2009 through both Facebook and Twitter; 14% have more extensive plans, focusing on Facebook; 17% will do more and focus on Facebook, including integrating the “Like” button into their sites; 9% plan about the same amount of social marketing, with a focus on Facebook; and 13% will maintain their social marketing efforts, and have plans for both Facebook and Twitter. 1% say they plan to do less on Facebook or Twitter, and 9% have no social strategies in place.

At Gproxy Design, we can help you take action on your online store to increase sales this Holiday Season. From online marketing strategies like SEO oriented to holidays or social media campaigns, to creative banners and season decorations to lift up your site. We can also work together in your mCommerce and mobile marketing initiatives.

It is very easy to get started! Contact one of our Consultants today HERE and let’s start working together as soon as possible to make the best out of the biggest shopping season of the year!

Source: InternetRetailer

M-commerece to influence 2010's Holidays Shopping Season, was reported by Deloitte

2010-09-21T17:46:00.004-04:00

It was reported today by the Mobile Commerce Daily, that m-commerce will play a significantly important role in 2010’s holiday shopping, according to research by Deloitte.

Because social networks and mobile apps are playing a increasingly prominent role in the shopping process, it is certain that online activity will influenced even in-store shopping for this holidays. With that said, retailers should deliver consistent messages, merchandising articles and inventory to clients moving between online and brick and mortar storefronts, the Deloitte study suggests.

Below I’m sharing with you some important facts we thought were relevant to quote from Mobile Commerce Daily’s article. It is interesting how mobility it’s becoming more and more relevant in the shopping process.

Mobile shopping
Consumers are using their mobile devices to price comparison and do product searches.

In a survey of consumers in early May, 21 percent said they have used a Web-enabled mobile phone to locate stores or product information, shop or compare prices.

Store locators are key in mobile and all retailers should help their consumers find them using this type of offering, whether it is via a Web site or application.

In last year’s Deloitte holiday survey, 19 percent of consumers said they planned to use their mobile phones to assist with their holiday shopping.

Generally speaking, retailers should expect only a small uptick in holiday sales this year, per Deloitte.

Consumers discretionary funds have dwindled as households remain focused on reducing debt and increasing their savings.

At the same time banks continue to limit access to credit and stimulus checks have run out.

Holiday sales
Deloitte said that if consumers receive good tidings later this season in the way of falling energy prices or additional stock market gains, they may be able to lend retailers a bit more holiday cheer.

Deloitte’s retail group expects total holiday sales to reach $852 billion, representing a 2 percent increase in November through January holiday sales, excluding motor vehicles and gasoline, over last season.

This growth rate represents a slight improvement over last year’s 1 percent gain.

Both mobile commerce and eCommerce will be the bright spot in the holiday picture this year.

Deloitte forecasts a 15 percent increase in non-store sales. Nearly two-thirds of non-store sales are from the online channel (including mobile), with the remainder coming from catalogs and interactive television.

Ms. Paul said that by reaching out to consumers via mobile applications, digital marketing and social networks, retailers today may be able to enhance brand awareness and build traffic and sales this holiday season.

“Mobile is changing the retail experience,” Ms. Paul said. “It offers price transparency on a whole new level as consumers are using phones during the shopping experience.

“It offers another way to get consumers at the point of impact when they are making their purchase decision,” she said. “Today you can reach out and touch the consumer when they are inside or outside of the store.”

Source: MobileCommerceDaily.com

Mobile payments increased 38 percent worldwide since January

2010-09-17T18:57:00.002-04:00

According to a txtNation executive, mobile payments growth continues to be robust, rerported today the Mobile Commerce Daily.

Mobile payments haven’t stoped growing around the world; this industry in Scandinavia is currently amongst the highest in Europe and the consumer spending rate is one of the highest in the western world. It is reported that every person has one mobile device.

Dan Butcher from Mobile Commerce Daily, interviewed Adam Williams from txtNation (Plymouth, England). He is the Client & Network Relations Coordinator, and I’d like to share this interview with our Gproxy Design community to learn more about today’s mcommerce payment methods and trends:

What challenges does SMS mobile payment address for merchants, retailers and content providers? What about WAP billing and MMS services?

For me, SMS has always been about the convenience, bundled with a degree of anonymity.

Many services that utilize mobile payment rely on impulse buys. In order to get as many of these as possible, these services need to streamline the purchasing process.

Credit card payment requires users to insert their name and full address, not to mention the card details.

PayPal helps, but only if you’ve got a registered account, which takes too much time in the first place.

Mobile payment makes it quick and easy. Send a unique payment ID, for example “PAY ABC” to a short code, receive a response within 10-15 seconds—done, billed, service granted.

WAP Billing, often bundled with MSISDN forwarding, is seemingly still battling with various regulators across the world.

That said, we’ve seen an increased take-up in the Britain’s “Payforit” solution, though Premium SMS still retains the greater share of the m-commerce market.

The main benefit to WAP billing is keeping users on one particular medium—their handset.

Every other billing mechanism requires the user to deviate from their chosen medium, be it PC to phone, WAP to phone or PC to credit card.

MMS, at least from the profitability perspective, flopped.

Whilst many users appear to have successfully interacted with each other using this technology, it seems that the business world has been unable to get any profitable leverage from the format.

This may change though, as more networks start to offer MMS billing.

What is the current state of mobile payments, and what is its potential?

Mobile payments are on the up.

Since the turn of the year we’ve seen an increase of more than 38 percent in mobile payments, across the globe, just through users taking advantage of our JunglePay and mEnable payment options.

We find that many businesses are currently opting for the convenience of these pre-built solutions, rather than an API service.

Interestingly, we’re seeing more operators opening up to the idea of selling physical goods via mobile payment, by offering a slightly increased revenue share for physical goods purchases.

Over the next couple of years, I see physical goods and mobile ticketing becoming a larger part of the mobile payment scene.

With which carriers has txtNation partnered ? Who are its mobile payments clients?

We’ve been working throughout the second quarter into the third quarter to partner up with each major operator in each Nordic country.

In Denmark we’ve partnered with TDC, Telia and Telenor, plus three more coming soon.

In Finland our partners are Sonera, a subsidiary of Telia, Elisa and DNA.

In Sweden we’ve partnered with Telia, Tele2, Telenor and 3.

In Norway our partners are Telenor, NetCom and Tele2’s Network Norway.

In the past we’ve predominantly worked with clients from the gaming sector, offering interactive games that sell virtual currency, or providing access to a special “members” area.

More recently, we’ve seen an upturn in enquiries from other sectors.

For example, mobile ticketing, where businesses offer their consumers the option to purchase and receive their concert or match ticket via SMS, has become very popular.

Orange’s British promotion “Orange Wednesdays” has blazed a trail for this type of service provision.

Subway and bus tickets in particular are becoming increasingly popular in the Nordics, with more than 10 percent of purchases being made via SMS.

Source: MobileCommerceDaily

Gproxy's Partner Magento, Launched iPhone App

2010-09-14T18:10:00.004-04:00

Our eCommerce platform partner Magento this week started offering to its clients the ability to create a commerce-enabled iPhone app.

The way this iPhone-app works is by installing the Magento Mobile extension to the core Magento eCommerce platform. Then a few configurations are required to determine how the app will function. “They send the configuration data to us and we do the rest”, said Magento CEO Roy Rubin in an Interner Retailer article, published this week.

In the same article Rick Shwartz from OK Skate was quoted, talking about their experience working with Magento Mobile: “Magento Mobile allowed us to roll out an iPhone commerce app in just a few days at a low cost, and even completed the approval process for us, saving valuable time and resources. Customer feedback has been great so far, as the app makes it simple for mobile users to search, order and pay for goods through our site.”

Magento charges a $799 setup fee for the mobile app, plus a maintenance service fee of $699 per year (or $69/month).

The Magento Mobile platform supports English, French, German and Spanish and they plan to add more than a dozen other languages, like Italian, Dutch, Chinese and Japanese. Although Magento Mobile only provides an iPhone-app today, they plan to offer soon applications for iPad and Google’s Android.

Internet Retailer reports that other retailers using Magento Mobile include apparel merchants The North Face and the Miami Dolphins professional football team.

At Gproxy Design we are currently experimenting with our first Magento Mobile stores. If you want to learn how we can help you on developing your own m-commerce store for Magento Community, Magento Professional or Magento Enterprise CLICK HERE or contact one of our Sales Consultants by calling our toll-free number 1-800-814-4761 or send us an email HERE.

Source: InternetRetailer

Gproxy Design Announces its Partnership with Rackspace

2010-09-10T14:49:00.002-04:00

Rackspace delivers enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of all sizes and kinds around the world. They got started in 1998 and since have grown to serve more than 99,000 customers, including over 80,000 cloud computing customers. Rackspace integrates the industry's best technologies for each customer's specific need and delivers it as a service via the company's commitment to Fanatical Support.

Having Rackspace join our Partner’s EcoSystem, allows us to offer a reliable and secure eCommerce hosting solution. Rackspace’s optimized services for eCommerce platforms like Magento among others, together with our other partners, makes Gproxy Design’s clients able to benefit from this partnership with complete solutions for your eCommerce needs.

Rackspace’s core products include Rackspace Managed Hosting, The Rackspace Cloud™ and Rackspace Email & Apps. There are currently over 2,900 Rackers around the world serving their customers. Rackspace Hosting provides a fully managed infrastructure designed for scalability, 100% network uptime guarantee, triple-backed security to meet your PCI needs, and our live 24x7x365 award-winning Fanatical Support®.

To learn more about this partnership or any other of Gproxy Design Services, please contact one of our Sales Consultants HERE.

Gproxy Design's Conversion Analysis for your eCommerce Business

2010-09-08T18:17:00.003-04:00

According to Practical eCommerce’s August 2010 Survey about Conversion Rates, 89.9% of their readers said they do track purchase conversion rates on their sites. Only 2.8% said “Sometimes” and a mere 8.3% of polltakers said they don’t.

If you are not part of that 89.9% you should consider contacting Gproxy's Team of Online Marketing Consultants to learn how we can help you on analyzing your online business conversion rates.

We believe it is fundamental to study the analytics of your site. It is important to understand that is not only about gathering data, but is actually about analyzing your visitors/customers online behaviour to determine tendencies and learn from that information what should you change to improve your website’s performance and user experience.

Setting up eCommerce goals at your Analytics account for measurement purposes, measuring conversion rates and comparing with previous results, tracking sources of traffic and keywords generating traffic, among other things are the start point for a good and effective Conversion Rate Analysis.

Gproxy’s Consulting Services can provide you with the necessary data analysis and tell you the when, who, what and why of your online store visitors’ behavior. We then offer recommendations for modifications or specific tactics to develop the areas that need improvement to accomplish the bottom line objectives of generating traffic, conversions, sales and accelerating your ROI.

To learn more about our Online Marketing services contact one of our Sales Consultant by calling our toll-free number 1-800-814-4761 or CLICK HERE to send us an email.

Top 5 Web Design Trends for Today's eCommerce Success

2010-09-06T14:58:00.005-04:00

In these heavily competitive times in our online industry, having an appealing website that converts visitors into clients is more important than ever. You site has to get the visors' attention, make them stay in your store and become interested in bro
wsing your catalog to complete a purchase. For all types of businesses, design can be the key factor to make the difference.

This week I read this article by Grace Smith from Mashable, where she analyzes 5 design trends, that if they are correctly used, can lead to great results. Her anaylsis is very smart and results-oriented. These trends are: Minimalism, Unique Photography, Bold Typography, Clear Calls to Action and A/B Testing.

I'd like to share her analysis with you, and if you find it interesting and believe that any of these can help boost your online business, don't hesitate to contact Gproxy. We can help you leverage your store with this and more techniques designed by our team of professionals.

1. MINIMALISM
While this web design style has been popular for some time, it’s worth revisiting as no small business owner wants to turn visitors away with a cluttered, overbearing and hard to navigate website.

Minimalist design effectively strips away the excess and helps the user concentrate squarely on the content. If a page has too many elements, the user will easily become confused about where to focus on, with many elements vying for attention.

With page weight now affecting your Google search engine position, it’s the perfect time to reassess how streamlined your design is.

There are several principles and steps you can follow to create a more minimalist design:

Go through your site and prune any unnecessary widgets or elements which aren’t serving a real purpose.
Make good use of whitespace, which is the space between different elements of a design. Used well, it will allow for easier scanning of your site and help frame the elements on each page.
With fewer elements, choosing the right color palette or accent color is critical. As color has great significance and meaning, it’s best to test how certain colors interact with each other.
Browse your site through the eyes of your visitors, evaluating if there is too much information, confusing or off-putting elements, or sufficient calls to action. Answering these types of questions truthfully will help you prioritize the essential elements.

A minimalist design doesn’t have to be bland and boring; it can easily be modern, fresh, sophisticated, elegant or refined, based solely on the details within the design.

2. UNIQUE PHOTOGRAPHY
Two men shaking hands, a group of people in suits sharing a joke, the call center girl: these are all tired, cliched images that litter thousands of business websites. These types of images fail to convey either information on the company or a sense of the site’s character, and are essentially meaningless.

Using custom photography or artwork whenever possible is recommended, though for small business owners, both time and budget are limited and stock photos are a relatively cheap and accessible resource.

So when choosing stock imagery, it’s best to keep in mind these four tips:

Research your competitors and industry and take note of the images used. You can then find a unique way to represent your product or service.
Avoid being too literal in your choice of imagery as abstract compositions often give a more dramatic and memorable effect.
Don’t always opt for the cheaper low-res image, as pixelated imagery devalues your overall design and looks unprofessional.
Veer away from the bland and predictable and let the images ‘break out of the box’.

Imaginative imagery will reinforce your brand message and add greater character to your website. So, when you must use stock imagery, do so with great care and take the time to find the right piece that will convey the true personality of your service or product.

3. BOLD TYPOGRAPHY
Web design at its core is about communication, and typography is a vital component of that. Great web typography helps bring order to information and creates a coherent, visually satisfying experience that engages the reader without their knowing.

A recent trend is the use of big, bold typography which helps to create contrast between other text while grabbing a user’s attention. Oversized text can help create hierarchy and ensure users understand your message loud and clear.

In order to utilize typography to create a bold statement, keep in mind the following tips:

Determine the single most important message you want to emphasize, as too many messages can lead to choice paralysis. Understand the qualities of the message you are trying to convey, and then look for typefaces that embody those qualities.
Choose a typeface that will match the character of your work. For instance, if your company embodies the feel of an Old Style font, you should consider Bembo, Garamond and Sabon. It will also greatly depend on what you want to convey with the type, because legibility is as important as the character of the type.
Give the typography the prominent position it deserves by surrounding it with a generous amount of whitespace. This will add emphasis and create even more focus on the typography.
Test out some of the various font replacement options such as Typekit or Typotheque. These allow you to license fonts to embed within your site, and help you to experiment with beautiful typography.

Typography is an art and the decisions you make are subjective; however, carefully selecting a typeface can make a huge difference to the quality of your design.

4. CLEAR CALLS TO ACTION
As a small business owner you want your visitors to complete a certain task when they land on your page. It could be to download, sign up or checkout, but these calls to action are one of the most important (and overlooked) elements in a small business website.

You want to grab your visitor’s attention and move him or her to take action. Crafting a clear, concise call to action is essential.

Here are four tips to keep in mind when designing a call-to-action button or advertisement:

Language: Keep the wording short and snappy (always start with a verb), but also explain the value behind the action the user is taking. In some instances it also helps to create a sense of urgency using words such as ‘now’, ‘hurry’ and ‘offer ends,’ with ‘free’ being the number one incentive.
Positioning: Ideally, calls to action should be above the fold, and be placed on every page of the site in a consistent position. For instance, Squarespace (shown above), not only has a large call-to-action button at the top of the page, but also has a slightly smaller button in the footer of every page.
Color: The color should make the call stand out from the rest of the design. Brighter, more contrasting colors usually work best for smaller buttons. For larger buttons, you may want to choose a less prominent color (but one that still stands out from your background), so as to balance out its size.
Size: The call-to-action button should be the largest button on any given page. You want it to be large enough to stand out without overwhelming the rest of the design.

It’s vital you test different combinations of call-to-action buttons and see how each affects your conversion rates (see A/B Testing below). It’s also best to make sure they fit within your overall design.

5. A/B TESTING
With competition growing fiercer online, it’s important for small businesses to have a website that converts visitors to buyers and creates a competitive edge. That’s why it is important to continually measure and improve site performance, usability and conversions.

One of the foremost ways of optimizing your web design is via A/B testing (sometimes referred to as split testing). An A/B test examines the effectiveness of one landing page over another. The two versions are randomly shown to site visitors to see which generates the best results. You then evaluate the performance of each and use the best version.

Various elements can be tested, including, layouts, copy, graphics, fonts, headlines, offers, icons, colors and more. Here are a few tips for A/B testing:

Clearly define your goal before beginning any test. For example, if you wanted to increase sign-ups, you might want to test the following: type of fields in the form, length of the form, and display of privacy policy.
Start with elements that will have the biggest impact for minimum effort. For instance, you could tweak the copy on your checkout button to see if conversions can be improved.
Don’t use A/B testing in isolation as this alone won’t give you a well-rounded picture of your users. Instead, use other feedback tools, such as Feedback Army or User Testing, in conjunction with A/B testing to get in-depth analysis of user behavior.

A/B testing won’t make a bad design great, but it will prove an effective aid in optimizing your current design’s usability and conversions until you decide to overhaul your website design completely.

These are the five design trends analyzed by Mashable, but there are many other trends that might better adapt to each particular inudstry and business needs.

Contact Gproxy Design Team of Professionals today, and learn how we can work together in pushing your eCommerce business to the next level. To contact us, please click HERE.

Tune up your eCommerce store for this Holidays!

2010-08-27T14:27:00.002-04:00

If you want to grab your clients’ attentions for this year's holiday season, you must act now! We don't want to scare you with a countdown to Thanks Giving or Christmas, but if you want to make this holiday season a profitable one, you need to make sure you are offering the best shopping experience to your clients with the functionalities they require for this particular time of the year!

ECOMMERCE TIPS FOR 2010 HOLIDAY SEASON

Start planning your website upgrades and improvements to make sure they are all ready by October, so you have plenty of time to test and launch all functionalities for your eCommerce website. Avoid launching new features in November or December, so your holiday activity is not affected.

Plan for inventory/stock availability for these dates. Take seasonality into consideration, holiday buying may be different from the rest of the year.

Plan for marketing the holiday season. Change your website colors, or at least add “holiday decoration” to it. All marketing and advertising aspects need to be planned in advance, so we recommend to start thinking about your holiday theme now! New banners, adapt your logo to the season, holiday promotions, themed gift cards, and many other ideas can be suggested by our online marketing team.

SOME OF THE MUST HAVE ECOMMERCE ADD-ONS FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON

Wish List: Including a Wish List in your website is a smart move! Your visitors will be able to keep track of those special items they would love to purchase these holidays for themselves or for others. Since there is NO purchase necessary when placing items in your Wish List, you can keep items you are not quite sure about, as long as you’d like.

Customer Reviews & Ratings This functionality will fuel your analysis in customer’s satisfaction of that determined product, allowing users to participate in your website by reading and writing reviews strengthens your online community. Your clients will appreciate other buyers reviews and rating to make a more informed purchase, specially on holiday season, when they have to many things on their minds and need to have quick access to information!

Gift Registry: This functionality will allow your clients to write their own letters to Santa right from your store! Your benefit is that they will browse your website over and over, and what is best they will tell their friends and family to visit your website to check out their gift registries! Very efficient to attracting new clients in the most competitive season of the whole year!

To find more information about these and other eCommerce add-ons click HERE.

Act now and don’t miss the opportunity of making all enhancements to your website before is too late for this Holiday Season! Contact our Christmas elves…I mean Sales team via email by clicking HERE or call our toll free number 1-800-814-4761.

Gproxy Design eCommerce Add-Ons for Better User Experience

2010-08-24T23:58:00.006-04:00

Gproxy Desing’s Research and Development team has created a group of eCommerce add-ons to fulfill our clients’ needs of functionalities to offer the best user experience possible in their online stores.

According to today’s eCommerce best practices, to offer a good user experience, there are some guidelines to follow. It is imperative to present a good user interface, both designwise and usabilitywise. Our team of experts can help you define the best layout for your website, always taking into account your target audience and industry to be able to analyze their shopping behavior. With that information they will be able to define options for your website that are ROI oriented.

Once the layout is defined, our Creative team will help you define the color palette to use in your store, that will always be reminiscent to your brand identity. Fonts, styles and images are key to generate a strong brand awareness throughout your online store.

However, usability and design are not the only factors that will produce a good shopping and user experience; eCommerce functionalities will make the difference.

Here’s an example of a very successful client that is currently making a good use of the functionalities that our team has created. This client is Ruff Wear, a company whose mission is to build performance products that enhance and inspire outdoor adventures for dogs and their human companions.

The eCommerce add-ons that you can find in this website are:

Product Image Rollover Zoom
Recently viewed items
Tabbed content
Product Images Gallery
Customer Reviews and Product Rating

To learn more about these functionalities and how we can help you improve your online store’s shopping experience, contact Gproxy Design today! You can contact our Sales Team by clicking HERE or by calling our toll free number 1-800-814-4761 and start learning about the future of eCommerce!

Cross-channel shopping will gain steam this holiday season

2010-08-20T15:03:00.002-04:00

More shoppers will be shopping across channels for retail this holiday season, says Paula Rosenblum, managing partner at research and advisory firm Retail Systems Research LLC. That means retailers need to engage those shoppers wherever they may be.

“Retailers need to have or create a single brand identity across channels,” she says. “They need to have their various channels in sync, particularly during the holiday season because who knows what the weather will bring.”

Weather can have a pronounced effect on how consumers shop, she says. For instance, last holiday season a major snowstorm on the East Coast helped bolster online sales and hurt bricks-and-mortar store sales. “You have to be prepared for anything because the weather is so unpredictable during the holiday season,” she says.

Beyond the weather, helping consumers shop however they choose is important because 65% of merchants say that consumers that shop across multiple channels, such as online, in-store and on their smartphones, are more profitable than single-channel consumers, according to a recent study by RSR. That’s up from 56% a year ago. The trend should continue because online and mobile sales continue to rise, she says.

In preparation for the holiday season Rosenblum says retailers that don’t have an m-commerce site need to get one. And, if they can afford it, they should offer a mobile app as well.

“Consumers expect to be able to use the mobile web easily, and if they can’t then the retailer may miss out on a sale,” she says. “Every site or app doesn’t have to be a glorious exercise in mobile commerce, it just has to work.”

Working means that not only does it allow a consumer to view a product and make a purchase, but that the inventory shown online is up to date and not on backorder, says Rosenblum. Retailers can maximize the usefulness of their inventory by sharing it across platforms, she says.

Only 54% of the retailers in RSR’s survey allow inventory allocated for one channel to be used for another channel’s fulfillment. Although that’s up from 43% a year ago, it still leaves a huge opportunity for improvement, says Rosenblum.

“Sharing inventory across channels ends up making the customer happy and making the retailer happy because they make the sale,” she says. “It’s a no-brainer.”

Article originally posted by InternetRetailer.com

Gproxy Design's Latest eCommerce Project Is Now Live!

2010-08-17T14:02:00.005-04:00

Avila Foods is a UK based company that provides African-Caribbean food products online. Their main goal is to provide superior level of service and most competitive prices.

They came to Gproxy Design for their NetSuite eCommerce website design. They required a fully customized website design, with some advanced eCommerce functionalities that hour team of professional programmers could solve out.

Challenges and Gproxy Design's Solutions
The most relevant request for this project was to transform NetSuite's default navigation and create a new layout based on clients ideas. Basically, we used some competitors' sites as inspiration (Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda, among others) and tried to adapt their eCommerce practices to the NetSuite platform:

Take left nav away from Home page
Unusual top navigation
Footer integrated to the content area
Visual mini cart
Registration through Zip Code check
Invite a Friend Functionality shown an all pages
Create inner scroll

The most difficult aspect of this project was to integrate the Booking Delivery Slot Functionality (created by third party) into NetSuite. Many challenges appeared during the implementation, but the most important one was to make the booking selection to last a certain amount of time in the cart, creating warning pop ups for the client to now when the booking option was about to expire.

The Final Result
The final result of this project is a 100% customized eCommerce website, implemented in the NetSuite platform, that counts with many eCommerce functionalities that NetSuite doesn't have out of the box, and that only our professional team of SuiteScript Experts could make come true.

To see more eCommerce stores created by Gproxy Design please visit our Portfolio by clicking HERE. To learn more about our Services, please contact one of our consultants HERE.

Traffic, the Life Blood of Your Internet Business

2010-08-11T17:36:00.002-04:00

New List-building Method Creates Tons of Free Traffic

Lack of traffic is probably the #1 reason new Internet retailers give up before they make their first sale.You can have a great looking site and a salable product, but you need tons of traffic. So What To Do and What Not To Do.If you are new, you want to look for all the free and nearly free traffic you can find until you have a proven ad and a workable formula. Stay away from pay per clicks until you fully understand them, or you can lose a bundle. Don’t get trapped into expensive traffic courses with monthly fees. Redirected traffic, pop-under targeted traffic is great for your Alexa ratings, but it probably won’t help your bottom line much.

If you are new and have a salable product and a professional looking site, you can make it sell. Set up an affiliate program. Use one of the many companies that will handle all the details for you, It is easier than you may think. Start using free ad sites. Do a search for free classified ads. This is good practice to see what works without spending money. Be careful some free sites also offer upgrades. I find the free ones are just as good as upgrading.

Write articles, Many articles! Post them on article sites. This will give you back links, you will be surprises how fast the search engines will pick them up and you will find your site coming up on some of the bigger, better search engines without even listing your site to the search engines. I personally think listing your site is a waste of time. Make sure you have a title and the proper meta tags and lots of back links. The search engines Will find you.

You need a reliable follow-up auto-responder. List building is very important! Offer everyone who drops by your site what- ever it takes for them to opt-into your list. This is where you start a viral marketing campaign. Done properly, this will release an Avalanche of unlimited free traffic. Once you have made some sales, have 50-75 affiliates, then you can look for some pay traffic. Start free to learn, then move up. Remember list building is big, don’t short cut it. If you stop by, I will give you a course on list building. Good Online Marketing on all your projects.

Source: http://searchenginerankings.atasmedia.net/

Why retailers need to be mobile for the 2010 holidays

2010-08-09T12:34:00.003-04:00

By Giselle Tsirulnik

This year has opened consumers’ minds to using mobile for doing research, gathering opinions and sharing them with peers via social media, as well as making purchases.

Because of these consumer trends, this year it is more important than ever to have a mobile presence, especially for the 2010 holiday season. Retailers are realizing this and have made mobile a priority for 2010.

“The data is clear, whether it’s the enormous amount of time spent on mobile or the dollars spent directly, consumers are there,” said Andrew Koven, president of ecommerce and customer experience at Steve Madden, New York. “For these reasons, retailers need to have some presence to accommodate at least one if not all of the consumer’s uses for mobile.”

The main point is that this year the sheer number of smartphone users has more than doubled, and Digby expects at least 65 million more to be enabled by year’s end.

The sheer number of smartphone users is increasing dramatically and that’s a big eye-opener for retailers.

Opportunity
It is not just about smartphones either. IPod touches and tablets are big now too.

For the first time there are more smartphones than desktop computers being sold, according to IDC. The desktop is dying and smartphones are the way of the future. More people are going to carry them around and that is a powerful opportunity for retailers.

“There is still time to set up a mobile website,” Mr. Koven said. “Decide what your business objectives are – store location, direct sales of products, presentation of special offers, how-to information for the holidays, and support the opportunity for consumers to engage with you in some way via mobile.

“Just get started,” he said.

The demographic of smartphone users is attractive to retailers, per Dan Lowden, vice president of marketing at Digby, Austin, TX.

The average mobile subscriber is age 25-34 and nearly twice as likely to make more than $100,000, according to NielsenWire. The demographic is great for retailers in terms of the customer base they want to reach.

Experience
Consumers expect a great mCommerce experience. A good mobile experience reflects positively on a brand and a bad one reflects negatively on a brand.

Mobile represents an additional or incremental revenue opportunity because people can buy anytime and anywhere. It also lets them buy immediately, playing on the impulse purchase.

“The biggest call outs I’m seeing in advance of the holidays, which bode well for more missions critical selling which the holiday season presents, are threefold: more visitors, higher conversion rates and more minutes being spent on mobile month over month,” Mr. Koven said. “Store location and inventory visibility are features that should be considered as part of the mobile platform.

“Mobile should inherently support ease, speed and shopping efficiency for the consumer’s experience,” he said.

Driving in-store purchase
1800Flowers said that mobile consumers search and evaluate products on their devices.

One consumer walked into a store with her mobile phone and said she wanted to buy what she had found on her mobile device. She picked the item she wanted using her mobile phone but came into the store to actually complete the transaction.

This example illustrates a great way to take advantage of mobile and drive people into stores.

Social media is becoming a big component of the mobile Web strategies of retailers. Consumers post stuff on their Facebook and have friends and relatives evaluate products.

If the response is positive, then consumers go and purchase the product or the service. Social via mobile is a great way to generate response and also useful for instant feedback.

The ratings and reviews around products help consumers make that decision, which is great during the holidays.

Best practices
“I think for mobile Web sites, the experience should be unique for mobile,” Mr. Lowden said. “It should not be the desk top Web site revamped for mobile. Think in terms of better fitting the mobile consumer.

“During the holidays that may mean highlighting special offers special promotions right up front,” he said.

The other best practice Mr. Lowden gave is that it is not just about mobile Web it is also about downloadable applications.

If the application can be downloaded to a consumer’s device then that retailer is able to build a closer relationship with the consumer.

“We are seeing a lot of activity from retailers that want to enable for the holidays,” Mr. Lowden said. “It is a major priority this year for retailers.”

This article was originally published by MobileCommerceDaily.com

Gproxy and NetSuite Power 'Frictionless' B2B eCommerce Portal for CA Technologies RMDM Unit

2010-08-06T16:47:00.002-04:00

SAN MATEO, Calif. —August 5, 2010 — NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced that CA Technologies (Nasdaq: CA) has implemented NetSuite's OneWorld to create a frictionless Ecommerce software platform for its recovery management and data modeling solutions, directing new opportunities to its 13,000 partners and opening new lanes of communication with customers on pricing and configuration choices.

CA Technologies delivers data protection, high availability and data modeling solutions under its ARCserve and ERwin brands. NetSuite offered CA Technologies the convenience of rapid deployment and cloud-based management, while enabling it to retain ownership of its customer data and avoid per-transaction Ecommerce vendor fees.

"CA Technologies is committed to seamlessly connecting customers who need our solutions to partners who can deliver those solutions bundled with their services," said Adam Famularo, senior vice president and general manager of CA Technologies' RMDM unit. "Our NetSuite Ecommerce environment has already proven to be extremely effective in providing this market connectivity — creating a win-win for our partners and our customers."

NetSuite's reporting and analytics capabilities provide detailed information on completed transactions, as well as abandoned carts — making it easier to distinguish missed opportunities from those completed through the reseller channel. In addition, NetSuite OneWorld's multi-site capability enables CA Technologies to host separate front-end sites for the ARCserve and ERwin product lines, while consolidating transactions in a single integrated backend.

"CA Technologies' rapid success is a perfect example of NetSuite's suitability for divisions of large companies," said Jim McGeever, COO at NetSuite. "Our combination of cost-effective management and high-end enterprise extensibility make NetSuite ideal for these types of divisional deployments."

CA Technologies designed and implemented their NetSuite eCommerce websites working together with Gproxy Design. To see our work please click HERE.

For more information about NetSuite, visit www.netsuite.com.
For more information about Gproxy Design, visit www.gproxy.com.

Top m-commerce trends for 2010

2010-08-04T12:26:00.002-04:00

By Giselle Tsirulnik

Mobile coupons, social media, customer service, location and iAd are the top m-commerce trends that retailers are focusing on in 2010 and will likely be part of the holiday mix.

Retailers are also quite infatuated with HTML5, which is going to shape the mobile commerce experience and expectations of consumers. According to FitForCommerce, retailers are expected to invest an average of $170,000 on their mobile sites this year.

“For those starting down the mobile path, the most important thing is to stay focused, and enter the channel based on metrics and data,” said Jill Dvorak, senior consultant on mobile commerce at FitForCommerce, Washington. “Just because this is a newer industry, do not fall into the trap that doing something is better than doing nothing.

“Know what you want to achieve, and then plan and execute, as you would any other marketing program,” she said “For retailers currently trying to grow their mobile channel, they should focus on a few things.”

First, retailers need to integrate mobile commerce as a new channel within the organization.

Next, retailers should be sure to keep abreast of new device technologies and incompatibilities.

Lastly, they need to ensure their analytics are measuring cross-channel activity to point them in the right directions for future wins.

“Retailers now have the unique opportunity to define the interactions with the mobile consumer, it is up to you to make it count,” Ms. Dvorak said.

Mobile commerce trend No. 1 – Investment
Investments are changing drastically this year. As mentioned before, retailers are expected to invest an average of $170,000 on their mobile sites this year.

As with other technology investments, large multichannel retailers are spending several times this amount, while smaller online-only retailers will spend far less, Ms. Dvorak said.

FitForCommerce is seeing clients invest heavily in mobile for holiday 2010.

The econsultancy is also receiving many inquiries about what the correct spend should be. Some clients are using their current ecommerce platforms’ mobile capabilities, while others are building new stand-alone sites.

According to Jason Taylor, vice president of mobile products at Usablenet, New York, the mobile channel is currently representing around 3-5 percent of total Web-related revenue, and growing.

As this number grows, so will investments in the space.

“In 2010, we’ll see more retailers integrate new mobile payments such as mobile PayPal and others,” Mr. Taylor said.

According to data from mobile commerce software platform Digby, Austin, TX, many retailers are seeing significantly higher purchase rates when they promote offers that are unique to their mobile Web site. Last year, most retailers wanted to start with mobile Web.

Now, more than 50 percent of retailers are enabling mobile Web and at least one rich application in their initial launch plans and expect to add more over time.

Customers who download a retailer’s application buy more often and at a higher average purchase price than the mobile Web, Digby finds.

In the second quarter of 2010, mobile Web visits were made up of 37 percent iPhone, 29 percent iPod touch, 13 percent BlackBerry and 12 percent Android, per Digby.

All of the mentioned device type visits are growing while other devices are falling off.

Digby finds that more retailers are looking at mobile as a strategic fourth channel that can help them bring more value to there desktop Web site, in-store and catalog channels.

Mobile commerce trend No. 2 – Mobile couponing
Engagement rates have been slipping. It is a challenge all retailers face.

One way retailers can combat this negative trend is with mobile coupons.

A recent Exposure2 report found that mobile coupon redemption rates can often exceed 50 percent, while paper coupons typically have a redemption rate of only 0.2 percent to 2 percent.

“The high redemption rate is due to a very engaged consumer, potential geolocated relevant messages and a high brand affinity or motivation to buy,” Ms. Dvorak said. “Also, mobile coupons help protect retailers, since security is easier to manage as they are harder to share between users.”

Mobile coupon pushes within advertising campaigns are going to be big as well.

Apple will definitely play a role in that. Mobile advertising that promotes a discount or deal is known to perform better than just plain vanilla branding initiatives.

“I think a big trend that will continue to catch on is mobile coupons,” said Kate Coultas, PR brand manager at JCPenney, Dallas, TX. “Also, I imagine more companies will partner with Apple for their iAd concept.”

Mobile commerce trend No. 3 – Location
Location-based marketing is going to be really big during the holiday season and is already playing a big role in the mobile commerce-related marketing tactics of leading retailers, according to Marci Troutman, CEO of Siteminis, Atlanta.

The biggest trend for now is Foursquare, which allows people to “check-in” through their phones and reveal geographic locations they go to.

Both large retailers and brick and mortar stores are taking advantage of this by providing coupons and freebies to those who check-in often or first.

Mobile commerce trend No. 4 – Social
Using mobile for sharing is a huge component of mobile commerce initiatives in 2010 and the same will hold true for the holiday season.

Mobile social network-based loyalty programs are going to be huge.

For example, retailer Barnes & Noble has taken sharing to a new level.

Barnes & Noble developed its LendMe technology to let customers share their eligible ebooks with friends for up to 14 days, right from the Android application.

Mobile commerce trend No. 5 – Analytics
2010 marks the first time that retailers truly place emphasis on investing time and money in analytics.

In mobile, analytics play an important role when trying to figure out what works and what does not, especially in a platform-specific setting.

Usablenet’s Mr. Taylor said that an important trend he is seeing is making sure mobile commerce can be tracked with the same detail as ecommerce, with integration with Omniture, Coremetrics, Webtrends and Google Analytics.

“One of our clients was surprised to discover their traffic from BlackBerry devices was much higher than from iPhones,” FitForCommerce’s Ms. Dvorak said. “What we have seen are people assume they need to invest first in iPhone apps or Mac-enabled sites.

“But perhaps the first step should be to examine the site’s traffic analytics,” she said. “Then, the next step is to ensure all operating systems can handle your site.”

For example, Adobe’s Flash technology does not work on Mac devices and many retailers have shopping sites where the widgets, gift finders, outfit builders are built in Flash.

This is especially true during the holiday season, when retailers increasingly want to offer all major features of ecommerce, not just check out. These include add to wish list, related-item suggestions, gift registry and support for promotional and coupon codes.

So, these types of tools will not only fail to display, they will throw an error if built using Flash and served on an iPhone.

In this instance, the importance of platform-specific mobile design cannot be overstated.

“There is a difference between a mobile-friendly site and a mobile-optimized site,” Ms. Dvorak said. “A best practice is start building your mobile site by optimizing the top 10 used features on your Web site.

“For example, increase the size of the search field to take up a larger percent of the page than it does on a regular Web site, as search is such an important part of the mobile experience,” she said.

Source: MobileCommerceDaily.com

Gproxy Design's latest NetSuite eCommerce website design

2010-08-03T15:07:00.005-04:00

Mobileation is Ride-on-Toys specialists, who has been working with Gproxy Design for the past 3 years. This time they came to us to redesign their site. Keeping a few elements from the design we did back in 2007, we reached this new site which looks awesome!
The client choose NetSuite for their eCommerce platform and they wanted a few new perks to give the site a "face lift," while keeping it's playful look and feel.

The site's homepage has a great looking Jquery banner, main categories can be found in the top navigation bar, and 4 saved searches as drill downs. On both ends of the logo, there are two more "categories", Exclusives to Mobileation on one side and Wow priced items on the other.

Checkout the Sign Up form, which has a custom made functionality. Our client wanted to capture some additional information from their users, like the number of children the buyer has also their names and dates of birth. This was difficult to work around, since it isn't part of NetSuite standards, but our team of professional developers found a way and divided the sign up form into two simple steps:

The user has to input their name, email and number of kids he/she has, then clicks next.
Depending on the amount of children the customer has, the amount of fields the form shows. For example if in the first step I were to put that I had 3 kids, in the second step 3 fields will show up. But if I were to put 5 children in the first step, then 5 fields would appear in the second one.

Each category has custom made banners, a main banner with its name as well as 3 additional banners announcing new arrivals, best selling items and specials. All associated with each category.
The final result of this NetSuite eCommerce project is a customized online store, with an appealing look and feel, which lifted up their brand image and gave their store an improved and user-friendly shopping experience. Congratulations to Mobileation and our team for completing project!

For more information about Gproxy Design's eCommerce solutions, please click HERE.