This morning the store development team at Solid Cactus was greeted with a Christmas tree, garland, and a paper Santa Claus — Joe Palko and I went a little overboard at our local party supply store. But, it’s all to get everyone in the spirit for our clients’ biggest time of the year: The holiday shopping season.

Solid Cactus today is hosting a 24-hour programming marathon to ready its eCommerce retailer clients for Cyber Monday, the official start of the online holiday shopping season. Solid Cactus promoted the Cyber Monday programming marathon through an offbeat video starring Scott Sanfilippo and a slew of team members (view the video here: http://bit.ly/scmarathon).

“We wanted to provide a way for our customers to have their eCommerce websites improved upon before Cyber Monday. It’s a tough holiday season for everyone – we all know what the economic climate is- and a lot of retailers may feel like there’s not a lot left they can do in time to get ready for the holidays, but we wanted to give them a chance,” said Gregory Davis, director of corporate marketing and product development for Solid Cactus.

Online retailers who signed up for a new store feature or store redesign before Wednesday’s deadline will have their projects completed for Cyber Monday. The design team put finishing touches on mock-ups to get ready for the start of marathon which officially kicked off about an hour ago, and will conclude at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Other members of the Solid Cactus volunteered to attend the marathon to provide support, coffee runs, food delivery, and entertainment during the marathon. Solid Cactus staff will also be blogging, posting video footage, and making updates on Twitter and Facebook about the progress of the programming event.

For more details on the Solid Cactus Cyber Monday Programming Marathon, contact Donna Talarico at (570) 706-7116 or by e-mail at donna.talarico@solidcactus.com

What is Cyber Monday?

Cyber Monday is the kick-off of the online holiday shopping season, the sister to Black Friday. Cyber Monday was first used in 2005, and coined by Shop.org after it was noted in the eCommerce industry that 77% of online retailers saw a significant spike in sales on the Monday following Thanksgiving in 2004.

The tradition continued, an unofficial eCommerce holiday was born, and now Cyber Monday 2009 is right around the corner. Are you ready?

I’m very excited today! It’s my first official blog post for Solid Cactus. Can you feel the excitement in the air? Ok, may be that’s just me. Anyway, so we were are…and I hope I can live up to the high expectations that everyone at Solid Cactus has set for our blogs. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

A little about me, I’m Karen Snyder and I am the Product Manager at Solid Cactus. I’ve been with Solid Cactus for over two years and I’ve had a variety of titles and worked in almost every department except finance. This is not a bad thing. I can barely balance my own checkbook. Working for different departments has given me a unique insight into Solid Cactus, our products, our personnel, how we get things done and our vision. As Product Manager I get to help make real decisions about what products we create and share with our clients and with those of you who may be still in the “still shopping around” stage. It’s the best position I’ve had yet, well not counting when I was the assistant for the Co-founder of Solid Cactus, Scott Sanfilippo. (Wait…Is he still reading? Can anyone see him?) Ok, I think he’s gone. Seriously, this is my favorite position to date at Solid Cactus.

So, in my blog posts my plan is to share with you all the cool features that Solid Cactus has to offer, why you should use them, who will benefit and well…all the nuts and bolts. You may also get the occasional sneak peek as to what our staff of dedicated and talented programmers and designers are working on next. Trust me, you’re going to want to stick around for those posts. I may even take a minute to introduce you to a few of those dedicated people so you can put a face with the names you hear so often on phone calls with your account managers and project managers.

I have to get back to work and I’m sure you have stuff to do,too. SEO to research, phone calls to answer, programming code to write, design colors to pick out, logos to design…Oh wait…you’re with Solid Cactus, don’t we do all of that for you? Hmmm…then I guess you can spend your time ordering products and getting ready for Cyber Monday. The race is on! Are you ready?

Last week Google announced that they are introducing a new search product for ecommerce stores called Google Commerce Search. According to Google, Commerce Search will bring some of Google’s best search innovations to eCommerce websites.

But it comes at a price. $50,000.00 per year.

That price tag limits just who is going to be using the product, and Google knows it. Which is why they’re targeting it to the top 1,000 e-tailers.

There is no doubt in my mind that Google rules the search empire. I’m a huge fan of their products such as Google Apps and Google Voice which I use everyday as well as Google Search being the only place I go to when I need to find something.

I own about a half-dozen eCommerce sites, and know just how important having a good product search available for your shopper is, but $50k a year is still a lot of money and has a high return on investment (ROI).

At Solid Cactus Boot Camp a few weeks ago, we unveiled our new Advanced Search product for Yahoo! Store that has been over a year in the making and is, what I consider, the absolute best, most feature rick, robust search engine for Yahoo! Store.

But you’re not going to pay $50,000.00 a year for it!

For under a hundred-bucks a month you can have a tool that is packed with features that are designed to turn that search into a sale, including:

• Auto-Suggest feature dynamically displays top-ranking items in a pop-in as user is typing
• Item image shown in search results
• Narrows search to specific criteria (such as, price range, size) and displays number of results found within each matching category
• Ability to sort review by price and relevancy, with dynamic paging
• Built-in spell checker (”Did you Mean?”) and stemming feature find misspellings and variations of search terms
• “More Like This” cross-sell
• Search term highlighted in results
• Advanced tracking and reporting helps you monitor search terms, which helps with marketing efforts

When I first saw the demo a few months ago, I was amazed at just how much this product was going to change how Yahoo! Store owners look at on-site search. When I say there is nothing like it out there for Yahoo! Store, I mean it.

The biggest shopping season of the year is right around the corner and there is no better time than now to implement a new search strategy for your eCommerce store. Watch the short demo video I did for Advanced Search for Yahoo! Store then visit www.AmericaneSuperstore.com and play around with the search feature. After just a few minutes worth of searching, you will see that this is one Solid Cactus product you have to have on your store.

The price is right, the features and functionality are far superior than other advanced search products and it will pay for itself within days.

If you’re ready to add this to your site, call us today at 1.888.361.9814 and say, “Gimme Advanced Search!” Or, if you really want to spend 50-grand on a search engine, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Boise, I’d like to sell ya.

(This is from the Solid Cactus blog archives from a past Halloween. The information is still pertinent today.)

This is my favorite time of year. I love crunchy leaves under my boots. (Oh, I love boots, too.) I love orange. I love pumpkins. I love apple cider. I love Halloween. And, I love, love, love to be scared!

But you know what? As an online consumer, I do not want to be scared away from an eCommerce website.  Here’s a look at spooky e-commerce practices.

Scary eCommerce Practice #1: Your Contact Information is The Invisible Man

No toll-free number in the header. A P.O. Box as the address. These are tell-tale signs that you are hiding from your customers– or it at least appears that way. Customers are the life-blood of your business. Why would you want to make it a hassle to reach you? Having your contact information prominently displayed creates peace of mind.

Scary eCommerce Practice #2: Your Site is Frankenstein’ed together

A stitch here. A stitch there. A bolt over here. Online consumers can tell if a site is piece-mealed together. If a site looks uniform in some aspects, but then there are big boxes of text here, cheesy clip are over there, etc. things can really look cluttered. That’s a turn-off to me. Branding is important to build trust and customer confidence and really make for an enjoyable online shopping experience. If your homepage is busy and looks like an undone jigsaw (Saw reference right there, kids!) puzzle it could spook online shoppers away.

Scary eCommerce Practice #3: Wrong Turn and The Descent– Where are people going?

Navigation. I get lost every time I go to New Jersey. I can’t really follow the Garden State highway signs too well. They just aren’t clear. Same can be said about eCommerce website design and navigation. I don’t like when I land on a site that has menus here, menus there, menus, menus everywhere.

People can make a wrong turn, get lost, get frustrated and leave. Worse yet, I’ve been on eCommerce sites that have so many subcategories that it takes five to six clicks just to get to an item page– like you are making a descent deep into a scary, scary cave. This is a highly confusing process that makes me want to shout, “Just take me to where I can BUY something!” Ease of navigation is crucial to a good online shopping experience.

Scary eCommerce Practice #4: The Shining

Animated GIFs. There’s a memory. I remember my first Geocities page- I had the banjo-playing frog, an e-mail graphic of a letter turning into an envelope, and plopping in a mailbox and I even had a blinking “welcome” message. None of this is eCcommerce friendly. Some flash is okay- that’s professional and tasteful. However, those animated GIFs look amateur and definitely look out of place on an eCommerce site. This is my biggest pet peeve so I had to add it to my scary list.

There are more things that give me the eCommerce heebie jeebies, but these four are a good start. Take a look at your own eCommerce website design. Is there anything that would spook you away? Scare you from shopping? October is a fun month- lots of scary things out there- haunted houses, great horror flicks and talk of all those superstitions– but don’t make the scares last yearround on your eCommerce site. Leave that to the Cravens and the Carpenters of the world!

The only ghost wandering around Solid Cactus in Shavertown today was that of the dearly departed Billy Mays. Well, not really, it was none other than project manager Joe Domkowski. Several team members got in the Halloween spirit and put their creativity to work by coming up with some great costumes.

Joel Nye took home the “booty” as Captain Jack. He was chosen “best dressed” by our judges and received a $75 bonus.

This week, it’s Solid Cactus Boot Camp week; so, I’ve been busy blogging about that. Had a nice compliment on Twitter from @eve_c that she enjoyed these eCommerce Tweets of the Week features, so here are a few enjoyable industry tweets I found this week. These link to some really great articles, especially some about how people plan to use social media this holiday season!

Marketing Tweets

fspereira Study points that Consumers will seek holiday deals via social media http://bit.ly/19tMhg #ecommerce #holiday

Social Media Oriented Tweets

Twitter_Tips 3 Twitter keys: Tell your story, connect w/ the best, measure the results: http://j.mp/3sv9qD –Share: http://bit.ly/s2zWR

MikeLizun top 20% of social media users visit social media sites 2.4 times per day and spend 31 minutes http://bit.ly/Hpy5O (MarketingMag)

Customer Service Tweets

virtualmarketer #Retail Customer Survey: 37% shoppers use live chat, 21% use click to call: http://bit.ly/3K70i #ecommerce #customerservice

At just after 9:00 a.m. this morning, Scott Sanfilippo brought the new recruits into the corporate marketing department for a tour. I was putting the finishing touches on some Boot Camp material as he introduced the team. I couldn’t help but get a little more excited. It’s one thing planning for Boot Camp, but when the 30+ clients from all over the country (and Canada, too!) actually arrive, I really get pumped!

More updates to come! The Internet Marketing team is ruling the roost right now in our training center. Pictures and more to come all week on the blog!

Also, follow us on Twitter for updates all week:  @cactus_donna, @scottsanfilippo and also follow the hashtag #scbootcamp — Check out our social media page see everyone to follow!

-Donna

The following is a special message for Solid Cactus Yahoo! Store customers from company co-founder, Scott Sanfilippo.

by Donna Talarico, Interactive Marketing Specialist

As some people know, I do some freelance writing outside of Solid Cactus for a local entertainment paper. I was writing a story last night about the Northeast Pennsylvania Philharmonic and local music center, Robert M. Sides putting on a screening of the independent documentary “Note by Note: The Making of a Steinway l037.”

While researching Steinway & Sons I found that in 1853 founder Henry Steinway built his company on three principles:

• Build to a standard, not a price

• Make no compromise in quality

• Strive always to improve the instrument

150 years later, the company is still guided by these fundamentals. They company didn’t succumb to mass production. They did not compromise the quality of their end-product or their craftsmanship to get their product in the hands of more people, quickly, cheaply. Each piano and all its parts are handcrafted. Nothing is outsourced.

Rather, it takes 450 people and 12,000 parts and about 12 months to complete one grand piano. According to the company’s press materials, nine out of 10 pianists prefer a Steinway and the most acclaimed music schools in the country are Steinway-only schools.

Why? The price and patience is worth it.

Those principles struck a chord with me. The same could be said of eCommerce developers like Solid Cactus and the business owners who understand the value of working with a firm of  “web craftsmen” who may take a little longer and may not be the lowest bidder, but the end result is worth it. It’s not always about price.

It’s about a high-caliber deliverable that is going to get you the best performance — whether its an eCommerce business, or  Beethoven.

Solid Cactus… you could say its eCommerce fine-tuned!

One of the most popular and wildly successful events for Solid Cactus customers is coming in just a few weeks. Boot Camp @ HQ is being held October 14 – 16 at our headquarters in Shavertown, PA.

This will be the 7th one of these events I put together, and I must say, like a fine wine they get better with age.

This three day event is packed full of fun and informative sessions on marketing, store design & programming, customer service, operations and more. Put on by the e-commerce experts that you know and love from Solid Cactus, the sessions are designed so that anyone from a newbie to a seasoned pro walks away with information they can use to run their business better.

Besides the opportunity to network and share your experiences with other e-commerce store owners for three days, you’ll have unprecedented access to the entire Solid Cactus team. Want to meet with your account manager? Have a question for one of our talented designers? Have a question about RTML? Our 150+ staff is here to help!

The fun doesn’t end at 5pm either. Each night we have a different activity planned starting off with dinner and ending, well, wherever the night takes us.

This event is ALWAYS a SELL OUT and I always have a handful of disappointed people who didn’t get their reservation in on time. We cap our attendee count at 40 to keep class sizes manageable and intimate, so please don’t wait to reserve your spot. A 50% deposit is all that’s needed to hold your reservation. The remaining 50% is due on September 11, 2009.

Take a minute to visit http://bootcamp.solidcactus.com to learn more about the sessions schedule so far, view photos and videos of past Boot Camps and to make your reservation.