Joe Palko, gearing up for the Solid Cactus Cyber Monday programming marathon.

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.

Shopping for the programming marathon

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?

Walmart yesterday issued a statement giving shoppers a sneak peek at some of the bargains to expect on items like plasma TVs, DVD players and deep discounts (some up to 60%) off popular kids toys. The mega-retailer also entered into a DVD price war recently with Amazon.com and Target, but weren’t able to match the deals.

While nearly every eCommerce store is in discount mode another theme very popular this year is free shipping. Whether it be ground service at no charge with a minimum order or just plain free shipping, the offer is luring in shoppers. But will these promotions and discounts help merchants turn a profit this year?

Internet Retailer commissioned a survey that found that October 2008 compared to October 2009 showed a 12.6% increase in sales, but don’t jump off your chair in excitement yet, according to the article:

…even though total sales were up by 12.6% year over year, the industry’s health was little changed from a year ago because total sales owed so much to discounted items, sales of which were up 112%, and because the depth of discounts increased from an average of 24.6% in October 2008 to 28% this October. Online retailers saw sales drop 2.6% on non-discounted goods from the same period last year.

This clearly shows that shoppers are extremely price conscious and are out there looking for the merchant who can give them the best possible price and service. So what is a merchant to do in this so called “new economy?” Not all of us can afford to offer deep discounts or free shipping, but we can provide value in other ways.

Customer Service – while service may not be what your customer is shopping for, give it to them and they may choose to fork over their credit card to you rather than mega-mart who you can’t even call to have a question answered. Make sure you make yourself accessible to your customers in case they have questions about a product you’re selling and make sure the person on the other end of that call or email knows what they’re talking about. Everyone who works for you should be an expert of the products you’re selling, if they’re not…. well, stop reading and start training.

Hook ‘Em – you’ve got that potential sale on the phone or in your in-box, don’t let them get away. Ask them what you can do to get their order today. If that means throwing in a small dollar amount gift card, giving a little off, working a deal on shipping or throwing in a free item, consider doing it. You paid a lot to get that lead and have that lead call you, now don’t lose them. Ask for the order, but don’t be pushy.

Shipping Deals – if free shipping is the magic elixr shoppers are looking for this season, it may be high time you look at your margins and see if you can offer some variation. But like I said above, not all of us can afford to do it. If a free shipping promo is definitely out of the question, what about offering a flat rate shipping promotion such as $4.95 ground or free shipping on select items.

Gift Cards – perhaps the best kept secret in the industry. In 2007 Consumer Reports reported that 27% of gift cards go unredeemed. That’s a lot of cash floating around out there. So why not have a promotion where if you spend $X you get a gift card or gift certificate for your store for $X. If those numbers still stand true, only 73% of people will redeem that card or certificate.

Some of you may be saying “I don’t need to discount or make deals for my customers to buy from me.” If that’s the case, congratulations, but I don’t believe you. Unless you’re the only person selling electric blankets to the Eskimos, nobody needs to buy from you. You have competition and competition this season is FIERCE. Let me say that again, competition this season is FIERCE. Having a solid holiday promotional plan now will help you “ring” in the new year on a happy note!

While the tents were going up, the press releases started going out from The Wagner Companies in Milwaukee, WI. Wagner is the only company in the United States to manufacturer and sell the time honored Festivus Pole.

What is a Festivus Pole? Fans of the NBC comedy Seinfeld would slap you for not knowing, but, here’s an excerpt from the press release that gives a good explanation:

In the December 18, 1997 episode of “Seinfeld” titled “The Strike” Mr. Costanza, played by Jerry Stiller, tells of how he invented the holiday when his son was young and he found himself in a department store tug-of-war with another Christmas shopper for a doll. “I realized there had to be a better way,” Frank recounts.

According to Mr. Costanza, the Festivus tradition begins with a bare aluminum pole, which is praised for its “very high strength-to-weight ratio.” The unadorned aluminum pole is displayed in opposition to the commercialization of highly decorated Christmas trees, and because the holiday’s creator, Frank Costanza, “find[s] tinsel distracting.”

I stumbled upon The Wagner Companies last season when I didn’t feel like putting up a Christmas Tree. I did a Google search for Festivus Poles and was amazed to see that there IS a company out there making them. I ordered the aluminum delight and stuck it in my great room. It didn’t go over well with members of my family who were expecting to see my house decked out in the usual holiday flair, but hey, I was lazy. Or, just sick of the “commercialization of highly decorated Christmas trees.”

The Wagner Companies, I’m sure, do a bang-up business selling the poles made famous by a cantankerous old coot on Seinfeld, and it just goes to show that niche marketing works. Even if it’s just for two months out of the year.

I would be remiss if I didn’t direct you to festivuspoles.com to buy your piece of holiday home decor. I would be spanked for not recommending The Wagner Companies needs a redesign as well. Guys, call me at 1.888.361.9814 ext 7100 and I’ll hook you up.

Tony Leto of The Wagner Companies stands next to one of the company's Festivus Poles. Photo from http://www.festivuspoles.com

I hold the ladder and I’m also holding on to hope that this holiday season is going to be a successful one for eCommerce store owners.

So far, I’ve heard mixed results. During a recent webinar hosted by comScore, they included the current predictions for the 2009 holiday season. For retailers it looks like it’s going to be a flat season, while Forrester predicts that eCommerce sales will increase 8%. But those predictions are just that, predictions. Nobody will know what the final numbers are until the season is over.

One thing that resounds strongly throughout all the stories I have been following is that this year is going to be the year of discounting. Whether it be in the form of promotions, coupons, free shipping or the inevitable price wars amongst retailers, customers want and more importantly, NEED to save money.
Solid Cactus has several products and features for your Yahoo! Store that I feel are “must haves” for this holiday, and here they are:

Holiday Countdown – Nothing says “you need to buy now” than putting the number of shopping days left in the season right up front and center. Urgency sells!

Advanced Search – Our new advanced search is the most powerful search engine available for Yahoo! Store. With features found on the “big boy’s” stores, we deliver a product that is robust, packed with features, easy to maintain and most of all affordable.

Scratch & Save – Read the fourth paragraph above again and you will see why having a feature like this is important. Give your customers the ability to scratch their way to savings in a fun way that is guaranteed to increase conversions.

accuRATEship – Free shipping is ruling the web this season as is fast shipping options like next day, second day and third day delivery. Give your customers free shipping promos, the ability to choose UPS, FedEx or USPS and real-time rate integration and features that drop-shippers fall in love with by integrating accuRATEship on your site.

In addition to features like these, make sure your website puts your customers in the holiday mood. Deck the halls but don’t over do it. Our award-winning design team at Solid Cactus can holiday-tize your eCommerce store in a professional and eye catching manner.

Now, before you say “it’s too late to do all this” listen up. As an eCommerce store owner myself, I know how important this time of the year is for the bottom line. I want you to take advantage of every opportunity that’s available for you to make money, which is why we’re having a programming marathon to help make that a reality.

Take a look at all the features we have for your Yahoo! Store and decide which ones will make a great addition to your store. Once you’ve chosen yours, give us a call and we’ll have them installed for you in time for Cyber Monday. Same thing for a holiday look or a complete site redesign!

Don’t let this opportunity pass you by, let us help you be successful this holiday.

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?

A younger me, on the right, working the line in the Ferret Store's warehouse. Picture from July 11, 2005.

But alas, the days of me picking, packing and shipping orders are gone. But I do remember them. I remember them well.

When I owned TheFerretStore.com, a typical Monday would consist of about 300 – 350 orders. Once Black Friday hit, a typical Monday had us looking at 500 – 600. And we didn’t drop ship. All the product we sold was stocked in our warehouse, picked, packed and shipped by a staff of 50 before automation.

We had pickers that would grab an order, start at the front of the pick route and fill big plastic tubs up with that order’s contents. The tub made it’s way on a set of rollers to a packing station where someone would verify items and quantities, wrap the items up with care and seal the box. The box would then make its way to a shipping station where one person would do the weighing and shipping.

Then we automated things. Everything was barcoded for accuracy, the shipping station was eliminated and equipment added at each packing station which enabled the packer to verify, pack and ultimately ship the package. With automation we dramatically increased out output and reduced our headcount.

Even with automation, when the holidays rolled around, it was all hands-on-deck. Everyone stepped up to the plate when the orders were backing up. We had a 24-hour shipping guarantee that we had to abide by and that meant many late nights and weekends. Customer Service Representatives would help out after their shifts, all our managers were pulled into the warehouse and basically anyone who could breathe was enlisted to help.

While the orders were going out, stock was coming in, so we had to balance and work around stockers who would be in the aisles restocking shelves or relocating product for quicker picking. Normally restocking was done at night when the picking operation wasn’t going on, but during the holidays you did what you had to do!

The hustle-bustle of “the season” was fun and exciting, and in case you didn’t get it from this post – I miss it. I loved walking through the warehouse watching that big stack of orders start out inches high and get whittled down by the end of the day, then grow the next morning. I miss the excitement of hearing “150 orders to go and an hour to get them out” at three in the afternoon.

A lot of eCommerce store owners never had the “thrill” of warehousing product and and filling orders. As more and more companies started drop-ship programs the eCommerce store owner needs to just send their orders in and someone else does the work for them.

The stores I own today, are all drop-ship stores and well, aren’t very exciting this time of year! There’s no warehouse for me to walk through and count the boxes going out. There’s no busting on the FedEx or UPS driver who was off for 8 weeks because that 70-pound ferret cage he lifted resulted in a hernia. And there’s no late night or weekend shifts working to crank out the orders (everyone hated them anyway).

I waxed nostalgic in today’s post after receiving an email from one of my good friends who uses Solid Cactus for her eCommerce needs. She was showing off pictures of the orders leaving her warehouse like a new father would show off pictures of his newborn son.

I remember pictures like these too…. I also remember how bad my back hurt by the end of the day Friday.

Happy selling!

If you’d like to open your own eCommerce store and experience all the fun and excitement for yourself, be sure to call upon Solid Cactus. I’m not only a former owner, I’m also a customer. And an employee! They can help you get started on Yahoo! Store, Amazon Webstore, eBay Prostores or Solid Cactus eCommerce.

Then once you’re up and running, Solid Cactus can help with Internet Marketing, Call Center Services, Comparison Shopping Engine Management, accuRATEship Shipping Manager, and total automation with Cactus Complete Commerce.

Shameful, self serving plug is complete.

This post first appeared on Scott’s personal blog where he shares thoughts on eCommerce, customer service and anything else that gets him excited.

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.

Best eCommerce Tweets of the Week – November 2, 2006

This has been a busy week for Twitter. The microblogging website no sooner launched its list feature when a national tragedy (Fort Hood) happened. News organizations jumped on using Twitter lists. So, this week’s Best eCommerce Tweets of the Week column is a little Twitter heavy.

I personally think the best find this week is a great tweet linking to a blog post for The Biggest eCommerce Lies and How to Avoid Them.

General eCommerce Tweets

MikeLizun 46% of Local Searchers Visit Businesses In-Store http://bit.ly/2a7zbc

architela The biggest #ecommerce lies and how to avoid them http://bit.ly/1JUWHY RT @boagworld business

Internet Marketing

WebsiteMagazine Email marketing benchmarks for 2010 – http://bit.ly/wDc00 – solid lessons to be learned from this MarketingSherpa study #email

Social Media

KaylieJones RT @alizasherman: Compiled 10 ways to use Twitter for your biz & life http://twurl.nl/zinm1i How do YOU use it well? http://myloc.me/1mGl2

NathanBransford Fabulous post by @debbiestier at @harperstudio re: whether Twitter sells books (spoiler: YES) http://bit.ly/1PoFFk

mashable Twitter Lists: Frequently Asked Questions and Strategies – http://bit.ly/2Rkmge

mashable The 50 Hottest Brands on Twitter Right Now – http://bit.ly/sbHih

(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!

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

Yahoo! Store Programmer Adam Klinges

Project Manager Joe Domkoski

Account Manager Keith Kalmanowicz

Yahoo! Store Programmer Joel Nye

VP of Operations Miguel Younger as himself

Yahoo! Store Programming Department Manager Chris Martin