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E-commerce firms should turn to commercial, off-the-shelf, or open source software as a replacement for current custom web development initiatives to save up to 35 per cent of their ongoing maintenance and licence costs, Gartner advised in its report "Cost Cutting in E-Commerce, 2009".

After you have defined your product categories and how to structure them (see Usability and e-commerce Part 1) you are ready to define the product pages. Let's start with the product overview page:

good e-commerce portal site

This is a recap of our webinar Multi-Store Retailing: Perks and Pitfalls with Elastic Path's own VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley. (The replay should be available by the end of the week.) You can also catch up on all of our audio/visual webinar replays at ElasticPath.com/Events/ and blog summaries here. Though our webinars are not product-specific - we put these out there for all online retailers to access and enjoy whether you use our ecommerce software or not, this topic is near and dear to use as our most recent version of Elastic Path is really honed for multi-store retailing. If you're interested in a product-specific webinar on our product you can view the replay of Technical Introduction to Elastic Path Commerce 6.1. Multi-Store Retailing: Perks and Pitfalls covered: * Why Multi-Store is gaining momentum * Types of stores to consider launching * When to launch additional stores * How to avoid critical mistakes

presentation of e-commerce landscape in Greece January 2010

Is social media/Web 2.0 for retail just hype or an essential part of doing business in the 21st century? The Wikipedic definition of Web 2.0 is "a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online." Wikipedia, being a user-generated knowledge base, is itself Web 2.0. In the ecommerce context, Web 2.0 includes leveraging social commerce on your own site, blogging/podcasting and participating in social networks like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter - and anywhere you or your customers can create and share content. Retailers often wonder what Web 2.0 / social media activities to be involved with, so this post ranks what I believe are the top 10 Web 2.0 activities for ecommerce based on their business impact.

how to achieve superior customer service

One of the hazards of product recommendations is that you may suggest the wrong thing. But online shoppers love product recommendations, so it is helpful to use them. And they can be great marketing tools. The key is personalized product recommendations.

We've already looked at some classic response-boosting offers along with offers that lower risk, reduce price, and increase urgency. Now let's look at offers that improve terms or that offer services or bribes.

A fundamental guide for businesses about the importance of customer retention and the four key elements to achive this. Why is customer retention at least equally important as customer acquisition?

One of the most important aspects of an ecommerce Web site is its product search. How your search results page is designed, and what it offers, are very important in terms of providing the results customers want. And as customers continue to expect more personalized results, they will create product searches that are increasingly narrow.

In ecommerce, one of the most important things is search. And right now, search has been moved to a whole new level with what is called blended search. Blended search is when the search engine takes it beyond text links to include pictures, video, blogs, news and just about anything else. This is changing ecommerce search especially, because now product search is part of this.

Over at The Email Wars, there is an interesting post about personalized links in ecommerce emails. Instead of linking to the relevant email topic, many times an ecommerce marketing email will simply send me to a homepage, or a broad category page.

One of the most important elements of your ecommerce Web site is the checkout page. This is the first page from the cart, basket or bag (or whatever you call it on your site) after you offer the option to "check out."

report of a customer research on e-shops.

One of the most important pages on your ecommerce Web site is the customer service landing pages. This page often has contact information, and maybe even FAQs. The idea is to make it easy to find, and ensure that the information on the customer service landing page is easy for the customer to use.

In online shopping, it is common to sign up for an account. Often, an ecommerce Web site will send you an email welcoming you to the site. But it doesn't always happen. And while it can seem annoying to have an inbox cluttered by welcome emails, I think it's a good thing to send a "welcome" email. And not just because I had to register on 36 Web sites in order to get the 20 examples I provide here.

Many good ecommerce Web sites know that the product details page can have a material say in whether customers stick around - and even whether they come back. Customers like to learn as much as possible about a product before buying, and product details pages can allow customer to explore a product.

Loyal ecommerce shoppers often like to set up an account with etailers they visit frequently. This means that how you set up the "My Account" page can be important. In terms of design and usability, it is important to cater to your ecommerce shoppers. All of the examples below are the My Account pages for various etailers. Each represents the first thing that comes up when the My Account selection is made on an ecommerce Web site.