myAmeriCommerce

AmeriCommerce Streamlines Order and Customer Areas in version 2010.4

esturrock — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:58:03 GMT

True to form, AmeriCommerce listened to customer feedback and has focused on a few routine areas of the product with the 2010.4 (and 2010.3) releases of the AmeriCommerce ecommerce solution enabling merchants to sell online. Additionally, some great new features and integrations have also been added along with some next generation features that will extend the flexibility of the shopping cart platform.

Another noteworthy mention is that AmeriCommerce has always used our own software for our own website and payments. However we’ve always used a mix of tools for the customer relationship management, accounting and order management systems due to the requirements that we have. With version 2010.4 the AmeriCommerce system is used entirely for our own customer and order management dropping our reliance on other tools and systems. This proves the power of our platform and how it has grown over the years. This shift results in better understanding of our system from sales up through accounting and beyond. This is a great advantage to our customers because every employee touches the system and features on a daily basis, even positions that were previously isolated from using it. We use most aspects of our software alongside our customers and due to that understanding and comradery we can innovate better and faster for the good of us all.

Here’s an overview of a few of the key features we’ve added in v2010.4. Be sure to review the revised order process so your team will be ready when your site is updated.

New Custom Workflow Engine
This new feature extension will allow a business to take control of their data workflows and create custom triggers and events that happen in response to events the shopping cart system is already performing. Tap into new orders placed and add new alerts, send info to external systems, set custom fields to new values, add/remove from drip series and so much more. All of this is configured by the merchant based on their specific needs. The rule engine looks for conditions that match and when matches are found, the ‘actions’ are taken. An action is what the rule is to ‘do’.

New Workflow Engine Types, Event Types, Conditions, Actions
Change customers, orders and more based on rules
Automatically add/remove customers to mailing lists and drips series based on criteria
Send custom email alerts to specified email addresses based on rules

New Scheduled Export Engine
Schedule exports to send data files to remote FTP servers or to folders on your own server. This allows automation of order and customer exports to external systems and allows you to save the file translations and formatting for repeated/scheduled use.

Schedule Automated Exports
Export to FTP Servers
Post Export Processing Options

New Add To Cart Capabilities
As we further extend our remote external site and system carting tools and our API carting tools we continue to add features to these areas. This allows any website or desktop program to use your AmeriCommerce storefront as a catalog, carting and ordering system. Empower any tool or website on any platform or service to take orders by just supplying the proper information to the cart system. Manage as much or as little of the carting/checkout process using our system.

Create/Maintain shopping carts over the AmeriCommerce from any application or website
Create/Maintain orders out of the carts you make from any application or website
Basic External Site Remote Carting Enhanced Using Url and Posting methods
Any site or application can now put add to cart buttons and do cart management
Any site or application can now order without ever going to your AmeriCommerce site

Customer Changes
The changes to the Customer area involved mostly cosmetic and previews of the data that resides in other modules of AmeriCommerce. And adding better support for tracking information for each customer including better custom field visibility, better notes and email tracking and more which allow a merchant to keep track the most valuable asset they have, their customers.

Add quick notes & emails with attachments to customers
Customer Edit becomes new home for historical data
Fast balance preview on customers
Edit and Add Addresses manually
Email Attachments capability added, with logging
Add a note capability added
Search by many new criteria including custom fields
New fields added to the customer list for showing balance, segmentation and more

Order Changes
After listening to customer feedback we have streamlined the order and customer areas of our platform for easy management. This involved putting information at our customer’s fingertips as well as providing advanced tools and access to the information and processes they need at the time. For orders, this involved reworking the order edit and management pages considerably. Cutting the time to enter an order into seconds vs. minutes and adding more visibility into the products being added to an order.

See http://www.americommerce.com/kb/afmviewfaq.aspx?faqid=373 for an overview of functional changes (and release history)
Quick search/entry fields for products & customers
Screen refreshed to be streamlined and fit in smaller space
Password reset capability right from order
Item images and more information on order items
Easier Authorization, Capture and Adjustments for Payments
Address Book capabilities added
View Order made smaller and easily printable
Coupon Codes, Affiliate Tracking & Adcode Tracking added

Drip Series Changes

Better Drip Series List Management and Visibility
Auto assignments added for after order placed through workflow engine
Can follow up and ask for reviews after 7 days and more.

New Front End Features and Changes

Carousel/Product Sliders Controls & Vertical Carousel Snapins Added
New Snapins/Product Sliders (Recently Viewed, Viewed This but Bought These, Deal a Day)
New Snapin: Tabs Control, can use anywhere
Product Picture Zoom and Popups Enhanced, Lightbox style
Discount Rules display on front end
Tell a Friend Feature & Emailing Added
Custom Layout on Order Based Email Templates
New Paging Controls added for Lists
Search Engine Friendly and Stylable Tabs Added for Products
Cleaner 'No Image' added

Other

Check Box List added to Custom Fields Display Type
Ability to add Store Level Custom Fields
New color picker added with full color range capabilities
Html Wysiwyg Editor updated with many new features

New Integrations
There were some great new integrations added that support customers both large and small. This helps us continue our edge of having the most integrations of any platform today. Over 175 and building.

CartSpan - PeachTree Accounting Now Supported
ExactTarget Mailing Management
AddThis Social Networking Linking & Notification
Tivoli Access Manager Single Signon Support Added
Commerce XML (CXML) Hooks Allow Custom CXML Integrations
Paymentech Orbital Certified
Aisle7 Content Server Integration
TMP Warehousing and Fulfillment Systems Integration
Standard Register Printing & Fulfillment Systems Integration

New Tools

JQuery Tabs, Slider & Date Pickers
Telerik Management Tools Updated
Highslide Image Tools Added

Be sure to review the revised order process so your team will be ready when your site is updated. See http://www.americommerce.com/kb/afmviewfaq.aspx?faqid=373

AmeriCommerce Wins 2010 CODiE Award for Best eCommerce Solution

esturrock — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:40:45 GMT

AmeriCommerce, an eCommerce Shopping Cart Software company was announced the winner of the 2010 CODiE Award for the Best eCommerce Solution. While many others have tried, AmeriCommerce is the first software as a service (SaaS) platform dedicated entirely to selling products online to win the award. The announcement was made last week at the CODiE Awards in San Francisco, California. Other recipients of the award have included such companies as QuickBooks, IBM, and PayPal.

The Software & Information Industry Association's (SIIA) CODiE Awards program, the only peer-reviewed honor in the industry, has raised the standard for excellence and serves as a prestigious representation of outstanding achievement and vision in the software and information industry. AmeriCommerce has been voted a CODiE award finalist in 2007, 2008 and 2010 and took home the crown for 2010.

Being recognized as the first in our industry segment to receive the CODiE award for the Best eCommerce Software category is an exciting endorsement

AmeriCommerce attributes its success to listening to business community feedback and understanding the problems online businesses face. With a strong combination of industry research and eCommerce business community input, AmeriCommerce has evolved to provide business solutions making the setup and management of an online store easy and scalable. “Our knowledgeable team and community of clients have helped shape an award winning shopping cart solution and we are thankful for their continued feedback, dedication and work. Our company provides a unique value proposition, fully hosted off-the-shelf software with customization capabilities to tailor AmeriCommerce to specific business needs. Everyone wins." said Ed Sturrock, Co-Founder and Vice President of Product Management

AmeriCommerce pioneered Multiple Storefront Technology™ and is an eCommerce solution with robust online store management and marketing tools, leading the industry in the quantity and depth of features, tools and number of integrations (over 165) with software tools businesses already use. Setting up and managing large and complex catalogs with multiple price points, promotions and shipping configurations are standard features of the product. Additionally, the software can be used by any website or application on any platform or can be the entire front end website as well.

“Since 2000, AmeriCommerce has always pushed expectations of what online store software should be,” said Stefan Barlow, Co-Founder and Vice President of System Operations. “Being recognized as the first in our industry segment to receive the CODiE award for the Best eCommerce Software category is an exciting endorsement that AmeriCommerce is indeed more than a shopping cart, we are an eCommerce platform.”

“We are thrilled to receive the recognition from SIIA. The process was extremely competitive making the recognition even more valuable. Our vision is to continue to develop best of class features while maintaining the eCommerce leadership position for innovation. This commitment will allow our customers to be industry leaders for years to come," noted Charlie Cooper, President.

"Now in its 25th year, the CODiE Awards continue to recognize those companies providing the best new technology products and services across a broad array of industries," noted SIIA President Ken Wasch. "In addition, its winners are a prolific testament to the power of technology to deliver innovative solutions to businesses and consumers. SIIA warmly congratulates all of the winners and nominees of the CODiE Awards, whose innovation is essential for continuing America's leadership in the global knowledge economy," Wasch continued.

About AmeriCommerce:
AmeriCommerce is a full service e-commerce solution provider empowering merchants to sell online easily. In production since 2000, the AmeriCommerce shopping cart software is built on the concept of marketing performance, ease of use, flexibility and customization. AmeriCommerce pioneered the Multiple Storefront Technology™ and provides their customers with everything they need to design and operate successful online storefronts. For more information, visit the AmeriCommerce web site at http://ww.americommerce.com.

About SIIA:
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to 500 leading software and information companies. For further information, visit http://www.siia.net/codies/2010/winners.asp

AmeriCommerce Again Chosen as Best eCommerce Solution Finalist by the CODiE Awards

Stefan Barlow — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:27:00 GMT

March 10, 2010 -- AmeriCommerce is pleased to announce that for the third year its Shopping Cart Software has been named a top 3 finalist in the Software & Information Industry Association's prestigious 25th annual CODiE Awards competition.

AmeriCommerce was again recognized as a finalist in the Best eCommerce Solution category for its innovation in Multiple Storefronts, Integration abilities and depth of features that make it stand out in the competitive shopping cart software industry.

"AmeriCommerce is honored to be chosen for the third year as a CODiE finalist for the Best eCommerce Solution," said Stefan Barlow, Systems Operations Manager and Co-Founder. "We constantly look forward to the future of the eCommerce space and will continue striving to bring new and improved solutions to our clients and their partners."

For 25 years, SIIA CODiE Awards have been the leading honor for the software and information industry's finest products and services. CODiE Awards judges are experts in their field and work to identify the "best-of-the-best" from hundreds of nominees.

"This is the twenty-fifth year we have recognized excellence in the software, education and information industries through the CODiE Awards program,” noted Ken Wasch, President of SIIA. “In this economic climate, companies are doing even more to innovate. AmeriCommerce has demonstrated a commitment to innovation and quality that is reflected in their selection as a finalist for the CODiE Awards. I am pleased and proud to have them listed among the candidates, and I wish them the best in the final round of voting."

The complete list of CODiE Award finalists can be viewed at http://www.siia.net/codies/2010/finalists.asp

About AmeriCommerce

AmeriCommerce is a full service e-commerce solution provider. In production since 2000, the AmeriCommerce shopping cart software is built on the concept of marketing performance, ease of use, and customization. AmeriCommerce provides their customers with everything they need to design and operate a successful online storefront. AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Software incorporates such features as Multiple Storefront management under one administrative console, abandoned shopping cart and other integrated analytics, advanced pricing structures, shipping and discounting options, one page checkout and much more. For more information, visit the AmeriCommerce web site at www.AmeriCommerce.com.

About SIIA

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to more than 800 leading software and information companies. For further information, visit www.siia.net.

AmeriCommerce Improves Customer Experience with Shopping Cart Software Version 2010.1

esturrock — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:31:00 GMT

AmeriCommerce brings Product Reviews, Gift Certificates, Subscriptions, and many more new features with their latest shopping cart software release.

E-Commerce specialists rank improving the customer experience as one of their top priorities in 2010. AmeriCommerce’s latest release, version 2010.1, helps by introducing Gift Certificates, Product Reviews, Subscriptions, and many more new features.

“Online store owners are looking to offer customers more value while reducing their own management overhead,” says Stefan Barlow, Co-Founder of AmeriCommerce. “We feel the new features in AmeriCommerce 2010.1 will make the customer experience more enjoyable while increasing conversion rates and easing order processing through our integration partners.”

Customer generated content is very valuable, both for increasing conversion rates and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Shoppers read reviews more frequently than product descriptions, as they are real customer recommendations of products rather than marketing text. AmeriCommerce 2010.1 adds a fully designable tag based review system with moderation support. Customers can supply tags to describe products, along with a more lengthy review, and choose multi-dimensional ratings that store owners define. Rating graphics can be customized to allow industry specific icons such as 4 out of 5 hotdogs.

Retailers can now increase holiday sales, reward customer loyalty, and introduce entice new customers by offering Gift Certificates as promotional discounts. Gift Certificates can also be purchased online, delivered instantly and redeemed as a payment method on an order. Additionally, store credit can be issued for returned items or B2B corporate purchasing.

Recurring revenue business models can take advantage of Subscriptions in AmeriCommerce 2010.1 to schedule and process regularly occurring orders while collecting funds via customer credit cards. Using Subscriptions can dramatically reduce the management time required to handle recurring orders.

On the design end, the AmeriCommerce Site Explorer has been revamped using AJAX for faster content management. Custom layouts offer more flexibility in the site design and several new free Themes and Button sets allow online store owners to set up shop quickly with a professional web presence.

For business that would like to add a shopping cart to their existing web site without changing hosting providers, AmeriCommerce offers Remote Carting. This capability allows access to AmeriCommerce’s advanced inventory control, pricing, shipping, payments and order processing systems while sending product options, personalization and shipping options from the remote site to the cart portion of AmeriCommerce. This empowers the store owner to keep their existing site but have AmeriCommerce manage the entire order process.

New 3^rd party integrations introduced in AmeriCommerce 2010.1 include order management systems ShipWorks and Stone Edge, payment gateways Sage Payments and Planet Payment’s IPay, Amazon S3 for eProduct delivery and image hosting, and ABF Freight Shipping.

About AmeriCommerce

AmeriCommerce is a full service e-commerce solution provider. In production since 2000, the AmeriCommerce shopping cart software is built on the concept of marketing performance, ease of use, and customization. AmeriCommerce provides their customers with everything they need to design and operate a successful online storefront. AmeriCommerce also assists the development of accounting systems, call centers, marketing, and distribution, which is the infrastructure supporting the e-commerce business.

2010 v1 – Increase Holiday Sales With New Features!

esturrock — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:02:08 GMT

Your AmeriCommerce team has been working diligently and is pleased to announce our latest version just in time for the Holiday shopping season. In the midst of this release we did not forget about a little fun…check out our Facebook page to learn about our Cajun Gumbo Cook-off and a customer who believes he’s the next infomercial king! Be sure to click ‘Become a Fan’ and show your support for your ecommerce partner! Visit Facebook here.

2010 Release 1 has many new features like:

Advanced Gift Certificates Module
Store Credit Module
New Themes to Choose From
UPS Negotiated Rates Support
ABF Shipping Integration (light truck shipping)
Order Splitting
Low Stock / Out of Stock Email Alerts
so much more!

Read the release summary with screenshots here!
http://myamericommerce.com/blogs/feature_release_history_production_path/archive/2009/11/02/2010-v1-release-summary.aspx

SPECIAL: Holidazzle Your Customers this Holiday Season

esturrock — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:09:33 GMT

AmeriCommerce recognizes the challenges small businesses face when competing against large corporations and their seemingly unlimited resources during the holiday shopping season. Outside of pricing, consumers are often (consciously or unconsciously) looking for that one little thing that separates your site from the competition.

Large retailers and web companies know the value of honoring the Holiday season with the look and feel of their website. From Google spelling their name in Christmas lights, or the Wal-Mart Yellow Dot donning a Santa hat, everyone looks for a competitive edge by creating a warm, inviting holiday web atmosphere during the busiest season in retail and online shopping.

For that reason, AmeriCommerce is providing some ideas to spruce up your sites and services this holiday season. You can choose to do these yourselves or save some time and use our team to see this through for you. AmeriCommerce designers will create graphically appealing, industry-specific Holiday graphics to dress up your homepage and emails for the Holidays. These theme elements will be implemented and saved in your administration console for you to activate for the holidays. These holiday elements can be used for years to come.

Things to consider for HOLIDAZZLING your customers:

Holiday Site Header (starting at $395)
Holidazzle your company logo (starting at $200)
Holiday Homepage Design (starting at $1,250, a savings of 30%)
Site Tighten-Up Review! - review site to identify and correct alignment, color matching, JavaScript or order-flow issues and review any spot you might be losing traffic/sales (starting at $65)
Email template designs with a holiday splash (starting at $125 per template)
- Let AmeriCommerce deliver your holiday email blast for as little a 2-3 cents per recipient
Promotional Landing Pages for email campaigns, sales, etc. (starting at $125)
Holiday Sales, Free Items & Shipping Specials setup (starting at $50)
Holiday Banners (starting at $125)
Setup Product Reviews (starting at $99)
Setup and sell Gift Certificates (new feature) (starting at $99)
Holiday Countdown Clocks (starting at $99)
Setup product feeds to major comparison shopping engines (starting at $75)
Managed Holiday Pay-per-click campaigns (10-15% of spend)

For all starting at prices, final costs are based on your specifications and requirements and an evaluation from the AmeriCommerce team.

CONTACT YOUR SALES REP TODAY! Or tell us about your needs here:
http://www.americommerce.com/offer/design.htm?a=2009HolidazzleBlog

2009 v36 Completed and Ready!

esturrock — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:44:00 GMT

Most of our customers are already on this version, it’s primarily a fast new version containing fixes and a few smaller new features. During this release we spent most of this time working on the 2010 v1 release which will have some exciting stuff!

Here’s a recap of the highlights. Click Here!

Version 2009.35 Hits the Streets!

esturrock — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:59:22 GMT

See the release notes here! We’re excited to see this release get out to the masses so they can begin building a collection of great product reviews and using the other new features and integrations that will make managing your store even easier. Integrations that include ways to print shipping labels, interact with new payment gateways and much more.

The new custom layout framework (2009.34) is holding up great and was used for many of the new features and conversions of older pages. For those that want the control it offers for layout while still being tied to our core feature set, it is a great way to have both options that is just not available on other systems.

Our move to Rackspace is already showing benefits and over half of our customer base has already been moved over. We have seen dramatic speed increases and all of the things we expected by extending our team’s reach.

From here were are going to do a few small and fast releases that target usability again, new themes and some great micro-features needed by many of our customers. Carty fans stay tuned!

AmeriCommerce Announces New Incentives and Discounts

esturrock — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:36:25 GMT

AmeriCommerce defies current economic trends in its meteoric rise in the shopping cart platform market and we want to share our success with our customers. Last month AmeriCommerce quietly unwrapped a few new incentives, discounts and pricing changes to give back to our customers new and old and enable them to remain competitive in the current economic environment. Let’s outline a few of them here for everyone’s benefit!

Pricing changes as seen on: http://www.americommerce.com/store/pg/1-Shopping-Cart-Software-Price-List.aspx

All Hosting Plans
- Reduced plan pricing for first 3 months from 10-33%!
- Reduced setup fees!
- Reduced and published pre-purchased bandwidth rates!
  - Rates as low as $3/GB (compare that to other fully managed hosting carts!)
Bronze Level Plan Changes
- Lowered pricing to $29 for first 3 months!
- Removed transaction fees permanently!
- Reduced setup fees!
- Enable multiple storefront technology on Bronze!
- Increased product limits to 250
Silver Level Plan Changes
- Created increased bonuses for paying annually
- Converted old ‘Gold’ plans to annual silvers (losing nothing)
Gold Level Plan Changes
- New higher limits, products and bandwidth caps setting it solidly between Silver and Platinum.
- Increased Google Adwords Credits
Platinum Level Plan Changes
- Reduced Tiered Pre-Purchased Licensing Fees for Products
- Reduced Tiered Pre-Purchased Licensing Fees for Bandwidth
- Increased Google Adwords Credits

In addition to these plan changes, AmeriCommerce has created new web design and implementation plans as well as changing existing naming for clarity. With these changes AmeriCommerce shows that it is truly dedicated to providing our customers best-of-breed software at value pricing.

AmeriCommerce Sets Its Sites on Rackspace

esturrock — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:13:42 GMT

AmeriCommerce has chosen Rackspace Hosting in order to transition datacenter operations while offering an enhanced level of service, support and care to our customers. Rackspace’s Intensive Hosting goes well beyond our requirements and is by far the clear choice for our new partner. Our Rackspace Fanatical Support team, in conjunction with AmeriCommerce’s in-house Systems Operations team, will work hand-in-hand with to provide constant 24/7/365 hardware monitoring and support, including 1 hour hardware replacement guarantees, managed backups, premium servers, virtualization, and rapid capacity deployment. This is an exciting and appealing upgrade to our existing service levels for all our customers.

While Internap has proven to be a flawlessly reliable enterprise-class service provider, we feel the benefits of migrating to a fully managed hosting environment are unmistakable, and will allow our teams to focus more on what we do best. We will continue to develop the best ecommerce platform available and focus on our customer’s storefront needs, while allowing Rackspace to provide the hardware and operating system support they are world famous for. AmeriCommerce will continue to maintain the Internap datacenter indefinitely for additional services such as offsite backups and disaster recovery.

Rackspace features:

Starting with more powerful hardware, including Dell PowerEdge quad core dual processor servers
Intensive Hosting provides 24/7/365 proactive monitoring and issue resolution for hardware and operating system issues
Custom-built servers available for dedicated offerings
Virtual Server offerings
Rackspace currently operates 9 datacenters around the world
Zero-Downtime Network Guarantee
1 Hour Hardware Replacement Guarantee
High performance bandwidth
Cisco co-developed network configuration
Automated patch management
Much, much more!

Rackspace’s hardware and operating system monitoring will be a perfect complement to AmeriCommerce’s SiteMonitor system which tracks individual web sites for availability and response time.

AmeriCommerce will be implementing this shift over the next few months and it will be seamless and painless for our customers. ProvisionDesk, AmeriCommerce’s in-house site management tool, allows us to automate the site transfer process with the click of a button.

Enhanced Focus, Reliability, Disaster Recover, Portability, Server Choices, Hardware Upgrades, New Talent, Expanded Team, Effortless Expansion…all of these great features and more will position AmeriCommerce for unmatched growth and customer service in the years ahead!

2009.34 Released On All Customer Sites

esturrock — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:27:00 GMT

The latest mini release of AmeriCommerce has been officially put on all AmeriCommerce websites. This release has been a great foundation piece as we have worked hard on custom layout capabilities, usability and site setup/maintenance features. One of the underpinning pieces of where we are heading is the custom layout capabilities introduced in this version, which besides offering very flexible layout and styling power for your website, it was also required for our much anticipated multi-dimensional product reviews and moderation feature!

Check out the 2009.34 release notes for screenshots and feature explanations:
http://myamericommerce.com/blogs/feature_release_history_production_path/archive/2009/05/05/5-0-34-release-version.aspx

We want to personally thank our community for their invaluable feedback and support! We are here for you and keep your goals in mind with every move we make, and it shows because your sales are growing consistently. In fact, despite the economy our customers’ cumulative sales are growing around 15-25% per month, amazing numbers! Some of this is weighted by very successful customers really focusing on their storefronts, so be sure you are doing the same!

Representing $55,000,000+ in sales for our customers

Be sure to answer your next email survey and help shape where AmeriCommerce is heading next! Some great features are on the horizon!

AmeriCommerce Partners to Send Data to Comparison Shopping Sites

esturrock — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:04:18 GMT

January 14, 2009 – AmeriCommerce, a leading provider of shopping cart software and storefront solutions, teamed up with GoDatafeed.com, provider of affordable datafeed management services, to automate the submission of AmeriCommerce stores’ products to various comparison shopping sites including Shopping.com, Shopzilla, NexTag, Google Product Search and many more.

“Both GoDataFeed and AmeriCommerce are designed to help merchants drive more traffic to their sites and our integration provides our retailers with a turn-key solution to promote products on a variety of comparison shopping sites and affiliate networks,” said Ed Sturrock, AmeriCommerce Product Manager. “GoDataFeed’s robust and user-friendly platform simplify datafeed marketing, optimize product listings and update Americommerce store information automatically—saving our merchants valuable time and resources.”

Now, AmeriCommerce clients can instantly import their product data into GoDataFeed’s system to automate their datafeed marketing efforts. GoDataFeed has created a seamless import process that automatically retrieves AmeriCommerce stores’ product data and updates it daily. To introduce the service, GoDataFeed will setup AmeriCommerce merchants’ first three feeds on the GoDataFeed system-- a $225 value--at no cost, during their first month’s risk-free trial.

“We are excited to provide AmeriCommerce clients with effective datafeed management that will accelerate their marketing efforts on multiple retail channels,” said Ro Grosman, GoDataFeed’s Director of Technical Operations. “GoDataFeed empowers AmeriCommerce merchants by giving them the right tools to enhance their visibility on the comparison shopping landscape and give their stores a competitive edge.”

As sales shift away from brick-and-mortar stores, research [1] indicates that online retail sales are expected to exceed $300 billion in sales by 2012 and 75 percent of online shoppers purchase products they research on comparison shopping sites. Optimizing product feeds is a key element in shopping channel success and GoDataFeed’s software has all datafeed templates and categories built-in, making it easy to optimize product data to each shopping site’s unique requirements.

GoDataFeed’s Web-based, sleek-user interface is designed with the Web 2.0 experience in mind, catering to retailers, SEM firms and hosting companies. The software supports more than 50 Comparison Shopping Engines and affiliate networks, including:

Become, Shopzilla, MSN Cashback, Shopping, Google Product Search, Yahoo! Shopping, NexTag, CNet, Shop.com, TheFind, Pronto, PriceGrabber, PriceRunner, Smarter, Share-A-Sale, ShopMania , MyCoupons, Oodle, Play.com,

About AmeriCommerce

AmeriCommerce is a full service e-commerce solution provider. In production since 2000, the AmeriCommerce shopping cart software is built on the concept of marketing performance, ease of use, and customization. AmeriCommerce pioneered the Multiple Storefront Technology™ and provides their customers with everything they need to design and operate successful online storefronts

AmeriCommerce Benefits:

Multiple Storefronts™ Management in 1 unified administration console
Free upgrades for life
Advanced theme engine providing control over the entire store layout
Product, Order and Customer management tools
Rule based analytics, shipping, discounts, payments, regions and more.
User defined tag based searching
Depth of features is unsurpassed, do what you do today…but better with the AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Software!

About GoDataFeed.com

GoDataFeed is reshaping the delivery of product feeds to the major comparison shopping channels with an innovative solution that properly and effectively automates, optimizes and analyzes the data feed management process. GoDataFeed empowers online retailers and search engine marketers by providing an affordable, time-saving solution to increase traffic and visibility on more than 50 comparison shopping sites and affiliate networks.

Serving online retailers, hosting and search engine marketing firms, GoDataFeed strives to meet the individual needs of each merchant and exceed customer expectations. GoDataFeed’s staff provides one-on-one customer service to meet the unique demands of each company and works with each client- from setting up customized feeds to implementing tracking—to ensure feeds are delivered properly and are driving motivated buyers to their site. GoDataFeed also caters to companies who wish to delegate the entire data feed setup process.

GoDataFeed’s software engineers and marketing specialists have developed ecommerce solutions for online businesses since 2000. Responding to the popularity of comparison shopping channels, GoDataFeed’s team combined its collective knowledge of best ecommerce and shopping channel marketing practices to create a single, user-friendly application to manage the product feed process. The GoDataFeed team has been quoted by retail industry sites including Practical eCommerce, Ecommerce-Guide.com, Small Business Informer and ECommerceOptimization.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Contact:

Ed Sturrock
Product Manager
Phone: 800-936-9006
Email: ed@americommerce.com
www.AmeriCommerce.com

Lin Grosman
Marketing & Integration
Phone: 954-472-3400
Email: lgrosman@godatafeed.com
www.GoDataFeed.com

[1] Source: Forrester Research, Inc., Cambridge, MA, US eCommerce: 2008 to 2012.

Server upgrades, network improvements, monitoring systems, oh my!

Stefan Barlow — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:28:43 GMT

Many exciting upgrades and improvements are underway at AmeriCommerce. These changes will increase performance, improve security, enhance uptime monitoring and more. The improvements have been in design phases for months and we are excited to begin this transition!

Server Software

Starting last week we began the upgrade from Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 to Windows Server 2008 with IIS7 and SQL Server 2008. These upgrades have shown significant performance increases, with Web servers upgrading from 32bit to 64bit. Approximately 80% of storefront databases have been transitioned to the new SQL Server 2008, while the remaining databases will be transitioned within the next week. Around 20% of the web servers have been transitioned to Windows Server 2008, while the remaining servers will be migrated over the next quarter.

These changes make for faster page loads, faster site updates when we release new versions, and more automation for our IT staff allowing them greater control as we continue to add new servers and clusters.

Server Hardware

AmeriCommerce has recently upgraded some of the primary SQL Servers to new energy efficient Dell PowerEdge 1950 III servers with dual quad core Xeon processors and 8GB of RAM. Combined with the new 2008 versions of Windows Server and SQL Server, the speed of our SQL Servers has dramatically increased! Our current roadmap is to purchase only the new energy efficient quad core servers going forward for SQL and Web servers, while moving off of the 1850 dual core servers ASAP.

The AmeriCommerce server infrastructure grew 62% in 3Q 2008, adding additional Web, SQL, Backup, and network administration servers.

Monitoring

Another major upgrade is the switch from Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM 2005) to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 (OpsMgr 2007). The new OpsMgr 2007 is a complete re-write of MOM 2005, and dramatically improves on usability and functionality. Using OpsMgr 2007 we will be able to closely monitor response times of every element on our networks, from Web Server request queues to SQL Server transactions and networking gear load. This new functionality will allow for predictive load analysis which will enable our IT staff to monitor usage information closer than ever before to pinpoint potential bottlenecks and make corrections before storefront visitors even notice.

Another round of monitoring improvements are scheduled for the next few weeks once OpsMgr2007 is completely configured which will improve off-hour monitoring and response time of on call IT engineers.

Backups

AmeriCommerce is also transitioning from Backup Exec server backup software from Veritas to Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM 2007). For our purposes, backing up, restoring, and archiving SQL databases and web data files with DPM is a huge step forward from Backup Exec. Last quarter AmeriCommerce added new MD3000 drive arrays for multi-terabyte online disk backup to augment our tape libraries which means we can keep storefront backups ready and available on disk for an extended period of time before having to go to tape for a restore. This change also allows us to archive data for longer periods of time since tape backups happen less frequently now and are primarily for archive and off site backups.

Security

Last but not least, security is an ongoing concern in everything we do. This year we upgraded from Cisco PIX firewalls to the newest generation of Cisco ASA firewalls configured in a redundant fashion. The new firewalls bring Intrusion Detection and Prevention along with gigabit networking interfaces for fast speeds between the different security zones.

As part of the server infrastructure upgrades we have instituted Active Directory services across all servers to centralize our management and service accounts. This allows for fine control over our IT Staff accounts and gives us new policy management and auditing abilities to ensure all servers in the network are consistently configured for best security practices.

AmeriCommerce Announces v5.0 of Their Shopping Cart Software

esturrock — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:25:00 GMT

AmeriCommerce announces Version 5.0 of their shopping cart software with over a hundred new features including an XML based Web Services API, Custom fields, MAP pricing, support for VAT/GST Taxing, partial order shipments, Live Design™ online Storefront Builder, Google™ Analytics and conversion tracking, Google checkout and Paypal Express, variant images and swatches and an IP Firewall.

Beaumont, TX November 12, 2008 -- AmeriCommerce announces Version 5.0 of their shopping cart software with over a hundred new features including an XML based Web Services API giving online store owners advanced tools to compete in the growing online marketplace. As the industry leader in Multiple Storefront™ technology, the 5.0 release increases the depth of existing features and introduces new functionality to further help store owners design, manage, market and analyze their online businesses effectively and efficiently.

The newly released Version 5.0 introduces an XML based Web Services API (Application Programming Interface) software developer's kit which allows developers access to the complete shopping cart platform so they can integrate existing business systems and synchronize business data for store owners. Developers are able to integrate the shopping cart with existing inventory, order management, accounting, customer management packages and other business software.

"The wealth of options in our web services API gives the power of choice back to the store owners who need to make real world changes to the software driving their business." says Ed Sturrock, Product Manager of AmeriCommerce. "As businesses grow, the need to integrate business software and systems is very important for operational efficiencies, growth and maintainability."

AmeriCommerce's focus in this release has been to empower business owners with customization tools and scalability as well as leading-edge features. An important feature is the advanced navigation design, often discussed as a primary driver of success for 'Top 100 Online Retailers'. The navigation and search tool is the map to the store and helps visitors find what they are looking for easily, leading to higher conversion rates. Version 5.0 features dynamic tree and drop down navigation, Dictionary, Thesaurus and Directed Searching, giving store owners complete control in customizing and adding exceptional navigation features to their storefronts with ease.

In-depth catalog management features have been added to reduce the time costs and challenges of managing large product catalogs and multiple storefronts. AmeriCommerce 5.0 features mass product editors, advanced import/export tools, API for mass inventory updates and synchronization and the Live Design™ Online Store Builder for quick updates to the storefront. Version 5.0 also features accelerated image management with auto association of images for easy association of product, category, manufacturer and variant images without needing to provide paths to each image. All of these features make managing large product catalogs efficient and easy.

Another new customization tool includes the powerful new feature Custom Fields. Every industry has unique requirements for collecting product or ordering information and Custom Fields allow store owners to customize their checkout process and collect information that is relevant to their business without the need for custom programming.

Additional key features in Version 5.0 include advanced pricing options with MAP pricing and support for including VAT/GST taxes in product price, partial order shipping, Live Design™ online Storefront Builder, Google™ Analytics and conversion tracking, Google checkout and Paypal Express, variant images and swatches, and IP Firewall. This release also features direct integration with Avalara AvaTax tax calculation services and Zoomify large image solutions.

About AmeriCommerce:
AmeriCommerce is a full service e-commerce solution provider. In production since 2000, the AmeriCommerce shopping cart software is built on the concept of marketing performance, ease of use, and customization. AmeriCommerce pioneered the Multiple Storefront Technology™ and provides their customers with everything they need to design and operate successful online storefronts. For more information, visit the AmeriCommerce web site.

Ecommerce-Guide.com calls AmeriCommerce a Superpower Storefront

Stefan Barlow — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:38:00 GMT

Wayne Kawamoto of ecommerce-guide.com has reviewed all of the major shopping cart systems on the market and has dubbed AmeriCommerce to be a Superpower Storefront.

Quote:

With all its comprehensive management and tracking tools, plus stellar shipping and cart functions, AmeriCommerce stands out from the crowd in storefront and hosting providers.

AmeriCommerce is a Finalist in CODiE Awards 2008 Competition

esturrock — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:52:00 GMT

AmeriCommerce is pleased to announce that for the second consecutive year its Shopping Cart Software has been named a top 5 finalist in the Software & Information Industry Association's prestigious 23rd annual CODiE Awards competition.

AmeriCommerce was again recognized as a finalist in the Best eCommerce Solutions category for its wide array of innovative features and ease of use that make it stand out in the competitive shopping cart software industry.

"We constantly strive to add new Web 2.0 shopping features and solve new ecommerce problems daily for our customers and take great pride in helping them" says Ed Sturrock, Product Manager and Co-Founder. "To once again be honored as a CODiE Awards finalist helps to justify the work we gladly do for our customers already. This is our lifestyle, not just our product."

For 23 years, SIIA CODiE Awards have been the leading honor for the software and information industry's finest products and services. CODiE Awards judges are experts in their field and work to identify the "best-of-the-best" from hundreds of nominees.

"Competition is tough this year and that makes selection as a CODiE Finalist a real achievement," said Ken Wash, SIIA president. "All the companies on this year's list should feel justifiably proud of their recognition."

The complete list of CODiE Award finalists can be viewed at http://www.siia.net/codies/2008/finalists.asp

About AmeriCommerce

About SIIA

AmeriCommerce Awarded PayPal Shopping Cart Certification

esturrock — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:46:00 GMT

AmeriCommerce announces certified integration between the AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Software and the new PayPal Express Checkout service. This new service adds to the existing PayPal payment methods AmeriCommerce integrates with including Website Payments Pro, Website Payments Standard, and the Payflow Pro gateway.

AmeriCommerce has worked together with the PayPal certification teams to test and verify all aspects of the integration with PayPal. In response PayPal has certified the AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart software for these payment models.

PayPal Express Checkout integrates directly with the AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Software to provide a simplified checkout process for all PayPal customers where the shopper provides their payment information to PayPal, rather than the storefront. PayPal Express saves store owners money as it can be used without monthly payments charged by most payment gateways.

PayPal Website Payments Pro model seamlessly integrates with the shopping cart and accepts all major credit cards using AmeriCommerce’s One Page Checkout, while removing the need for a separate gateway or merchant card processing system.

"Online store owners demand flexibility in the payment options offered to their shoppers and PayPal offers multiple services that can to increase online sales by appealing to the shopper’s preferred methods of payment," said Kenneth Vincent, Sales Manager for AmeriCommerce. "Offering our clients these certified payment methods will aid in converting visits into sales."

The new payment methods are introduced in conjunction with other payment optimizations that support the AmeriCommerce Multiple Storefronts™ Shopping Cart management model and include additional storefront specific settings for payment options, payment gateways and markups.

AmeriCommerce provides ecommerce solutions to a variety of online businesses, including shopping cart software, ecommerce hosting (http://www.americommerce.com), web design, custom development and marketing consultations. Clients include B2B, B2C and internal purchasing systems in various industries.

About AmeriCommerce

AmeriCommerce is a full service e-commerce solution provider. In production since 2000, the AmeriCommerce shopping cart software is built on the concept of marketing performance, ease of use, and customization. AmeriCommerce provides their customers with everything they need to design and operate a successful online storefront. AmeriCommerce also assists the development of accounting systems, call centers, marketing, and distribution, which is the infrastructure supporting the e-commerce business. For more information, visit the AmeriCommerce web site (http://www.americommerce.com).

AmeriCommerce 4.3 honored as Small Business Computing 2008 Finalist

esturrock — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:13:00 GMT

AmeriCommerce 4.3 Nominated for Best Storefront Software by Small Business Computing

Small Business Computing has chosen the top 5 small business products in each category and will award the top honors based on YOUR feedback. AmeriCommerce 4.3 has been nominated for the Storefront category under Ecommerce.

Earlier this year, AmeriCommerce 4.1 was honored as a top 5 finalist in the 2007 CODiE Awards for Best Ecommerce Solution, and 4.3 was nominated for 2008 CODiE Awards as well.

Please take the time to vote for AmeriCommerce for the Storefront category in the 2008 Small Business Computing Awards at the link below:

http://solutions.internet.com/index.php/4416_default

Thank you!
Your AmeriCommerce Team

Live Design™ Web Site Builder Highlights

esturrock — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:53:00 GMT

The Live Design™ Web Site Builder is AmeriCommerce’s new way to interact with the front end of your storefronts. Now you can make your changes without having to navigate through your administration panel. This new administration tool helps remove the disjoint and confusion of seeing the front end and the editing it in the back end admin console. Now for the first time you can edit the areas of your site, the products, categories and more in a WYSIWYG environment instantly while browsing the site.

Live Design™ Web Site Builder Highlights

Click through the front end of your website and edit content, products and more
Hover over areas and double click them to edit the region
Change design elements in and out as you are on the public facing portion of the site
Enhanced Admin Toolbar integrated into the front end design that lets you edit, navigate and perform actions
Removes the need to click around in the admin tool to edit the front end of the site
Quick links to products, categories, manufacturers and content integrate deep within your front end design seamlessly
Design your website using a live edit website builder that cuts design time by 25%

How to use:
Simply view site in Live Design mode from the stores menu, or click Live Design on the Admin Toolbar while logged in.

AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Version 4.3 Press Release

esturrock — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:27:00 GMT

AmeriCommerce version 4.3 introduces many new features to their shopping cart software (http://www.americommerce.com/) giving online storefront owners more control over content, design, search engine optimization, product catalog management and order fulfillment.

The new version adds many new features to AmeriCommerce's unique Multiple Storefronts™ offering, which allows online store owners the ability to manage several unique online storefronts from one web-based administration console. New features include store-level shipping, pricing, payment methods and tax overrides along with store-level password protection.

AmeriCommerce has always been a highly search engine optimized shopping cart software (http://www.americommerce.com/), and the new version continues to add more tools to improve organic rankings. Each product, category, brand, and content page automatically generates a search engine optimized static HTML link, but storefront owners can take this further by supplying their own highly keyword-optimized static links, increasing search engine relevance, making AmeriCommerce version 4.3 online store software (http://www.americommerce.com/store/pg/17-Shopping-Cart-Design-Shopping-Cart-Features.aspx) even more S.E.O. friendly.

Reducing shopping cart abandonment is an ongoing process for every online store owner. Using One Page Checkout, potential customers can complete their purchases as quickly as possible without moving through multiple pages which can lead to shopping cart abandonment. Additionally, automated emails can be sent to every abandoned cart customer increasing conversion rates on abandoned carts by up to 40%.

"Online store owners can have very different requirements for their business needs", said Ed Sturrock, Product Manager for AmeriCommerce. "With this release, we continue to improve on our flexible shopping cart management system to address the needs of more complex storefront implementations."

Product catalog management can become very complicated for some online storefronts. AmeriCommerce version 4.3 introduces many enhancements that include a new attribute based search system that gives shoppers the ability to drill down into the catalog by several criteria, in addition to the classic category tree. Product kitting and grouping provides fine-grained control over packaged offerings and related items. Enhanced inventory control includes stock availability even on products with variations and options and several import / export utilities combined with the Product Mass Editor make maintaining catalogs with thousands of products quick and easy.

Other new features include improved web-design management, automatic drop shipping notifications to suppliers, performance enhancements and CRM functionality.

AmeriCommerce provides ecommerce solutions to a variety of online businesses, including shopping cart software, ecommerce hosting (http://www.americommerce.com/), web design, custom development and marketing consultations. Clients include B2B, B2C and internal purchasing systems in a various industries.

About AmeriCommerce

AmeriCommerce is a full service e-commerce solution provider. In production since 2000, the AmeriCommerce shopping cart software is built on the concept of marketing performance, ease of use, and customization. AmeriCommerce provides their customers with everything they need to design and operate a successful online storefront. AmeriCommerce also assists the development of accounting systems, call centers, marketing, and distribution, which is the infrastructure supporting the e-commerce business. For more information, visit the AmeriCommerce web site (http://www.americommerce.com/default.aspx?prweb0726-3).

AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Version 4.3 Release Highlights

Stefan Barlow — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

AmeriCommerce is proud to announce Version 4.3 of the industry leading AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Software.

New features include:

One Page Checkout
Drop Shipping Support
Inventory Management improvements
Variant Inventory tracking
SEO - Custom URLs and redirects on the item / page level
Role Based Security
Store Text (Foundation for future multi-lingual support)
Product Kitting & Product Groups
Product Personalization
Phone Order Entry & Order Editing
Auto-Sizing Images and Thumbnail Creation
Submit a Payment page
AmeriSync 2.0 with deeper QuickBooks integration
Customer Relations Management Improvements
Many Multiple Storefront™ Improvements

Web Site Monitoring Services for all customers

esturrock — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 05:23:00 GMT

As you may already know, we have been working towards our stability and usability initiative a great announcement for our customers has been released today. With the next update to your website a new service is automatically installed that monitors the site remotely from multiple places outside of our datacenter. This SiteMonitor service hits each customers' website(s) at periodic intervals and will run key tests against it to determine response time, valid page loads, database connectivity and log the results for future inspection and reporting. This service does many interesting things for us and was engineered to minimize impact on our servers and the sites while still providing accurate tests.

What do we do with the results?
If something appears to be wrong, our internal monitoring system is notified and it immediately sends notifications to all appropriate team members and on-call support staff no matter the hour. Emails are sent, text messages, audible alarms in the office and on special monitor computers go off, and internal automated systems kick in to diagnose and switch your site to other servers in the cluster while the down site waits to be fixed.

Why not buy off the shelf software for this?
This was a point of contention for us and we decided to engineer ourselves primarily because we do not just need to test 1 customer site...each customer has a minimum of 2 websites running side by side in our enterprise cluster environments. If one goes down the other picks up the requests and customer state. As amazing as that is, we need to test all sites on all web servers to ensure each duplicated website is running properly in the cluster. Being part of an enterprise web cluster provides our customers an unquestionable level of stability and this system just helps stabilize and prove that even more. Additionally we log this data to our internal databases for easy reporting later and to tie into other systems that can automatically respond to websites having problems as we work towards our quest for a "Self Healing" Data Center.

Were you not already monitoring systems?
Absolutely, we ran packaged software and some other custom apps that hit sites to determine if the web servers were responding to requests and other smaller tests. However, the new package runs much deeper tests and interrogates not just the main site, but every duplicated website the customer has across all web farms. The net result is a much deeper test and analysis.

Who gets site monitoring?
Every AmeriCommerce customer free of charge. There will be varying frequencies of inspection based on the level of service you are at. Bronze will be a few times daily, Silver & Gold will be hourly, Platinum every minute. And by request we can upgrade your monitoring level beyond what is provided, very minimal extra charges may apply. The reason we would have to charge for more frequent monitoring is due to the amount of bandwidth absorbed by the tests and the resources and servers needed to perform more requests against all of our clients.

Why not do every site every few seconds or minute?
Bottom line, server load and bandwidth. Neither are cheap, especially in an enterprise environment using the expensive equipment we demand AmeriCommerce to be ran on. Every request takes bandwidth to send and receive, the server must process that along with other customer requests for real pages. Multiply that by thousands of sites across multitudes of servers and everything adds up very quickly. Additionally, very low traffic sites would remain in memory on servers and the number of sites a cluster can host drops substantially if every page of every site is hit every second because the server never gets a chance to reclaim those resources. Shared clusters depend on reclaiming unused site's resources when processing requests. This is also why we have to charge a small fee for more frequent monitoring if you want something above your package level.

This is yet another great improvement to our infrastructure that buys everyone, employees and customers, piece of mind and the knowledge that we are out there ready to respond immediately if something happens. We know how important customers and sales are and you can count on the AmeriCommerce team to help provide you with the tools to make sure both are larger than ever.

Routine Automated Testing of Features

esturrock — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 13:41:00 GMT

We have an exciting announcement pertaining to our Support & Process Improvement initiatives that we have undertaken these last couple of months. While we have been releasing cutting edge tools and features, we have also been working on creating a new tool in our management toolbox. As part of our homegrown Provisioning system that automatically handles creating sites and the management thereof, we have developed a new testing suite. TestCenter is a culmination of a few of our technologies and others that have 1 incredible output...routine automated testing of almost all AmeriCommerce features, pages and settings.

First why is this important? These repeatable tests ensure the functionality that we release in older releases is never harmed as we upgrade and add features to almost every area of our product. These tests are run on new code versions, site upgrades and daily against customer sites to ensure everything is running as it should be. Issues are caught much sooner in the development process and it allows our QA team to focus on the more difficult problems and communication instead of worrying about every area of the product.

What does this mean to you? Faster and even more stable releases and features than ever before in the history of AmeriCommerce, an already fast paced development company.

How does it work? TestCenter has a few features that basically allow us to record tests or write them to test all of the features of the products we offer. We then are able to run these tests in a repeatable fashion on multiple sites and places due to the stuff TestCenter does for us. It automatically handles making the tests non-customer specific taking much of the guesswork out of the tests themselves. This was a major shortcoming of the out of the box tools on the market...they were designed to test 1 thing, whereas we need to test 1000's of sites and tens of thousands of use cases. So we built it to be fully integrated into all of our processes and to be fully automated, a very difficult but powerful feat. These tests can be pointed at anything and check the processes, the pages, the response and render times and much more to ensure your site is working fast and reliably.

This coupled with the other 6+ major infrastructure improvements over the last few months will empower us for years and they will speed up the development of our product by leaps and bounds. Some of those other upgrades were the .net 2 upgrade, our team source control system, our help ticketing system, user forums, knowledgebase, pop up help and much much more.

New Team Member

esturrock — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:09:00 GMT

AmeriCommerce welcomes our newest developer:

Chris Allen: Developer extraordinaire, this new and talented developer will be adding many of the features you request every day

Our team grows constantly and we are excited about the new talent brought to the table. This hire help strengthen an already strong talent pool and will be instituting much of the change that you, our customer, request and need. As if it's not enough that we have a monopoly on a truly feature rich multiple storefront ecommerce solution, now we can boast another of the industry's leading talent joining our ranks.

Team Development Process Improved

esturrock — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 13:20:00 GMT

We have recently made a major shift in the development of our software by choosing a very sophisticated source control system for our product's code base. A source control system manages team members and the files they work on, shows differences between them and integrates different versions of our product with other versions. We will be using this incredible new cutting edge system to do some amazing things and primarily to speed up our already fast paced development. Our customers will not notice much of a change other than faster response times to code changes, maintenance releases and hot fixes.

One of the main things we will be doing soon is implementing a "Beta Track" of our software, where customers can opt-in and receive the latest and greatest features that we offer. Meanwhile, all other customers that need and require very stable, limited change versions of our product will stay on the "Released" versions of AmeriCommerce. Beta Track customers will be updated with new features every 1-2 weeks, and "Released Version" customers will be updated with major versions only. However, one of the most powerful things we now offer is the ability to hot fix both tracks of customers within minutes of the development code fix being completed. This keeps our responsiveness to any issues that may arise as well as release small changes and small features, meanwhile we are coding hard core on larger features without affecting our production customers at all.

Another great thing about this new system is the hundreds of productivity improvements it offers, it ties into our .Net 2.0 initiative seamlessly and is the culmination of 1 year of setup and preparation, including the .Net 2.0 upgrade as the backbone it was built upon.

One last great benefit is the new system's ability to manage remote offices and teams of developers, architects and other support people. This was a major requirement for AmeriCommerce as we have recently opened up branch offices that are geographically diverse, and this new system helps us all tie everything together. This was an exciting move for us and we are poised for faster growth, quicker development and just great things in general.

The AmeriCommerce multiple storefront shopping cart e-commerce system will remain #1 and on the cutting edge of our industry at all costs, and this is just one more reason to prove it.