Platforms & Apps Archives

Microsoft Office Alternatives for Ubuntu Linux

August 13, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Maintaining spreadsheets, composing business documents, or even building slide-style presentations are a mainstay of modern business, including small and mid-sized online retail operations that often depend on the Microsoft Office suite to compete these tasks. The dependency on Office ...

Platforms & Apps

16 Responsive Ecommerce Themes on WordPress

August 6, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Responsive design allows a business to reach computers, tablets and smartphones from a single website. Here is a list of responsive themes on WordPress for ecommerce sites. Many of these themes are designed to be used with specific ecommerce plugins. All are premium themes, though r...

Platforms & Apps

Automating Social Media Posts with Dlvr.it

May 23, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Social media campaigns have become a mainstay of ecommerce marketing. Even the smallest of online retailers are likely to have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, and there are indications that social engagement may improve shopper relations and, possibly, sales. But the process of ...

Platforms & Apps

Bing Goes Social with New Redesign

May 15, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Microsoft's Bing search engine will get a major redesign in the next month, extending the tool's integration with Facebook and introducing a new feature to help searchers get more done. “In 2009, we launched Bing with a simple proposition: people should expect more from a search engine...

Platforms & Apps

13 Timekeeping Apps for Small Businesses

December 21, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Time is a precious commodity, particularly for entrepreneurial small-business owners that have to manage it themselves. Whether for billing or keeping yourself accountable, there are a number of mobile apps to measure your time. Here is a list of mobile apps to manage time. There are t...

Platforms & Apps

10 Great Licensed Shopping Carts

December 19, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Licensed ecommerce platforms are often the most flexible and powerful "shopping carts" available to online retailers, but they can demand more in terms of expenses and development time. Licensed shopping carts — or, perhaps more accurately, ecommerce platforms — are hosted on a merchan...

Platforms & Apps

8 Great SaaS Shopping Carts

December 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecommerce solutions allow small online retailers to open functional online stores with a minimum in capital expense. While there are many good SaaS shopping carts on the market in the end of 2011, here are eight carts that are among my personal favor...

Platforms & Apps

15 Mobile Apps for Holiday Shopping

November 17, 2011 • Sig Ueland

There are many mobile apps to assist consumers with holiday shopping. There are deals and rewards apps, price comparison apps, and to-do and shopping assistant apps. Here's a list of 15 mobile apps that assist consumers. Review these apps to see the mobile-shopping options your cus...

Platforms & Apps

7 Worthy Magento Extensions

November 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce merchants often add features and functions to their sites to increase sales and performance. In this article, you'll find seven worthy extensions for Magento — the ecommerce platform — that address common ecommerce-related tasks. Some of these work best with the free Magento ...

Platforms & Apps

An Overview of Magento Go

November 7, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Magento Go is the software-as-a-service ecommerce platform from Magento, a leading open-source ecommerce solution. Magento Go may be an attractive choice for some online merchants. SaaS or hosted ecommerce platforms generally offer a few advantages for merchants. First, many of the he...

Platforms & Apps

10 App Marketplaces for Open Source Shopping Carts

October 26, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Many open source shopping carts can be customized with extensions or modules, created by an active developer community. Here is a list of app-extension marketplaces and libraries for open source shopping cart platforms. Most of the platforms are free. The extensions are both free and ...

Platforms & Apps

The 10 Best Blogging Platforms in 2011

October 5, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Online merchants are competing for customer attention and loyalty in an Internet landscape where people create their autobiographies across social networks and businesses have to discover a reason to be relevant in that narrative. Blogging, which some suggest is a waning art for indivi...

Platforms & Apps

18 Useful Extensions for OpenCart

September 30, 2011 • Sig Ueland

OpenCart is a leading open-source ecommerce platform. With nearly 3,000 free and premium extensions available, OpenCart is also feature-rich and highly customizable. Here is a list of extensions to tailor your OpenCart site. There are extensions to enhance your cart’s functionality, pr...

Platforms & Apps

9 Online Tools to Plan Your Physical Event

September 28, 2011 • Sig Ueland

I recently compiled a list — "16 Live Meeting and Webinar Platforms" — of webinar platforms to reach a broad online audience. But if you’re holding a physical event, such as a conference, you can still find planning resources you need online. Here is a list of sites to help you plan...

Platforms & Apps

11 Online Meeting Planners

September 14, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Online scheduling sites offer a simple way to schedule your next meeting. Pick your range of dates on the app's calendar, then notify the other meeting attendees so they can pick the dates that work for them. View the responses, and you’re done. No more wasting time searching for a time...

Platforms & Apps

15 Productivity Apps for Your Google Chromebook

August 15, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google Chromebook and its browser-as-operating-system approach to computing have put the spotlight on web-based applications. The Chromebook's Chrome OS represents a completely new approach to computing. On a traditional Mac or Windows-based computer, there is the operating system on t...

Platforms & Apps

Goodsie Helpful for Beginning Entrepreneurs

July 21, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A new ecommerce platform helps novice ecommerce entrepreneurs get up and running quickly, but it limits choices and, perhaps, creates some marketing challenges. Goodsie — which costs $15 per month — uses a simple web interface and a well-defined set of options to help would-be merchant...

Platforms & Apps

15 Mobile Retail Apps that Enhance Customer Experiences

June 24, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Retail businesses are building mobile apps that do much more than just display products for sale. Mobile apps can shape the in-store experience, empower the purchasing process, and create interesting and dynamic ways to interact with the customer. Here is a list of mobile apps created ...

Platforms & Apps

34 Ecommerce Themes for WordPress

June 22, 2011 • Sig Ueland

A WordPress ecommerce theme can take a regular blog and transform it into a dazzling online storefront. Find the theme that’s right for you, then customize it to create your unique store. This is a list of ecommerce themes for WordPress. There are free themes, if you’re just getting st...

Platforms & Apps

20 QR Code Tools and Uses

June 16, 2011 • Sig Ueland

With quick response codes, businesses and organizations are finding new ways to deliver information and interact with consumers. When you scan a QR code with your smartphone application, you can receive product information. But QR codes can also link to web content, video, social medi...

Platforms & Apps

25 Great Magento Themes

June 15, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Magento is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms with thousands of live shops, including major retailers. The platform, which eBay recently purchased, also has a vibrant developer community that creates easy-to-integrate themes and modules. In this article, you find a list of 25 ...

Platforms & Apps

35 Android Apps to Run Your Business

June 10, 2011 • Sig Ueland

In this mobile world, iPhone gets all the love. There are over 400,000 different apps for Apple’s iOS, compared to approximately 200,000 apps for Google’s Android OS. However, according to a recent study by mobile analytics group Distimo, there are now more free apps available for Andro...

Platforms & Apps

24 Ecommerce Plugins for WordPress

June 2, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Once WordPress was just a place to blog. Then came over fourteen thousand plugins. Today WordPress is a highly customizable platform, with everything you need to run your ecommerce business. Here is a list of 24 plugins to help you run your business on WordPress. These plugins will hel...

Platforms & Apps

10 Essential Shopping Cart Features

June 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio

There are hundreds of ecommerce platforms that online merchants can choose from. The differences between these carts can be significant, so knowing what features matter is important. In this article, you'll find a list ten "must-have shopping cart features" that either improve the shop...

Platforms & Apps

16 Live Meeting and Webinar Platforms

May 18, 2011 • Sig Ueland

With web conferencing you can reach a broad audience, whether it’s a 25-person live meeting or a 2,500-person webinar. Here is a list of live-conferencing services. Many of these distinguish between smaller meetings and larger webinars, offering services for both categories. While t...

Platforms & Apps

Ubuntu Linux: A User-Friendly, Desktop Operating System

May 4, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Last week, Canonical — the open-source development firm — released a new version of its Ubuntu Linux operating system, seemingly aimed at offering casual Windows and Mac users a feature-rich alternative. Although it is certainly a bit of hyperbole to say that Ubuntu 11.04 will send Ap...

Platforms & Apps

Internet Explorer 10 Is Coming

April 18, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Microsoft released a preview version of its forthcoming Internet Explorer 10 web browser at the MIX11 developer conference in Las Vegas last week. The browser preview provides important insights into what might be a new salvo in the browser wars and could affect how online businesses develop websites and applications.

Platforms & Apps

Miva Merchant President on Acquisitions, SaaS Moves

March 22, 2011 • PEC Staff

Miva Merchant launched its shopping cart in the late 1990s and the company's evolution continues. An independent investor group acquired Miva Merchant in 2007, and executives there have since been evolving that product to a hosted platform, enhancing the company's revenue, and generally...

Platforms & Apps

Mobile Devices to Alter Retail Landscape; 3 Predictions

March 16, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Internet-enabled mobile devices are going to have a huge impact on retail sales in just the next few years, especially affecting small ecommerce businesses. Anytime one discusses the future of a particular industry or where a trending technology or behavior may be taking some segment, ...

Platforms & Apps

Magento Releases Hosted, SaaS Version

March 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Magento, the open-source ecommerce platform, officially launched a hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) version. The Magento platform — in my view — is one of the most robust and effective ecommerce solutions available. If, in fact, Magento has any drawbacks or weaknesses, it is that ...