Category

Platforms & Apps

Our coverage of platforms and apps includes innovations and updates to shopping carts, content management systems, mobile shopping, digital-product selling, headless commerce, social media, and much more.

  • Distributed Commerce to Disrupt Online Storefronts? Platforms & Apps

    Distributed Commerce to Disrupt Online Storefronts?

    December 11, 2013 •

    The vast majority of ecommerce transactions occur in a traditional online storefront. Most ecommerce solutions include everything required for placing an order in a single shopping cart or platform —

  • 20 Apps for Microsoft SkyDrive Platforms & Apps

    20 Apps for Microsoft SkyDrive

    December 2, 2013 •

    SkyDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage service, similar to Google Drive and Dropbox. SkyDrive comes with some attractive features, such as 7 GB of free storage and mobile apps for iOS,

  • Platforms & Apps

    4 Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

    November 20, 2013 •

    Managed WordPress hosting came about because many WordPress sites, from small time bloggers to large businesses, wanted more security and support than was provided by standard hosts. They wanted expertise ...

  • Hosted Mobile Platforms Quick, Easy to Implement Platforms & Apps

    Hosted Mobile Platforms Quick, Easy to Implement

    November 18, 2013 •

    Consumers increasingly conduct product research on smartphones. But actual online purchases are typically done on desktops, laptops, and, now, tablets. There are many reasons for this, but mostly it is that ...

  • Choosing a WordPress Ecommerce Solution Platforms & Apps

    4 Popular WordPress Ecommerce Platforms

    October 16, 2013 •

    Most products for sale online are straightforward, with variations mainly in colors and sizes. WordPress ecommerce plugins can be an easy, inexpensive way to sell these items. If you already ...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Ecommerce Platforms: Design Control vs. Ease of Launching

    July 3, 2013 •

    Online shoppers judge an Internet retailer’s trustworthiness and a product’s value based, at least in part, on how good a site or product detail page looks. Given its importance, one might think that design control would be an essential part of every available ecommerce platform. But ma...

  • Platforms & Apps

    4 Comment Systems: Pros and Cons

    June 27, 2013 •

    In “What to Look for in a Comment System,” I described features like comment moderation, analytics, social integration, and dashboard settings. In this post I will review four popular comment systems and discuss the highlights of each.

  • Platforms & Apps

    Multichannel Case Study: Gap Inc.

    June 21, 2013 •

    As a small online retailer, you may ignore the strategies of larger, multichannel brands. But if you investigate what these larger companies are doing to deliver a consistent multichannel experience, you will learn how to compete with them. If your operations are online only, you risk ...

  • Platforms & Apps

    25 Apps for Dropbox

    April 15, 2013 •

    Dropbox is a cloud-storage service. Similar to Google Drive and SkyDrive, Dropbox lets you access and sync files across all your devices. While Dropbox only offers 2GB of initial free storage — Google Drive offers 5GB, SkyDrive offers 7GB — it expands free storage for completing a few s...

  • Platforms & Apps

    4 Reasons Every Retailer Should Have a Mobile App

    April 3, 2013 •

    Mobile applications resonate with shoppers, are easy to implement, come with a variety of abilities and purposes, and are becoming the standard for online retailers. There are at least four reasons nearly every retailer should offer a mobile application. Mobile commerce is among the fa...

  • Platforms & Apps

    22 New Ecommerce Themes for WordPress

    March 11, 2013 •

    WordPress is a content management system that’s popular for blogging. But with an ecommerce theme, you can use WordPress to launch a storefront. Here is a list of new ecommerce themes for WordPress. There are free and premium themes, loaded with features to customize your site. Many o...

  • Platforms & Apps

    7 Must-have WordPress Plugins for Business Sites

    January 3, 2013 •

    WordPress plugins extend the popular content management system’s capabilities and, in many cases, improve its performance. While each site may wish to use a different combination of plugins, there are simply some of these extensions that every business must have.

  • Platforms & Apps

    Mobile Commerce: Website or App?

    January 1, 2013 •

    According to Forrester Research, mobile commerce sales will grow from $10 billion in 2012 to $32 billion in 2016, accounting for more than 7 percent of total ecommerce sales. With the adoption of smartphones and tablets accelerating worldwide, that percentage could be even higher. For...

  • Platforms & Apps

    10 Free Content Curation Platforms

    October 8, 2012 •

    Many businesses are embracing content curation — the process of collecting, commenting on, and linking to the content of others. The premise is find relevant articles, tips and tools that your prospects and customers would find valuable, and then share them on a platform that you brand.

  • Platforms & Apps

    18 Gmail Productivity Plugins

    September 11, 2012 •

    The right plugin can transform Gmail from a standard email program into a productivity powerhouse, capable of managing your communications and professional networks. Here is a list of productivity plugins for Gmail. There are plugins to schedule emails, track correspondence, manage so...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Installing Software on Ubuntu Linux

    September 3, 2012 •

    The Ubuntu Linux software installation process is more like visiting a mobile app store than following a traditional Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X process. “On Windows, you might have to root around on a website to find an .exe file to download or go to a store and buy a CD with ...

  • Platforms & Apps

    The Benefits of an Integrated Ecommerce System

    August 30, 2012 •

    Editor's Note: This is part one of a three-part series on the benefits of an integrated, all-in-one ecommerce platform. The second installment is "Defining Your Integrated System Requirements." The third is "Choosing an Integrated Ecommerce System; 4 Steps." I am consulting with a com...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Touring the Ubuntu Unity Desktop

    August 27, 2012 •

    Ubuntu 12.04 is an alternative to the Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X operating systems. It features a functional and intuitive desktop environment. Ubuntu's Unity desktop has similarities to both Windows and OS X, meaning that users considering the switch to Ubuntu should not have m...

  • Platforms & Apps

    17 Ecommerce Themes for OpenCart

    August 20, 2012 •

    OpenCart is an open-source shopping cart system that is feature-rich and user-friendly, with a large variety of payment gateways and shipping method integrations. OpenCart features many high-quality ecommerce themes to ...

  • Platforms & Apps

    Microsoft Office Alternatives for Ubuntu Linux

    August 13, 2012 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 •

    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 ...

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