BigCommerce is now PCI complaint according to their blog dated 1/27/11. The stampeding sound you hear are Volusion's disgruntled customers running for the door. I fear they may end up wedged in BigCommerce's front door ala the Three Stooges.

http://www.bigcommerce.com/ecommerce-blog/bigcommerce-is-now-pci-compliant/

Link Building Brain Dump

Here's a list of link building ideas and rules of thumb for store. I'll update as I think of ideas. Got any of your own? Drop them in the comments below and I'll add them to the master list.

How many stores do you share a server with?

If you use a hosted shopping cart solution and don’t pay for a dedicated web server, then you’ll end up sharing space on a web server with other stores. This is fine and dandy as long as the server is balanced and there isn’t a resource hog sappy server resources away from your store. This happened to me years ago with a store I had on MonsterCommerce. My store ended up being moved 2-3 times and being issued a new IP w/ each shuffle. It was a pain in the neck to say the least.

As a online merchant, you should know how many stores are on your web server. Too many is a bad thing. How will you know if you’re sharing a server with either too many stores or resource hog? Things will get laggy and response time will plummet. This results in unhappy customers and a diminished sales conversion rates.

Volusion V5: Worth The Wait

Merchant Account 411

For those new to ebusiness, here is an overview of all you need to know about merchant accounts. Merchant accounts offer a way to ease your tasks while dealing with all your financial transactions in the form of the Merchant Service Provider system. This payment system allows you to conduct all your credit card payments whether its goods or services. The Merchant Service Provider facilitates you in easy processing of credit cards.

Going ahead of the traditional credit card terminal, the merchant of today can opt to rent, buy, and lease or secure the terminal in exchange for some contractual obligations from a merchant processor, of course, the business owner must carefully review the terms and conditions before selecting a merchant processor and a credit card terminal

I found this info on osCommerce and thought it may be helpful to the readers here. Enjoy!

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Do you want to market your merchandise online as effectively and efficiently as possible and that too without wasting much time? Then, the right place for you to stop is osCommerce website.

OSCOMMERCE is one-stop software for you to advertise almost anything online, physical or digital products. This e-commerce website offers some of the best facilities for you to easily market your stuff and see immediate results. Apart from an easy set-up facility through a free Internet download for the newcomers, this software even allows you to customize your stuff as per the requirements of your clientele. Yes, you guessed it right, it’s an open source based e-commerce solution and GNU’s General Public License.

Accepting credit card payment online carries great responsibility. Merchants must take every step to protect the integrity of ALL the data collected from their customers. Why? You can lose your shirt if you don’t.

The credit card companies have banded together and created a standard for the use and storage of credit card data for ecommerce companies. This standard is called the Payment Cart Industry Data Security standard (or PCI for short). It applies to ALL ecommerce merchants both big and small. If you sell something online and accept credit card payment, you HAVE to be aware of the PCI standard. Why? If your store is found to be non-complaint, you can lose the ability to collect credit card payments, be targeted by a class action suit and face HEAVY fines. Believe me, it’s a whole lot easier being complaint.

Zoovy offers multiple sales channels all feeding off one product database.

I’m always on the lookout for cool new features that shopping cart solutions offer. I found one really cool one today. Check this out:

Zoovy's Multiple Sales Channel Feature

If you’re a niche merchant that sell your items via multiple channels, this solution is worth a look. You can sell your products on eBay, multiple online storefronts, Amazon, Yahoo Shopping and Pricegrabber. Pretty cool.

Cruising Zoovy's site, I didn’t find any pricing information or many details about their solution. Is it a hosted solution? What’s the pricing structure? It’s a classic ambiguous web technology site. You know, great looking site but it doesn’t provide information on what the company does or the products they offer. Maybe this is by design to get potential customers to call their 800 number? If so, it worked. That’s what I’m doing right now…