- See more at: http://blogtimenow.com/blogging/automatically-redirect-blogger-blog-another-blog-website/#sthash.CjzeOUZw.dpuf On-Demand eCommerce Blog | Dynamic Merchandising by OrderDynamics: 2009

Multi-Channel Retailer, Walkingonacloud.com, Selects OrderDynamics as eCommerce Platform for Growth

Online Shoe Retailer Selects OrderDynamics to Streamline Operations and Convert More Traffic
OrderDynamics, Canada's leading On-Demand eCommerce Solution provider, announces recent customer acquisition, Walkingonacloud.com, a Canadian Shoe retailer specializing in comfortable footwear through over 30 retail locations.

Walkingonacloud.com has been operating US and Canadian B2C eStores for over seven years. Specializing in "comfortable footwear brands", Walkingonacloud.com carries over 7,000 SKUs and leading footwear from top brands such as Geox, UGG, Ecco, and Rockport. Over the years, Walkingonacloud.com has achieved very strong search engine placement for highly competitive keywords for the shoe brands they carry. This has resulted in high of volumes traffic from organic searches and strong order growth, which has put a strain on their eCommerce platform, negatively affecting their conversion rate.

"Our top priorities for the website include diversifying our traffic sources and implementing tactics to raise our conversion rate to be more inline with industry averages" comments Mark Zuckier, Co-Founder and President of Walkingonacloud.com. "The OrderDynamics on-demand eCommerce solution gives us superior technology and additional resources to help us manage our website proactively." Walkingonacloud.com currently runs on a custom-built system which has become costly to maintain and does not have the features of a mid-market platform. OrderDynamics will migrate the Walkingonacloud.com website to their platform including all product, order, and customer data, external feeds, and design. Most importantly, all existing organic search rankings will be preserved through a comprehensive website scraping a redirect process. "Once we reviewed the detailed website migration process, we were immediately comfortable with moving forward" continues Zuckier. Walkingonacloud.com will also benefit from a superior Order Management System (OMS), which is part of the OrderDynamics platform and easily integrates multi-channel activities such as phone orders, shopping sites, ERP, and Amazon and eBay.

Walkingonacould.com will re-launch on the OrderDynamics platform in Q1 2010. "We are excited about the Walkingonacloud.com project." says Michael Turcsanyi, VP of Sales at OrderDynamics. "Walkingonacloud.com has all the ingredients to achieve significant revenue growth in the next 3 years and OrderDynamics looks forward to helping make this a reality".

About Walkingonacloud.com
Walkingonacloud.com is a leading online footwear retailer of brands such as Rockport, Ecco, Mephisto, Geox, UGG and carries over 7,000 SKUs. Walking On A Cloud operates over 30 retail stores in major shopping centers in Canada.

Happy Holidays from OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Team

The team at OrderDynamics would like to thank our Clients, Partners, and Vendors for making 2009 a fantastic year. The eCommerce industry continues to grow at double-digit rates amidst our darkest economic times, providing confidence to retailers looking to invest in their online sales channel. However, retailers must proceed cautiously and make investment decisions wisely. For many, the importance of selecting a more robust eCommerce platform will outweigh costly "add-on services" in an attempt to build sales. We look forward to talking with you about your plans.

This past year, OrderDynamics has made significant investments in our On-Demand eCommerce Platform technology, making it the perfect choice for high-growth retailers that are being held back by their platform.

From all of us, we wish you a Happy Holidays and prosperous New Year!

Sincerely,
OrderDynamics Team
1 (866) 559-8123

P.S. Be sure to visit our booth at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition, Chicago in June.

Implementing eCommerce Personalization is Easier and More Affordable with the Right eCommerce Platform

A recent Internet Retailer Study published in November revealed the implementation of advanced eCommerce techniques could reach as high as 74% of a retailer's eCommerce technology budget for 2010. Out of the 193 retailers surveyed, 48% are looking to change eCommerce platforms, with over 20% looking at Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eCommerce solutions.

High on the priority list for spending (37%) is Personalization tactics, including ratings and reviews and other personalization techniques. Other techniques in the study included forms of Content Management, eMail Marketing, and Multi-Channel integration.

With the right eCommerce platform, retailers can implement advanced eCommerce tactics easily and affordably. Here are some examples of how retailers can implement Personalization Techniques on their eStore.

Avoid Overcomplicated Tactics

OrderDynamics is designed for online retailers and wholesalers (B2B & B2C) who have out grown their current eCommerce solution. These businesses enage us because they've "hit the wall" causing growth challenges - either through a lack of adequate frontend features or inability to streamline backend processes involved with high volume websites.

When engaged by OrderDynamics, these businesses are educated on what features will immediately bring the biggest benefit - allowing them to mature into the more sophisticated features over time.

The issue of personalization can quickly become large, complex, and expensive so tackling basic concepts, as described here, is a great way to provide a personalized website experience without breaking the bank.

“Know your client”; Build Around the Little Things they Value

All of the tactics we look at here should be part of any mid-market eCommerce platform and, if implemented correctly, should lead to increased sales through qualified traffic and converting more visitors.

1. Identify Returning Customers

Recognizing a returning shopper will make repeat buying easier and will naturally lead to additional sales. Since these customers are already qualified, you want to make their subsequent purchases hassle free.

Tips include:

• Cart and Wish List Persistence
• Display user name (“Welcome Back: John Smith” – Not you?)
• Provide easy re-order options (hold and present order history)
• Allow for auto-shipping of consumables
• Merchandise based on past purchases
• Merchandise based on recently viewed, search history, and cart contents

2. Invite Customers Back

Online retailers needs to take advantage of the deep business information coming from their website. The leading platforms that include Order Management Systems (OMS) automatically captures key data on each order and everything about that customer. By creating and scheduling targeting eMails (OrderDynamics built-in email marketing engine is called eCast Manager), retailers can create highly relevant messages back to their Clients. These messages should be a mix of customer service and new promotions that motivate them to come back to the website.

Tips include:
• Highly targeted audiences (filter recipients from data in the OMS database)
• Notifications of new lines or product replacements (or categories / brands)
• Offer incentives to return (coupons and other promotions)
• Notice of items in a persistent wish list
• Notice of items in a persistent cart
• Rate and review previous purchases (specify product)
• Notice of related items or accessories related to a purchase
• Recent sign-up but no purchases

3. Navigation Preferences

Nothing is more annoying than a website not saving preferences that you’ve taken the time to set. Since shoppers will likely navigate your eStore uniquely, the ability to store these preferences is important as is the ability for a shopper to clear saved settings.

Tips include:
• Listings per page
• Grid listing formats
• Categories, Brands, Products of interest
• Recently viewed and searched
• Addresses (Billing, Shipping, Multiple)
• Profile Picture

4. Social Network Feeds

When designing a social networking strategy (or “Social Commerce”), it is important to think about what information you can deliver to your target customer that will incent them to 1) pass that information on (concept of "going viral") and/or 2) make them visit your website. Simply creating a Blog, Facebook or Twitter page is not going to result in revenue.

Tips include:
• Build community through blogging or forums
• Create articles of interest or educational value
• Post promotions to Twitter with links back to Products, Category, Brand pages
• Allow shoppers to post purchases to their Facebook wall (notify their friends of purchases)
• Participate in MySpace, Twitter, Facebook of suppliers / manufactures

5. Personalizing Content

Over and above product content, it is important to have a strategy to manage “content areas” across the site. These content areas typically include flash, video, HTML, or images, and have links to promotions, products, categories, search pages, or brand pages. Making these content areas as relevant as possible to your shoppers increases the overall "personal feel" of a site and leads to finding and buying faster.

Tips include:
• Automatic rotation of content areas based on rules
• Thresholds and tracking of impressions and click through rates (CTR)
• Customize content to be as specific as possible
• Content: Products, HTML, Images, Flash, Video
• Rules to rotate content based on:
o Referral URL, Keyword URI, Domain
o Time of day
o Persona definition (example: Consumer, Prosumer, Expert)
o Geo-targeted IP Address
o Logged in user

The Role of Your eCommerce Platform

As retailers build strategies to better connect with their customers using personalization tactics, an evaluation of their eCommerce platform will probably be in order. It is important for retailers to find a platform vendor that can both enable their immediate vision while being proactive in helping them measure outcomes and adjust accordingly.

While we’ve only covered some basic tactics here, advanced personalization techniques can go beyond core eCommerce platform to involve leading third party services for buying recommendation services, site search control, ratings and review content, and more. The eCommerce platform provider must support all of these systems and have a strategy to help retailers successfully execute on their personalization strategy over time.

To Request a Free Assessment, Contact Us!

Congratulations on going live: Health Care Logistics, eMedDecor.com




www.emeddecor.com Selects OrderDynamics for Growth on On-Demand eCommerce Platform

OrderDynamics, Canada's leading On-Demand eCommerce Solution provider, announces recent customer acquisition, Health Care Logistics, a worldwide provider of medical equipment since 1978.

A recent re-launch of their consumer division, www.eMedDecor.com, Health Care Logistics looked to OrderDynamics for their superior eCommerce technology and services oriented around growing sales.

“OrderDynamics gives us a single, end-to-end technology solution to power our B2C websites. Their SaaS service model emphasizes growth and provides structured processes to manage traffic and conversions” explains Bethany Reid, Brand Manager for eMedDecor. “We simply outgrew our previous eCommerce platform, which didn’t have the features or management capabilities to support our growth” continues Bethany. “OrderDynamics helped us understand a reasonable growth target and works proactively with our marketing team to achieve our goals”.

The new eMedDecor.com website launched on OrderDynamics in 90 days with a broad selection of gifts and accessories and an easy-to-use design. New site features include:

• Shop by Profession – Doctors, Dentists, Nurses, Pharmacy, Veterinarians, & More helps the consumer find products unique to them.
• Gift Services – Wish Lists, Gift Certificates, Gift Messages, Wrapping Services, and Product Personalization make the site great for gift givers.
• Navigation features – – Intuitive product search, user ratings and reviews, guided navigation filters, and express checkout create a fast and fun shopping experience.

“We congratulate the great team at Health Care Logistics and look forward to a long term partnership” says Michael Benadiba, CEO of OrderDynamics.

About eMedDecor & More:
The eMedDecor.com website is a consumer website providing over 2,000 medical related products in categories such as Dental, Doctors, Nursing, Pharmacy, Veterinary and more. eMedDecor.com offers an exciting range of products for Appreciation and Recognition, Books, Cards, and Paper, Clothing, Collectibles, Décor, Office Accessories, Personalized Products, and Tools of the Trade. eMedDecor.com also provides easy shopping options such as Gift Certificates, Gift Wrapping, Gift Messaging, and Personalization.

Scheduling Site Promotions: Easier, Relavent, and Convert Better

As eCommerce platforms ramp up features to meet the needs of the savvy online buyer, retailers often struggle with effectively maintaining them. To be effective, retailers not only need the latest "frontend" merchandising capabilities, but "backend" systems that allow them to manage, what could be hundreds of promotions at any given time. Retails must have technology that gives their product teams the ability to manage the site proactively and reactively given the buying trends they experience.

To be effective, retailers need the ability to:

1. Launch promotions quickly
2. Time promotions to buying events
3. Measure promotion success

The OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Platform combines the latest frontend merchandising technology with a powerful scheduling engine and management metrics that gives retailers "point-and-click" control over website promotions.

Launch Promotions Fast

It is important the the eCommerce platform technology provides real-time ability to create, stage, test, and launch new promotions. Whether it is, for example, a new sale, bundles, eCast (email) campaigns, shipping discounts, or in-cart promotions, the platform should provide easy-to-use web interfaces designed for a product manager or marketing resource to make website changes easily. The platform should also provide XHTML access and a secure Content Management System (CMS) for advanced levels of access.

For mid-market to enterprise reatilers, the ability to stage these changes and test orders against a test gateway prior to going live (without impacting their timeline) is equally as important. Staging changes also allows marketings teams to pre-provision promotions, but leaving them inactive until needed.

Time Promotions "Scheduling"

To effectively time website changes to buying events, like Thanksgiving for example, retailers need more control than simply being able to launch promotions quickly. They require a sophisticated scheduling "engine" to create and manage hundreds of running promotions at a time, and on a per-website basis.

The scheduling system must allow for multiple website promotions to be running concurrently with status reports. Some of the important scheduling capabilities are: eCast (email) marketing, personalized content areas, site seach controls, product / brand / category content areas, coupons, overrides, free shipping amounts, etc. These scheduling and promotion tools must provide granular control at a per-product / brand / category and per eStore website basis. The system must provide control to activate and deactivate promotions on a particular date/time, date range, recurring date/time, and the ability to chain promotions.

With this level of control, retailers can start marketing to their Clients well before the event, making them more proactive and always on top of the next promotion.

Measure Success

Like any other successful sales and marketing program, eCommerce websites require detailed metrics that allow promotions to be managed effectively. It is important that the marketing team can measure the success of each promotion in-real time, and against other promotions across the website.

This isn't specifically about web analytics (Google, Omniture for example), although they play a role, it is about the metrics provided by the eCommerce platform. It is important the platform itself can produce metrics about the performance of a particular promotion. For example, the ability to track click-throughs and impressions on personalized content areas, tracking delivery and open rates of eCasts (emails) promotions, sales from referring websites, ads, keywords, and ability to trend sales across different promotions; all core requirements of mid-market to enterprise online retailers. And all of these must be viewable against sales / orders across a defined time period.

With the right metrics, retailers will have the business information needed to make decisions about the promotions running on the website.

Look at your eCommerce Platform

For retailers to stand a chance against the ever more savvy online buyer, they must take a close look at their eCommerce platform provider to determine their plans for making site promotions more effective. There many of "add on" services out there, but we feel the platform provider plays a key role in this area and should have, at a minimum, the tools and technologies available in this article for launching and managing promotions.

To learn more, please contact us today!

An Integrated Order Management System (OMS) Key to Avoiding Lost Revenue When Payment Brands Go Down (Paypal, Authorize.NET recently)

With 2 major payment providers having issues in the past 4 weeks to the day (Authorize.NET July 3rd 2009 and PayPal August 3rd 2009), many online retailers and merchants that rely on these systems were effectively out of business, unable to take orders, and losing revenue.

Although failures like this are considered unacceptable to businesses and executives, there are ways retailers can avoid being impacted by these types of failures. The solution rests in the capabilities of the eCommerce platform and its Order Management System (OMS).

Order Management Systems (OMS) provide software to facilitate the capturing and processing of eCommerce orders. When this system is part of your overall eCommerce platform (same eCommerce vendor platform driving the frontend presentation and backend OMS) you get a very robust and flexible foundation to power almost all online retailing needs. For example, eMail Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Fulfillment and Inventory Control, and Advanced Merchandising Rules. This type of "end-to-end" solution helps retailers drive more value from their eCommerce investment by reducing complexities, manual tasks, and less systems / vendors to manage. Obviously, we believe an on-demand or SaaS eCommerce platform is the way of the future for most retailers vs. purchasing and customizing software.

In addition, most platform providers (with an integrated backend OMS) will automatically capture order information prior to posting to the payment provider. This allows for steps to occur before fulfillment like address validation and correction, fraud detection, pre-authorization, etc. This also takes care of two critical problems if payment providers fail. 1. The user is oblivious and can place their order on your website 2. Retailers can quickly and easily resume order processing once the gateway has returned to normal.

As is the case with PayPal and Google Checkout, the shopper has to leave the merchant's website in order to complete their purchase - something not required for other alternative payment brands or traditional gateways like Authorize.NET. However, the eCommerce platform should fully capture the order first and provide logic that informs the user of a payment gateway problem then invite them to use an alternative method or be notified once the gateway has returned.

OrderDynamics takes this a step further and automatically creates a Customer Service Case (ticket) for all abandoned PayPal or Google Checkout orders so retailers can proactively follow-up with these shoppers and convert the sale. This process can be tailored to include an email back to the shopper after X hours inviting them to come back and complete their purchase with a coupon or other incentives.

So when you're evaluating a new eCommerce platform provider it is important to look deeper than the frontend design or "flashy websites" and get into the details of how the platform technology itself will enable a robust, scalable, and cost effective environment for years to come.

See related post: Authorize.NET Outage Does Gateway Downtime Equal eCommerce Disaster?
Learn more about: OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Platform

Authorize.NET Outage | Does Gateway Downtime Equal eCommerce Disaster? Not for OrderDynamics

If you're one of the many online retailers that rely on Authorize.NET as their payment gateway - today may have been a very painful day. I say maybe because if you're one of the websites that cannot take new orders because of this outage - you may want to look into a new eCommerce platform. Some, more sophisticated eCommerce platforms, allow for orders to continue even if the payment gateway is totally down. OrderDynamics retailers have been able to accept orders on their websites even if Authorize.NET is their only payment gateway.

What appears to be the result of a datacenter fire in their Seattle facility (located at Fisher Plaza), Authorize.NET has been down for over 5 hours already on July 3rd 2009. Many are hoping the sales volumes will be lower due to the statutory holiday for tomorrow's July 4th celebration of Independence Day happening today, Friday.

With regular updates coming from their recent twitter account, Authorize.NET is taking responsibility and also claiming their backup datacenter also failed. *At time of writing, Authorize.NET's website was also down - most likely hosted in the same facility. Details are spare as the company is focusing on bringing up their systems.

"An event like today underscores the need for online retailers need to think about their Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans and ensure their eCommerce platform provider can meet these requirements." Says Steven Berkovitz, On-Demand Platform Architect.

An important feature of the OrderDynamics on-demand eCommerce solution is its ability to still capture orders during a gateway failure, making them available for later processing. This allows shoppers to keep buying as normal. "Orders are still captured, shoppers get an order number and confirmation email, then when the gateway is alive, the system will process them automatically." explains Steven. "The last thing you want is to loose the order - this is the equivalent of closing your physical location instead of taking a credit card manually or cash."

"Another feature of our platform is the ability for OrderDynamics to dynamically route orders to different gateways or completely fail-over payment gateways if needed." Continues Steven. "Our platform is integrated with every major payment gateway and over 20 alternative payment brands; allowing for ultimate flexibility and reliability."

OrderDynamics also has redundant datacenters as part of its On-Demand eCommerce SaaS Platform and enhanced service plans that provide up to 99.9% service availability through a fully replicated Disaster Recovery plan to its secondary facility over 75kms away.

Be sure to follow the twitter feed for updates and if you'd like to learn more about how Payment Gateways are used, see this Informed Merchant Article.

The OrderDynamics team was happy to see you at IRCE 2009!

Dear Customer,

We at OrderDynamics really want to thank you for visiting us this year at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition 2009. We sincerely enjoyed the opportunity to talk with you and learn more about your business. We’re excited with all that we saw from the exhibitors, and thrilled to see how far the eCommerce industry has come over the past eight years.


We look forward to connecting with you in the coming weeks, in the mean time we invite you to visit our website and learn more about our On-Demand eCommerce Platform.

Sincerely,

The OrderDynamics Team
1 (866) 559-8123
solutions@orderdynamics.com

On-Demad eCommerce Provider OrderDynamics - Off to Boston: Internet Retailer IRCE 2009

We're off to Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition from June 15th to 18th at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Many retailers will be in attendance to learn about a wide variety of technologies and solutions to help them in their eCommerce journey. Despite the economy, IRCE attendance remains strong with over 4,500 people expected. With 91 sessions, 178 speakers, and over 360 exhibiting companies, IRCE is the one-stop-shop for those involved in eCommerce projects this year.

Come see OrderDynamics at booth 1024! - See Booth Floor Plan - we look forward to seeing you there!

Basic SEO Concepts For Online Retailers

It amazes us how many people we talk to have an "SEO consultant" - generally costing them anywhere from $1,500 to $4,500+ per month in "management fees" - and their eStore websites are not doing some of the basic things needed to rank high in the search engines. This article is meant to provide some basic concepts for online retailers to think about before signing up for SEO services.

First of all, Google is going to drive the bulk of your traffic so focus on getting your eStore optimized for Google first.

Search engines generally work from 2 principles and are tied together - Paid Listings, and Organic Listings. Paid Listings or "Sponsored Ads" require you to bid and pay per click whereas organic results are free. Organic positions take time to build and your goal should be to list on page one of Google for your chosen keywords.

Online retailers must start by determining the search terms (keywords and phrases) they think their target shopper uses to find their products or ones they want to use to compete with others. Google has tools to help them determine closely related search terms and the actual volumes of searching happening for them. Google AdWords Tool for example.

Google will only list up to 2 pages in organic listing per search term (keyword/phrase) in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). Therefore there is no point in optimizing an entire site for the same search terms.

It is important to lay out the pages on your site according to search terms and ensure these HTML pages are optimized for search (title tags, meta description, keywords, anchor text, image alt attribute, etc. ).

The next step is making sure these pages do in fact have content that is relevant to the search terms you believe are important. Simply optimizing the HTML tags is not enough. For retailers, this can be product landing pages or top-level entry pages with dynamic product listings.

You can test the quality of the pages using tools from Google, you should be targeting a 7+ (out of 10). For Paid Search Listings, a high quality score will also help your Pay Per Click costs (keep them down) and ensure your ad is shown.

Once your pages are optimized and have relevant content, the next step is a strong link building strategy. Inbound links build relevance in the eyes of the search engine and also help with your Page Rank, which is part of how Google rates the relevance of a site.

Link building can be done in many ways including press releases, manually listing yourself in high-quality directories, working with industry partners to exchange links, articles/blogs, and social networking. It is important to link from relevant site and hopefully pages with a high page rank. Avoid linking scams or "black hat" techniques that could cause Google to punish your listings in the SERPs.

All of these strategies are centered around 1 website domain name, so if you have more than 1 domain name you have an opportunity to widen the net. Although we recommend focusing on other keywords and phrases on the second site vs. competing with yourself.

Another critical part of an effective SEO strategy is to ensure the HTML code meets the latest XHTML standards, is error free, and the website performs well. Google will not rank websites high that have errors or are slow. Also important is your full URL path (page names, folders, etc.) as a method of capturing keywords and strengthen the results.

For online retailers, it is crucial that the eCommerce platform you select has the tools and expertise to help guide their clients to a successful SEO plan.

The OrderDynamics on-demand eCommerce platform not only provides easy to use SEO tools, our Account Managers and Developers have SEO expertise and help advise our Clients on how to make the most out of their SEO dollars.

On-Demand eCommerce Software Solutions By OrderDynamics Slash Project Lengths In Half

Leading on-demand eCommerce software provider delivers rapid eStore deployments thanks to SaaS platform and eCommerce web site design separation.

Toronto, ON May 15, 2009 -- OrderDynamics Corporation has observed that many online merchants are struggling with short eCommerce software replatforming timelines as peak shopping periods approach rapidly. Contributing to the tight timelines are delayed budget decisions and managers expecting more from their marketing team with a lot less.
OrderDynamics has designed its new eStore implementation process to reduce time to launch a new Client and is averaging a 15 week schedule from signature to soft launch.

"There are two factors at work here that allow us to roll out so quickly; eCommerce Web Site Design Flexibility and our SaaS Platform"

Explains Michael Benadiba, CEO OrderDynamics Corporation. OrderDynamics entirely separates the eCommerce web site design process from its on-demand platform, allowing this process to start in parallel and be delivered by a third party creative agency or internally.

OrderDynamics makes the eCommerce web site design come to life through a library of web 2.0 and 3.0 front-end web controls such as floating shopping carts, personalization controls, search merchandising, product reviews, and other pre-built controls which focus on enabling an fast, fun, and easy shopping experience. "The design and ease of use of an eStore must match the brand experience you're trying to create and the shopping expectations of your customers" continues Benadiba.

"By removing this hard linkage to the eCommerce platform, our Clients can accelerate design decisions and quickly implement future changes".

The other important time saver is the OrderDynamics eCommerce SaaS platform. eCommerce software as a service (or SaaS), means the software application is already developed and available almost immediately after signing a contract. It also means the SaaS provider takes care of maintaining the software and hosting it as part of a Service Level Agreement (SLA). "Our platform is fully redundant and is engineered for Availability, Performance, and Transaction Integrity - all things we guarantee in our SLA " adds Steve Berkovitz, On-Demand Platform Architect.

OrderDynamics Solves eCommerce Problems | Find out if You're Ready

We've recently launched our You're Ready Campaign aimed to reach prospective Clients that may be hitting the wall with their current eCommerce solution. Although there are many issues retailers face, we've selected 5 recurring problems that seem to come up regularly in discussions and that we've helped solve for our Clients.
As always, a special thanks goes out to all OrderDynamics Clients who give us valuable feedback and input on what's important to their business so we can shape our solutions.

Infinitely Simple eCommerce
OrderDynamics is a leading provider of on-demand eCommerce solutions designed to help online merchants grow revenues and simplify operations. We allow you to deliver superior shopping experiences through our innovative multi-eStore platform and integrated backend management systems that enable Dynamic Merchandising, Customer Service, Order Management, and Automation. You're Ready is our way of providing you solutions to the common problems that we help our Client's solve every day.

There are hundreds of reasons retailers are choosing OrderDynamics -> Find out if You're Ready

Rich Consumer Experiences | OrderDynamics Tops Practical eCommerce Top 10 List for April 2009

Practical eCommerce recently asked industry insiders to share a great, innovative idea that could help an eCommerce firm. Here’s what ten of them had to say.

OrderDynamics topped the list with...

Rich Consumer Experiences Dominate

"Focus on immersive branding and marketing techniques that create unexpectedly fast, fun, and easy shopping experiences. Are your budgets caught up on technology or are you investing in creating that visceral connection to the consumer? What amazes us the most is that very few e-stores provide that connection."

Michael Benadiba
CEO
OrderDynamics Corporation

OrderDynamics Launches Support for Amazon Payments: Amazon Simple Pay™

Canada's leading On-Demand eCommerce platform provides its online retailers support for Amazon's payment solution Amazon Simple Pay™.

Toronto, ON March 26, 2008 -- OrderDynamics Corporation launches support for Amazon Simple Pay™, a set of payment-only products that allows shoppers to use payment information from their Amazon.com accounts as a payment method. By offering Amazon Simple Pay™ to their shoppers, online merchants provide a convenient, trusted, and easy ordering mechanism to tens of millions of Amazon Customers.

"New payment solutions are constantly under evaluation by our product development team, because of the significant positive impact it can have on our Client's sales" explains Michael Benadiba, CEO OrderDynamics Corporation. "We also make the frontend implementation of these payment solutions easy through self service access from our backend management dashboard" continues Benadiba. Amazon Simple Pay™ provides brand recognition, purchase protection, and convenience to online shoppers - all things that can increase the chance of converting a sale.

The OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce platform has access to over 20 branded payment methods on their front-end eStores through its partnership with CardinalCommerce such as: Verified by Visa & MasterCard® SecureCode™, Amazon Payments™, Bill Me Later®, Ebates™, eBillme™, eLayaway™, Google™ Checkout, Green Dot® MoneyPak®, MyEcheck, PayPal™, RevolutionCard™, Mazooma™, ClickandBuy®, and more.Learn about how we've helped online merchants grow, Read our Case Studies

OrderDynamics is going to Internet Retailer IRCE 2009







For the first year, OrderDynamics will be attending the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition from June 15th to 18th at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Come see us at booth 1024 - See Booth Floor Plan

The IRCE 2009 Conference Content
IRCE 2009 is a four-day conference featuring 179 speakers in 94 sessions devoted to the strategies and tools that e-retailers can use to thrive in a recession that pulls the rest of retailing down. Hence the theme: Rising Above—Not Just Surviving—the Economic Storm. The agenda, which has fewer general sessions than last year and many more specific breakout sessions and tracks that are targeted to specific e-retailer needs, includes the following:

IRCE 2009 Agenda Summary
Day One (June 15) features two concurrent day-long workshops:
  • Search Engine Marketing: Strategies for a more competitive market.
  • Survival Guide for Small E-Retailers.

Day Two (June 16) marks the start of the general conference and features:

General Session (8:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.):

  • State of the Industry: How E-Retailing Can Shine in A Gloomy Economy
  • Technology Track: Finding Cost-Effective Web Technologies
  • Retail Chain Track: Making the Web the Driver of the Chain
  • Web Design & Merchandising Track: Making a Hot Site at a Cool Cost
  • Small Retailer Track A: How Low-Budget Operators Can Have Big-Time Success

Day Three (June 17) contains a full day of breakout sessions in four tracks

General Sessions (8:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.)

  • Marketing Track: What Marketing Works Best in a Recession.
  • Operations Track: How to Cut Costs While Increasing Conversions
  • Measuring Success: How Understanding Web Metrics Creates Online Success
  • Small Retailer Track B: Efficient Ways to Attract New Web Shoppers

Day Four (June 18) features two concurrent day-long workshops:

  • Capitalizing on the M-Commerce Boom
  • Diving Deep Into E-Mail Marketing
The Internet Retailer 2009 Conference & Exhibition is not only the world's largest e-retailing conference, it is one of America's fastest growing conferences. While overall attendance at conferences and trade shows grew at 5% last year, IRCE has grown at a compound annual rate of 86% in its first three years of operation—from 1,178 total attendees in 2005 to 4,087 total attendees last year. Based on last year's turnout and favorable conference evaluations, we project total attendance at IRCE 2009 will reach 5,000.

eCommerce SaaS Platform Enhancement: Fulfillment with ShipWorks

Part of our last major release in January was a service module to allow our Customers to plug-in to the latest version of ShipWorks. The OrderDynamics integration components will also be rolled into the ShipWorks installer for quick integration to our "One-Click Bill & Print" fulfillment automation system for future Customers.

With this enhancement, we've integrated the OrderDynamics eCommerce back end manager at our dataceter, to the ShipWorks software running on the shipping computer our Customer's site. It handles data linking for Customer Service, Shipping, and Tracking for those using ShipWorks 2.9 to automate shipping activities.

What is ShipWorks?
ShipWorks is for people who sell online. It connects to your online store or seller account. It downloads your orders and makes it easy to create shipping labels, manage customers and emails, and update the online status of each order.

Other options?
OrderDynamics supports a wide range of fulfillment and shipping integration options. To be honest, integration to service providers like ShipWorks is very straight forward thanks to the built-in platform APIs inherent in the OrderDynamics system.

Example Service Providers Supported:

  • United States Postal Service (USPS)
  • Canada Post
  • UPS
  • FedEx
  • DHL
  • Pitney Bowes
  • Endicia
  • Professional Distribution
  • Purolator
So far we've had a great experience working with the ShipWorks development and their leadership team.

Recurring Online Retail Sales Possible with "AUTO SHIP" fulfillment automation by OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Solution

February 19, 2009

OrderDynamics, Canada's leading On-Demand eCommerce Solution provider enables its merchants to offer a recurring purchase and ship option called "auto ship".

Toronto - OrderDynamics Corporation, Securing repeat business is important in any business especially in times of economic uncertainty. For online retailers it's becoming an essential way not only to survive, but to grow revenues on top of a reliable base. Online retailers are in a unique position to acquire recurring sales through sticky services and providing relevant information after the initial purchase thanks to having detailed customer information in their database.

As part of their new feature release strategy, OrderDynamics performs regular Dynamic Merchandising eCommerce Surveys to capture specific interest areas from its Client base. "We hear consistently from both new and current Clients that recurring purchases is a key part of their sales strategy. This helped us prioritize our AUTO SHIP feature" explains Steven Berkovitz, VP Development. OrderDynamics calls its recurring purchase and shipping feature AUTO SHIP, which is a well known term in the eCommerce community.

AUTO SHIP gives the online merchandiser point and click ease to enable their customers to automatically receive certain products on a regular basis. Merchandisers can offer special discounted pricing for customers that subscribe to AUTO SHIP as well as offer multiple shipment frequencies. Call Center agents are also able to easily up-sell shoppers and subscribe them to AUTO SHIP on their behalf. The OrderDynamics SaaS-based eCommerce solution handles the recurring charges and shipping, and provides key management metrics to the merchant to manage their AUTO SHIP program.

AUTO SHIP seamlessly integrates into existing OrderDynamics fulfillment technology. "Our One-Step Bill & Print concept totally streamlines the fulfillment process for our merchants" explains Michael Benadiba, CEO of OrderDynamics. "With a click of a button, orders are downloaded, matched to shipping manifests, then printed for warehouse staff and uploaded to the shipping company for shoppers to track their orders online. And this can be done anytime throughout the day". This process has been refined over the years specifically to reduce fulfillment errors and handle higher volumes of orders. "AUTO SHIP orders seamlessly integrate into our existing One-Step Bill & Print which makes rolling out this new feature transparent to our customer's fulfillment departments." continues Benadiba.
These enhancements are part of an overall new feature release strategy that OrderDynamics includes as part of their eCommerce solution.

About OrderDynamics Corporation
OrderDynamics Corporation is a privately owned company that provides turn-key eCommerce solutions to businesses looking to grow their online sales. The success of OrderDynamics is highly attributed to its response to real client requirements and Dynamic Merchandising concepts which provide superior control and help drive revenue. The OrderDynamics solution is designed for online merchants and services different business such as retail, manufacturing, business-to-business, complex online retail, and more. OrderDynamics officially launched its solution in 2006 after 2 years of research and development.

Learn how we help online merchants grow eCommerce Case Studies

For more information, please contact:
Michael Benadiba
Chief Executive Officer
OrderDynamics Corporation
1+ (866) 559-8123
news@orderdynamics.com

OrderDynamics Helps Online Retailers Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment and Increase Sales Through Simplified Checkout Option

January 15th, 2009

Canada's leading On-Demand eCommerce provider builds streamlined shopping cart checkout for online shoppers into SaaS platform.

Toronto, ON (PRWEB) January 15, 2009 -- OrderDynamics Corporation, a Canadian On-Demand eCommerce solution provider, is pleased to announce continued enhancements to its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform in order to solve the real business challenges of online merchants.

OrderDynamics Customers have another powerful eCommerce Shopping Cart feature to streamline the checkout process for their shoppers. Shopping cart abandonment occurs when shoppers leave the checkout process before completing the sale. With the click of a button, online merchants can include shipping options onto the same web form, and remove the final confirmation page, unlocking a single-page checkout while still maintaining brand flexibility, design control, and a standards-based layout.

"It is very important for our Customers to monitor and reduce their shopping cart abandonment. We help them manage this on a number of levels," explains Michael Benadiba, CEO of OrderDynamics Corporation. An On-Demand eCommerce solution provider can aggregate key metrics like shopping cart abandonment across hundreds of eStore websites and verticals and then implement software and services to reduce abandonment.

"Another important component to this strategy is allowing our Customers to maintain their own branding and design during the checkout process and not redirecting their shopper to a different website or URL, as seen with other providers such as NetSuite and Infopia," continues Benadiba. "Our research shows that redirecting someone away from the eStore during the checkout process or having the checkout page designed differently increases abandonment rates."

The OrderDynamics solution includes a powerful backend management console and sales dashboard that gives online merchants complete control of what shopping cart features to present to their shoppers and to closely monitor business metrics.
These enhancements are part of an overall new feature release strategy that OrderDynamics includes as part of their solution and Dynamic Merchandising concepts.

About OrderDynamics Corporation
OrderDynamics Corporation is a privately owned company that has provides turn-key eCommerce solutions to businesses looking to grow their online sales solutions. The success of OrderDynamics is highly attributed to its response to real Client requirements and Dynamic Merchandising concepts which provide superior control and help drive revenue. The OrderDynamics solution is designed for online merchants and services different business such as retail, manufacturing, business-to-business, complex online retail, and more. OrderDynamics officially launched its on-demand eCommerce solution in 2006 after 2 years of research and development.

Learn about how we've helped online merchants grow: OrderDynamics Case Studies

For more information, please contact:
Michael Benadiba
Chief Executive Officer
OrderDynamics Corporation
1+ (866) 559-8123
mailto:559-8123news@orderdynamics.com

Dynamic Merchandising: SEO Checklist for eStore product pages

If you don't already have a strategy in-place for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), it should be high on your New Year's resolution list.

Online merchants have a great opportunity to leverage the vast SEO tactics for each product page on their eStore website. We're talking about product pages because most purchases start from a search engine. In the highly competitive Internet search world, online merchants are uniquely positioned to drive individual product page search results (page rank) in addition to bringing traffic to their main website.

We've provided a brief list of SEO tactics all online merchants should be doing to increase the likelyhood of a shopper finding their products. It is important to understand that this level of control and flexibility should be put into the hands of the merchandising team (or marketing team) through easy-to-use web interfaces, not having to proxy requests through a web design team.

Be sure to closely examine the Complete Feature List of your eCommerce Shopping Cart Software to look for these built-in SEO control capabilities.

eCommerce Product Page SEO Checklist (used for each product page):

  • Standards-Based Pages: It is very important build your website following HTML W3C Standards which basically means your eStore will be read properly by a search engine and people browsing your website. A great designer isn't typically a great HTML coder. You really do need to think about the performance of your HTML pages to ensure they're error-free with lowest possible load times and that you aren't violating basic SEO rules. Your eCommerce provider should help you implement your eStore website and maintain the eStore HTML. Typically in an On-Demand eCommerce environment the eStore website branding and design is decoupled from the underlying eCommerce software - this means you can easily change your design & structure quickly and easily. For other tips to create high performance pages see Google Web Master Tools.

  • Keywords: Start thinking about your keywords right away as this will drive many of the decisions below. Pick keywords and phrases that your target customer will use to find your product. If you're using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, these keywords and Ads should align. For example: 1960s Rookie Hockey Cards

  • Page Content: You've probably heard this a million times already but its key to a successful SEO strategy. If your pages do not have relevant content they will not service your Customers and the search engines will not rank your page effectively against your keywords.

  • Title Tag: This is the title of your page and one of the most important factors in SEO. Page titles should reflect the individual product you're selling. Title tags are shown in the search engine results page. For example: 1968 Rookie Card of John Smith - Millioncards.org.

  • Page File Name: This is the actual html page name. For example: millioncards.org/rookie-cards/1968-rookie-card-john-smith.html

  • Meta Keywords Tag: These are the most likely words or phrases that will help a customer find your product and are embedded in the HTML code. For example: Rookie Hockey Cards, John Smith Hockey Cards, 1960s Hockey Cards.

  • Meta Description Tag: This a description of the Product Page and should be a short, 1-2 sentences (max 200-250 characters) that describes the content on the page. It is also shown in the search engines below the page title. This should briefly describe the product and be unique from the page title. For example: Millioncards provides rare Rookie Hockey Cards for collectors or gifts for hockey fans. This John Smith Rookie Card is in mint condition and includes protective case.

  • Anchor Text (text links): Anchor text is very important in keyword use. This is the text found on your eStore that appears as a hyperlink. For example, click to learn more about our Enterprise SEO eCommerce Features. You can use Anchor text throughout your eStore to guide shoppers to the product pages, which will also help the search engines understand what the hyperlink is about. Anchor text should be relevant and can be used to link within your eStore to relevant product pages.

  • Header Tags: Allows you to organize your product page into relevant sections by topic from the H1 Page topic header, H2 main topic, and H3 and sub topics, and so on. Headers give the search engines and understanding of where the important information is on the product page and allow you to utilize your keywords for topic areas that describe the product.

  • Alt Image Attribute: Alt image attributes should be used for every image on your website. Alt attributes, provide a description to the search engine about what the image is (since search engine robots cannot "see") and displayed to the user prior to loading the image. Keep these short and relevant to what the picture is illustrating.

Online merchants must have this level of SEO control and capability at the hands of their merchandising team. With most product purchases starting from a web search and the highly competitive and fast-moving online sales world, you must be able to move quickly optimizing your product pages, keywords, and advertising campaigns to maximize sales.

For those not well equipped, it will be a painful process working through the web designer and basically impossible to deliver effective search engine optimization and advertising expenditures.

The OrderDynamics Team

Plan your On-Demand eCommerce solution for 2009 Holiday Sales...Happy New Year from OrderDynamics!

On-Demand eCommerce - Happy New Year! from OrderDynamics










A new year is upon us and we would like to thank our Customers and everyone that has helped make OrderDynamics a leading on-demand eCommerce solution provider.

With an exciting year ahead for online merchants, be sure to start planning your eCommerce platform changes soon and in time for the 2009 holiday sales season. Depending on the size and complexity, an eCommerce website migration can take 45 to 90 business days (or longer) and you'll want to leave plenty of time to test and implement the latest Dynamic Merchandising tactics.

Thank you for making 2008 a wonderful year! Happy New Year!

The OrderDynamics Team