Ecommercepartners.net

On the surface it may have looked as though there was going to be some web drama in the works when three former Google engineers joined forces in an effort to dethrone the search engine giant.  Unfortunately, giants don’t always come down easily, especially when your new search engine – in this case Cuil.com (pronounced “cool”) – is nowhere near prepared to handle the volume of traffic it would receive on Day 1 after being hyped all over the news media.

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According to the Irish e-commerce firm Magico.ie, consumers in that country are poised to take the Internet by storm this upcoming holiday season, making it the biggest Christmas shopping season on the world wide web for Ireland to date.

Lackluster sales to brick-and-mortar businesses will give way to a boom in online shopping at e-commerce web sites this year, boosting sales by as much as 50%.  Pinpointing both price and time-saving concerns, Magico.ie warns small to medium businesses to get on the ball when it comes to their ecommerce marketplace presence in anticipation of this online upswing.

It was brought to my attention recently that Paypal is intentionally overcharging their customers by making it unclear as to exactly how much they are paying in fees and what the process is to qualify for paying the lower rates.

If you are a Paypal user, you owe it to yourself to watch this video and see just how much they might be getting you for:

http://screencast.com/t/NmNu6Zwm

Special thanks to Andrew Hansen for the heads up on this one.

ECommerce Partners, the innovative interactive agency and ecommerce solution provider, has been nominated for Ad Tech’s 2008 Limelight Award in the Best Business-to-Consumer website category for Anthony.com, the online home of top men’s skincare and grooming brand Anthony Logistics for Men.

New York, NY (PRWEB) July 24, 2008 — ECommerce Partners, a leading ecommerce solution provider widely recognized for building successful businesses online, has been nominated for Ad Tech’s 2008 Limelight Award in the Best Business-to-Consumer Transaction website category. ECommerce Partners received top honors for its ecommerce site Anthony Logistics for Men, a men’s skincare brand.

The 2008 Ad Tech awards, an industry event created to recognize talented designers and companies who demonstrate excellence in interactive marketing, hosted some of the leading U.S. interactive and technology agencies and web design teams. ECommerce Partners’ website was chosen by an executive panel of industry experts and judged on four key criteria: creativity, ease of navigation, results based on objectives and overall experience.

We are honored to be chosen among our peers for our front and back end work on the Anthony Logistics for Men website

“We are honored to be chosen among our peers for our front and back end work on the Anthony Logistics for Men website,” said Gil Levy, co-founder of ECommerce Partners. “This was a highly competitive category, and we competed against brands with vast budgets. We are thrilled to receive recognition for the overall aesthetic and comprehensiveness of the site.”

“Our website is an essential component to our daily business transactions,” added Tony Sosnick owner and CEO of Anthony Logistics for Men. “More importantly, our site serves as a destination point, information portal and brand experience for our customers. ECommerce Partners helped us achieve our multi-layered objectives of developing a sleek and informative website with easily navigable ecommerce solutions.”

About ECommerce Partners
Since 1998, New York web design provider ECommerce Partners has been developing innovative sales, design and marketing technologies and solutions for many of the internet’s top and emerging businesses. Through innovative methods, ECommerce Partners enables its clients to tap new revenue opportunities while streamlining operational systems. Highly sought after by many of the top Fortune 500 companies, ECommerce Partners is widely recognized for building successful businesses online, from design to technology.

For more information, please visit www.ecommercepartners.net.

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We have talked recently about using social media web sites to your advantage in the ecommerce marketplace and today I want to steer you in the direction of one of the most useful and simple ways to use social media to draw new visitors to your online business.

You could say that I stumbled upon this one by accident.

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By the time you read this, I will be on my way to New Orleans for a couple of days out of town.  Ironically, this post was inspired in part by the French Quarter of New Orleans – or at least some of the employees of that area.  There are some businesses in that area that have managed to survive the severe drought of tourists in the still-recovering post Katrina area, in fact some of them are thriving even on the slowest nights on and around Bourbon Street.

Believe it or not, they can teach you a thing or two about the way you operate your online business.

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Social media has taken the Internet by storm in recent years to the point where now profiles on popular social media web sites like MySpace or Facebook serve as a calling card more than I ever imagined possible.

In bars people don’t ask for telephone numbers anymore, even though they just bought the new iPhone 3G.  Instead, people are asked what their MySpace profile name is.

Are you using social media web sites to your advantage? If you aren’t you might want to get on that bandwagon soon because I guarantee that your competition is probably already there.

One note of warning before you proceed:  When an ecommerce web site goes social, the hard sell needs to take a back seat to the fun and light hearted, otherwise you are going to alienate your audience quickly.

Could it be that we have almost survived another work week?  I think so!

And just because I can, I have certified this post as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft Free!

The Ultimate Collection of Online SEO Tools
I just came across this link yesterday and have still barely made it through half of the excellent SEO related links they have available.  The fact that every one of their tools are web-based makes it that much more cool, especially when your hard drive is as bloated as mine is these days.

Obama Wants a Cyberterror Czar
Dismissing the current administrations attempts at curtailing cyber crime, the Presidential candidates detail their ideas for increasing cyber security and making us all safer on the ‘net.

Australians Want to Buy Online, study
Research has indicated that Internet users from Australia and New Zealand are twice as likely to make purchases online as their counterparts in the United Kingdom.

Have a great weekend!  See you on Monday!

According to the Hollywood Reporter, major film studio Lionsgate and video sharing site YouTube (a Google owned website, I might add) have come to an agreement regarding an ad-sharing deal that is likely to be the first of what could be many similar deals in the future.

In a nutshell what it equates to is a channel on YouTube that features clips of Lionsgate owned films, over which advertising will be placed.  The “Saw” films, classics like “Dirty Dancing” and even television series like “Weeds” are all included.

source:  Hollywood Reporter

San Francisco, CA – Terry Childs, 43, is in jail.  It seems that his employer upset him enough for him to cause a little problem on the job.

Did I forget to mention that Childs works (worked?) for the City of San Francisco as an IT Network Administrator?  Because yeah, he does/did.  It seems that after being disciplined on the job for lackluster performance, Childs felt the need to prove that he had mad skillz and proceeded  to set up a master password for the city’s FiberWAN (Wide Area Network) that only he has access to.

According to a press conference with San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris,  Terry Childs stands charged with four felony counts including improper tampering with computer systems as well as causing a denial of service that locks city admins out of the network.

After refusing to give up his own master password and reportedly giving police several fakes, he is being held on a $5 Million bond.  The network is still operational, but concern has been expressed as this network contains sensitive data ranging from confidential official email communications to police records and city employee payroll records.

It is estimated that the damage could end up costing the city millions of dollars, though the extent of the problem has yet to be revealed.

The lesson to be learned here?  Always stay on the good side of your company’s IT people.