How to avoid acquisition angst
On Tuesday, August 12, another ecommerce platform vendor will announce it is being acquired. This one, among the crews. More details are forthcoming after Tuesday’s announcement.
B2C Partners believes announcements like this will become more common in today’s economy. The market is saturated with providers targeting the enterprise. Few are profitable, even among the good guys. When operating capital becomes harder for vendors to find, finding a suitor may be the only option.
What does that mean for retail clients? Of course, that depends on what survives the aftermath. Generally speaking, hold on to your wallets. When GSI Commerce acquired Accretive Commerce last year, users faced more integration costs to switch toolsets.
B2C Partners recommends retailers review service agreements to ensure they survive future M&A activity. Ongoing support should continue until the client’s original investment has fully depreciated, or for one year beyond the merger/acquisition activity, whichever is later.
Mind the URL for Storefront SEO
SEO takes work. It’s both an art and a science. When you finally achieve prominent page rank for great keywords, it’s essential to maintain that position long-term. But what if your URLs aren’t portable? What if you can’t take that page rank with you, when you switch technology providers?
Consider the case of Demandware clients, many who accept the URL generated by default. Retailers like Barneys New York, House of Fraser, Bare Escentuals, Sanrio, and Playmobil have their storefront URLs stuffed with non-essential elements, including the Demandware brand. Here are some examples:
• www.barneys.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-BNY-Site/default
• www.houseoffraser.co.uk/on/demandware.store/Sites-hof-Site/default
• store.bareescentuals.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-BareEscentuals-Site/default
• shop.sanrio.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-eStore-Site/default
• store.playmobilusa.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-US-Site/en_US
Notice the bloat that follows the domain name. According to Matt Cutts of Google, when this space contains relevant keywords, it is useful in lifting page rank in the search engines. But the examples above aren’t laden with keywords. Instead, the domain name is followed by 30+ characters of no use to either search engines or consumers. This hurts SEO efforts in the short-term (because the pages won’t rank as high) and in the long-term (because the URLs aren’t portable).
Now, it is indeed possible to create vanity URLs in Demandware. Here are some examples:
• www.timberlandonline.co.uk/men-footwear-shoes/men_footwear_shoes,default,sc.html
• www.gardeners.com/Composting/Composting_New,default,sc.html
• www.sallybeauty.com/Curling-Irons/BUYNOW01-04,default,sc.html
• www.zabars.com/blue-cheese/Blue_Cheese,default,sc.html
Timberland, Gardener’s Supply, Sally Beauty and Zabars all modified their URLs, stripping out the bloat and dropping the Demandware name. URL customization can vary client-to-client and site-to-site. But research finds clients often settle for the defaults, not realizing what it might cost them down the line.
When Barneys launched its site on Demandware in May, the ‘on/demandware.store’ string was still in the URL all over the site — even after a 9 month integration effort. What will they do if they ever need to leave Demandware, like Playboy did earlier this year? Clients cannot take the on/demandware.store URLs with them.
Unfortunately, the longer Barneys waits to customize the URL, the more it will cost them in sales and marketing to switch vendors in the future. Of course, that benefits the incumbent technology vendor. But it’s never good for the client. [Note: Since publication of this post, Barneys has made significant progress customizing URLs on its product and category pages.]
More recent Demandware customers like Compact Appliance, Nine West, and Lucy.com are still in development. We’ll have to see if they choose the default route.
B2C Partners advises all retailers to plan their URLs carefully, no matter what vendor they choose. Do not settle for defaults; and never let the provider advertise their brand ahead of your product in the URL string. Keep the URL uncluttered and peppered with relevant keywords. This will do far more to help consumers find your products – regardless of the technology.
Shop.org “Doctor Is In” Clinics
Kudos to Shop.org for addressing a growing concern from its members. This year’s Shop.org Annual Summit will feature one-on-one sessions, by appointment only, with leading industry specialists. It’s a welcome step in the right direction. The topics are relevant, and speakers are all highly qualified. In today’s email announcement, the Doctor Is In Clinics are described as something “better than peer networking.” I wouldn’t say it’s better than networking – but it is certainly better than JUST networking. Now if Shop.org would only add a session for some ecommerce platform consultant to cover ”Evaluating and Selecting Ecommerce Technology.”
Catalysts, Ecommerce Platforms for SMB’s
Everyone starts somewhere. Many small and mid-size retailers need a new, affordable ecommerce platform. While they may have a recognized brand, not everyone has the immediate potential to drive $5 million in online sales. So where do they turn?
Catalysts are designed specifically for the small- and mid-market. Unlike enterprise solutions that demand a million dollar software investment or tens of thousands every month in hosting fees, catalysts deliver a far more limited feature set with ultra-easy deployment options at an ultra-low cost. Some open source options are even free!
Here are more than 30 SMB ecommerce platforms that won’t break the bank:
Not all these vendors are alike. Some, such as Onestop and Virid, offer a full range of professional services. Others, such as ChannelAdvisor and NetSuite, offer ecommerce as a bolt-on to their core services. Amazon, Yahoo and ProStores are extensions of massive shopping portals. And packages solutions like osCommerce and Magento are virtually free software you download, install, and custom-configure on your own server.
Multiple ProStores outages affect merchants
According to ProStores’ message board, an unplanned, system-wide outage took place on Tuesday, May 28. The cause was said to be a third party vendor of data services. The issue lasted for hours and affected all merchants and tech support lines.
At 3:00PM Tuesday, ProStores reported, “We’ve identified and resolved the problem and are taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen in the future.” But within 30 minutes, a second outage occured; and was “related to the first.” The second outage took nearly five hours to resolve.
As a courtesy, successful transaction fees will be refunded to ProStores merchants for the month of May. This exposes one shortcoming of multi-tenant software. A service glitch at the data or application layer can affect everyone all at once.
Webinar on Ecommerce Platform Selection
Research indicates that nearly two-thirds of retailers are considering an ecommerce platform replacement within the next 2 years. Bill Mirabito of B2C Partners will present material on How to Select an Ecommerce Platform on Thursday, May 29 at 3:00PM.
No one size fits all. The material is vendor agnostic. During this session, Bill will describe the four different software models. He will also share tools and methods for identifying best fit, along with step-by-step techniques for cultivating consensus among key stakeholders.
Retailers who are now considering a platform replacement will leave this session with valuable material they can put into action immediately.
MarketLive scores new investors, $20M in capital
On the heels of recent news that MarketLive will end support for version 4 and prior, the company announced today it has closed a new round of financing and added two new investors. According to the press release, “JAFCO Ventures and Northgate Capital, join existing investors, Sequoia Capital, Sigma Partners, Globespan Capital, and others, who all fully participated in the round,” which amounts to $20M in new capital.
Rumors had been swirling around that MarketLive had been putting out feelers for a sale. Today’s news sharply curbs that speculation.
Speaking briefly with Gartner last week, Gene Alvarez told me MarketLive’s decision to jettison the older versions is “customary for software companies” and essential to the company’s future. While this may be true, it’s no consolation to nearly half of their clients – many who launched on v.4 in the last 18 months after an arduous, expensive integration. Now they must start all over.
Perhaps MarketLive will follow the lead of other SaaS vendors, and invest capital to reduce the cost and complexity of upgrades. In April, MarketLive CEO Terry Austin said that improving upgrades was indeed part of the plan. While admitting that migration is expensive, he asserts it is still more affordable than transitioning to a competitor.
Has Shop.org jumped the shark?
After six years of paying Shop.org membership dues, this is a question I find myself asking today. Has Shop.org jumped the shark? I wonder if other members have the same question. I always enjoy the camaraderie of the retail community. But content at Shop.org events is all too often impractical and painfully redundant.
Last year, my former colleague Sucharita Mulpuru gave a keynote at the annual summit urging members to step back from all the fluff and to get back to basics. It was a brilliant message in an otherwise dull show. But Shop.org didn’t get the message. Read more
MarketLive ending support for Version 4
I just returned from the MarketLive Summit at Half Moon Bay, CA. The venue was lovely, but the mood was mixed. By April 2009, MarketLive will end support for Version 4 of its platform. Nearly half of its 150 customers now face an upgrade or move off of the platform.
Version 5 has been available since 2006, and the upgrade to get current is a costly and complex endeavor. Of course, telling clients they must move “up or out” by its very nature forces everyone to at least consider “out.” I met with many MarketLive clients at the event who are indeed considering alternatives.
I’m scheduling an executive briefing with MarketLive to gather more details. Stay tuned.
IBM client sues over ecommerce software
According to Paul McDouggal of InformationWeek, IBM is facing a $6 million lawsuit from Harry & David filed recently in U.S. District Court in Oregon.
The report claims that Harry & David had to settle claims with both NCR and Charles Hill for using IBM’s Websphere Commerce Server version 5.6, software which allegedly violated patents. The client also claims in the suit that IBM refused to indemnify them, thereby breaching contract.
Now there’s more than one side to every story. This article was first released this afternoon. So I’ll do some homework and post what I find. More to come. Stay tuned.