Today, my first guest article was published on Practical eCommerce. Very excited to see the Ordoro presence on a popular ecommerce magazine such as PeC. Please give me feedback on the article either there or right here on this blog.

I also want to extend a big THANK YOU to Gary Yorke – the owner of ChildTherapyToys.com. His input was extremely valuable in writing that article.

Also, the entire Ordoro team wishes to thank all you readers for your support via RSS subscription, Facebook and Twitter.

Last night, we presented at the Texas Moot Corp semi-finals. We did a great job, and we are proud to announce that we advanced into the finals. Ordoro is one of the 5 finalists of the Texas Moot Corp competition.

We had an amazing time doing the 15 minute pitch of our business plan. I started the pitch focusing on the pain experienced by thousands of small business ecommerce merchants. I then introduced the Ordoro solution and talked about how excited our customers were to see the alpha version screens – our focus on usability had paid off. Naruby followed up with an overview of where Ordoro fits in the market place, and talked about all the hard work we did over the past one year to take us to where we are today. Sangram topped it all off with the financials and a discussion about the entire Ordoro team.

The response from the judges was very positive. Every one concurred that Ordoro addresses an important pain in the market and that we have the right team structure to build a great solution. They gave us great suggestions for marketing and also highlighted a couple of areas that we need to focus on. All in all, great feedback from four experienced investor/entrepreneurs.

Now on to the big event – the Texas Moot Corp Finals. Just getting into the Moot Corp Finals itself means a lot to us. We get to pitch in front of another panel of successful businessmen and women. Yet another round of constructive feedback on our business plan. And more exposure within the Austin investor community. And last but not the least, bragging rights.

The entire Ordoro team wants to thank all the small business ecommerce merchants out there who have helped us with all the market research. Thank you for all the early feedback that has helped us build a great product. I know you are waiting for our product release announcement. It is coming soon.

For now, the march is on for February 17. Come cheer for us at the Texas Moot Corp Finals.

This one is a bit off topic, but we wanted to share it anyway.

We have set the wordpress comments moderation option on this blog so that we get to review/approve all the comments before they are posted. Obviously, we chose this in order to weed out all the spam that gets posted as comments. This setup works fine because currently our comment volume is low. And we get to act on new comments within a couple of hours anyway.

Every day, we find new spam comments. Usually it is the garden-variety spam. The Russian gibberish, the Greek alphabets, and sometimes meaningless sentences like -

Amiable brief and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Thanks you on your information.

But occasionally we run into a gem, like this one below, which makes me wonder how creative these spammers are getting. They must be spending a lot of hours thinking up interesting conversations.

My friend and I were recently discussing about how involved with technology our daily lives have become. Reading this post makes me think back to that debate we had, and just how inseparable from electronics we have all become.

I don’t mean this in a bad way, of course! Societal concerns aside… I just hope that as the price of memory falls, the possibility of uploading our brains onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It’s a fantasy that I daydream about every once in a while.

(Posted on Nintendo DS running R4 DS BB)

The cool thing is that Akismet did trap this one as spam. The cat and mouse game between spammers and the Akismet algorithm is exciting.

Update from the day after: Today this article got indexed by Google and lo and behold hell broke loose. Seeing their text show up on the blog (since I quoted it verbatim in my article), the spammers have been rushing to us like sharks smelling a drop of blood from miles away. They probably think we approved their comment to be published, and wanted to quickly cash in by adding more comments.

We had 42 spam comments in under 30 minutes. I’m really curious on how this is gonna turn out. Honestly, we were a bit concerned about Google giving us bad karma points for quoting the spammy text, but so far all looks well.

American Express Open Forum discusses three services that let small business owners accept credit card payments using an iPhone. This suggests the possibility of replacing the clunky Point-of-Sale devices with a sleek device like the newly released Apple iPad. Fast Company has a related story.

A great innovation for the small business owners – particularly for merchants who sell in exhibitions, tradeshows and farmer’s markets, and for home service providers like movers and maid services.

The three services reviewed are -

1. SquareUp
2. PAYware Mobile
3. Mophie marketplace intelligent case

Wall Street Journal has a good set of articles in their How to Guide for Small Businesses section. Here is an article on how to choose a bank for your small business.

Most small business owners have an option of choosing between a large national bank and a small regional bank. Both have their pros and cons.

Pros of Small, Regional Banks

1. With small, regional banks, you often get better customer service and one-on-one access to the loan officer. Such banks are usually more flexible and focus more on personal relationships and the borrower’s character than just the numbers on a credit report.
2. Loan officers at smaller banks have the authority to make loan decisions. With them, the turn arounds for your decision may be faster than with a large national bank which will have to check everything with their corporate office.

Pros of Large, National Banks

1. Large national banks may be able to give you a better rate than the small regional bank. So if you are more interested in that additional basis point and less on the flexibility, large banks may be better for your business.
2. Small Business Administration (SBA) loans can be a great source of cash for small businesses. If you are planning to apply for an SBA loan, ensure that your bank will issue SBA backed loans. Large national banks are more likely to offer SBA loans than small regional banks.
3. Large banks often give you additional perks that small banks may not be able to offer. Examples include payroll, sending invoices, collecting payments and issuing credit cards. However, be aware of additional fees for these services. A recent article on the American Express Open Forum suggests that banks have dramatically increased their fees for individual and small business accounts. According to J. D. Power, 46% of all bank customers reported a problem with bank fees so far in 2009.

Analyze the pros and cons of each option, and talk to officers at both kinds of banks before you decide on a bank for your small business. It is important to build a strong relationship with the officers of the bank no matter what size the bank is.

During this process, certainly discuss the bank rates with the loan officer. Negotiate the bank fees openly. If you can afford to maintain a high balance, then use that to drive fees and rates in your favor. Sometimes moving your personal banking too into the same bank will help negotiate a better deal.

Let us say you have built a strong fan following on Facebook via your business fan page. Other than bringing traffic to your webstore, is there an easier way to monetize on this fanbase?  Now there is.

ShopTab is a new way to monetize your popularity on Facebook and to increase your ecommerce sales. ShopTab is a Facebook application that lets your fans browse your webstore catalog and make purchases from within Facebook. The ShopTab app lets you create a facebook “feed” of your product catalog. This is very similar to the Google Products approach that I wrote about a few days ago.

Once you upload your products onto the ShopTab interface, your fans will be able to browse the products directly on Facebook. They are also presented with a “buy now” button and if they click on it, they will be taken to your webstore home page to complete the purchase.

ShopTab costs only $10 a month to list 500 products. This flatfee model is great if you do not like the “percentage of sales” model used by platforms such as eBay and Amazon.

More details about this application can be found here.

Wall Street Journal discusses different ways to deal with excess holiday merchandise.

1. Sell via consignment stores – What are consignment stores? These are stores that will hold your inventory for you and sell it at a lower price. They take a percentage of the sales revenue. You still own the inventory and therefore you do not get to cash out until your products are sold. ConsignmentShops.com is a good resource to find such outfits for your excess merchandise.
2. Sell to liquidators – They will buy your inventory in bulk, but often pay less than the wholesale price. However, you no longer own the inventory and therefore you get out to cash out early on. Depending on your cash needs, liquidation may be a more suitable route for you than the consignment route. Liquidation.com is a good resource to find liquidators for your excess inventory.
3. Sell via online marketplaces – This can be a great route to get rid of inventory, if you are willing to sell at very low prices. You can list your excess inventory on Craigslist, eBay and Overstock.com
4. Donate to charity - In most cases, you can claim a good amount of tax write-offs via donations to charity. Talk to your accountant to ensure that you are making the best out of your donations.

Please help me complete this list. Please add your entries to the comments section with links to relevant reviews and I will move it to the main article.

If you would like to be notified when I update this list, please follow us on Twitter @ordoroteam

Every small business owner who is looking for a shopping cart for their ecommerce business is faced with hundreds of options. According to Practical eCommerce magazine, there are about 500 ecommerce shopping cart solutions. How do you decide which one is right for you?

This is my attempt to aggregate and list information about the majority of small business ecommerce shopping carts.

The list below is in no particular order -

1. Shopsite – One of the most popular small business shopping carts. You need either download and run the software on your own servers, or you can find a hosting provider to host your webstore. Lexiconn is one of the popular Shopsite hosting providers.
2. Shopify – A pure SaaS (hosted) small business shopping cart that focuses on ease of use and simplicity. No installation, backups or upgrades required. Easy to get started. Read a detailed review here. Shopify recently acquired StoreSync, thus extending its ease of use to the iPhone platform.
3. Miva Merchant – Hosts about 200,000 stores. A preferred shopping cart solution for many small businesses. You can either install and run it on your own, or seek a hosting provider. Recently, the company launched a hosted platform called Miva Merchant SaaS, with monthly prices for it ranging from $59.95 to $129.95. More information here.
4. ZenCart – Is an open source shopping cart solution but you need to download and install it. ZenCart’s authors claim that their software “can be installed and set-up by anyone with the most basic web site building and computer skills.”
5. Interspire - This solution includes a shopping cart, an email marketing module and a content management system. More information here.
6. MightyMerchant – A hosted shopping cart that also provides flexibility to customize according to your needs. The company also offers a web design service for small businesses that want to modify the look and feel of their webstore. More information here.
7. Volusion – Yet another hosted shopping cart solution. Monthly pricing plans from $25 to $160. More information here and here.
8. ProductCart – You need to download and run the software on your servers. License fee starting from $695. Additional services for additional fees. More information here.
9. X-Cart – Not hosted. License fees starting from $115. The company provides installation and customization services starting from $57. Used by 20,000+ live online stores worldwide. The X-Cart shopping cart can be modified by the merchant and by third party developers. More information here.
10. ShopCreator – They offer three different shopping cart packages targeted towards small to medium businesses. The Transact package charges a percentage of the shop revenues. The StartUp and Retailer packages charge flat monthly fee. All packages are fully hosted.
11. Magento – Is an open source ecommerce shopping cart platform. Hosts 30,000+ merchants. Since it is open source, there are numerous third party plugins. More information including a video walk through here.
12. Wahmcart ((Work At Home Mom Cart) – Easy, light-weight, hosted small business shopping cart. Available for $40 a month.
13. GoECart – Hosted solution. Customizable. Provides good integration with shipping services, payment gateways. More information on the shopping cart can be found here, here and here.
14. SearchFit – Hosted solution. Starting from $49 to $249 per month. Has a flexible template system that will allow you to customize your web store. The shopping cart also has a strong focus on SEO. Has functionality for email marketing and Google feeds.
15. ColdFusion Shopping Cart - You have to download and run the shopping cart software on your servers. The company offers installation service for a fee. Requires MS Access, MSSQL or MySQL database running on your servers. Integrated with shipping services, Quickbooks and payment gateways.
16. Fortune3 – You can download and run the shopping cart on your own. Or you can choose the hosting plans provided by the company. Pricing ranges between $30 an $160 a month with an additional one-time setup fee.
17. Cubecart – Authors of the cart claim that their ecommerce shopping cart is used by “over 1 million stores worldwide”. You can download and run the ecommerce software on your own. Or use the hosting plan offered by the company.
18. Network Solutions – Hosted shopping cart with price ranging from $27/month to $100/month. Additional setup fees. The company claims that their shopping cart is SEO friendly and is integrated with payment gateways. The cart also works with Google Analytics and various other third-party software. (Thanks @Ross for the suggestion)

…. I will be adding to this list over the coming days.

This is a no-brainer for every ecommerce merchant. Upload your product information into Google Product Search. It’s free, and will improve the chances of your product showing up during Google search.

Google Product Search lets online shoppers compare products and their prices across multiple online retailers. Some of the new features introduced in November 2009 are -

• A gallery view which displays images of the product
• A review section with review summaries
• Video product reviews from YouTube

Wall Street Journal reports on a survey conducted by Synovate on the shopping habits of the wealthy across the world; conducted across 8,000 people in 11 markets around the world—the U.S., Brazil, Canada, France, Netherlands, Spain, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates and the U.K. The findings are interesting.

In Hong Kong, India and UAE, luxury shoppers want to see the logo prominently on the product. The reasons mentioned are as follows.

• Since counterfeiting is prevalent in their market, a prominent brand logo suggests the authenticity of the brand
• The nouveau riche in these countries want to flaunt their success to their peers. For them, the brand logos are essential to the display of wealth.

In contrast, luxury shoppers in US and UK behave very differently. They are more likely to choose luxury goods without logos.

• 50% of the respondents in US said that they felt guilty purchasing luxury goods