e-Commerce: Complete. Configured. Connected.
Charlie Born
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Homepage: http://www.plimus.com
Posts by Charlie Born
Introducing BlueSnap
Apr 3rd
Today, we proudly entered the era of open eCommerce with the launch of BlueSnap, a new company focused on providing enterprise-size vendors of digital goods and content a complete eCommerce infrastructure and payment solution. BlueSnap is the result of an investment last year by Great Hill Partners, focused on bringing to market flexible monetization solutions that enable companies to quickly and cost-effectively implement a compliant and secure online business environment.
Based on more than a decade of experience helping companies of all sizes deploy eCommerce solutions, BlueSnap’s vision is to become the “go-to” commerce provider in the age of always on connectivity. As Hagai Tal, BlueSnap’s CEO, says, “We literally grew up in this industry, and as we gained experience, our vendors became more successful. BlueSnap is the result of that experience and growth, and represents an evolution of eCommerce technology that provides our customers a virtual ‘app store’ of BlueSnap products that can be combined to design the solution that best suits their needs.” For existing Plimus vendors reading this blog post – operationally nothing changes for you. Plimus will be a service of BlueSnap. As a current Plimus vendor, Plimus.Com will continue to be your website for support, information, and questions. The Plimus payment platform will remain the core platform to help you sell your digital goods and services online.
BlueSnap supports eCommerce business models for virtual ownership of services or content – things like subscriptions to premium online video or audio content, recurring membership to an online gaming site or other cloud-based services – as well as more traditional purchase models. We’ll be going into more detail on our product offer in future posts, but, in short, BlueSnap will offer a suite of five customizable solutions, including:
- BlueSnap Full Service Commerce – technology and expertise to build enterprise class online commerce capabilities
- BlueSnap Custom Commerce – builds on BlueSnap’s Full Service Commerce solution, with the addition of specialized functionality from the company’s best-in-class ecosystem of partners
- BlueSnap Content Commerce – solutions to monetize online content, SaaS and cloud services, including industry-specific solutions including CloudTV+Plus, a unique IPTV entertainment solution
- BlueSnap/Plimus Self-Service Commerce – a continuation of Plimus’ 10-year leadership as the “do it yourself” eCommerce platform for small and medium sized businesses, now a BlueSnap service
- Commerce Integration – channel and developer targeted services to support integrated commerce and embed payments, eCommerce and online marketing in existing applications to create new revenue streams
Today’s announcement has been a long time in the making and there’s still more to come. You can learn more about these developments and keep updated on BlueSnap’s evolution of open eCommerce by visiting our website at www.bluesnap.com. You may also follow The BlueSnap “Make It Happen” blog at BlueSnap Blog
[l1]Insert link to blog when bluesnap.com goes live.
Promoting a New Product Online
Mar 19th
Our vendors are constantly offering new products and services on their websites. Regardless of the product, vendors always do a launch to raise awareness of the brand. Product launches are more than creative ideas, however, vendors need to conduct a launch that addresses a wide market segment and speaks to multiple audiences. It’s important to leverage marketing tactics that provide consistent and comparable data for all launches, helping make improvements from one to the next.
In a recent Practical eCommerce article, “How to Promote a New Product on Your Ecommerce site,” Armando Roggio discusses four tips for promoting a new brand online:
- A Common Thread – Begin with a common strategic goal. It’s imperative that this goal (or set of goals) have a common thread. This allows us to compare the results from each launch. With this data, we are able to improve the goals moving forward.
- Common Measurement – Include a general set of data points that are regularly tracked from launch to launch, such as website traffic, user time on website or total number of click-throughs. Once again, this data will be valuable to identify room for improvement.
- Common Resources – Always use the same set of resources – for example, the same email lists or Facebook or Twitter followers. This way, vendors leverage their existing resources and help increase the list with each new launch.
- Tactics are the Ingredients – By combining these ingredients and making the perfect recipe, vendors can and will be hugely successful.
So what do you think of the list? Do you leverage these tips when conducting a new product launch?
10 Ways to Optimize Your Website for Google
Mar 13th
Vendors are always seeking new, innovative ways to optimize their websites. With e-Commerce sales continuing to grow each year, vendors must understand the importance of creating a secure and frictionless website, and employ methods for converting browsers into buyers.
Leading technology blog Mashable recently wrote an article highlighting 10 ways vendors can optimize their websites specifically for Google SEO. While we think there is more to optimization than just this list, however, it’s a good start.
According to Mashable, here are the “10 Ways to Optimize Your Ecommerce Site for Google Search”:
- Panda Loves Humans: A recent update to Google’s algorithm, Panda, now incorporates user experiences and interactions. For example, time spent onsite and the variety of incoming site traffic impact a website’s Google ranking.
- Control Duplicate Content: Duplicate content, while common for e-Commerce sites, will lower the Google ranking. Be sure to keep content fresh and new.
- Frontload and Focus: Focus your efforts on pushing and marketing a few key items rather than the entire store.
- Quality over Quantity: Research the key words that are driving users to your page. Instead of paying for Google’s Keyword Tool … incorporate these targeted words into website copy for SEO.
- Getting Cutting Edge with Google Adwords: Don’t forget the new Adwords offerings – lots of new ones to try – including mobile targeting and retargeting.
- Explore all Types of Content: Use many different tags, keywords, tags, recommendations, etc. to distribute your product and help drive sales.
- Keep it in the (Google) Family: If Google is the ultimate selling ground for you, leverage Google products such as YouTube, Google+, etc. Plain and simple.
- Be a Social Butterfly: Be active on Google+ to help search engine optimization.
- Google Places: This is only for brick and mortar stores … not relevant for us.
- Use Schema.org: Often, online sites are build from data converted to HTML code and are not optimized for Googlebot. Schema.org helps give search engines access to your data – most importantly, Google crawl.
So that’s the list … pretty good stuff. Outside of the 10 tips listed above, it’s important that vendors build websites that enable a seamless transaction allowing consumers to buy without unnecessary hassle. Key components of a frictionless website are auto-login, a secure payment process, one-click purchasing and ability to buy in multiple currencies. We understand that the end result for our vendors is to sell their goods and services and it’s our mission to give them the tools to increase their revenue streams.
So what do you think? Any tips missing? You can read the full article, written by Stacey Politi, by clicking here.
What Happens to Virtual Goods Once a Game Closes?
Feb 15th
Last week, word of a virtual goods lawsuit against Google resurfaced in the news. Originally filed last fall, angry players of the game “SuperPoke Pets” are seeking damages for their class-action suit against the game’s owner, Google. “SuperPoke Pets” allowed players to chose their favorite pet (dog, cat, frog, etc.) and care for it online by purchasing “gold” with real-life money. Using the virtual gold, users could purchase special items such as dog bones, food and treats. for their pets.
“SuperPoke Pets” was created by Slide, a gaming company that was acquired by Google in August 2010. Last summer, it was announced that the game would stop selling gold for virtual goods news that caused a wave of blacklash and crazed spending by gamers.
According to the article, “Virtual Pet Owners Sue Google Over Lost ‘Gold’” by Paidcontent.org, “… some players rushed to stockpile virtual items after the company announced that it would stop offering gold-based transactions. These players hoped to sell their items on a secondary market (basically, a Craigslist of sorts for items like virtual doggy bones) but those hopes were dashed when Google said it would kibosh the game.”
This is an interesting discussion as it marks one of the first litigation filed surrounding virtual goods sales and the value of the money used to purchase them. The dispute over the SuperPoke virtual goods and similar online currencies and the items purchased with them has, until now been a thing of the future – consumers never seemed to worry about making their purchases or the risk involved. As you know, the virtual goods and services market is large and we’re interested to see how challenges like this lawsuit are dealt with in court.
As a selling platform for virtual goods and services, we understand the value of providing buyers with safe and secure transactions. We ensure that all sellers on our platforms meet all business and industry standards. It’s important that Plimus’ sellers enable a frictionless shopping experience with a secure checkout process.
This lawsuit was transferred to federal court in San Jose last week, and we’ll continue to track its development and keep you posted on the news.
The Other 99% Of Entrepreneurs by Guest Blogger, Sramana Mitra
Feb 9th
This week we are pleased to have Sramana Mitra join us as guest blogger. Sramana is a noted entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley and is an author of several business books and a very active blogger as well. You can find out more information on Sramana at the end of this post. Of note, in 2010, Sramana started a program called “1 Million by I Million,” the goal of which is to help, through her virtual program, 1 million entrepreneurs achieve 1 Million or more in revenue – by the year 2020. At Plimus, we have a simple business philosophy; we make money only when our sellers make money. We think Sramana and her 1 Million program is a natural fit for our sellers, and we hope many of you will take advantage of what this program has to offer. So, without further delay – Sramana welcome.
Thank you Plimus for inviting me to blog to your followers today. I want to talk with you today about my recent piece Reengineering Capitalism where I highlighted a phenomenon that the global entrepreneurship ecosystem is paying very little attention to: Over 99% of entrepreneurs who seek funding get rejected. Yet, the entire world is focused on the 1% that is “fundable.”
The media, when pitched a startup story, is interested in who funded the venture. They seldom ask how much revenue the company has or if it is profitable. Incubators take pride in how exclusive they are and how many “deals” they “reject.” Angels and VCs, of course, discard most of their “deal flow.” And entrepreneurs? They seem to have confused the definition of entrepreneurship altogether. Entrepreneurship, they mistakenly believe, equals financing!
This is wrong.
There are numerous stories of successful businesses that have been built without a penny of outside financing. I want to share with you some wisdom from the heroes of the other 99%. They live in a world of entrepreneurs who enjoy their freedom and are not looking to sell their businesses or take them public. You could say these businesses are built-to-enjoy, as opposed to built-to-flip. Needless to say, outside financing, by definition, requires an “exit,” and for most businesses, that means a sale to a larger company.
But the entrepreneurs I will introduce you to today are not interested in selling their companies. They just want to continue doing what they are doing: building value.
Meet Girish Navani, CEO of eClinicalWorks, a super-successful healthcare IT company based in Boston. He has never taken any funding but has built a $100 million-plus business by delivering value to customers.
Girish says, “I don’t foresee leaving the company for at least 10 years. I would like to leave it a private company with no external investors and absolutely no thoughts whatsoever about Wall Street. I am having fun and take great pride in my freedom. There is no reason I would give that up. We are a cash flow positive company. We have recurring revenues and no debt. We have a large customer base that is growing exponentially.” [You can read Girish’s full story here.]
Meet Andrew Fox, CEO of ClubPlanet, a $30 million-plus nightclub ticketing services company that is also 100% founder-owned. Andrew loves nightlife and says, “The business is very successful and has a lot of room for growth. I think that we have a lot of suitors out there who mention really ridiculous numbers at times. This is such a great lifestyle business that I don’t know if I could ever sell it. All of my previous businesses I built to sell, but this time around you might find me right here in thirty years. I hope by then it is $300 million a year. Based on our growth trajectory, we are seeing really good signs of improvement. [You can read more of Andrew’s story here.]
Then there is the oft-cited Sridhar Vembu, who has turned all tables with Zoho, a $100 million-plus SaaS company that competes with Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com without a penny in outside capital.
I have had numerous conversations with Sridhar over the years, and each time he reinforces the same basic philosophy: “I want to build this without outside capital. I don’t want to sell the company.” [You can learn more about Sridhar’s methods here.]
Each of these entrepreneurs could raise money in a nanosecond given how much success they’ve had. The fact that they don’t gives you an idea about the advantages of the self-financed, organic growth model. No matter how much Wall Street gyrates, these entrepreneurs experience and demonstrate a level of stability and steadiness that is exemplary.
Imagine if the American economy had many more such steady private companies that are far removed from the movements of the speculative markets, how much more robust things would be? It really is time that the media starts celebrating more of these kinds of heroes: the other 99%.
And for young entrepreneurs, as you evaluate role models to emulate, perhaps it is not a bad idea to also consider some of these lesser-known heroes. They can give you a picture of the realities of an alternate, deeply satisfying universe.
In conclusion, I want to leave you with a 1:49 minute video message. Please listen to it, and stop for a moment to think about your path forward. Is a single-minded focus on fund-raising your only option?
Introducing the New Plimus PayPal Option
Jan 16th
Generally on this blog we post industry observations. And today – we are really excited to be announcing a new PayPal option from Plimus that we think leads the industry. We know our existing vendors will be happy to see it and new vendors will find a distinct advantage over other PayPal integrations. On Jan. 15, we introduced a new approach to PayPal sales that we know you are going to like. This solution delivers all the e-commerce features you have come to expect from Plimus, but with an added layer of benefits: security, portability and accelerated access to your revenues.
All you need to get started is your Plimus seller account and a PayPal Business, or Premier, account. You enter your PayPal API credentials into your Plimus account, and voila! Your customers can now buy anything you offer – including subscription options – and your revenues are immediately delivered direct to your PayPal account. All the normal post-sales support you rely on from Plimus – from reporting to 24/7 customer support, for invoicing to dispute management, from reporting to refunds – is still in play, but you have access to your revenues immediately.
Using your own PayPal account gives you the confidence and security to control your own PayPal destiny. Build your own independent history and reputation as a PayPal seller. Manage your own account, and use it elsewhere on the Web where you choose. And know that all those subscribers are associated with your account, so you can work directly with them, any time it makes sense for your business.
The cost for this feature? Exactly the same as for any other payment method offered through Plimus. In fact, to make sure you get what you expect, Plimus dynamically deducts the fees PayPal charges from our rate, every time a sale is completed.
We are confident this update will have a really positive impact on your business. Having your PayPal revenues in hand the moment a sale closes gives you the opportunity to immediately re-invest in driving even more sales; and the control you have over your own PayPal account gives you confidence that you have secure and portable control over your own customer base.
So grab your PayPal API credentials – or open a PayPal Business, or Premier, account if you don’t already have one – login to the Plimus Control Panel, and get started today.
More detail on the www.Plimus.com website.
Plimus is exhibiting at Affiliate Summit West Jan. 9 – 10
Jan 9th
Happy New Year everyone!
2011 was a great year with a growing Plimus team, new customers and affiliate sellers, and the acquisition by Great Hill Partners. We look forward to what’s on the horizon this year and guarantee it will improve our customers’ bottom line.
There is no better way to kick-start the year than a trip to Las Vegas. Plimus is exhibiting at the Affiliate Summit West show taking place today continuing through Jan. 10 at Caesars Palace. Plimus is showcasing our industry leading e-Commerce processing platform for digital commerce, which services more than 7,000 sellers and 85,000 affiliates. Come see us at the booth!
As a reminder, the Affiliate Summit West is a three-day conference for affiliate merchants, vendors and networks to come together and discuss the latest trends and information from affiliate marketing experts. At the show, Plimus’ affiliate experts are on hand to demonstrate how to leverage the Plimus Marketplace e-Commerce platform for maximized conversions and optimized return on investment. We are looking forward to the many organic conversations that always arise during the networking session.
I’ve included additional details about the show below. If you’re interested in scheduling a meeting at the show, just stop by the booth. We hope to see you there!
Affiliate Summit West 2012
When: Jan. 8 – 10, 2012
Where: Caesars Palace Hotel
3570 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, Nevada
Booth No. 405 / 407
And once again, Happy New Year from the entire Plimus team!
ComScore Reports e-Commerce Spending Up 15 Percent
Dec 20th
It’s no secret that the holiday shopping season is in full force. With only a few shopping days left, consumers are scrambling to buy gifts for friends and family. According to a recent ComScore report, however, this holiday season has been a little different than previous years. This year, many consumers have gotten their shopping done early, and e-Commerce sales in the United States already have reached $25 billion, up 15 percent from last year.
The information was compiled from online sales conducted the first 39 days of the November / December holiday shopping season. More recently, during the week of Dec. 5, total e-Commerce sales reached $5.9 billion, a 15 percent increase from just one week before. This year also has seen several days with more than $1 billion in total e-Commerce sales. We’re interested to see what the remaining sales number reveal and exactly how big e-Commerce spending will get this holiday season.
As you may have seen, Plimus’ recent “What’s on Your Virtual Wish List This Holiday Season?” survey found that consumers are spending more money online than ever before online. Interestingly, their purchases have expanded beyond physical goods as virtual goods spending increased from 21 percent in 2010 to 24 percent this year. And, 17 percent more consumers have given someone a virtual item as a gift so far this year – have you?
To learn more about the ComScore findings, read the full article by Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat, “E-commerce Sales Hit $25B, Up 15 Percent.”
A Year in Review: 2011 Plimus Highlight Reel
Dec 15th
With the New Year right around the corner, we’re looking forward to further growth and success in 2012. It is impossible to look forward, however, without taking a quick look back to recognize the significant achievements Plimus made during the past year. Adding numerous customers to our portfolio, substantially increasing sales for online vendors and hosting our first-ever digital commerce conference are just a few highlights from 2011.
Among our biggest accomplishments is the wide variety of vendors added to our stable of customers during the past year. Hundreds of new vendors in the software as a service (SaaS) and Cloud-based services industries including SohoOS, DudaMobile, Justinmind, BabyFirstTV.com and Perfecto Mobile have selected Plimus to help them deliver cloud-based subscription services. Even better – our partnership with these vendors has helped them realize an increase of more than 20 percent in revenue.
Using the Plimus Buy AnywareTM API and Plimus’ unique marketing and sales features, sellers in 2011 generally saw:
• An 11 percent increase in shopping cart stickiness as customers completed the transaction more often rather than leaving items in the cart;
• A 19 percent increase in transactions processed daily from returning customers resulting in overall increased revenue.
Also in 2011, Plimus expanded its relationships within the payments industry. Not only did we add several regional payment methods, including Boleto Bancario in Brazil, and UKash, PaySafeCard and Wallie Card in Europe, we also hosted the first Take Charge 2011 Digital Commerce Summit. This successful one-day event attracted more than 700 people, including C-level executives and entrepreneurs who participated in discussions around the opportunities and challenges of conducting business on the Internet.
Arguably one of the most notable events of 2011 came in August when Great Hill announced its acquisition of Plimus. We’re confident that this relationship will help fuel growth as Plimus expands its focus on its client’s successful monetization of an increasingly global, complex and expanding online and mobile world. Plimus’ vision of e-Commerce 3.0 and “Cloud Commerce” that leverages an open, frictionless e-Commerce approach will be central to upcoming solutions.
Looking ahead to 2012, Plimus has plans for new platform features that will enable vendors to increase close rates and gain competitive advantage. Currently in beta testing, initial results of the new solutions have resulted in sellers experiencing an improvement in close rates of more than 25 percent.
While we’re eager to roll out this platform and announce several other developments during 2012, we can promise one thing will NOT change. We will continue to offer innovative features enabling Plimus vendors to see significant improvements to their bottom line.
Plimus’ Second Annual Virtual Holiday Shopping Survey
Dec 5th
Today, Plimus issued the results of the “Second Annual Virtual Holiday Shopping Survey,” which highlights the differences between consumer’s online shopping habits this holiday season versus their spending habits in 2010.
This holiday season is about giving virtual goods and services! Interestingly, results found that consumers are spending more money online than ever before and their purchases have expanded beyond physical goods. In fact, virtual goods spending increased from 21 percent in 2010 to 24 percent in 2011. Similarly, 17 percent more consumers have given someone a virtual item as a gift so far this year.
Our survey was conducted informally via social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter. The survey participants were entered into a drawing for a chance to win a $100 gift card for their holiday shopping. To learn more, read the entire release by clicking here.
