The Ecommerce Blog

Innovation in the Cloud – 10 Game Changing SaaS Applications

Published on March 7th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

Cloud Computing - Popular SaaS ApplicationsIf you think about how you use software today versus how you did just 10 years ago, my bet is you now use a lot more web-based applications.

A piece of software that runs in your web browser and which stores your data (such as emails or photos) on the Internet is commonly referred to as Software As A Service (SaaS) or cloud-based computing – two buzz words which companies like SalesForce.com and Google use as much as they can to communicate the idea that there’s a paradigm shift taking place in the way software is built and used.

The basic idea is that a few years ago most of the software programs you used (such as Microsoft Office, Outlook, Photoshop and MSN/Yahoo/AOL Messenger) were Windows (or Mac) based applications that you had to install and upgrade. They took up space on your hard drive and couldn’t be used when you were on another computer unless you installed them again.

Today, you can get access to pretty much any type of software using just a web browser – and a lot of the times the software won’t even cost you anything. There’s nothing to install and if your computer crashes you can easily restore an automatically saved draft/backup copy in just a few clicks. This is the basic premise of the SaaS/cloud computing model.

When you think about it, the first real mainstream consumer SaaS application was Hotmail, which Microsoft acquired (nope, they didn’t build it) in 1997 for $400 million. It required just a web browser and you could login from any computer in the world with an Internet connection.

In the last 10 or so years, the shift to the cloud has changed the way companies (including us) build software and the way users consume it. While FaceBook or Gmail are probably the most-used consumer SaaS applications, there are quite a few gems that let you accomplish practically anything online, and I want to share some with you in this post.

BigCommerce, our ecommerce software, is of course delivered in the cloud – your orders, customers, products and preferences are all saved as part of our secure database cluster which you can access through your login from any computer with an Internet connection 24/7. You don’t need to install anything on your computer to use the software and upgrades are made available automatically.

As a software company we’re also big believers in cloud computing ourselves – we run Google Apps for staff in our 3 offices (Sydney, Austin and London). We also run our CRM/email marketing/analytics/SEM/HR/calendars/chat in the cloud. For new team members this can sometimes take quite a bit of getting used to – when you come from using clunky desktop software like Outlook and outdated CRM software like Siebel it’s actually a big shift (albeit a productive one) that can take a few weeks.

To speed up the transition from desktop to SaaS, we’re also doing our part via integrations with other SaaS platforms for email marketing, accounting, analytics, affiliate tracking, shipping, payments and more. A great example is our upcoming integration with Outright.com, Mailchimp and Picnik.com in version 6, and we’ll continue to build out at least a handful of integrations with every major release going forward.

Anyway, I digress. Here are 10 innovative software applications which are making the move from desktop to cloud easier and faster for consumers and businesses:

1. Aviary (think Photoshop, but free and online) -If you don’t want to spend $1,000 on Photoshop and barely use more than the basic features like most people then you’ll love Aviary. Very similar to Photoshop in terms of design, it gives you advanced photo and image editing right from your browser – and it’s free.

2. Grooveshark (think iTunes, but for radio and free) – An amazing streaming music service that’s completely free. You can create and share your own playlists or even enable radio mode which recommends and adds songs to your playlist for you automatically.

3. Google Website Optimizer – The best way to test changes to your website and how they impact your conversion rate, such as different checkout buttons or product photos. Google Website Optimizer is integrated with BigCommerce and can easily increase the conversion rate of an established ecommerce store by at least 10%.

4. Picnik (think Aviary but not as advanced) – Another excellent online photo editor. While not as advanced as Aviary, it’s a lot more popular and has an excellent API, which we’ve used to build photo editing right into the upcoming release of BigCommerce 6.

5. GetSatisfaction – A customer-centric community support platform for businesses. Customers can ask and answer each other’s questions, post ideas and leave testimonials. Used by global brands like Microsoft, Zappos and of course us.

6. SalesForce -The CRM pioneer which is slowly but surely changing how sales team manage their pipelines, opportunities and deals. Often looked at as the business version of Amazon.com in terms of innovation and adoption.

7. CoTweet (think Gmail for Twitter) – Makes Twitter as easy to manage as email. Create multiple logins so your staff can reply to customers on Twitter through one company account. You can also assign follow ups to team members and track previous conversations in a threaded format. We use CoTweet to manage our Twitter account with great success. Oh, and it’s free too.

8. SurveyMonkey – Dead simple surveys with built-in skip logic. We recently used SurveyMonkey to send out a survey asking customers why so many switched to BigCommerce (over 25%). There’s a free plan but it’s only $20 a month for practically unlimited surveys and responses.

9. Box – Pioneering file and document sharing in the cloud. Box makes it easy for both consumers and businesses to upload, share and update all sorts of files. They also have excellent mobile clients for iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones.

10. BigCommerce – And last but not least, our ecommerce platform, BigCommerce. A true cloud-based offering which gives businesses of all sizes everything they need to sell online and attract more customers to their online store. Features like built-in CRM, a suite of marketing tools and easy-to-use content management system turn your website into a platform which can sell, support and attract new customers, as well as evolve with your business needs as they continue to change in response to your own customer’s needs and habits.

What are your favorite SaaS applications? Feel free to share them by posting a comment below!

Interspire Podcast #1: Our email marketing strategy for 250,000+ contacts

Published on January 20th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

Length: 26:40
Overview: A look into the strategies we’ve used to grow our various email lists to over 250,000 people.

Description: In this, our first podcast in a series of many, I discuss the specific strategies we’ve used over the last 6 years to build our list of contacts to over 250,000 people. I talk about the design ideas behind our newsletters as well as how to write content which allows you to relate to your subscribers. I’ll also share a few tricks relating to email compatibility, buyer psychology and company positioning.

Like this podcast? Share it on FaceBook or Twitter.

How to Create a FaceBook Fan Page and Add the Widget to Your BigCommerce Store

Published on December 11th, 2009 by Mitchell Harper

bcfacebookpageWe’ve recently setup our very own BigCommerce fan page on FaceBook (we’d love you to become a fan and connect with us!) and let me be honest with you – it wasn’t a walk in the park. FaceBook now has so many buttons, tabs, applications and settings that it took us quite a bit of time and research to work everything out, but now that we have I wanted to share what we did so you can do it too.

Something like 70% of people in North America have a FaceBook profile and creating your own FaceBook fan page is a great way to connect with your customers. If you have a blog you can automatically setup your fan page so that new blog posts appear on your wall. You can even create a FaceBook fan page widget and put it right into your BigCommerce store, which is what I’m going to teach you how to do in this post.

Creating Your FaceBook Fan Page

The first thing you need to do is create your own personal FaceBook account. If you already have an account then you should use that – and don’t worry, your personal photos, wall, comments, etc won’t appear on your FaceBook fan page – you will simply be the owner of the page.

fbcreatepagebuttonOnce your personal account is setup, go to this page and click the “+ Create Page” button. You’ll now see a few different options for the type of page you want to create. If you’re selling online then you’ll either want to choose “Local” or “Brand, Product or Organization” and then choose an option in the dropdown list that best represents your company, products or services. Finally, enter your company name in the “Name of Page” box and click the “Create Page” button.

Here’s a sample for an online store that sells coffee:

fbpagesetup

Your fan page will now be created and should look something like this:

fbfanpagebasic

Adding Your Logo

Pretty boring, right? Let’s spice it up. Firstly, see the big question mark image at the top of the page? That’s where we want your logo to appear, so move your mouse over it, click the “Change Picture” link and then choose “Upload a Picture” like so:

fbchangepicture

If you don’t have a copy of your logo on your computer then you can download the logo from your BigCommerce store (if you’re using an image as your logo not text through the logo builder). Just go to your store in a web browser and right click on your logo at the top of the page. You should see a “Save Images As…” (or similar) menu option which will let you download your logo to your hard drive.

Here’s how my sample fan page looks with a logo I created in Photoshop:

fbpagewithlogo

Adding New Blog Posts to Your FaceBook Wall Automatically

Next let’s setup our fan page so that our BigCommerce news posts are automatically added to our wall (the wall for your fan page, not your personal FaceBook account). That way you can add news to your BigCommerce store and have it appear on your FaceBook fan page automatically, without you having to do anything.

To do this we need to install the “Notes” application on our fan page, so make sure you’re on your fan page then click the “Applications” bar at the bottom left of the page and choose the “Browse More Applications” link, like this:

fbappdropdown

Now type “Notes” (without the quotes) in the search box at the top left of the page and press enter. A list of applications will appear. Click the first one:

fbappsearch

When the page loads click the “Add to my page” blue link on the left and then choose your new fan page if prompted and click the “Close” button. The “Notes” application will now be available on your fan page, so the next step is to tell the “Notes” application where your blog is.

Your BigCommerce store includes the ability to push your own blog posts (or news items as we call them) which will appear, by default, at the bottom of your home page in the “Recent News” section like this:

fbnewsbc

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to create at least one blog post before you’ll see the “Recent News” section. From your store’s control panel click the “Website Content” tab and choose the “Create a News Item” option. You can then create a news item and it will appear on your store’s home page. Easy!

You should now have at least one news item displaying on your home page. To add your blog posts to your FaceBook fan page automatically we need to get the RSS feed for your BigCommerce blog, which is simply a file containing all of your recent posts. To get this, click on the orange icon next to the “Recent News” heading on your home page:

fbrssbc

After clicking the RSS icon you want to copy the website address from the address bar in your web browser, so right click on the text in your address bar and choose the “Copy” option. Your website address should now look something like this:

http://awesomecoffee.mybigcommerce.com/rss.php?action=newblogs&type=rss

The front part of your website address can be different, but the part in bold above should be the same. Now jump back over to your FaceBook fan page (you might need to click your browser’s back button 3 or 4 times to get back to it) and click the “Edit Page” link under your logo image. Find the “Notes” application and click its “Edit” link, like so:

fbnotesedit

When the page loads you’ll see a link that says “Import a blog >>”. Click on it and in the “Web URL” box right click and choose “Paste” to paste in the address of your BigCommerce RSS feed which you copied in the last step. Finally tick the check box and then click “Start Importing”:

fbimportblog

After the import is complete you’ll see a preview of how the posts will look on your wall. Click the “Confirm Import” button on the right side of the page and you’re done. Any new BigCommerce blog you create will appear on your FaceBook fan page within a few hours of being posted in your store. Here’s how our AwesomeCoffee sample FaceBook fan page looks.

Adding the FaceBook Fans Widget to Your BigCommerce Store

OK now that our fan page is setup let’s create a widget which will show our fans and recent wall posts in our BigCommerce store. The widget is a great (free) way to drive more fans to your FaceBook page. To get the widget, click here and choose the options you’d like to appear in the widget. I recommend including both recent streams and fans. Finally, click the “Other” button to see the JavaScript code which you should copy to your clipboard by right clicking in the box and choosing “Copy”:

fbwidgetpage

Now we need to use BigCommerce’s design mode feature to add the JavaScript of the widget into our store.

Adding the Widget to Your Store Using Design Mode

Design mode is a feature unique to BigCommerce which let’s you edit the layout, text and HTML in your online store. To enable it, login to your store’s control panel and click the “Store Design” link at the top right of the page, then click the “Design Mode” tab. After clicking the checkbox/button you should see the design mode toolbar when viewing your store, like this:

fbdesignmodebutton

For this example I want the FaceBook widget to appear on the left under my newsletter box, so I’ll right click the newsletter box and choose the “Edit Panel” option, like this:

fbmenu

A window will now open which contains the HTML for the newsletter box. Don’t worry – you don’t have to edit any HTML. Just paste the JavaScript from the FaceBook widget at the very bottom of the HTML code, like this:

fbpaneledit

Click the “Save” button at the top of the window and then when you reload your store’s home page in your web browser you should see the FaceBook fan widget like so:

fbwidgettoowide

Now as you can see, the widget is too wide. We need to make a small change to the JavaScript of the widget, so right click on the newsletter box again, click “Edit Panel” and notice the “width” attribute which I’ve highlighted in yellow below:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php/en_US”></script><script type=”text/javascript”>FB.init(”d7f985e0ed5b8318daa7c52be5710748″);</script><fb:fan profile_id=”165603319018″ stream=”1″ connections=”10″ width=”300″></fb:fan><div style=”font-size:8px; padding-left:10px”><a href=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/BigCommerce/165603319018″>BigCommerce on Facebook</a> </div>

Change it from 300 to 160, like this:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php/en_US”></script><script type=”text/javascript”>FB.init(”d7f985e0ed5b8318daa7c52be5710748″);</script><fb:fan profile_id=”165603319018″ stream=”1″ connections=”10″ width=”160″></fb:fan><div style=”font-size:8px; padding-left:10px”><a href=”http://www.facebook.com/pages/BigCommerce/165603319018″>BigCommerce on Facebook</a> </div>

Now click the “Save” button and reload your store’s home page in the browser. It should now sit perfectly!

fbwidgetfinal

In this example I decided not to include the stream in the widget and just the fans, and I’ve used our BigCommerce fan page for the widget in this example. As I mentioned earlier, it’s quite a complicated process to create a FaceBook fan page, but luckily it’s easy to embed the widget into your BigCommerce store.

If you do setup your own FaceBook fan page and integrate it into your store we’d love to see it – just post a link to your store in the comments below! Finally, don’t forget to become a fan of BigCommerce on FaceBook :)