The Moran Group Presents OrderDynamics, eCommerce SaaS Provider at Boston Trade Show

The Moran Group is the parent company to TMG Exhibits. At every tradeshow at the Boston Convention Center we showcase the best of the Exhibits and give them a spot to pitch their products well after the show has ended. We hope you find their products or services as helpful and unique as we did.

The team put together a brief video interview of OrderDynamics at Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in June, 2009.

AlevaHealth.com Moves 7 Sites to OrderDynamics eCommerce SaaS Platform

Toronto, ON - OrderDynamics, On-Demand eCommerce Solution provider, announces recent customer acquisition, AlevaHealth.com, operator of seven eCommerce websites and a Michigan retail location.

AlevaHealth.com is a division of American Medical Services which was founded in 1957 by Joseph L. Gaskins. Over the last 10 years, AlevaHealth.com has seen significant growth by selling its healthcare products on seven different websites all powered with different technology from X-Cart, StoneEdge, Yahoo!, and Amazon. Each site caters to a specific sub-segment but supports Aleva's mission of "a fresh idea on health". Accordingly, each site is uniquely branded and provides a different user experience, product set, and promotions. With over 17,000 SKUs and servicing up to 350 customers daily, Aleva has established a dominate market position for leading brands such as " Jobst, Sigvaris, Mediven, Juzo, Activa, Therafirm and Futuro". As Aleva continues growth through a multi-site strategy, the need for a unified eCommerce platform has become crucial.

"We have seen significant growth across our websites, requiring a holistic eCommerce platform strategy that gives us a solid operating foundation and leading frontend enablement features to fuel growth." Derek Gaskins, President of American Medical Services. "The OrderDynamics eCommerce SaaS solution provides us a single backend to manage each website independently and allows us to create completely custom experiences for each brand" continues Gaskins. AlevaHealth.com currently runs each website on different frontend platforms causing significant overhead for back office tasks. OrderDynamics will first migrate the website: www.healthylegs.com to their platform from Amazon including all product, order, and customer data, external feeds, and design. OrderDynamics will ease migration resources for Aleva by performing data migrations, site implementation, and project management. HealthyLegs.com will also benefit from a superior Order Management System (OMS), which is built-in to the OrderDynamics platform and easily integrates multi-channel activities such as phone orders, shopping sites, ERP, Amazon, and eBay.

HealthyLegs.com will re-launch on the OrderDynamics platform in Q1 2010. "Aleva's business plan sees increased websites and microsites to further entrench them into markets that need their services." " says Michael Turcsanyi, VP of Sales at OrderDynamics. "OrderDynamics will help Derek and the team realize their vision for years to come by delivering the latest frontend technology and keeping back office tasks efficient".

About AlevaHealth.com:
AlevaHealth.com, a division of American Medical Services, is a leading retailer of healthcare products. Operating its Pontiac Michigan location since 1957, AlevaHealth.com has since expanded online through its 7 eCommerce websites carrying leading brands such as Jobst, Sigvaris, Mediven, Juzo, Activa, Therafirm and Futuro. AlevaHealth.com lists over 17,000 SKUs on their sites and stocks nearly $2.5 million in inventory, enabling 99% of orders to be shipped same or next business day.

eCommerce SaaS Platforms, 10 Provider Truths

A recent Internet Retailer Survey showed over 33% of online retailers are focusing their 2010 technology spending on their eCommerce platform. With over 47% deciding against in-house or internally hosted options, retailers need a way to evaluate hosted vs. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eCommerce solutions.

This article provides a checklist for retailers who are evaluating SaaS based eCommerce solutions as part of their re-platforming project. These are the characteristics of a true software-as-a-service (SaaS) eCommerce provider.

The platform decision is arguably the most important, complex, and costly part of a retailers 3-5 year investment cycle. It is a decision that is often put off or easily put on hold due to other priorities or the risks involved. And it is a decision that very few online retailers are qualified to make on their own since it has such broad implications across technology, marketing, operations, and sales.

What is SaaS?
A logical place to start. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a delivery model alternative for software companies to license their software "on-demand", typically delivered over the Internet using standard web protocols. In most cases, the SaaS provider has software running their own servers in a data center they manage, along with all aspects of the application. This is opposed to licensing software "off-the-shelf".

eCommerce SaaS Providers are companies that deliver their eCommerce software platform on their proprietary infrastructure. True SaaS eCommerce providers can offer a much higher level of service overall to retailers over in-house or third party hosted models.

The "Service" in SaaS
Beyond the software delivery side of SaaS, and more important for retailers to understand, is the provider's ability to actually provide an ongoing service. The SaaS provider is not coming in, building out a website, charging licensing fees and leaving. A SaaS provider makes their money over a 3-5 year period and is accountable for keeping the website online and fast every second of every minute. A tall order for just plain old software companies and is the fundamental difference with SaaS providers over custom eCommerce solutions or third party hosted systems.

1. Redundant Server Infrastructure
True eCommerce SaaS providers have redundant server farms with no single points of failure. The SaaS platform will offer load balancing, clustering, and automatic fail over for all server tiers. In all likelihood the SaaS platform will house more than one website and Client (called a multi-tenant architecture) - this is not a problem providing they can guarantee performance, security, and availability in a Service Level Agreement.

Beware: We often hear of eCommerce Systems Integrators proposing one or two servers as "ongoing hosting" instead of proposing robust, high-availability architectures.

2. New Features and Upgrades Included
We are not talking about "18% per year maintenance". True eCommerce SaaS providers will deliver several releases per year of new platform features requested by their Clients. These features will be rolled into the software code base and seamlessly released to all Clients avoiding costly "customization fees".

Beware: Software License Maintenance is often used as a placeholder during the sales process for new features, support, service, or other.

3. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Included
True eCommerce SaaS providers have a "service culture". They are used to earning their money over a 3-5 year period of time vs. one-time upfront fees. As a result, they will guarantee Uptime, Performance, Transaction Integrity, and the Support Process in an SLA with the retailer. These SLAs should provide clear monthly reports on the status and a penalty structure for not meeting the targets.

Beware: Companies may try to use the 3rd party hosting company's SLA in place of an agreement with the solution provider.

4. PCI Security
Payment Card Industry compliance is something that all online retailers must understand and be able to demonstrate. True eCommerce SaaS providers will maintain PCI-DSS compliance and provide controls within their platforms to make compliance easier for the merchant.

Beware: Providers should guarantee they will maintain PCI compliance in their Master Services Agreement.

5. eCommerce Account Management
Outside of 24x7 support, true eCommerce SaaS providers will offer a dedicated account management resource to their Clients. This person is named on their account and is available as a single point of contact and is accountable for customer satisfaction at no extra cost.

Beware: It is important the person assigned to your account is not motivated by selling more services.

6. Platform Configuration
True eCommerce SaaS platforms offer rich features that can be turned on or off (configurable) as part of the implementation and by the merchant on-demand. This includes the ability for complex merchandising, search, promotions, shipping, checkout, payment, and other tools to be available to the Client as needed at no extra charge.

Beware: Many eCommerce providers will build a custom platform and website that offers limited configurable parameters after it's delivered.

7. Rapid Deployment
Since a true eCommerce SaaS provider already has existing infrastructure and software running live, this drastically reduces project times and allows the retailer (and the provider) to focus on the most strategic parts of a project (User Experience and Integration).

Beware: To reduce project risk, retailers must provide more time for testing (technology, procedures, etc.) for in-house or third party hosted solutions than with SaaS solutions.

8. NOC Monitoring and Performance
True eCommerce SaaS platforms have a software and hardware architecture that is scalable, allowing for quick provisioning of additional capacity to handle peak demands. To stay on top of capacity, SaaS providers are continuously monitoring eCommerce websites using global availability and performance monitoring tools (Gomez, Keynote, Uptrends) and have a Network Operations Center (NOC) that can proactively stay ahead of load issues.

Beware: Many IT departments are just not staffed to handle 24x7x365 monitoring or have the resources to properly architect a scalable solution.

9. Rental License vs. One-Time Lump Sum
Since SaaS providers license their eCommerce platforms "on-demand" vs. lump sum licensing, most provide a monthly based fee to "rent" the license. SaaS licensing models vary, some which are based on transactions, commissions, users, products, bandwidth or flat monthly fees. In almost every case, the ongoing monthly fees with a SaaS provider will be higher but the one-time fees will be significantly lower (than a licensed / hosted or custom build hosted). Typically the monthly fee is a blend of License and Delivery of the service.

Beware: The monthly fee for SaaS providers is not "hosting", it is a mix of licensing and service delivery (as defined in the plan and SLA). Go back to checklist #1, the managed hosting fees alone for a redundant setup will make the SaaS fees very reasonable.

10. Disaster Recovery - Business Continuity
As a provider of business critical services to online retailers, true eCommerce SaaS providers will maintain a full disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plan (BCP). This will protect the merchant by reducing possible downtime and data loss caused by a disaster in the data center.

Beware: Backups can be part of a DR strategy, but are not the plan alone. It is critical that the platform provider has a replicated environment to recover service if needed.

For more information contact: Michael Turcsanyi

OrderDynamics at IRCE 2010 - Booth 379

The Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2010 is in Chicago at the McCormick Place Campus in June. The conference promises to deliver practical and action-oriented tactics to help retailers "reboot" after recovering from the worst recession since WWII. The 4 day event (last day workshop) will offer topics and workshops that focus on "Reinvesting, Refreshing, and Recommitting" anticipating double-digit growth rates from 2010. OrderDynamics is excited to exhibit at the show again this year. We look forward to participating in the sessions and seeing our Clients and partners. More to come as we prepare for the show! We'll be located at booth 379. See the list of speakers

Multi-Channel Retailer, Walkingonacloud.com, Selects OrderDynamics as eCommerce Platform for Growth

Online Shoe Retailer Selects OrderDynamics to Streamline Operations and Convert More Traffic

OrderDynamics, Canada's leading On-Demand eCommerce Solution provider, announces recent customer acquisition, Walkingonacloud.com, a Canadian Shoe retailer specializing in comfortable footwear through over 30 retail locations.

Walkingonacloud.com has been operating US and Canadian B2C eStores for over seven years. Specializing in "comfortable footwear brands", Walkingonacloud.com carries over 7,000 SKUs and leading footwear from top brands such as Geox, UGG, Ecco, and Rockport. Over the years, Walkingonacloud.com has achieved very strong search engine placement for highly competitive keywords for the shoe brands they carry. This has resulted in high of volumes traffic from organic searches and strong order growth, which has put a strain on their eCommerce platform, negatively affecting their conversion rate.

"Our top priorities for the website include diversifying our traffic sources and implementing tactics to raise our conversion rate to be more inline with industry averages" comments Mark Zuckier, Co-Founder and President of Walkingonacloud.com. "The OrderDynamics on-demand eCommerce solution gives us superior technology and additional resources to help us manage our website proactively." Walkingonacloud.com currently runs on a custom-built system which has become costly to maintain and does not have the features of a mid-market platform. OrderDynamics will migrate the Walkingonacloud.com website to their platform including all product, order, and customer data, external feeds, and design. Most importantly, all existing organic search rankings will be preserved through a comprehensive website scraping a redirect process. "Once we reviewed the detailed website migration process, we were immediately comfortable with moving forward" continues Zuckier. Walkingonacloud.com will also benefit from a superior Order Management System (OMS), which is part of the OrderDynamics platform and easily integrates multi-channel activities such as phone orders, shopping sites, ERP, and Amazon and eBay.

Walkingonacould.com will re-launch on the OrderDynamics platform in Q1 2010. "We are excited about the Walkingonacloud.com project." says Michael Turcsanyi, VP of Sales at OrderDynamics. "Walkingonacloud.com has all the ingredients to achieve significant revenue growth in the next 3 years and OrderDynamics looks forward to helping make this a reality".

About Walkingonacloud.com
Walkingonacloud.com is a leading online footwear retailer of brands such as Rockport, Ecco, Mephisto, Geox, UGG and carries over 7,000 SKUs. Walking On A Cloud operates over 30 retail stores in major shopping centers in Canada.

Happy Holidays from OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Team

The team at OrderDynamics would like to thank our Clients, Partners, and Vendors for making 2009 a fantastic year. The eCommerce industry continues to grow at double-digit rates amidst our darkest economic times, providing confidence to retailers looking to invest in their online sales channel. However, retailers must proceed cautiously and make investment decisions wisely. For many, the importance of selecting a more robust eCommerce platform will outweigh costly "add-on services" in an attempt to build sales. We look forward to talking with you about your plans.

This past year, OrderDynamics has made significant investments in our On-Demand eCommerce Platform technology, making it the perfect choice for high-growth retailers that are being held back by their platform.

From all of us, we wish you a Happy Holidays and prosperous New Year!

Sincerely,
OrderDynamics Team
1 (866) 559-8123

P.S. Be sure to visit our booth at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition, Chicago in June.

Implementing eCommerce Personalization is Easier and More Affordable with the Right eCommerce Platform

A recent Internet Retailer Study published in November revealed the implementation of advanced eCommerce techniques could reach as high as 74% of a retailer's eCommerce technology budget for 2010. Out of the 193 retailers surveyed, 48% are looking to change eCommerce platforms, with over 20% looking at Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eCommerce solutions.

High on the priority list for spending (37%) is Personalization tactics, including ratings and reviews and other personalization techniques. Other techniques in the study included forms of Content Management, eMail Marketing, and Multi-Channel integration.

With the right eCommerce platform, retailers can implement advanced eCommerce tactics easily and affordably. Here are some examples of how retailers can implement Personalization Techniques on their eStore.

Avoid Overcomplicated Tactics

OrderDynamics is designed for online retailers and wholesalers (B2B & B2C) who have out grown their current eCommerce solution. These businesses enage us because they've "hit the wall" causing growth challenges - either through a lack of adequate frontend features or inability to streamline backend processes involved with high volume websites.

When engaged by OrderDynamics, these businesses are educated on what features will immediately bring the biggest benefit - allowing them to mature into the more sophisticated features over time.

The issue of personalization can quickly become large, complex, and expensive so tackling basic concepts, as described here, is a great way to provide a personalized website experience without breaking the bank.

“Know your client”; Build Around the Little Things they Value

All of the tactics we look at here should be part of any mid-market eCommerce platform and, if implemented correctly, should lead to increased sales through qualified traffic and converting more visitors.

1. Identify Returning Customers

Recognizing a returning shopper will make repeat buying easier and will naturally lead to additional sales. Since these customers are already qualified, you want to make their subsequent purchases hassle free.

Tips include:

• Cart and Wish List Persistence
• Display user name (“Welcome Back: John Smith” – Not you?)
• Provide easy re-order options (hold and present order history)
• Allow for auto-shipping of consumables
• Merchandise based on past purchases
• Merchandise based on recently viewed, search history, and cart contents

2. Invite Customers Back

Online retailers needs to take advantage of the deep business information coming from their website. The leading platforms that include Order Management Systems (OMS) automatically captures key data on each order and everything about that customer. By creating and scheduling targeting eMails (OrderDynamics built-in email marketing engine is called eCast Manager), retailers can create highly relevant messages back to their Clients. These messages should be a mix of customer service and new promotions that motivate them to come back to the website.

Tips include:
• Highly targeted audiences (filter recipients from data in the OMS database)
• Notifications of new lines or product replacements (or categories / brands)
• Offer incentives to return (coupons and other promotions)
• Notice of items in a persistent wish list
• Notice of items in a persistent cart
• Rate and review previous purchases (specify product)
• Notice of related items or accessories related to a purchase
• Recent sign-up but no purchases

3. Navigation Preferences

Nothing is more annoying than a website not saving preferences that you’ve taken the time to set. Since shoppers will likely navigate your eStore uniquely, the ability to store these preferences is important as is the ability for a shopper to clear saved settings.

Tips include:
• Listings per page
• Grid listing formats
• Categories, Brands, Products of interest
• Recently viewed and searched
• Addresses (Billing, Shipping, Multiple)
• Profile Picture

4. Social Network Feeds

When designing a social networking strategy (or “Social Commerce”), it is important to think about what information you can deliver to your target customer that will incent them to 1) pass that information on (concept of "going viral") and/or 2) make them visit your website. Simply creating a Blog, Facebook or Twitter page is not going to result in revenue.

Tips include:
• Build community through blogging or forums
• Create articles of interest or educational value
• Post promotions to Twitter with links back to Products, Category, Brand pages
• Allow shoppers to post purchases to their Facebook wall (notify their friends of purchases)
• Participate in MySpace, Twitter, Facebook of suppliers / manufactures

5. Personalizing Content

Over and above product content, it is important to have a strategy to manage “content areas” across the site. These content areas typically include flash, video, HTML, or images, and have links to promotions, products, categories, search pages, or brand pages. Making these content areas as relevant as possible to your shoppers increases the overall "personal feel" of a site and leads to finding and buying faster.

Tips include:
• Automatic rotation of content areas based on rules
• Thresholds and tracking of impressions and click through rates (CTR)
• Customize content to be as specific as possible
• Content: Products, HTML, Images, Flash, Video
• Rules to rotate content based on:
o Referral URL, Keyword URI, Domain
o Time of day
o Persona definition (example: Consumer, Prosumer, Expert)
o Geo-targeted IP Address
o Logged in user

The Role of Your eCommerce Platform

As retailers build strategies to better connect with their customers using personalization tactics, an evaluation of their eCommerce platform will probably be in order. It is important for retailers to find a platform vendor that can both enable their immediate vision while being proactive in helping them measure outcomes and adjust accordingly.

While we’ve only covered some basic tactics here, advanced personalization techniques can go beyond core eCommerce platform to involve leading third party services for buying recommendation services, site search control, ratings and review content, and more. The eCommerce platform provider must support all of these systems and have a strategy to help retailers successfully execute on their personalization strategy over time.

To Request a Free Assessment, Contact Us!

Congratulations on going live: Health Care Logistics, eMedDecor.com

www.emeddecor.com Selects OrderDynamics for Growth on On-Demand eCommerce Platform

OrderDynamics, Canada's leading On-Demand eCommerce Solution provider, announces recent customer acquisition, Health Care Logistics, a worldwide provider of medical equipment since 1978.

A recent re-launch of their consumer division, www.eMedDecor.com, Health Care Logistics looked to OrderDynamics for their superior eCommerce technology and services oriented around growing sales.

“OrderDynamics gives us a single, end-to-end technology solution to power our B2C websites. Their SaaS service model emphasizes growth and provides structured processes to manage traffic and conversions” explains Bethany Reid, Brand Manager for eMedDecor. “We simply outgrew our previous eCommerce platform, which didn’t have the features or management capabilities to support our growth” continues Bethany. “OrderDynamics helped us understand a reasonable growth target and works proactively with our marketing team to achieve our goals”.

The new eMedDecor.com website launched on OrderDynamics in 90 days with a broad selection of gifts and accessories and an easy-to-use design. New site features include:

• Shop by Profession – Doctors, Dentists, Nurses, Pharmacy, Veterinarians, & More helps the consumer find products unique to them.
• Gift Services – Wish Lists, Gift Certificates, Gift Messages, Wrapping Services, and Product Personalization make the site great for gift givers.
• Navigation features – – Intuitive product search, user ratings and reviews, guided navigation filters, and express checkout create a fast and fun shopping experience.

“We congratulate the great team at Health Care Logistics and look forward to a long term partnership” says Michael Benadiba, CEO of OrderDynamics.

About eMedDecor & More:
The eMedDecor.com website is a consumer website providing over 2,000 medical related products in categories such as Dental, Doctors, Nursing, Pharmacy, Veterinary and more. eMedDecor.com offers an exciting range of products for Appreciation and Recognition, Books, Cards, and Paper, Clothing, Collectibles, Décor, Office Accessories, Personalized Products, and Tools of the Trade. eMedDecor.com also provides easy shopping options such as Gift Certificates, Gift Wrapping, Gift Messaging, and Personalization.

Scheduling Site Promotions: Easier, Relavent, and Convert Better

As eCommerce platforms ramp up features to meet the needs of the savvy online buyer, retailers often struggle with effectively maintaining them. To be effective, retailers not only need the latest "frontend" merchandising capabilities, but "backend" systems that allow them to manage, what could be hundreds of promotions at any given time. Retails must have technology that gives their product teams the ability to manage the site proactively and reactively given the buying trends they experience.

To be effective, retailers need the ability to:

1. Launch promotions quickly

2. Time promotions to buying events

3. Measure promotion success

The OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Platform combines the latest frontend merchandising technology with a powerful scheduling engine and management metrics that gives retailers "point-and-click" control over website promotions.

Launch Promotions Fast

It is important the the eCommerce platform technology provides real-time ability to create, stage, test, and launch new promotions. Whether it is, for example, a new sale, bundles, eCast (email) campaigns, shipping discounts, or in-cart promotions, the platform should provide easy-to-use web interfaces designed for a product manager or marketing resource to make website changes easily. The platform should also provide XHTML access and a secure Content Management System (CMS) for advanced levels of access.

For mid-market to enterprise reatilers, the ability to stage these changes and test orders against a test gateway prior to going live (without impacting their timeline) is equally as important. Staging changes also allows marketings teams to pre-provision promotions, but leaving them inactive until needed.

Time Promotions "Scheduling"

To effectively time website changes to buying events, like Thanksgiving for example, retailers need more control than simply being able to launch promotions quickly. They require a sophisticated scheduling "engine" to create and manage hundreds of running promotions at a time, and on a per-website basis.

The scheduling system must allow for multiple website promotions to be running concurrently with status reports. Some of the important scheduling capabilities are: eCast (email) marketing, personalized content areas, site seach controls, product / brand / category content areas, coupons, overrides, free shipping amounts, etc. These scheduling and promotion tools must provide granular control at a per-product / brand / category and per eStore website basis. The system must provide control to activate and deactivate promotions on a particular date/time, date range, recurring date/time, and the ability to chain promotions.

With this level of control, retailers can start marketing to their Clients well before the event, making them more proactive and always on top of the next promotion.

Measure Success

Like any other successful sales and marketing program, eCommerce websites require detailed metrics that allow promotions to be managed effectively. It is important that the marketing team can measure the success of each promotion in-real time, and against other promotions across the website.

This isn't specifically about web analytics (Google, Omniture for example), although they play a role, it is about the metrics provided by the eCommerce platform. It is important the platform itself can produce metrics about the performance of a particular promotion. For example, the ability to track click-throughs and impressions on personalized content areas, tracking delivery and open rates of eCasts (emails) promotions, sales from referring websites, ads, keywords, and ability to trend sales across different promotions; all core requirements of mid-market to enterprise online retailers. And all of these must be viewable against sales / orders across a defined time period.

With the right metrics, retailers will have the business information needed to make decisions about the promotions running on the website.

Look at your eCommerce Platform

For retailers to stand a chance against the ever more savvy online buyer, they must take a close look at their eCommerce platform provider to determine their plans for making site promotions more effective. There many of "add on" services out there, but we feel the platform provider plays a key role in this area and should have, at a minimum, the tools and technologies available in this article for launching and managing promotions.

To learn more, please contact us today!

An Integrated Order Management System (OMS) Key to Avoiding Lost Revenue When Payment Brands Go Down (Paypal, Authorize.NET recently)

With 2 major payment providers having issues in the past 4 weeks to the day (Authorize.NET July 3rd 2009 and PayPal August 3rd 2009), many online retailers and merchants that rely on these systems were effectively out of business, unable to take orders, and losing revenue.

Although failures like this are considered unacceptable to businesses and executives, there are ways retailers can avoid being impacted by these types of failures. The solution rests in the capabilities of the eCommerce platform and its Order Management System (OMS).

Order Management Systems (OMS) provide software to facilitate the capturing and processing of eCommerce orders. When this system is part of your overall eCommerce platform (same eCommerce vendor platform driving the frontend presentation and backend OMS) you get a very robust and flexible foundation to power almost all online retailing needs. For example, eMail Marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Fulfillment and Inventory Control, and Advanced Merchandising Rules. This type of "end-to-end" solution helps retailers drive more value from their eCommerce investment by reducing complexities, manual tasks, and less systems / vendors to manage. Obviously, we believe an on-demand or SaaS eCommerce platform is the way of the future for most retailers vs. purchasing and customizing software.

In addition, most platform providers (with an integrated backend OMS) will automatically capture order information prior to posting to the payment provider. This allows for steps to occur before fulfillment like address validation and correction, fraud detection, pre-authorization, etc. This also takes care of two critical problems if payment providers fail. 1. The user is oblivious and can place their order on your website 2. Retailers can quickly and easily resume order processing once the gateway has returned to normal.

As is the case with PayPal and Google Checkout, the shopper has to leave the merchant's website in order to complete their purchase - something not required for other alternative payment brands or traditional gateways like Authorize.NET. However, the eCommerce platform should fully capture the order first and provide logic that informs the user of a payment gateway problem then invite them to use an alternative method or be notified once the gateway has returned.

OrderDynamics takes this a step further and automatically creates a Customer Service Case (ticket) for all abandoned PayPal or Google Checkout orders so retailers can proactively follow-up with these shoppers and convert the sale. This process can be tailored to include an email back to the shopper after X hours inviting them to come back and complete their purchase with a coupon or other incentives.

So when you're evaluating a new eCommerce platform provider it is important to look deeper than the frontend design or "flashy websites" and get into the details of how the platform technology itself will enable a robust, scalable, and cost effective environment for years to come.

See related post: Authorize.NET Outage Does Gateway Downtime Equal eCommerce Disaster?
Learn more about: OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Platform