Archive for 2005

Solid Cactus Inc., a leading website developer and Yahoo! Small Business, a leading provider of essential online services for small businesses, today announced they intend to collaborate to provide small business customers with affordable website design packages for the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions platform. Under the terms of the… Read More

If you’re receiving this as the busy retail season approaches then you already own a Solid Cactus web site. If so, you’re ready for the approaching shopping season. You may even be too busy to read this until the New Year. Hey! Don’t blame us; you wanted a piece of the e-commerce pie. Now you get to experience the dark side of “Black Friday.”

Be it e-commerce or retail, in the world of business there is nothing more valuable than your reputation. Building and keeping a good reputation is good PR, or Public Relations. Because of the value it ultimately brings to a company’s bottom line, Public Relations should be a part of every business marketing plan.

In the world of online retailing, attracting customers and making the sale is only half the battle. The other half is how quickly and accurately a company can get the order into the customers’ hands and earn their repeat business. Today’s customers are pressed for time and with buying online becoming increasingly convenient, online retailers often get only one chance to prove themselves. In the 21st century, the difference between good and great companies lies in execution of their supply chains and order fulfillment process. Whether to keep the order fulfillment function in-house or to outsource it to an order fulfillment company is certainly an important decision.

It may sound like a marketing pitch, but Solid Cactus really is “your partner in success.” Each member of our team takes each client relationship seriously. The better we understand your businesses, the better partners we can be. I try to do my part; I regularly take time to pile on the frequent flyer miles and travel around the United States visiting our clients. I want to learn about our clients businesses, and see what else we can do in our work to help them become more successful.

The Solid Cactus family continues to grow with three new people. Bryan Banks and Brian Emershaw are e-Commerce Consultants and Michael Shales is our newest Solutions Advisor.

The holidays are coming. Are you still processing orders one by one? If so, it’s time to join the future of e-business before the busiest season of the year. Let us introduce you to the automatic order management system Cactus Complete Commerce powered by OrderMotion. Take advantage of the speed and… Read More

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When we launched this newsletter, Solid Cactus co-founder Joe Palko and I vowed that we would offer more than just a PR vehicle for our company. Okay, we’ve done some self-congratulating, but we are also determined to provide you with genuine e-business advice in every single issue. What follows is the system we use for organizing the warehouse of our own e-business, TheFerretStore.com. E-businesses expand at the holidays because of increased business, and it is critical to have a product location plan to teach to your holiday temps. An easy-to-navigate system is crucial, and is one of many things we learned along our very long road of very hard knocks as we developed our own company.

Over the past few years, Yahoo! Small Business has undergone numerous changes, both to the backend and what customers see when they view your site. One thing that has been missing was a customizable checkout flow which matches your store’s look and feel. The new Yahoo! Checkout Manager changes that.

It was 1452, Gutenberg pondered the idea of movable text, bringing together the use of paper, oil based ink and a wine press to print books. Today’s technology has stretched far beyond his imagination, using computers and broadband to spread information and commerce. My friends here at Solid Cactus often joke about my 25 years of experience in the print industry as if I had been around as long as the Gutenberg press.

Conversion rates are the name of the game in e-commerce. It’s nice to have lots of hits on your web site, but only when you convert a visitor into a buyer are you making money. The key to higher conversion rates is to make it easy on your shoppers! Make it easy for them to navigate your site, and make it easy to find the products they want to buy at price points they can afford. Let them customize their shopping experience the way they would in a brick-and-mortar store.

Caring for triplets is no easy task. Neither is managing a successful website. Lynn Lorenz, owner of JustMultiples.com, a website specializing in products for twins, triplets and their families, needed an easier way to keep her on-line store up to date. After investigating other developers, she chose Solid … Read More

Tatyana Cathcart wanted to take her pop-culture fashion website, BabyGirlBoutique.com, to the next level with a more professional looking website, easier to manage backend, and a customer friendly shopping cart system. To get the job done, she teamed up with Solid Cactus who delivered just what she … Read More

Massachusetts based embroiderer, Embroider This, needed a website redesign and they also had an aggressive deadline that needed to be met. Owner Sarah Kochanowski knew just who to call, Solid Cactus. With strict standards for design and a firm date for completion, Solid Cactus was ready and willing to make… Read More

The era of PCI Compliance is here. Are you up to standard? Perhaps more important, do you have any idea what PCI Compliance is? What follows is a primer to help you understand PCI Compliance and what it means for your e-business.