Archive for June, 2010

Shopping Cart Migration Made Easy With Cart2Cart

June 22nd, 2010

Any small business eCommerce retailer that has tried migrating from one platform to another, knows how complicated it can get to successfully migrate all your information to a new platform.

Recently I tried moving a shopping cart from Zen Cart to Magento… with simple products it’s no big deal. You export. You modify in excel. You import. The problem is that it is not always so simple. If your store has product options on most products, it is usually extremely complicated to migrate platforms. It doesn’t have to be, it can be simple with Cart2Cart (aff link) made by MagneticOne.

Migrate Shopping Carts Easily

Since I used Cart2Cart for a Zen Cart to Magento migration, I figured I’d share the process with you.

Price

Before you start, keep in mind that this is a paid service although it seems to be reasonably priced. I tried a cart with less than 500 products and the cost was $49.00 for the products only. The estimate including the customers and orders was $129.00. You can get a price estimate here.

Migration Process – Step 1

The first step after you buy credits is to enter the source shopping cart information. As of this time, Cart2Cart supports 22 standard carts including Magento, osCommerce, ZenCart, PrestaShop, CRE Loaded and more… After you fill in the required information, you will need to download the Cart2Cart “bridge” files and upload via FTP to the root directory of the source cart.

Zen Cart - Source Cart

Step 1: Enter Source Cart Information

Migration Process – Step 2

The next step is to fill out the information of the destination shopping cart and to upload the “bridge” files via FTP to the destination cart as well.

Destination Cart

Step 2: Enter Destination Cart Information

Migration Process – Step 3

In the third step you need to select the data that you want to transfer as well as any upgrade options available for your cart.

Step 3: Select Migration Options

Migration Process – Steps 4, 5 and 6…?

Step four will help you match up the currency options from the source cart. Step five will let you do a demo with 10 items… Click “Skip Demo” if you want to do a real migration..

It should be harder, but it’s real easy. Try it and let us know how it worked for you…

NOTE: I have not tested this with a lot of products (394 to be exact). I have no idea if it can handle a few thousand products. It sounds like it can…

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Posted in Platform

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From Jellyfish To Bing CashBack To Nothing

June 4th, 2010

The latest news coming from Microsoft is that Bing cashback will be retired at the end of the month. In a post titled “A Farewell To Bing Cashback” they say:

As part of this “test-and-learn” mentality, we will be retiring the Bing cashback feature, which means that the last day you can earn cashback will be July 30, 2010.

Why are we doing this? When we originally began to offer the cashback feature, it was designed to help advertisers reach you with compelling offers, and to provide a new type of shopping experience that would change user behavior and attract a bunch of new users to Bing.

In lots of ways, this was a great feature – we had over a thousand merchant partners delivering great offers to customers and seeing great ROI on their campaigns, and we were taking some of the advertising revenue and giving it back to customers. But after a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for.

This is definitely bad news for small eCommerce sites. Bing cashback was one of a few good channels with little up front costs. Goodbye Bing cashback…

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Posted in Comparison Shopping

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How To Set Up The Facebook Like Button For Magento + Facebook Insights

June 1st, 2010

When Facebook announced they were launching a “Like” button for the whole internet, you knew you had to get in on it. The Facebook Like button is part of Facebook’s new Open Graph Protocol which allows users to easily share content (including yours) from across the web. For the developers amongst us, you can get all the code and info on Facebook’s developer site. For the rest of us, here are 4 Magento Extensions that will easily integrate Facebook’s Like button.

Facebook Like Button Extensions

The first two are simple implementations of the standard Like button. The next two are more complex integrations with many more options and with Open Graph support.

Pick one, buy it, install it.

  1. Facebook Like Button by RetailEvolved
  2. Facebook Like Button by TSDesigns
  3. Facebook Social Plugins by Magento Ireland
  4. Facebook Like Button with Open Graph Support by Soleun

Track Like Button Activity With Facebook Insights

Once you have the Facebook Like button installed, you’ll want to set up Facebook Insight for Domains. This will allow you to see what is happening in the world of Facebook in relation to your store.

  1. Go to Facebook Insights
  2. Click green “Insights for your Domain” button
  3. Enter your domain name and select your account from the drop down list.
  4. Copy the Meta Tag that Facebook gives you and paste into your Magento Admin -> System -> Configuration -> Design -> HTML Head -> Miscellaneous Scripts
  5. Confirm the domain with Facebook

You should now be able to see all kind of cool reports in Facebook Insights.

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Posted in Social Media

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