As you surely know by now, Microsoft shuttered Bing cashback at the end of July. They have already launched the new Bing Shopping which is completely free for merchants. Like Google Product Search, it is a must for every merchant to be listed on Bing Shopping. It’s free, so why not?

Microsoft is currently allowing new merchants to join the program. You will need to go to the Microsoft Advertising site and fill out the Bing Shopping Merchant Application Form, once you do that you should hear back from the Bing Shopping team within a couple of weeks.

Once you are approved to join the shopping program, you’ll get an email with your account login information and feed specs. All you need to do to go live is:

• Fill out your merchant contact info, shipping and tax rules within the Merchant Portal.
• Setup and submit your data feed via FTP.

If you’ve done it before for Google Base, you can do it again. It’s free, you might as well…

Finding a reliable hosting company that fits your needs can be tough. As with any other platform, Magento has it quirks and needs to be set up on a decent server. Here are a few of the hosting providers I’ve dealt with and some basic info on their services and pricing.

Nexcess:

Nexcess, a Magento Enterprise Partner, has a few hosting plans that are optimized specifically for Magento. For a starter site, the Nexcess mag|SIP 100 account works well enough. If you have a site with many products or a lot of traffic, you may want to try one of their better plans.

• Support: The support team is available via email only (no phone support), however their support team is VERY responsive and I consistently get replies to my emails within 10-15 minutes.
• Pricing: The Magento optimized plans start at $24.95/month. They do have other plans that start as low as $6.95/month, but these are not recommended for use with Magento as you will have very high page load times.
• Up Time: I have been using Nexcess for several years for a few different clients and I have found their up time to be pretty good. They do have occasional downtime, but they are very responsive in such cases.
• Features: Nexcess uses the SiteWorx control panel, it has everything you need from DNS Settings, Email Setup and MySQL management.

Bottom Line: Nexcess is a great host with reliable service. Recommended.

Sign Up w/ Nexcess Hosting »

Crucial Web Hosting:

Crucial Web Hosting, a Magento Professional Partner, has two levels of hosting plans: Split-Shared and Split-Dedicated. The Split-Shared plan is perfect for a start site. While larger sites will want to go with the Split-Dedicated option.

• Support: The support team is available via email only (no phone support), however their support team is responsive and I consistently have gotten replies to my emails within 15 minutes.
• Pricing: The hosting plans start at $25/month.
• Up Time: I have used Crucial for a few clients and I have found their up time to be pretty good.
• Features: Crucial uses cPanel, so if you are familiar with cPanel you should feel right at home.

Bottom Line: Crucial Web Hosting is a reliable host with very simple and efficient service. Recommended.

Sign Up w/ Crucial Web Hosting »

Simple Helix:

I have not used Simple Helix, but I have heard great things all around. They offer 3 simple plans, the starter which is $20/month, professional for $50/month and semi-dedicated for $75/month.

Sign Up w/ Simple Helix Hosting »

Blue Host:

They only offer a simple shared hosting solution for $6.95/month. If you are just looking for cheap hosting to get started with, Blue Host may be for you. This is not optimized for Magento but will handle a small site.

Sign Up w/ Blue Host »

NOTE: Links in this article contain affiliate IDs, if you sign up by clicking on any of the links I will get commission. Please support eCommerceCircle.

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.

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.

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…

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…

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.

Want a Magento theme that is professional and free? Check out this list of free premium Magento Themes from around the web.

1 – ElectroMagik

ElectroMagik is a minimalist professional design. Lots of white-space, easy on the eyes.

Info | Live Demo | Download

2 – Absolute Theme

Absolute Theme is a slick&smooth blue theme for Magento.

Info | Live Demo | Download

3 – Classic Theme

Classic Theme is a professional theme that comes in 9 colors.

Info | Live Demo | Download

4 – HelloWired

HelloWired has a very simplistic clean look with space for gallery images on the home page.

Info | Live Demo | Download

5 – Foot Prints

Foot Prints has a cool earthy tone to it.

Live Demo | Download

6 – EversonStore

Everson Store is a grayish theme that would work well for a clothing store.

Info | Live Demo | Download

7 – HM Modern

HM Modern is a yellowish modern looking theme.

Info | Live Demo | Download

8 – Glam

The Glam theme makes your store a glamorous one.

Info | Live Demo | Download

9 – Grayscale

The Grayscale theme is minimalistic, beautiful and sleek.

Info | Live Demo | Download

10 – Oops!

You got ripped off. I only listed 9 free premium Magento themes. You’ll have to check back for more another time.

Like most eCommerce stores, you have a database with all your newsletter subscribers. You send them emails on a weekly/monthly basis. You have a very low open-rate and deliverability rate… How do you fix this? Here are 5 quick tips to get your email in the customers inbox and get them to open it.

Improve Deliverability

Tip #1 – Remove Bounced Emails

After every email you send, remove all the hard-bounces. Most email providers will allows you to view a report of which email addresses bounced back. Take that list and bulk-unsubscribe them from your list.

Most ISPs see that you keep sending to email addresses that don’t exist and they will start to think of you as a spammer and blacklist you.

Tip #2 – Include Unsubscribe Link On Top Of Email

Include a unsubscribe link at the very top of your email body. The ISPs scan for this and when they see an unsubscribe link on top of your email it tells them that you are serious about your email list integrity and that you are not a spammer.

Tip #3 – Text to Image Ratio

Another thing ISPs look for are emails with mostly images. When an email body consists of just images with very little text it has a higher chance of being spam. Spend the extra few minutes and add some text!

Improve Open-Rates

Tip #4 – Subject Line

Your subject line is the single most important element of your email after it has been delivered to the customers email inbox. This is what will make someone click to open the email. Write it well and always include a call to action.

Tip #5 – Include Short Text Snippets

Include a short text snippet on top of your email template. Most email clients offer a preview pane and this will be the first thing consumers  see. This is extremely useful with email clients such as Gmail and Outlook where they show a snippet of the email in the inbox itself.

Via: Campaign Monitor

Tip #6 – Use Alt-Text & Image/Table Sizes

Make sure you always include alt-text on all images because most email clients will block images when the email is first opened and will only display the images when the customer clicks “Display Images”.

It is equally important to use the width and height tags for all tables and images so that when there are no images displayed, you email is still structured properly. This will help the consumer understand what the email is about even without images and encourage them to view the full email.

TheFind.com has been around for some time and has been a great tool for consumers to find the products they are looking for. Until now TheFind has populated its product database by crawling the web and filling in the blanks from third-party feeds.

I just realized this a few days ago, but in late April they launched the ability to upload a feed via FTP.

Great news! TheFind has launched a feed upload tool through the Merchant Center and now accepts direct feeds from merchants.

What does this mean for you?

• Greater control over product information on TheFind (ability to set up notifications to primary email address, letting you know when the feed is live)
• Faster updates (initial feed can go live within 72 hours)
• Increase product relevancy through our new, expanded attributes, as seen in our the data feed specs.

I’ve just submitted a data feeds for several clients, we’ll see how it works. In the meantime, you can register here.

Comparison shopping engine campaigns can drive tons of traffic — Are you getting sales? That’s the question. We hope the answer is yes. When it’s not, here’s a quick tip to remove under-performing items.

You can get better results by removing all items under a specific price. For example, if you sell sneakers you may also have socks in your feed which are getting a lot of clicks that doesn’t translate into revenue. What you can do is remove all items under $10 from your feed. You’ll get less clicks which in effect will cost less. You will probably end up with the same amount of sales. Your best bet is to try this for a few weeks and see how it performs.

Another great idea is to run a kill-report every few weeks.

I just found a new option in my Google account. The ability to activate Google Gears for AdWords. This stores all you account data on your local computer for faster load times. Look for an offline icon on the top right of your AdWords account.

When you click on it you are prompted with the option to continue and activate:

This was reported by Search Engine Land last week:

Instead of loading the data off Google’s servers each time you click on a section in the AdWords console, Google will load the data off your local computer. Google said, “each time you access AdWords, your data loads directly from your computer, making your experience much faster.”

Do you have the offline option in your account?