RE: [cobalt-users] New E-Commerce Shopping Cart Review

["jonothon ortiz" <jon@xxxxxxxxx>]

oh man are you getting reported for spam.....

-----Original Message-----
From: cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of
sales@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 9:41 PM
To: cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [cobalt-users] New E-Commerce Shopping Cart Review


Hello,

I wanted to pass on some helpful information regarding an incredible
shopping cart that we recently, and fortunately stumbled across. This
informative review will be beneficial to any business owner who is looking
to setup their own online store, as well as hosting companies who are
looking for a very powerful shopping cart to offer to their hosting clients.
Since this shopping cart can be totally private labeled, you can completely
brand it as your own!

I know there are a lot of business owners setting up online stores, and
there are probably tons of other business owners that would like to do the
same thing, but they are not sure how to get started.  Website designers
often charge several thousand dollars or more to do this kind of work, and
understandably so!

But if you are reluctant to put out that much money to get started, then we
would highly recommend that you read the following information below about a
very powerful shopping cart called “ShoppingQ” (by Bitwise Software
International, Inc.)

ShoppingQ is fast, reliable, feature rich, very easy to use, and very
inexpensive!  Since the vendor will setup a FREE test drive of this
phenomenal shopping cart for you, we wanted to pass this on, as we think it
will benefit anyone that is fortunate enough to use it.


Features List:

The first attractive feature about ShoppingQ is it that it is very easy to
use. It is so easy to use that even a beginner can setup an entire store in
about an hour! All you need to make this shopping cart work is access to the
Internet, and your favorite web browser. (i.e. Internet Explorer or
Netscape, 4.0+)  To begin your store setup you simply access a web page on
your hosting account, with your browser, called the “Store Main Menu”. We
refer to this entire section as the “store administration area”.

Once you are logged into the store administration screen, the program walks
you step-by-step through the process of setting up the basic and more
advanced options of the store. This includes your store logo and welcome
text, custom checkout fields, payment methods you wish to accept, store
coupons and discounts, real-time credit card processing, members only
access, as well as sales tax and shipping methods.

One thing that we really appreciated about the store administration screen
was that it was very easy to navigate, and you could quickly find what you
were looking for!  We appreciated that even more after we attempted to walk
thru the demo of another popular shopping cart program that just released a
new version. We played with the other shopping cart’s administration screen
for about 10 minutes trying to figure out where the link was to add a
category or a product, and finally we had to break down and read their
instructions to learn how to do that!  But that is simply not true of
ShoppingQ! We had no trouble at all in finding everything we needed in
ShoppingQ, right on the main page of the store administration screen.

After you have setup the basic and more advanced options of your store,
which probably only takes about 10 minutes, you then move on to setting up
the various departments of your store. For example if you sell sports
equipment, your departments may be “Basketball”, “Football”, “Soccer”, etc…
Once you setup your departments you move on to setup the various categories
and sub-categories you many have for each of those departments. ShoppingQ
allows you to setup 1000 different departments, 1000 categories under each
of those departments, and 1000 sub-categories under each of the categories.
Most business owners would probably not setup anywhere near that many, but
we liked the fact that you could if you needed to.

The last step is to setup your products. This too is a very simple process.
Since the shopping cart can handle the setup and administration of over
1,000,000+ products, this shopping cart can handle just about anything you
can put it in! There are also many options that you can enable for each
product!  For example, you can setup items so that they are on sale and
expire on a certain date. You can even enter how many you have in stock, and
ShoppingQ will display that information to the customer. Every time an item
is purchased form your website, ShoppingQ automatically reduces the quantity
on hand in the database. The store can also be setup to actually email you
when product inventory levels fall below a certain number. Those are just a
few of the nice product setup features that caught our attention.

All in all, we found that the store administration screens walk you
step-by-step thru every detail, and if you get stuck…. (this is the great
part), all you have to do is click the HELP button at the top of each and
every page. The online help explains exactly what you need to do. Yes, each
copy of the store has it’s own online manual. It just doesn’t get any easier
then that, and we really liked that feature.


30 Website Skins To Choose From:

Part of the basic store administration is selecting the website template or
“skin” that you want to use for your store. ShoppingQ has 30 professionally
designed website “skins” to choose from. Once you pick the skin for your
store, every page of your website is automatically displayed using the
selected skin!  This allows you to know exactly what your website will look
like at the touch of a button. If you get tired of the skin you are using,
you can easily change it with the click of a button right from the basic
store administration page. From that point forward, your entire website will
display itself using the new skin.

By the way, these are high quality skins which add value to the owners
website!  To give you an example about just how important it is to have a
quality website design, I wanted to relate a brief personal experience.

A few days ago my wife and I decided to purchase a product that we had been
wanting online. After finding several websites that offered the product,
here is what happened… The first website we found was very informative, and
actually had a streaming video clip of the product we wanted. It was pretty
cool!  But as I looked at the website it looked like it was designed by a 3
year old!  The graphics of the entire site were awful. After looking the
website itself, and the order process they had, we were so turned off by
this website that we actually went to the next website on the list (which
was quite professional looking) and made the purchase.  To top it off, and I
know this might have been going a little too far, but a couple of days
later, I actually emailed the company that we didn’t buy from (you know,
from one business owner to another), and very nicely explained to them why
we didn’t purchase the product from their store. The main reason was that
their website was very unprofessional looking!

My point is this… The skins that come with ShoppingQ are very professional,
and they are not going to turn buyers away from your site! Why go through
the process of getting a store online, not to mention the expenses involved,
if your website is going to turn away buyers???

Here is a totally cool feature regarding the skins. If you are experienced
with HTML, you can even download the skins (they are just plain HTML files),
and change them as you see fit.  So basically, if you are a beginner, you
have a great selection of professional skins to choose from, and if you are
an advanced user, you can totally customize the look and feel of your store
however you want.  We really liked the flexibility that this offers!


Store Check Out Process:

If you want to sell your products or services online, the shopping
“experience” and the store’s check out process must be very easy to
understand and follow. Every profitable marketing professional will attest
to this fact!  If you visit one of the demo stores that were created by
ShoppingQ, you will see just how easy it is to find products, add them to
your cart, and then check out.

When a customer wants to check out, ShoppingQ first creates a check out
password for each customer. Then it collects all of their contact
information and remembers this information for future visits by the
customer. (All the high-end carts do this!)  From there, ShoppingQ walks you
step-by-step through the rest of check out process. It is actually very
simple and makes the customers feel safe.


Private Label Ready:

One of the main features that attracted us to ShoppingQ, was the ability to
private label this shopping cart as our own. We honestly couldn’t find any
other shopping carts that were as powerful as ShoppingQ that would allow us
to do that!

In fact, the vendor created ShoppingQ from the ground up to allow hosting
companies to do this. You can put in your own logo, and completely customize
the “look” of the all the administration pages. We also liked the idea that
the ShoppingQ name, copyright notices, links, etc… did not appear in any of
the store administration pages, skins, help files or store pages. They are,
in effect, allowing hosting companies to market this software directly to
their customers, and they will never know that the software is really
ShoppingQ!

It only took us about one day of work to customize our private label
version. For hosting companies that want to do this, you simply download a
directory of HTML files, customize the look to your specification (leaving
certain tags in place), save them, then upload them back into the same
directory they came from. From there, when you view the store administration
screen, you will see it displayed in your own customized version. We are
still amazed at how cool this aspect of ShoppingQ is.


Supported Server Platforms & Installation:

We were very impressed, to say the least, with the incredible speed at which
ShoppingQ operates. The program was written and compiled in C++, and is
backed by a very high-speed, internal database system. We had no complaints
at all in this regard.

We are running our private label version on the Cobalt Networks RaQ 4
platform. ShoppingQ currently runs on the Cobalt RaQ3/4, and Redhat 7.1
(intel based) servers, and word has it that the vendor is working on FreeBSD
4.3 (intel based) and RedHat 6.2 (intel based) versions.

If you are an end user, you don’t have to worry about installing ShoppingQ,
as your hosting company would do this for you (provided they are running
compatible servers). Once your store is setup, your hosting company would
provide you with the details regarding how to access your store.

For a list of hosting companies that offer ShoppingQ (or a private label
version of it), you can visit this web address:
http://www.shoppingq.com/store_hosting.htm

>From a hosting company’s standpoint, we really liked how easy it was to
install ShoppingQ for our customers. You simply telnet or SSH to gain root
access to the server, and then you copy the single store setup file into the
web directory of the customer’s hosting account. Next, type in a couple of
simple commands to install it, and that’s it!

We also liked the fact that we didn’t have to change any of the web server’s
configuration files, which in Cobalt’s case, could void the server’s
warrantee.  Like everything else about ShoppingQ, this aspect is quick and
easy.


Technical Support:

Fast, quality, technical support is so important when you are working with
anything as important as your online business.  Whenever we have had
questions or needed assistance from the vendor, their support staff has
always emailed us back in less than 24 hours (usually within a couple of
hours which is unheard of in the industry).  They have been very helpful and
courteous to us. We really dote on the idea of getting fast, quality
technical support, since a good majority of the companies we have interacted
with online often take several days to back to you. You don’t have to worry
about that with these guys.


Final Comments:

We have reviewed and tested a number of high-end shopping carts, and we
really believe that ShoppingQ will be the next big rave for end users and
hosting companies alike.  It has so many features and options, and all of
them are easy to use and setup.  We have found that our customers just love
ShoppingQ. Since it includes an online manual, and it’s so ease to use,
technical support from our customers is almost non-existent.

If you are a hosting company, think about how this package will bring in new
customers for you, increase your hosting revenue, and improve your customer
longevity.

The vendor will gladly setup a FREE Trial Store for you so you can
completely evaluate the program before you ever spend a dime! They are that
confident in their software! We are too!  Don’t miss the boat on this one!

For more information about ShoppingQ, you may visit the vendor’s website at
the following URL: http://www.ShoppingQ.com.


Chad E. Roadhouse
NitroMax Web Hosting
http://www.nitromax.com
sales@xxxxxxxxxxxx

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