VERTSOL in Wordpress

“Footwear and accessories retailer Shoebuy.com today launched FloraFlora.com, a flower-selling e-commerce site that offers free delivery. The site aims to eliminate what the e-retailer describes as hidden fees in the flower industry and offers consumers an incentive to report such fees charged by other sites.

Consumers looking to buy flowers at a competitor’s site who discover hidden costs, and instead buy on FloraFlora can send an e-mail to hiddenfees@floraflora.com and receive 10% off their purchase. FloraFlora defines hidden fees as any fees that appear in the shopping cart that are not the actual price of the flowers, required taxes, or cost of advertised shipping. They would include, for example, handling fees, service fees, and previously unspecified delivery charges.

FloraFlora also is guaranteeing the freshness of its products, and is backing up its promise with a 25% refund for shoppers who feel their flowers are not as fresh as those they have purchased from other retailers. To claim the refund shoppers can e-mail freshness@floraflora.com.”

Because of the global recession it is a good idea to branch out to other businesses to add more income for the company. I do believe that they should have started with this business a little earlier so that they could get enough attention before November 1 but it is also a good thing they have already started because there are a lot of people that buys flowers for Christmas and of the peak season would be February 14 which is valentines day. It may still take a few more months before valentines but at least they could already notify their market about their new service. I like the idea that they removed all the hidden fees because there are a lot of online shops that offer the same products at the same price but would have a lot of hidden prices that by the end of the transaction you would be amazed how much you have spent.

Posted by: Timothy Co - O0B -Vertsol

“To no one’s great surprise, e-retailers entered November with prominent home-page displays of special offers ranging from free shipping on all orders to discounts of 50% off regular prices

60 of the top 100 sites offered free shipping of some kind, with most setting restrictions, such as requiring a minimum order value. Zappos.com, now a unit of Amazon.com Inc., and Shoebuy.com offer free shipping on all orders and returns; Blue Nile offers free shipping on all orders; Systemax, the company behind TigerDirect.com, CompUSA.com and CircuitCity.com, says it offers free shipping on most orders. J. Crew offers free shipping on all kids’ merchandise, and Peapod offers it to new customers for the first 60 days.

32 of the surveyed retailers set a minimum order value to qualify for free shipping, ranging from $10 at Barnes & Noble to $195 at Ralph Lauren and $699 at Dell. In most cases the minimum order value is around $50.

Sears is one retailer that sets multiple minimum order values for free shipping based on product type, such as $39 for apparel, $49 for footwear, luggage and toys, and $99 for electronics, fine jewelry and baby products.

Overstock.com is offering $1 shipping on all orders through Nov. 25, and Kohl’s offered shipping for 99 cents on all orders for a limited period from Nov. 3 through 5.”

It seems that most of the retail sites have already prepared for the Christmas season. There are so many people looking for gifts and would usually buy a lot during this time of the year. The shoppers would be looking for a site that would offer cheap products or promos that they could avail to save some money. Free shipping and lowering the prices would be the best way to attract customers. I do believe that all of the sites would now be aiming for more people to visit and order from them so they are no lowering their prices so that the customers would start going to their sites.

Posted by: Timothy Co - O0B - Vertsol

“Just as shoppers are getting closer to their peak holiday shopping days, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. this week escalated the online price war it set off last month with books, offering pre-ordered DVDs priced at $9.98—down from list prices close to $30—and free shipping at Walmart.com. Amazon.com Inc. and Target Corp. countered with their own, slightly less generous, offers on their e-commerce sites.”

As the holiday season starts it seems that Wal-Mart would try to fully rival amazon. They started with selling books and sold them way lower than the price of amazon now that the peak season is coming it seems that they took the war to another level by bring in DVD’s since this is one of the best selling products online. They are now offering free shipping and lower prices when it is compared to amazon that usually sells lower than the other e-commerce sites. In the future Wal-Mart might be able to take amazons number 1 spot.

Posted by: Timothy Co - O0B - Vertsol

Vista sold more PCs than Windows 7 did

According to Philip Elmer-DeWitt, The vista has sold more compare to Windows 7.

Here is a clip from the article:
“… In a press release issued Thursday, Baker explained what happened:
“A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset,” Baker wrote. “Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October. The other hurdle Windows 7 faced was sales of PCs with older operating systems (XP and Vista) were high, making up 20 percent of sales during the Windows 7 launch, compared to just 6 percent of older operating sales during Vista’s launch week.”…”

I think that the vista had more good features and advantages that’s why more people had been choosing it. Window 7 might be also good but the marketing of vista was quite good.

Posted by: Shelyn Chua

A revolutionary new mobile terminal Casio IT-800

According to the site IT-Chuiko, a new technology has been found and it is called Casio IT-800.
Here is some of the features of the Casio IT-800:
“…Develop the use of ISO 13,407 and a focus on functional design allows for the creation of handy and ergonomic mobile terminal. It has a strength class of IP54 and is resistant to dust, water, allowing you to fall from a height of 1.5 meters without damage. Casio IT-800 can operate at temperatures down to -20 º C, making it a versatile device during harsh weather conditions.

- Card Reader - NFC (ISO 14443A and ISO 14443B) may be used to read proximity cards Mifare type (eg user authentication)
- Reader C-MOS technology with high speed and precision scans 1D and 2D codes (up to 5 codes at a time)
- 2.0 megapixel digital camera performs sharp images using auto focus function with a super-bright LED flash
- GPS navigation to easily find a given location, or to assign geographic coordinates to pictures made
- Modem GPRS / EDGE / UMTS / HSDPA is useful for data collection, dispatch reports, as well as for the function call
- WLAN Card (802.11b / g) allows rapid replication in wireless coverage
- Bluetooth is easy to connect to such additional printer….”

This new mobile will surely hit the spot of the market. I believe that they will love the good features and functions of the mobile. It can give the market benefits that will surely make a hit.

Posted by: Shelyn Chua

“One might say it’s not that big a deal, considering we are just talking about Windows Vista. Still, according to market research firm the NPD Group, WIndows 7 outsold Windows Vista in terms of retail boxed sales by 234%.”

It think the reason why windows 7 outsells vista is because most of the people didn’t like vista that much because i think there are complications. And maybe people heard from other people who installed windows 7 said that is way better than vista so most of the people who uses vista bought windows 7 that’s why windows 7 was able to outsell vista by 234%

Site: Windows 7
Posted By: Marylyn Lim

“One of the reasons many portals avoid integrating Google site search is the lack of customization which Google offers to them despite it earning top notch dollar for search keywords. This will be a thing of the past if Google expands its line of customized search solutions as it has launched a commerce search engine for online shopping portals.”

Google is one of the most visited search engine in the world. Google has so many categories to choose from and one of them is blog search. Now, they also enter the commerce search engine. With this, more and more people are going to use Google. Commerce search engine allows retailer to promote certain products, vendors, or product categories with product boost.

Site: Commerce Search Engine
Posted By: Marylyn Lim

“Have you ever gone to a sub shop or convenience store with credit card in hand only to find out that the Internet connection is down and they are only accepting cash? No cash, no food and I just walk out frustrated, upset and not likely to come back anytime soon. Well, if you are a quick service retail owner with a point of sale (POS) processing system, you may want to consider installing a reliable failover solution to avoid losing sales and future customers. One way to protect your business from downtime is to implement a simple and affordable 3G wireless broadband failover solution for your POS system. The 3G wireless technology and coverage is constantly improving and bandwidth speeds are now at a point where wireless access is a viable Internet failover solution for critical applications like POS.”

I think this is a good idea because most of the people don’t want to wait so long to be serve, they get easily pissed off if there are delays or just like the scenario mention above. With these 3G Wireless Broadband For Retail POS it helps prevent failure in POS. So even if the primary connection have problem, the business isn’t affected because the wireless router technology will automatically reroute the traffic to the redundant secondary 3G wireless broadband connection with Payless Cellular. So there won’t be any interruption on the transactions.

Site: POS

Posted by: Marylyn Lim

Microsoft’s New Retail Stores Look Just Like Apple Stores (MSFT, AAPL)

According to Dan Frommer, the new retail store of Microsoft was being talk about looking just like Apple Stores.

Here is some clip from the article:
“Like its sibling in Scottsdale, Ariz., it looks a lot like Apple’s retail stores — big, clean tables with computers set out for people to use, with lots of uncluttered floor space for people to walk around. (Plus Xbox stuff, and multi-touch Microsoft Surface tables for people to use.)”

The Microsoft might be thinking of new way of getting customer but they had been having issue about the having same look of retail store on Apple stores. I think they didn’t do it on purpose they just want to have new look. I believe that this issue will eventually end easily.

Posted by: Shelyn Chua

The tools to deliver multi-channel retailing.

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“This system is good for me. It is good because as stated, they rely on existing systems. They do not develop so that they would lessen costs. The problem here is only that they cannot adapt their system to the latest ones”

Posted by: Chino S. Apoloni O0B