Appliedi.net Windows Web Hosting Blog

Applied Innovations is always trying to bring more value to our e-commerce web hosting customers. We often will find a popular product that our customers find useful, and we will see if we can get our customers a discount. Revolver Commerce makes many useful add-ons to the ASPDotNetStorefront e-commerce app, and they also provide design and development services.

Revolver Commerce brings some much needed add-on applications to the already wonderful ASPDNSF product. These apps can save you a lot of time, and potentially increase sales. I was able to ask Chris McKellar, one of the lead developers at Revolver Commerce about their products. Here’s a couple of the questions I asked:

From customer feedback you’ve received, what might be the most important add-on if someone had to choose just one?

“Product Attributes. Search is a great add-on, but there are a couple others out there as well. Attributes is something that was desperately needed in the ASPDNSF community and we’re thrilled to have had the opportunity to be able to provide a solution there.”

I see that my purchase of an add-on includes a year of upgrades. Can you tell me about how often they are updated? For example, if ASPDNSF releases a new version, if there’s any compatibility issues, will there be an update to the add-on?

“Add-ons will be updated shortly after ASPDNSF releases new versions. As we add features to the add-ons, we’ll also update our clients with those features. We have no specific roadmap for feature development since it’s highly demand driven from our client base.”

AppliedI customers can log into the control panel  and check out the market place to redeem a 10% off coupon from Revolver Commerce for add-ons to your ASPdotnetstorefront website.

Popularity: 3% [?]

A great deal of our e-commerce web hosting customers choose to order Instant SSL certificates from Applied Innovations. For the $99 price tag we install the highly secure 256-bit encryption SSL certificate for you, you get $100,000 warranty from Comodo, and you also get the Trust Logo free. 

Today, Applied Innovations has been informed before the official news release, that Comodo will be updating their Trust Logo. The Trust logo is getting a much needed aesthetic facelift, and becoming more useful by allowing a customer to hover their mouse over the graphic to activate a Java Script that tells them more about who you are. This equals more trust, which potentially equals more sales. You can see the demo of the new graphic here. 

Here’s the Old Trust Logo:

Here’s the New Trust Logo (To see how the Javascript works, please click the above link to the demo): 

Comodo has also had the scrolling “CornerTrust” logo for a while now that essentially has the same Javascript mouse-over feature as the new logo, but the CornerTrust required a graphic to hover on the corner of the customers browser. This new logo is a stationary option.

For instructions on how to install the new logo, please see this Support page.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Appliedi.net has partnered with PayPal and Yahoo! to bring you a special offer just in time for the holiday season. Signup today for the Yahoo! PayPal Checkout Program and get more customers — plus save money at the same time.  Here’s the benefits:

You’ll get noticed on Yahoo! search results with a shopping cart icon next to your ad.

Your ads on Yahoo Search will stand out among the crowd with a shopping cart icon next to the ad title, giving you the extra something special to make your ad more enticing. 

You’ll be able to tap into PayPal’s network of users, with over 150 million accounts

By offering PayPal Express Checkout your shoppers will be able to checkout quickly and easily using PayPal Express Checkout.  PayPal Express Checkout is probably already supported by the shopping cart engine you’re using and requires little more than signing up for it with PayPal and enabling it in your shopping cart.  Some of the shopping carts Appliedi.net hosts today that supports PayPal Express Checkout include: aspdotnetstorefront, bvcommerce, storefront by LaGarde, CREloaded, OSCommerce, The Commerce Starter Kit and ProductCart to name a few.

You’ll get FREE checkout transaction processing through April 30th 2008!

PayPal is offering free checkout transaction processing for all merchants through April 30th 2008.

How To Get Started Today!

To get started you’ll want to make sure you have a Yahoo Sponsored Search account already. If you don’t, Click here to sign up for a Yahoo Sponsored search and get in additional bonus $50 of free search credits.

Next click on the banner to the left and sign up for paypal promotion. If you don’t already have a paypal business account you’ll be prompted on how to sign up for one, but don’t worry it’s free to have a PayPal business account.

That’s all there is to it. In about 10 business days your Yahoo ads will have a shopping cart icon and you’ll receive your $100 of free clicks in a couple weeks.

AppliedI.net is dedicated to being your online business partner and this is just an example of the great offers you have exclusive access to as a hosting partner. In fact today we offer more than $275 in free advertising offers through our various search partners, $150 savings in website security and several hundreds of dollars in free software or discount offerings all through our hosting partner marketplace.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Everyone has heard that e-commerce sites require SSL Encryption in order to be successful.  But what about the differences between all of them? What about getting a final explanation for their general purpose? This is why I sat down to write this article today.

Basic comparison between all the certificates we offer: »» Positive SSL: 128/256 Bit Encryption and 99.3% browser compatibility rate. No warranty, no trust logo and no EV Auto-Enhancer™ included.
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»» Instant SSL Pro: 128/256 Bit Encryption, 99.3% browser compatibility rate, $100,000.00 warranty and corner trust logo. No EV Auto-Enhancer™ included.
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»» SGC SSL: 128/256 Bit Encryption, 99.3% browser compatibility rate, $250,000.00 warranty and corner trust logo. No EV Auto-Enhancer™ included.
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»» EV SSL: 128/256 Bit Encryption, 99.3% browser compatibility rate, $1,000,000.00 warranty, corner trust logo and EV Auto-Enhancer™ included.
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»» EV SGC SSL: 128/256 Bit Encryption, 99.3% browser compatibility rate, $1,000,000.00 warranty, corner trust logo and EV Auto-Enhancer™ included. This certificate also includes the patent-pending SGC technology (we’ll cover this further in this article).
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Alright, so now all the features are exposed. You might be wondering “aren’t they all just certificates anyway?”. I do understand your concern for spending a little bit more. But the answer is no, they aren’t exactly the same product.

In terms of functionality, I’m pretty sure you won’t notice any major difference between all of them (probably with the exception of both SGC and Auto-Enhancer technologies), but the most important aspect of them all and what you should wonder is:

“What kind of impact will a certificate have on my sales and how will they help me to convert a prospect into a customer?”

As a concerned and responsible businessman/woman, this is the right thing to do.
In fact I cannot emphasize this enough. It’s the most important aspect of them all – your business image and position on your prospects’ minds. Remember: first impressions are everything, and most of the online consumers will buy on impulse. In a simple sentence, this means you won’t have any competitors if you do things right. Doing things right would mean to analyze your competitors web sites and writing down what you can do better then them.

One of the things you can do is to transmit more trust to your customers. More then your competitors do. If they don’t pay attention to this, then you just found a way to stand out from the crowded market you’re in. You’ll be the “secure” vendor.

Let your prospects feel safe, let them know they are providing their financial information to a responsible company. Your company. This is why I have to praise Comodo’s SGC and EV Auto-Enhancer™  technologies. They will help you to do this; and here’s how:

EV Auto-Enhancer™
This technology will actually turn your prospects’ browser address bar to green. They will know they’re on a safe place, and that you invested on this technology exactly to remind them of this fact.

“Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates are the next generation SSL Certificate because they help protect against phishing attacks. They work with high security Web browsers (e.g. Microsoft IE) so that visitors to Websites with an EV SSL Certificate will see a “Green Address Bar”. EV SSL Certificates represent a new industry standard for e-merchant identity verification developed by the CA/B Forum.“

Source: Comodo’s Official Web site

Here’s an example of this technology in action:

SGC™
This technology will actually force the certificate to rely on our server’s Cryptography capabilities, rather then just using what your clients’ browsers are able to support. With Sever Gated Cryptography (SGC), you will actually be able to guarantee a high level of encryption during critical data transmission like you have never been able to do before.

“128/256 bit SSL Certificates designed for securing leading web sites. Server Gated Cryptography (SGC) enabled certificates upgrade the encryption capabilities of older browsers from 40-bit encryption into full 128/256 bit encryption – ensuring your website protects and is trusted by the highest number of internet users possible.” Source: Comodo’s Official Web site

TrustLogo™
This technology will reinforce the trust your prospects deposit on your web site (hence the TrustLogo name) by authenticating your business contact information directly from Comodo’s secure servers.

Here’s an example of this technology in action:

Sales Conversion Tips

• Make sure you place your trust logo on all your web site pages. This should imperatively be done as you never know which page will trigger a “buy-now” reaction. Having your trust logo displayed on the page that triggers this action will actually add weight to the decision.
• Keep reminding your customers that your site is secure, otherwise the green bar wouldn’t be displayed. Make sure you emphasize the fact that this identity verification isn’t done by your company, but by a 3rd party company which is reliable and trustable (Comodo). Always add links to your explanations so your customers can confirm this by themselves.
• Never forget to mention that even if their browser has a limited decryption level, your web server is prepared to add the extra security they need when exchanging sensitive information with your organization.

That’s it for SSL. I hope you enjoyed reading it and most of all I hope to have clarified most of your concerns before deciding which certificate suits best your organization.

To conclude this article, here’s our SSL Certificate products link:
http://www.appliedi.net/ssl-certificates/

Sincerely,
Andre F

Popularity: 1% [?]