We had a problem today with one of our SpellBy.com orders: it arrived at our customer's house with the glass broken in 3 places. (It was delivered ground - and sometimes I think "Ground Service" means a package is kicked across the country on the ground - but that's another story.)

First, our customer was exceedingly pleased with the quality of our frame. Besides the broken glass, there was another more pressing problem: she's getting married this Friday - and the frame was supposed to be a gift for her husband. While our frames take a minimum of 3 days to manufacture, I didn't want to disappoint a bride-to-be, so I had to rush this one though production and ship it out overnight -and that included a trip to our framing warehouse to deliver the prints, which I carefully produce and inspect for quality.

In the mean time, my business partner, Kevin, sent an email to our master framer, Jose, so that he could begin assembly on the frame in advance of my arrival (Jose is a fine craftsman - and perfectionist). I promise I'm getting to the point -right now: When I arrived, Jose told me that he was initially shocked when he received the email from Kevin because it was titled, "FYI," which he thought meant, "F$@K-YOU-IDIOT."

Okay, first of all my business partner and I never use that kind of language in business and second, Jose did learn the meaning of FYI ("for your information"), just prior to my arrival by asking someone else at the warehouse.

Anyway, all this got me thinking about the dynamic nature of language and communication - and how we can't assume that what we take for granted will be understood by someone else. In fact, as a consultant, I recall numerous emails that were misunderstood -from sentence structure, typos to a perceived harsh tone (even when there was none).

My advice: don't assume that everyone will understand your grammar, rhetoric, composition, diction or vernacular. Kevin's opinion is: "This is scary," and I'd have to agree.

Many of our clients have always wanted the same thing from a shopping cart system: to easily edit their product content, put things on sale, track inventory, add new articles, blog, edit online policies and easily make shipping rate adjustments. In other words (and although it's not standard to refer to it in this way) they want a fool-proof CMS (content management system) included in the backend of their eComm system. In the early days, a good CMS system didn't really exist - but we're happy to say that there's been a lot of progress.

In this blog we're going to talk about our experience / review of the following carts:

• Yahoo Shooing Cart
• eBay
• X-Cart vs. OSCommerce
• CS-Cart
• VirtueMart
• Magento

Yahoo Shopping Cart

We have avoided implementing a Yahoo Shopping Cart because it never fit any of our client's long-term business requirements, and so we were not able to give it a good technical review. However, we have a close business associate that succesfully runs 5 or 6 different eCommerce websites all on Yahoo Shopping Carts. They chose Yahoo Shopping Cart because of the ease of implementation. However, the complaints they have is that they pay a separate monthly fee for each of the carts, even so they process all credit card transaction by securely funneling them into a 3rd party merchant gateway.

eBay

I've personally stopped using eBay (I was a user who successfully sold $thousands of dollars of goods on eBay) and also recommended that some of our clients operate ancillary stores there. However, I stopped using and recommending them because it became what I call, the Cheapskate's Shopping Cart System. Now don't get me wrong, if I find a bargain -I will use them again but I can't recommend setting up an eBay store because the results are sketchy.

X-Cart vs. OSCommerce

A number of years ago, we considered X-Cart but wound up going with OSCommerce for a fairly established small business client. After completing a technical review of X-Cart, we determined that we would need excessive development resources for a successful implementation, because X-Cart's base system only included an incomplete feature set. Even though it touted itself as "out-of-the-box" and "open source," solution, it really wasn't. So we went with OSCommerce for this particular client. In spite of our best efforts, the end result was the creation of a, "white elephant in a black box."

The whole elephant in the box problem was that our client imposed a must-have-feature of, "purchase without an account" -just a month before launch and/or at a time when development was better than 90% complete. In addition to it being a realized project management risk, we were faced with a technical challenge, that oddly colored our work with this particular client for years to come!

Client stated reason for purchase without an account: "Yankee Candle has it, we want it too." We said, "Okay - sure, it's a serious project management risk and, um, was never a feature that we originally discussed when we scoped the project and it does activate change control, but yeah, we'll do it." Oh, we did it - and the purchase-without-an-account feature conflicted with almost all of the other key features / functionality of the site. The end result: it eliminated any promise of an effective CMS for our client, because even so the system was up and running 99% of the time, it was just too delicate for anyone to touch, but us. What a nightmare.

On top of that, the OSCommerce "community" was progressively becoming a circus, with lots of in-fighting -and some very crack-developers being excluded from bulletin boards, etc. We vowed to never implement another OSCommerce system again - and we haven't.

CS-Cart

Last year at BlueLab we implemented modernica.net on CS-Cart (the project was handed off completely after a successful launch). For the first time, we were wowed! From what we understand (but don't quote us on the specifics) CS-Cart was created by a group of renegade X-Cart employees, who wanted to improve things by actually delivering what developers, clients and end-users wanted. Ironically, the "purchase without an account" feature is standard on CS-Cart. I also want to mention that CS-Cart is also easily set up for clients who sell products that need to be downloaded. CS-Cart is a win, win, win for everyone concerned. The team at CS-Cart are also readily available for consultation as necessary. There is a small cost for the software, which is under $300 retail and about $100 less than that for developers.

VirtueMart

We've successfully implemented VirtueMart several times now. VirtueMart is an add-on Joomla component. So, let me talk a little about Joomla first. The first time we worked with Joomla was on an inherited project that was driven by a savvy publishing client who really needed a backend / CMS that would allow her to make multiple daily edits. Later this particular client decided to implement a shopping cart system because she wanted to get out from under the tightening restraints on self-publishers at Amazon. We chose VirtueMart, because, like Joomla, we thought it would give our client maximum control over her product, coupons, order processing, etc. In addition, for kicks and giggles, we decided to implement one of our internal projects, SpellBy.com on the Joomla / VirtueMart platform -and that has also been a success - even with a great deal of customization and code-tweaking.

Magento

We are closely watching Magento. While we haven't done an implementation yet, they're worth mentioning because the system feature-set is robust, with features like the ability to control multiple stores. We were in-touch with the Magento team back in our OSCommerce days - and they were highly responisve!

One of the most common questions new web business owners ask us, is: "How long can you expect to keep a client?" My answer is always the same, "It depends."

A long time ago, while I was working as an assistant for a successful Boston photographer, he emphatically stated that anyone in the creative business can only expect to keep a client for 2 years. At that time, I thought his statement was cynical. However, he was only accepting the reality of his own business. At Blue Lab, our experience has been different - more varied.

Three types of clients you typically can't expect to retain and/or secure any significant ongoing business from:

1. One-offs: Clients who want to develop an informational website (individuals, like freelance PR consultants, doctors, small non-eCommerce store owners, etc.). While we certainly take these clients - we don't expect ongoing businsss after launch.
2. Under capitalized projects: We have consistently worked with clients who were trying to get great business ideas off the ground - from contests to travel, we saw these projects fail because additional funding failed to materialize (this is common in the business world).
3. Under committed owners: This category of client pertains to small and medium sized businesses alike, where the owner / client is reluctant to take the necessary next steps to reach a tipping point with their business. Once the signs of this become obvious, it's best to let these types of clients go because they will consistently attempt to cut corners and micro manage the process of development.

Three types of clients you can expect to retain and/or secure significant ongoing business from:

1. Content driven websites: Information driven websites that require continual content updates.
2. eCommerce sites: Non-static products. Companies /owners that continue to innovate and respond to market trends.
3. Non-technical creative firms: This includes advertising agencies, PR Agencies, design companies (usually small to medium sized businesses and freelancers). Establishing a relationship with these types of companies can bring consistent business year after year. They will usually serve as the art-director on the project for their clients.

By no means are the above lists all inclusive and there are, exceptions to every rule. At Blue Lab we have clients who have come and gone, others who have stayed with us for 4 or 5 years and some that have been with us since the our first day in business. So, I hope I have clearly answered question - because it really all depends.