Morse Data to Exhibit at the AAUP Annual Meeting
If you’re attending the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) Annual Meeting June 20 – 22, 2013, be sure to stop by our exhibit and say hello.
The exhibits are open June 21-22 — we’ll be in attendance both days.
If you’re not an InOrder user and would like to learn more about how InOrder can help you manage delivery of digital goods, please do stop by for a demonstration. Our recently released Digital Delivery Enhancement gives you the capability to deliver digital products with flexible download options and terms — while still protecting your digital assets.
Morse Data Internship Program Gives College Students Experience
If you believe in people and give them the opportunity to gain experience and skills, it encourages people to learn and grow. This invaluable gift has been the philosophy of Morse Data Corporation since its inception in 1975.
Jim Morse, our founder and CEO, first hired Tony Marchese as a college intern in the fall of 1985 while he was attending the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Tony went on to earn a minor in Management and a Masters in Computer Science. Tony has been with Morse Data ever since, and is now the Vice President of Systems Software for the Orland Park office. Since then, Morse Data has been responsible for providing “wings” to several college interns and continues to do so today under Tony’s direction.
To quote one of our current interns, “I have learned more here at Morse Data than I could ever learn in a classroom setting.” We’re proud to be an employer who believes in paid internships, money which provides our interns with a little extra cash to help defray their skyrocketing college costs. We’re also happy to give our interns experience — especially now in a job market where employers want to hire those with experience.
We’ve seen many interns come and go over the years and a few have decided to make Morse Data their home. Doug Kasper was a Morse Data college intern during 2009 – 2011. He’s now a full time employee and is responsible for assisting in the development of the InOrder desktop along with the web cart and our corporate website, getinorder.com. Doug impressed us with his eagerness to learn and has made a tremendous contribution to many of the InOrder software changes that have helped further our clients’ needs. To quote Doug, “The experience gained at Morse Data is second to none.”
Jeff Grandt has been in our college intern program for the last two years. Jeff is pursuing his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is looking forward to graduation in 2014. Jeff has been a tremendous help with our corporate website and has often been called upon to assist with special projects and bug fixes.
Our newest intern is Dennis Lynch. Dennis, a freshman at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, joined us in May. He’s pursuing majors in Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as in Computer Science. He was also valedictorian of his Senior Class at Marist High School — so we’re thrilled he chose to share his summer with us at Morse Data.
Sadly we will be saying goodbye to Adeel Qureshi who will be graduating in June from DePaul University with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Adeel has been our “go-to” person to assist with changes needed in our software and he will be sorely missed. We wish him the best and know that the experience we have provided will allow him to flourish and grow as he pursues future opportunities.
If you know someone — maybe you! — who would be a great fit as an intern at Morse Data, feel free to submit your resume via the Careers tab on our Website or send an email to careers@morsedata.com.
Now Your Customers Can Share Your Products on Social Media (Plus More!)
Ready for more InOrder Web cart features? We’ve got them — three new ones live now! These features come standard with the default InOrder Web cart that’s part of the eCommerce module. If you have any questions about these and other features we’re rolling out, please call us!
New Feature #1: Social media sharing
The InOrder shopping cart is now integrated with the AddThis sharing service. AddThis allows your Web customers to share pages from your online store with their friends and networks on social media sites, including Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Allowing customers to share product pages with their social networks is a great way for you to bring in more traffic and find new customers.
As an aside, you can download this great report from Constant Contact, If You Like It, Put a Pin In It, on how to drive traffic and sales with Pinterest. Data show that because Pinterest is so heavy on visuals, people (mostly women, the site’s largest demographic) are using the site as a catalog — meaning, they go there to shop!
New feature #2: Shipping rate and delivery estimates
The new shipping feature shows shipping rates and delivery times during checkout when Web customers are logged in. Summary totals are updated as new items are added to the cart. Providing customers with more complete information about shipping rates and times throughout the checkout process helps decrease the rate of shopping cart abandonment as people know how much they’re spending as they shop.
New feature #3: Preferred currency selection
With this InOrder update, Web customers in other countries can set their preferred currency while shopping.
Once a customer selects a currency, product prices are automatically displayed in the customer’s preferred currency using current exchange rates. This new feature simplifies the shopping process for customers and increases the likelihood of them completing the purchase process.
Questions? Comments? Feedback? Let us know in the comments section.
Calling All Ducks — 2013 InOrder Duck Revealed
Morse Data is proud to announce . . . the 2013 InOrder duck. Woot! We think he’s pretty cool. We love the guitar and leather vest — and his cheeky flip side. 😉
You can pick up your 2013 InOrder duck at our IRCE booth (number 628).
We’re still looking for photos of collections of InOrder ducks. If you don’t want your colleagues to know you collect rubber ducks, we promise not to use your name. Send pictures to marketing@morsedata.com and we’ll post them here on the blog.
InOrder’s Web Cart Now Supports Multiple Cross-Sell / Up-sell Capabilities
It’s been a very busy spring with multiple features to InOrder’s Web cart coming live each month. Many of these have been developed to help you improve your customers’ online shopping experiences — and ultimately improve sales. One feature we’re super excited about is the support for multiple cross-selling item types.
When customers purchase items through your online store, catalog or other channel, you can now offer additional options. (CSRs can offer related items via phone.) While this is a standard option on most retail sites these days, we’ve taken this functionality to a whole new level.
Instead of being limited to the standard single list capability, you can now provide multiple lists of products related to a specific SKU – even if these products reside on other areas of your website.
Related items may be displayed in groups on the home page and the Web cart. The main body of the home page displays those groups in rotating carousels. These groups may include items related to customers’ previous purchases, wish lists, loyalty awards, special searches, web specials, etc., and other groups defined by cross-selling types. Below is a screen shot showing a home page with groups of related items on carousels:
In the next screenshot, you can see the item details with Related Items.
You can now offer customers additional items at the point of purchase, as seen in the next screenshot:
For use through Customer Service, the new cross-sell type description is displayed on the following InOrder windows:
Order Entry cross-sell / upsell popup:
A setting is available to determine whether or not items sold together as components of a kit are generated as cross-sells. When this setting is used, items that are sold together in a kit will also get generated.
Current Cross-Sells shows the new Cross-Sell Type:
Have you used this new functionality yet? If so, let us know about it. We’d love your feedback. Stay tuned for additional new features!
New Report Gives Tips for Improving Email Deliverability
If you rely on email (and who doesn’t?) to alert your customers to new products, services, promotions, etc., then you’ll want to read Listrak’s new report, “Don’t Be Left Out of the Inbox: Email Deliverability Tips for Every Stage of the Customer LifeCycle.”
According to the report, focusing on campaign revenue, clickthroughs and open rates is good. However, it’s the email “sins” that go unnoticed, such as bounce rates (undeliverable email). Bounce rates and other issues can harm your sender reputation — and thus lower inbox placement.
Some stats cited in the report:
- 80% of all deliverability problems are directly attributable to poor sender reputation. (DMA, Email Deliverability Review)
- Of the majority of blocked emails, 77% are due to poor sender reputation. (DMA, Take Outs from the Email Deliverability Masterclass)
- Commercial emails make up to 70% of all spam complaints and 60% of spam trap hits. (Return Path, Email Intelligence Report)
The report authors state, “Spammers are actually doing a better job reaching the inbox than some legitimate email marketers who are sending to people who opted in. If you’ve stopped monitoring your deliverability and reputation, it’s time to get back on track.”
The report lists 10 tips for controlling and improving your email deliverability — including choosing a good email service provider, engaging your subscribers, and reducing deployment schedules (meaning, not over-sending, which is the number one reason people unsubscribe.)
A cutting-edge feature of the InOrder Email Marketing Enhancement provides the ability to let your opt-in customers specify a maximum frequency to receive emails.
The report also lists four sites where you can query and monitor your email reputation:
Sender Score — With Return Path’s Sender Score, you get a peek into how mailbox providers view your sending reputation and how this compares to other email senders. Once you create an account, you can enter your ISP for the report.
Senderbase — Simply enter your IP or domain into the box at the top of the page to view your email reputation. And while you’re there, take a peek at the email stats, like this one: 85% of global email sent every day is spam.
AOL Postmaster — Another tool where you enter your IP address for a score.
McAfee TrustedSource — You can find the reputation tool on the left side of the page, second box.
Lots of good stuff in this report, so be sure to download and read it.
Get Your InOrder Duck at IRCE 2013
It’s almost that time – time to add to your collection of InOrder Ducks. Be sure to stop by Booth 628 during IRCE and pick up yours.
Handing out ducks has become a tradition, so much so, people come to our booth just to get the latest duck to add to their collection.
InOrder ducks from previous years.
We’d love to see your ducks! Do you keep them on your desk or at home? Do you have pictures of the elusive InOrder scuba duck? It’s quite rare so if you have one, we’d love to see it!
Please email us your pictures (send email to marketing@morsedata.com). We’d love to post them here on the blog.
Maximize SQL Server Uptime with High Availability
A few months ago, Marketing VP Tony Marchese wrote a two-part post about SQL server health. In these posts, he described how to help keep your servers running at maximum efficiency. (You can read Part I and Part II.) Happy servers means more uptime — and more uptime means you’re not up at night worrying about your servers crashing in the middle of a busy shopping season.
Since these posts were written, we’ve had customers ask us if we can configure their SQL Servers for them. The answer is, “You bet!”
We now offer full support for SQL Server High Availability with Automatic Failover using SQL Server High Availability technology, such as Database Mirroring and Always On Availability Groups.
In plain English, this means that once your SQL Server has been correctly configured, another sever in the group will instantly take on the load — with minimal or zero downtime or delay — if the main server in your group fails.
Keeping your servers running at maximum efficiency is crucial if you’re a multichannel merchant or an Internet retailer. Ensuring your servers are configured correctly allows ordering processing to proceed without delay — saving you thousands of potential lost dollars and system downtime due to server failure.
Want to ensure your InOrder system is working within an extremely fault-tolerant environment? Give us a call — we’re here to help you.
Should You Move InOrder to “The Cloud”?
Clients often ask us if InOrder is “in the cloud.” The answer is yes . . . and no. First, a clarification of terms. Although people sometimes use “cloud computing” and “software as service” interchangeably, they mean two different things.
Cloud-based computing, or cloud computing, simply means your network isn’t tied to a physical PC in your office. Instead, you outsource your entire network to another company and access it through a service, such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, or iNetU. The hardware that runs your network – and lots of other companies’ networks – is managed by the company that owns it. The benefit of outsourcing your network is that you don’t have to manage or replace the hardware – freeing you up to focus on other business issues as well as saving you money in IT costs, hardware, software, etc.
Software-as-service is when you pay a subscription fee to use a software application that’s hosted “in the cloud.” This means you log into the application via your Internet browser. The information stored in the application resides on the application’s servers; the company that has developed the software manages all updates, hosting, etc.
InOrder is software that’s installed on physical servers whether they’re in your office or somewhere else. Because it doesn’t matter where your servers are, you can use InOrder “in the cloud.” We fully support cloud-based computing and have partnerships with companies like Rackspace and INetU.
Cloud computing doesn’t necessarily mean your problems go away. In March 2012, for example, Amazon Web Services went down – an outage that affected many popular sites including Pinterest and Instagram. AWS was down again on December 24, 2012 – and took Netflix with it.
If you’ve been thinking of moving your network – or InOrder – to the cloud, and are wondering if it’s the right thing to do, ask yourself these questions:
Are you an expert on maintaining your servers? If you’re not an IT expert, then you’ll need to hire an IT person or an IT company to help manage your servers. The latter option is a particularly good one for small companies.
Do you replace your hardware every three years? If yes, it may make sense cost-wise to consider cloud computing.
Is your business Internet dependent? If yes, hosting your site in the cloud versus your own physical servers is probably a good idea. This way, if your town or city loses power due to a natural disaster or other reasons, your online business isn’t affected. (Generally, companies like Rackspace have redundancies that ensure their clients’ networks keep working even if power is out in a local area.) In addition, having your site hosted means you can log on to it through other means, such as a mobile device.
What’s been your experience with cloud computing? Have you been thinking about it? If so, give us a call – we’ll be glad to help answer any questions you may have.
IPD Uses InOrder to Keep Volvo Owners the World Over Happy
Celebrating their 50th year of business, IPD has been selling Volvo parts, accessories and performance products since 1963. With a parts inventory totaling over $800,000, IPD ships from its Portland, Oregon warehouse to Volvo owners and enthusiasts the world over.
IPD actually started down the ERP implementation road with another company only to discover that the program wouldn’t work. According to Kevin Rutledge, System Admin and Programmer for IPD, the program design had too many problems (as did the software company’s mentality). “They just didn’t understand our market and processes. The software was geared toward a manufacturing environment and we could see that it would work quite well in that arena but not the retail sales arena.”
The IPD auto parts business has unique needs that aren’t addressed completely with any ERP type application. Says Kevin, “It’s not like selling iPods or clothing. We warehouse stuff differently, we market our stuff differently, we purchase differently, etc. Heck even our customers behave differently.”
Several people at IPD had pushed for in-house development (or out-of-house development managed by in-house personnel) but decision was made not to go that route for various reasons, including time, cost and the potential that key employees could leave the company at any time.
IPD chose InOrder based on the company’s list of requirements and a review of software demonstrations. Kevin is quite candid about the selection process: “InOrder didn’t look perfect but the basics looked better than some of the other similar priced applications. Price was an important factor too.”
When asked how InOrder has helped IPD, Kevin says, “The biggest gain we’ve had from InOrder is the open Microsoft SQL database. Being able to access our data was our main goal.
“Our website is a completely separate application from InOrder. I’ve written various scripts that sync data between the two and it’s working pretty well for us. Our labor costs are down for order processing since we don’t have to manually key web orders any longer.”
Kevin adds, “The one thing we do appreciate about Morse Data is their attention to us. We’re a ‘special needs customer’ with seemingly constant issues. The customer support people at Morse do a great job of tracking down the weird and complex issues we have, determining the cause and then resolving them. We’re definitely impressed.”
To read more about IPD and how InOrder is helping them maintain inventory in real time, download the case study.
And, if you’re an auto parts company – or any company that sells online or through multiple channels, and your existing business software isn’t working for you, give us a call.