Archive for the ‘Miva Merchant’ Category

Miva Merchant has traditionally been offered through various web hosts around the globe, and for sale directly to users who wish to manage their own box. Now, they have also added a hosted version, where customers can pay for the software, hosting, email, and so on for a monthly fee (which varies depending on the package selected).

Practical Ecommerce interviews Rick Wilson, executive Vice President of Miva Merchant, to talk about the new offering.

The hosted version of Miva Merchant allows them to compete with carts such as Volusion, who are known more for their simplicity and ease of hosting/setup than they are for their flexibility or extensibility. Miva Merchant continues to support the existing models running through independent web hosts or sold directly to the end user.

For more details on the various plans, visit the Miva Merchant SaaS page on their website.

Miva Merchant has provided links to several PowerPoint presentations from the conference sessions. You can find them listed at http://www.mivamerchant.com/conference_2009/presentations.html.

The sessions available are:

• Miva Merchant, Past + Future by Rick Wilson
• 10 Steps to Improve Adwords by Paul Cary
• SearchSpring
• Avoiding the 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design by Tim Ash
• Building Customer Trust by Brennan Heyde
• Improving Customer Conversion Rates by Brennan Heyde
• The State of Search Marketing by Gillian Muessig
• Using Google Analytics to Grow Your Business by Morgan Jones
• Hiring An SEO Firm by Nikki Patrick
• Introduction to SEO by Mark Simon
• SEO — Optimizing Your Site by Mark Simon
• SEO for the CEO by Gillian Muessig
• Advanced Link Building by Gillian Muessig

These slides are a great overview of the topics covered for those of you who weren't able to attend, or those who attended different breakout sessions in the same time slots.

The 2009 Miva Merchant Conference kicked off yesterday, February 27, with a welcome message from Russ Carroll. After recognizing sponsors, presenters, and the Miva Merchant employees, Russ identified what we should expect to learn at the conference, and then covered a list of developments that have occurred since the 2008 conference:

• The return of Jon Burchmore, who was one of the original architects of the Miva Merchant shopping cart, to fulfill the roll of CTO of Miva Merchant
• They successfully released 5.5 after a significant beta test period
• The creation of the Miva Merchant Support Club, including the "Gems" benefit
• Bringing product support back in-house from India
• Discontinuation of Miva Payment, in favor of a tightened relationship with Intuit and Chase
• Support for PA-DSS compliance on versions 5.5 and the upcoming 4.25, including a new payment model for legacy v4 stores

Russ left us with one final thought on the economy: "Free-market capitalism is an anvil that has worn out many a hammer."

Rick Wilson spoke next on the past and future of the Miva Merchant software. He stated that there are now approximately 10,000 merchants running Miva Merchant 5.5, the latest version of the shopping cart, although there's still a significant number of merchants still using the 4.x platform as well. Some of the highlights that have taken place since version 5.5 was first launched:

• A new timeout-free set of import/export modules
• XML import capabilities
• Eliminated excess white space in the page source
• Admin click efficiency - making the administration easier to use
• A streamlined user interface
• Created a highly stable environment
• Opened up virtually 100% control of shopping interface
• MySQL optimization
• Skins

Rick also mentioned two "mom and pop" stores using Miva Merchant that have grown with such significance that they are now part of the Internet Retailer Top 500 - TotalVac.com and Allergy Buyers Club.

Rick also discussed the PCI compliance and PA-DSS compliance work they are doing on the software to ensure that merchants can continue to safely accept credit card payments. Finally, he demonstrated some new features coming out for Miva Merchant 5.5, particular related to order processing, editing, and capturing payments and handling refunds.

From there, the conference moved into a series of keynotes, some educational, and some product-based presentations by sponsors. These included Amazon Payments, Dr. Larry Osborne, the pastor of North Coast Church (who gave a wonderful presentation!), Google Analytics and Website Optimizer, and Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com - who had the dubious distinction of being the last speaker on a delayed schedule before lunch.

The afternoon breakout sessions included topics such as Quickbooks integration, social media, search engine optimization, Google analytics, and Miva Merchant skins. The evening concluded with a dinner.

Pete and I (Susan, that is) are both in San Diego at the Miva Merchant 2009 conference. We've announced our new service offerings - Click-2-Customer, FeedExact.com, and AccurateTax.com, and released this brand-new website that showcases our in-house design and development talents. If you're here, catch Susan at the Quickbooks and SEO 101 (repeat) sessions on Friday, or at the Accounting and SEO 301 (repeat) presentations on Sunday. If you're not, keep up-to-date by following our blog here, or following Susan's posts at Twitter. We'll have a day-one recap shortly.

Also want to give a shout-out to Leslie Kirk's photos in the photo gallery. I swiped one she took of Pete and myself just to prove that we're not on a beach in Mexico. (Sounds nice, though, doesn't it?!)

This week Miva Merchant rolled out version 5.5 of their renowned shopping cart application. It's a free upgrade for Miva Merchant users already running version 5.0, and it's offered as a streaming update. The bad news is that it's quite easy to upgrade. The good news is that it's quite easy to upgrade. Here's what I mean: When you log into your store's administrative interface, depending on your notification settings, you may see a popup window that looks like this: