Everest new support and maintenance plan, too expensive and complicated

Everest Software's new maintenance has left customers to ponder as they have to understand the new dynamics of support and maintenance program that the new management are imposing on its customers.

Its' simple plan however it gets complicated or expensive if you try to avoid not picking Enterprise plan. Firstly you are giving option to subscribe for year plan or 3 yr or 5 yr.

If it's year plan subscription then the catch is it get pricey as years go starting from $3000 to almost $7000 by end of 5 year

After you choose you can pick whether you are going to pick "Standard" or "Gold" or "Platinum" and each of those packages offer different services like platinum gives you unlimited support and weekend support but again its expensive.

Finally based on product offering you can stay with whatever user license you have or choose to jump to Standard or Professional where you have access to all the add-ons that you could purchase, so its either this or that...

We at InfoSourcing want to offer alternative support and maintenance services for Everest customers and also offer wide variety of services from Customization, support and book keeping services, to read more our Everest support and maintenance click here...

Integration of Everest to E-Bay, seamless end to end e-Commerce solution

InfoSourcing new add-on application now integrates eBay with Everest. The seamless integration of Everest Software and eBay allows you to easily sell on eBay with few clicks, and integrates all your eBay orders into Everest.

Now you can manage all your listings on Ebay and reach wider audience in selling your products. eBay is one of the most popular shopping sites in US, UK and Canada. integrating with eBay will expose your business to larger audience resulting in higher sales.

eBay listings are managed through our utility with easy-to-use interfaces and all orders resulting from sale flows seamlessly back into Everest for processing. Fulfillment and tracking are managed within Everest via built-in inventory; pick, pack, and ship; and UPS and FedEx tools.

For Benefits, Features and functionality of ebay intergation click here to read

Your Website Should Be Revenue Generator And Top Sales Rep In Your Company

BUMPER CHRISTMAS FOR THE MOST POPULAR RETAILERS ONLINE

With economy slowdown Online retailers have pushed themselves with better deals to attract higher sales for last quarter of 2008. According to reports obtained from Nielsen sales in UK had good impact compared to 2007 yr. Few Quotes from that report

The top 10 retailers online during the 2008 Christmas shopping period (Q4) averaged a 37%
increase in Unique Visitors compared to the 2007 Christmas shopping period
• Amazon, averaging 15.6 million Unique Britons each month in Q4 (ranked #1),


Alex Burmaster, Communications Director, Nielsen Online: “The fact that the leading retailers online managed to attract over a third more visitors than they did for Christmas 2007 meant online retail provided some very bright news amidst the overall gloomy economic picture at the end of 2008.

We at InfoSourcing are focused in helping to achieve higher sales from Internet, recently we helped Everest UK Customer "DJM Music". DJM wanted to automate their e-Bay and Amazon sales for Holiday season'08. We automated their listing of products on Amazon and E-Bay and integrated the order process into Everest, this saved them ton of time and they were able to operate with higher efficiency and higher sales.

We now have a superior integrated tool with eBay and Everest, listing, re-listing and importing of orders into Everest, feel free to ask for demo or better yet visit our website www.Info-Sourcing.com

It becomes even more important to have a flexible shopping cart with tons of features to attract your internet audience and also to venture into new avenues and integrating with your backend, this constant cycle of marketing approach would bring in more customers and more sales, customize your e-Commerce software and reach wider audience, out of the box applications can only do so much, look at the bigger ROI if one does customize their website functionality to reach wider market.

Everest Forum - Forum for the missed ones

Everest Forum

Everest is all set to have their second forum in Las Vegas in Sep 15, 16th 2008, if you missed attending New Orleans Everest World, then you have another chance to meet up in Las Vegas and get hands on experience of Everest 5.0.

Since its launch and introduction of new features and functionality they had to hold the new version till 5.0.1 for its complexity and depth of the product and make easy tranisition to newer version.

Everest Forum would be a good time to attend since the product would have matured and its right time to make the switch just before the holiday seasons starts or you could postpone your migration till end of the year, so you could really make some decision sitting in Las Vegas MGM Grand Casino hotel.

Las Vegas known as city of lights, Casino bar and most famous "what happens in Las Vegas, stays in Vegas ..." well what are you waiting for if you missed New Orelans its time to hit Vegas and learn the new 5.0 and have some fun in the city.

Integrated Gift Card Solution - The Purple Cow

Integrated Gift Card Solution for Everest Software - The Purple Cow

As we pass through blazing hot Summer and Fall season entering into the gift season we will see drastic usage of gift cards by retailers, ecommerce and businesses.
Gift card captures the attention of any shopper who passes by your website or your retail store, another way of sharing gifts with loved ones.

Seth Godin, author of "Purple Cow" writes in his book
"You're either remarkable or invisible, make your choice". Seth uses "purple cow" as a metaphor for getting attention, one of the marketing strategy to adopt.

Small and Medium Business (SMB) need to adopt to the concept of having a purple cow to attract customers/shoppers and we relate "Gift Card & Loyalty Program" as one of your Purple cow, by offering such programs/services you can attract & retain your customers as they surf through online or offline in the store.

Gift Card brings new customers to your store and loyalty program retains your existing customers, moving into Calendar year of holiday seasons sales figures are driven by providing such services to your customers, the concept of Purple cow is very effective way of marketing.

Whether you are in retail, e-tail (ecommerce), wholesale, distribution model you should have "Purple Cow" on your side to attract customers, some of our clientele enjoying our purple cow for the season are We Got Soccer (www.WeGotSoccer.com) and Tire Plus (www.TirePlusBrand.com), and few more to go live before the season starts.

Ask us how we can help you to paint your cow in Purple?

Read more about our integrated Gift Card Solution for Everest Software here.

Everest 5.0 the new avtar (version)

Everest Software released its much hyped about Everest 5.0 version, we had glimpse of its new features and functionality and we are happy to inform that the new version looks good so far, but we are waiting for it to hit the road and see how it performs.

Good Points to consider:
1. The overall look and feel of the desktop version hasn't changed except the new icons
2. Speed of the product remains the same no major difference
3. New set of Features introduced such as Google Checkout, PayPal for e-Commerce
4. Enhanced Item matrix wizard, added import of item matrix items
5. Added a new feature for Merging duplicate accounts, which is good
6. Introduced basic gift card concept for desktop only
7. Everest E-Commerce can be managed easily with lots of preferences in the backend.

Not so Good Points:
1. Everest E-Commerce is now on .NET platform and supports only 1 template and its built on base dynamic/modern template, we expected they would use amazing template which is widely used coz of amazon look and feel
2. HUGE disappointment that some features like Google Checkout, Paypal and Kits are now clubbed as eStorefront Professional and is charged $$$$, these are features that every other e-Commerce product must have, and Everest decided to charge for it.
3. Source Code not available for building your own logic this is insane, it blocks solution providers like us or developers to customize their business logic, you can defintely make changes to look and feel of the template and add make few small changes to code but you won't be able to integrate seamlessly with the e-Commerce site.
For example: If you wanted customize so that you could give away FREE item everytime shopper purchases item X, this was possible to do in 4.02, however in with .NET version its not possible coz of non-availability of source code.
4. No integrated Gift card and Loyalty program combo available yet, not possible to redeem gift card over the web

More in-detail comparison list will be published, as we unearth new set of features and its usage.

CPC (Cost Per Click) Vs CPA (Cost Per Action)

The e-Commerce industry is evolving through search engines, e-commerce business owners are spending their marketing budget to get traffic by advertising online through Google Adwords, Yahoo Overture or MSN Ad centre by participating in their PPC (Pay Per Click) or CPC (Cost Per Click) campaigns or even by advertising in price engine feeds such as pricegrabber or shopping.com websites.

Now, Microsoft has taken an revolutionary step in marketing & advertising by pushing their CPA Model (Cost Per Action) which is more beneficiary to business owners, since they will be paying only if they get orders/quotes/any action that results in merchant's objectives being met.

Microsoft launched its CPA model today (21st May) by introducing "Live Search Cashback" Program, this program allows e-Commerce websites to advertise with MSN and get listed on their comparison site for products being searched and when shoppers search on search.live.com or search.Msn.com and visit advertisers websites and place order or take appropriate action, shoppers get anywhere from 2% to 20% discount based on merchant offerings and merchant pays Microsoft for per conversion/action.

This is truly going to change the way shoppers are going to search, we could expect more numbers/traffic on Microsoft's search engine platform (Search.live.com) and this is a great initiative to drive quality traffic and sales.

Everest e-commerce customers should be engaging themselves to join this cash back program and get quality traffic and increase their sales.

We offer data feed management to Google, MSN and other price engines to submit your product catalog in real time to be listed on comparison engines.

Visit Everest E-commerce data feed, SEO and customization pages.