At last year’s Hosting Con our VP of Product Development sat down with myhostnews.com to talk about Pinnacle Cart, click here to view the interview. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Craig Fox, our Founder and VP of Product Development was recently invited to provide some insight into PA-DSS / PCI compliance and it’s effects in the ecommerce industry for The Web Host Industry Review, better known as The WHIR .  Here are some snippets from the article:

“We’ve completed that compliance ring – what we call the remediation process – with our QSA,” says Craig Fox, VP of product development at e-commerce software firm Pinnacle Cart. “Everything seems to be coming clean.” According to Fox, the total initial cost associated with certification for Pinnacle Cart is likely to be in the range of $20,000 to $30,000 – a manageable cost of doing business, and not something the company intends to pass on to its customers in the form of a price increase, but by no means an insignificant sum of money.

Check out the full article on pages 12-13  here as mentioned on our @pinnaclecart Twitter account!

We know the survey may have been a surprise to many of you who have been waiting on a new beta version on a new platform. I would like to take a few minutes to explain where we are and the direction of the company.

Many of you have recently completed a survey we sent you relating to feature sets for a new version of our shopping cart software.

At the end of last year we were in the process of developing a new platform for Pinnacle Cart that would take us into the next decade. As we began developing the product we also began to understand the challenges and opportunities associated with PA DSS (Payment Applicant Data Security Standard). Visa and MasterCard will begin to enforce this new standard on all shopping carts and any payment application that accepts credit cards in July of 2010. In a nutshell, as a small business owner, this is another requirement for you to be PCI compliant.

Certification is an expensive and time consuming process as we work with a 3^rd party QSA recommended by Visa/MC. In addition, our company will have to absorb this expense every time we come out with a significant change to our software. We are making every effort to not pass this expense along to our customers and have been able to keep that goal to date by not increasing the cost of the software. But as you can probably imagine it has forced us to change the way we look at development and releases. The great news for you is Pinnacle Cart will be a leader in PA DSS certification and education.

We have made a major decision to delay the release 4.0 and certify “Pinnacle Cart 3.7 PA DSS.”  Of course, by default, it will also mean that 4.0 will also be certified when it is released. The survey you received some time back will go a long way to defining the some of the features associated with 3.7. Many of the features are in the process of being built or already have been built and Craig will have a post about the feature set and the timeline to release. This was a difficult decision as we are very excited about getting to the new platform. The funny thing about the new platform is that it actually IS the reason we decided to come out with an interim release. A new platform undoubtedly creates challenges for upgrades. Though we will provide documentation, a path to upgrade and continue to offer services to assist in the upgrade there will still be work to do. On the other hand, if you are on a 3.4, 3.5 or 3.6 series cart, upgrading to a 3.7 cart is quite easy. Combined, it was obvious we needed to certify a new release for older clients who now must upgrade to 3.7 to have a PA DSS certified shopping cart. Providing choices for our customers has been a cornerstone of our business and this is a great example of changing our direction to better server our entire customer base.

We are excited and look forward to a summer release of 3.7 and a substantial new feature set.

Mike Auger

While checking our Twitter updates, I came across this interesting article posted by @AvalaraSalesTax .  It is a great and indepth article about the potential increase in taxation of goods purchased online.  Click here to check it out.  Likewise, if you come across more great ecommerce based articles, feel free to shoot them our way via our @pinnaclecart Twitter account or email them to iwantthisblogged@pinnaclecart.com .

Pinnacle Cart 3.6.3 has been launched!

If you have account in our new account area at https://account.pinnaclecart.com then you can get the new packages from there.
If you do not yet have an account in the new area, please proceed to http://www.pinnaclecart.com/upgrade.php to get the version of the cart as well as your own account in our new account area.

We will also be releasing this as a hotfix to 3.6.2 version carts as soon as it is available.

Below are the changes and fixes in 3.6.3

Changes from version 3.6.2 R.704 to 3.6.3 R.905

Added - Password update notification and failed admin lockout.
Reason - Necessary to meet PA-DSS compliance.

Added - Password Strength Meter for administrator accounts.
Reason - Necessary to meet PA-DSS compliance.

Added - Intuit QuickBooks Merchant Service.
Reason - Requested by clients

Added - Tracking features for both Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
Reason - Allows customer to track visitor / sales data using Google Analytics and Google Adwords.

Added - Time limit for storage of credit card data.
Reason - Necessary to meeting PA-DSS compliance

Issue – Address field 1 & 2 maybe too short for some international addresses.
Fixed - Increased the max length to 48.

Added - HTTPS interface to PayPal Payflow Pro.
Reason - PayPal Payflow Pro was using library in the cart, now using HTTP interface to communicate.

Issues – Wrong default URL in NTP Now payment gateway.
Fixed - Database is updated with new URL.

Added - Shipping area restriction in the Google post XML.
Fixed - Per Google Checkout documentation.

Issue - Taxes are not recalculated when you update order quantity in admin area.
Fixed - Fixed the query to pull tax rate for updated order subtotal.

Issue - Unable to bulk update a tax class when a high number of products is present in the database.
Fixed - Redesigned the tax class update function.

Issue – Per PA-DSS compliance documentation, CVV2 data cannot be stored under any condition.
Fixed - Removed CVV2 data field from credit card storage.

Issue- Promo code does not get rechecked after deleting a product from cart.
Fixed - Added additional check for promo discount calculations.

Issue - Newsletter unsubscribe does not work for registered users.
Fixed - Updated unsubscribe function for registered users.

Issue – On IPN payment methods OPC drops shipping and makes order free of charge.
Fixed - Added additional checks for shipping rate after few unsuccessful transaction.

Issue – In some instances, attribute inventory was not updating on purchase.
Fixed - Modify the stock control function to check the list of ordered items.

Thank you for an extremely successful 2008. As we go full steam into 2009 we wanted to let all of our customers know what we’ve been working on and what you can expect from us for the New Year. Over the past couple of months the entire Pinnacle Cart team has been busy working on the planning and development of our next release, Pinnacle Cart 4.0. While we don’t have an official release date set at this time, my hope is to provide you with information regarding the release over the next couple of months in preparation for a BETA release sometime in the first quarter. As with any release suggestions from our customer base is very important. Almost every feature added to the application comes from you and we encourage all customers to use our discussion board or submit a “feature request” through our support area.

One of the primary goals of the 4.0 project is to expand our feature set and to migrate the application into a new development framework. Frameworks aim to alleviate the overhead associated with common activities used in application and plug-in development. To assist us with selecting a framework the development team created a list of requirements necessary for any framework we use.

I’ve outlined a couple below:

1) Size- While every framework will reduce development and QA time, some were quite heavy and required the application to come with many additional components we simply won’t use.

2) Speed – Some frameworks hadn’t yet been fully realized and suffered from latency issues. Actually some had been fully realized, but still had unacceptable latency issues. Also we wanted to make sure the selected framework used Web Caching to reduce bandwidth usage, server load, and perceived “lag”. A web cache stores copies of documents passing through it and subsequent requests may be satisfied from the cache if certain conditions are met.

3) Follows MVC (Model View Controller) model – The MVC architectural pattern is used to separate the data model with business rules from user interface.

4) Security – Must have an authentication and authorization frameworks that enable the web server to identify the users of the application, and restrict access to functions based on some defined criteria.

After an exhaustive research all of the existing frameworks in the market, we found none of them completely meet the needs of our application therefore we decided to create our own framework appropriately named “PinnacleGears”. Gears was designed specifically for the needs of eCommerce applications and is fully-documented, light-weight, secure and quite snappy I might add.

One of the other changes you’ll notice in PC 4.0 is we’re migrating into a 100% XHTML compliant template system. On top of making design changes very quick and easy, XHTML compliant systems have the added benefit of becoming excellent fodder for search engines and can assist in SEO. This system will allow third-party designers the ability to create front-end designs with much greater efficiently.

Over the next couple of months leading up to the release I’ll be doing my best to update you on some of the changes and new features you can expect in 4.0.

When the economy is in recession, the last thing you want to do is spend resources on sales pitches that lead nowhere. One great mantra preached by marketing gurus is to invest in developing strong customer relationships, which will build a large customer base to get you through rougher periods. If you haven’t done that, don’t panic. Here are some tips to keep you afloat in troubled times.

Sell to existing customers

When sales are slow, selling to existing customers is cheaper and easier. The reasons are simple – you’ve got their attention already and built a relationship based on trust and credibility and, most importantly, given them reason enough not to fall prey to your competitors’ advances. You know their buying history, so offering them products and services that complement their original purchase is vital. Using e-mail management software like Constant Contact in conjunction with Pinnacle Cart allows you to stay in contact with your existing customer.

“Free” is a very attractive word

Nothing grabs attention like the word “free” when you see it online. Send out free newsletters or offer a free trial period. Many websites offer a complimentary service and then charge for a detailed report. For example, astrology sites will give you a high-level reading of your birth chart free of charge and offer specific dates predicting events in your life for a fee.

Find lucrative advertising deals

Participate in pay-per-click advertising programs or even better, pay-per-sale. Using iDevAffilaite in conjunction with Pinnacle Cart allows you to create a commission based sales force where you only pay affiliates when they make a sale. In tough economic times pay-per-sale programs make much more sense for your business as there isn’t any upfront costs involved.

Publish yourself online

Generate free press for yourself by writing articles in ezines, blogs, forums, podcasts & RSS, mini-sites and social networking sites. You will build credibility for yourself and be seen as something of an expert in your field. If you don’t have the means to do it, hire freelance writers to do the job for you. Negotiate with the hosting information/content site to publish your name, a short byline and your website URL with the article. Or better still, start an ezine yourself.

Be visible all the time

Make sure you’re on your customers’ radar when they may need a product or service that you offer. Create mailing lists for this purpose by asking visitors to your website to complete a simple registration form. Then send them emails about discounts and news items like current trends in that area. For example, clothing stores send emails announcing sales that have children’s jackets for $14 with free shipping. The kids don’t need another jacket but such attractive information coming into your mailbox definitely warrants a peek at the product.

Don’t limit yourself to online advertising

Your business may be online but your advertising doesn’t have to be. Advertise judiciously in newspapers, or TV and radio, or send press releases that are fed into several online and offline PR channels.

There’s nothing we can do to stop the recession but we can make the best of it. Following these tips will help you increase sales as well as drive traffic to your website, which in turn, generates more sales.

Everyone knows that a picture is worth a thousand words. And it has never been truer than when you’re purchasing something on the internet. In the absence of picking up an item, holding it in your hand and getting an up-close look-see, getting a detailed visual is the next best thing. With an ever-increasing competitive marketplace, giving the buyer an image to view not only provides an advantage over other merchants but also gives the purchaser added assurance that they are making the right buying decision. Both of which will inevitably increase your conversion rate. That’s why the PinnacleCart shopping cart comes fully loaded with a robust imaging tool.

When uploading products into your online store you want to ensure that you include a high resolution image. The higher resolution your image, the more detail the purchaser will be able to see of your product(s). Ideally, you want to use an image with at least 250 dots per square inch or, more commonly referred to as, dpi. To include an image for your product, simply go to the ‘Product’s Image’ section of the ‘Add a New Product’ page and select browse. This will allow you to find an image that is saved on your computer and upload it to the appropriate folder in the cart.

You will also have the option to choose a type of zoom function for your product(s). The zoom functionality allows the shopper to get a detailed visual of your product. This zoom capability is built into the PinnacleCart product, so there isn’t anything you need to do other than upload the image and choose the desired option under the section ‘Image Zooming’. There are three types of zoom options: 1) zoom, 2) magnify, and 3) image overlay. Zoom allows your customers to view your product images in incredible detail. The user does not need to click anything - they just move their mouse over the image to see every detail of your product. Magnify is an elegant way to zoom into your images with a magnifying-glass. The user does not need to click anything - they just move their mouse over the photo to see every detail in your product. And, Image Overlay is used to overlay images on the current page. This feature allows potential customers to view enlarged product images without any pop-ups or leaving the page.

Click below to see the image tool feature in the admin area of the cart.

You can also use additional customization to further enhance the existing imaging tools. With a little additional effort, you can choose a specific zoom area position, specify a specific size of the zoom area, add a title for the zoom image, display a loading message while the image is downloading (ideal for those with a slow internet connection), and adjust the opacity of the square when someone hovers over the image, among others.

So, when updating inventory, be sure to take advantage of this very useful and easy-to-use feature. You will assuredly increase your conversion rate while also providing your customers with a richer shopping experience. And if you ever have any questions or issues, be sure to reference our knowledgebase as you will find thorough documentation on how to get the most our of this tool.

We’ve been working on some new flash videos to help both new and existing customer understand just how easy it is to use Pinnacle Cart. While we’ve only completed 4 at this time, we’ll be adding more every week until we’ve covered most major aspects of the cart. If you have any feedback or an idea for a video you’d like to see, please issue us a support ticket and we’ll get on it right away.

See how easy it is to use Pinnacle Cart

Congratulations to Todd Chism for being selected as one of the top 5 canidates for Entrepreneur Magazines Entrepreneur of the Year. His business, patioshoppers.com currently has 7 employees and is projecting 4 million in sales for 2008. And of course he’s using Pinnacle Cart as his eCommerce Platform.

“PatioShoppers opened business as a small independent patio umbrella dealer and sold over $1 million within the first 13 months to become one of the largest and most successful specialty umbrella dealers online,” says Todd. “From inception, we have moved into many other outdoor furnishings categories, including cushions, heaters, furniture and more. With our recent launch of a specialty niche patio heater site, we are working to build our online presence.”

To cast your vote and learn more about Todd, direct your browser to http://www.entrepreneur.com/eoy/chism.aspx