Experience of eCommerce in worldwide Market

I recently had a project come up and spent a lot of time testing different platforms to find one that could handle digital products the best. For various reasons I settled on Bigcommerce and began building out the store. I knew from reading the Ultimate Big commerce review that I shouldn’t expect great things from their existing templates and that turned out to be true. They were pretty generic and didn’t suit my needs, so I began adapting a new one to the platform.

That’s when the fun began. To put it nicely, the Bigcommerce platform leaves a lot to be desired for programmers and developers. The only real documentation that they provide hasn’t been updated since 2009 and is missing just about all of the variables. It’s useless as anything more than a basic overview of the system and Bigcommerce uses a massive number of variables in their template designs, which means that you’re going to need to know what they are and how they work. There are a number of “Advanced Tutorials” published in their knowledgebase and on the forums that help developers work around some of the items normally covered in documentation, but that just means you have to spend a lot of time searching rather than getting work done. Fortunately a developer named Spring Merchant has created a template variable search on their website which is helpful, but not official or complete. I don’t understand why Bigcommerce can’t provide a complete list themselves. I’ve lost track of how much time I’ve spent trying to find variables and figure out why it is they they do or do not work. If you ask design or programming related questions when you contact support, even if they are specific to Bigcommerce variables, they copy and paste the “Sorry, but we can’t support custom development” response in the live chat window. I would agree with this policy if they provided decent documentation.

I’ve been in communication with several people at Bigcommerce regarding these issues and after long delays between responses I was told that they are making improvements and that I should post my suggestions to ideas.bigcommerce.com. A quick review of the top issues indicates that there are a lot of other people out there who share my concerns, many posting them years ago, but without any movement from Bigcommerce. Out of the 20 items on the first page only two are in development; one of them has been without an update for almost three months and the other missed the estimate for implementation.

It’s no secret that we don’t like many of the ecommerce platform review sites out there. Most are scams. The review sites simply award the best spots to the company that pays them the largest lump sum, or the highest affiliate fees. Example: “Zippy Cart” – one of the largest ecommerce review sites in the world is simply a “pay-to-play” site where whichever shopping cart pays the most gets the better rating. Their rankings are absurd. Pinnacle Cart #1, Shopping Cart Elite #4, and NO mention of Shopify or Big Cartel? It’s ridiculous. I suspect sites like that semi-blackmail companies… ‘sponsor a review’ or ‘pay for editorial time’ otherwise we won’t review your platform. I hate that crap.

Anyways, I say all this mostly because I feel like ranting. It’s my blog and I’m allowed to rant every now and then. But also because I’m sick of people thinking that’s how this site works. We do not accept lump sums of money to increase a carts ranking. We get emails almost every day from marketing and affiliate departments, even some pretty well known CEOs offering us very good money to either rank their cart, or move them from #6 to #2 or whatever. We refuse every time.

The whole point of this site is we are an UNBIASED review site. This isn’t a full-time job for us, we review and post articles in our spare time.  We do this for fun, and we do it to warn people of the bad online store builders (OS Commerce!) and tell people about the good ones (Shopify, Bigcommerce, Corecommerce, etc.)

Name of Business with app name

Naming your business is an important branding exercise, but if you choose to name your business as anything other than your own personal name then you’ll need to register it with the appropriate authorities.

This process is known as registering your “Doing Business As” (DBA) name.

Patter for iOS is a messaging application that lets people chat with friends privately or in public chat rooms. As the name implies it is the iOS version of the Patter web application built by @duerig.
The primary goal for my app is to support, promote, and enhance the Patter web application…the mothership as it were. Some secondary goals for me are to learn the App.net API better and to be more involved in the community. I also hope it can be an example of an interesting way to build on top of the API.

Currently, the app is more tailored to somebody that has already used Patter but I hope to make it clearer for those who have little or no exposure to Patter or even, for that matter, to App.net.

What qualities make a great app?

I like apps that are immediately obvious how to use and are uncluttered in appearance. I like apps that have a bit of personality and character embedded throughout their interface. I want to be able to get a laugh or two or see something unexpected.

With just about every app I’ve made I try to add in a few little Easter eggs just for fun. With Patter for iOS I decided early on to add something fun or unexpected with every release. I’m trying to do it in such a way that if you aren’t really looking you’ll never notice or be bothered by them, but, if you dig around a little, you will be able to find this whole other world inside the app that you never noticed before.

What is a “Doing Business As” Name?

A fictitious name (or assumed name, trade name or DBA name) is a business name that is different from your personal name, the names of your partners or the officially registered name of your LLC or corporation.

It’s important to note that when you form a business, the legal name of the business defaults to the name of the person or entity that owns the business, unless you choose to rename it and register it as a DBA name.

For example, consider this scenario: John Smith sets up a painting business. Rather than operate under his own name, John instead chooses to name his business: “John Smith Painting”. This name is considered an assumed name and John will need to register it with the appropriate local government agency.

The legal name of your business is required on all government forms and applications, including your application for employer tax IDs, licenses and permits.

Do I Need a “Doing Business As” Name?

A DBA is needed in the following scenarios:

Sole Proprietors or Partnerships – If you wish to start a business under anything other than your real name, you’ll need to register a DBA so that you can do business as another name.
Existing Corporations or LLCs – If your business is already set up and you want to do business under a name other than your existing corporation or LLC name, you will need to register a DBA.