Google’s Custom Search Business Edition enables shopping cart and website owners, particularly small-to-medium sized enterprizes, to utilise google’s search technology.

The custom search engine will let visitors access search results from any website or websites that you, the Webmaster, chooses.

Starting at around $100/year, you can add Google search to index and search up to 5,000 pages on your website; $500 gets you up to 50,000.

Google’s Business Edition also gives you the ability to remove Google AdWords advertisements and change the colors of the results pages so it matches your shopping cart. You can also choose to feature specific content in your search results or display particular promotions or events above the search results.

To ensure the highest level of compliance under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI), Viart Shop has recently added two 3D secure payment gateways to their shopping cart software.

Viart.com (http://www.viart.com/), an online company supplying PHP shopping cart software worldwide, has recently enabled two more 3D secure payment systems.  This will help merchants to safeguard online shoppers and help protect them against online credit card fraud.

3D secure is a new technical standard developed by Visa and MasterCard to secure CNP transactions over the Internet.  Visa brand their version of the scheme ‘Verified by Visa’ and MasterCard have called their initiative ‘MasterCard SecureCode’. Other cards included in the scheme are Maestro and solo.

“3D secure transfers the liability for fraud from the merchant to the card issuer, under a range of conditions. It’s an online version of ‘Chip and Pin’ technology, making shopping online more secure for both merchants and shoppers. Explains Mr. Birzul, Technical Director of Viart.com.

Fraud and security concerns have grown in tandem with the growth of eCommerce.  By offering 3D secure payment systems, Viart is making shopping online safer for both buyers and sellers.

3D Secure authentication requires the cardholder to enter a PIN/ password they previously assign to their credit card.  This is needed to complete any transaction online and therefore protects the cardholder from unauthorised use of their card.

For merchants, the benefits of 3D secure include confidence in order acceptance and protection from fraudulent charge backs. (more…)

Google has recently announced the acquisition of Postini - A company that offers security and corporate compliance solutions for email, IM and other online based communications.

Postini serves over 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide.

Google has explained the deal will allow them to offer more hosted services to businesses.  At the moment, 1,000 small businesses sign up for google Apps (Which includes Google Mail, Calendar, Talk etc.) on a daily basis.   While Google launched Google Apps to help businesses to communicate and share information, larger companies have been unable to use it due to breach of legal and compliance issues.

Google has said that they want to address these information security and compliance issues - hence the reason for the acquisition of Postini.

Wikipedia continues to grow, with the online encyclopedia recieving around 20 million more vistors per month, than it did 12 months ago.

As reported by Nielsen/ Netratings, Wikipedia had 46.8 million unique visitors in May 2007.  This is a huge 72% increase compared to June 2006.

Research carried out ealier this year also found that 36% of online users in the US consult Wikipedia on a regular basis.

While Wikipedia is often criticised for the imprecision of its articles -  “the truly remarkable thing about Wikipedia as a news site is that it works as well as it does.” (Why Wikipedia Works- Center for Citizen Media)  It’s chaotic - but it just works!

This tremendous growth in the past year has made the open-access website the most popular news source online.  The speed at which the news items are added, edited and expanded no doubt plays a part in its popularity.

Shopping cart abandonment is a significant issue for all merchants.  Before completing the checkout process, it is thought that as much as 75% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts - as reported by industry research reports.

There are a few ways merchants can identify drop out points.  My personal favourite is using Google analytics.  Anyone with a website can enable google analytics and amongst many features you can evaluate in great detail visitor navigation and analyse their behaviour.   As a result merchants can pinpoint and improve certain areas of a website so as to avoid shopping cart abandonment.

Another way to identify obsticals in order completion is to utilise a shopping cart abandonment survey.  This could be sent to abandoned or lost customers.  

Another article you might find interesting is: Shopping Cart Abandonment