AH: Please begin with a brief history of ViArt ?
TM: Viart started as two people back in 1999. We began by doing small programming projects for e-commerce companies. These projects usually involved building e-retail websites. We were responsible for building and maintaining their websites.
Their sales peaked at around $30 million dollars per year selling consumer electronic goods. During this time we started developing the Viart Shop platform, originally called code2sell. We used all of the knowledge we'd gained from working with a high volume e-commerce site to design a highly featured system that we hope can be used by developers anywhere to rapidly build feature rich web sites. Today we are a privately owned, well funded team of around 30 people and it seems we are growing in numbers every week!
AH: Tell me and our readers what are the basic differences between ViArt shopping cart and others similar shopping carts on the market today?
TM: I think it has to be the range and depth of features. The Viart system comprises a shopping cart, support ticket system, CMS, merchant and call centre modules, bonus points functionality and forum. We even include a classified ads system, banner ad system and in the next release, multi site functionality where you can run several websites from one database and administration interface. We continue to develop each of these and are constantly working in an attempt to make it the best in it's class.
As an example of our continued development we are about to release a small PC based application, integrated with Viart shop, that will allow the automatic printing of orders that have successfully passed payment - a small thing but something that makes a big difference if you are printing say 30+ orders per day.
We have part of our team that only work on additions to the core scripts. This means that our users will hopefully always have access to the latest advanced features to allow them to build better websites for themselves or their clients. We have tried to keep the price point low so I would humbly say that there aren't many (if any) other systems that include all of these features at such a low cost.
AH: What are some of the challenges that you foresee as customers are demanding more friendly experiences while buying online?
TM: Well this is a big one! In the past I used to say that if you had the content users wanted that was generally enough. Eventually people would find you and put up with bad design and a convoluted checkout system because they really wanted what you've got. But that was 8 years ago. Today you still need that content, but you also have to have good design that is aesthetically pleasing to the browser and you need a clear way to find the content and a simple way to convert.
So if you are a retailer with hundreds or thousands of products you need an efficient and easy way for your users to find that one product they are looking for. This means a well structured category system using the terminology used by your users which is not necessarily the same as that used by you or your industry colleagues. A good search facility is the second part of helping your users find content. With the meteoric rise in general search through the major search engines users demand the same results and standards from searches within a website.
The checkout funnel is one of the most important features on any e-commerce website. This has to be kept to a minimum number of steps possible and the user should be kept informed as to where they are and what they have to do next e.g. "Step 1 of 3 - Your Invoice and Delivery Details". At this point you will encounter so called "friction" - every time you ask for something a little more personal the user will stop and ask themselves "do I want to give this information to this website?". The ultimate friction point, I believe, is when the user is asked to enter their credit card details. At this point you should be emphasising trust messages to try and overcome this friction.
As web developers and site owners I believe that web analytics is hugely important. It allows us to measure any point where we've got it wrong and can point us in the right direction to fix things. So for example if you get a high exit rate after an internal search it might be indicative that your search facility needs to be looked at. If users bounce out of your site at the first stage in the checkout it might be that you should add some more details emphasising your privacy policy and trust of your company.
It's a big topic and I could go on for ever - another article perhaps! One thing I would note is that there are very few e-commerce companies that get it right. Christmas time is the time of year when I personally buy many things on-line. When you do this it becomes immediately apparent what is a "good" site and what is not - can I see if the product I want is in stock? How long will I have to wait for delivery? What is the full cost of my order? What if there is a problem, will I be able to resolve it with them? Is the flow through the checkout flawless (I can't tell you how many times I've got stuck in a loop because of a bug in some checking software!) and finally, do I really trust that this company will take my money and deliver the goods as promised?
The encouraging thing is, I believe that there are plenty of opportunities for smaller more nimble companies to make their websites match the needs of users thereby giving them the opportunity to compete against the bigger players.
AH: What can you tell me about the future of online sales, and whatever you want to tell me about ViArt's future plans with their line of products?
TM: Just about every report you read in every part of the world suggest that online sales are increasing. As more users come online with ever faster broadband connections the web becomes a far more pleasing experience and individuals will interact more and more with websites. The huge rise in the use of Social Networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is I think indicative of this. It follows that these same users will want to enjoy the convenience and choices afforded by shopping Online.
With regard to Viart I sometimes think we are the best PHP e-commerce system that no-one has heard of! We have spent very little on marketing and promoting the product preferring to spend on development and adding more and more features. We will continue to develop new features and improve existing ones. We know that we need to do more work with regard to our manuals and we know we can do more to make the product easier to use.
With any product like ours the major cost to users is not the purchase price, rather it is the time and effort you need to put in to become proficient enough to rapidly develop great websites. We want to do everything we can to get users to that stage as quickly as possible. We worked hard last year to improve our support function and we will strive to continue this improvement this year by adding more people to our support team.
AH: In your opinion what are some the key elements vendor should consider in developing their online store?
TM: I think for every online store there are two key parts to success. Firstly you must drive traffic to your website and secondly you must do everything possible to ensure that your visitors convert into customers i.e. they perform the action you want them to perform, whether it be place an order, sign up for a newsletter or call you.
To ensure the latter you need to offer content that appeals to your visitor. Then you have to ensure that they can find this content by utilizing good user friendly category structures and effective on-site search. Finally your checkout (or conversion) funnel needs to be simple and user friendly. For example, if it's a sign up be sure you tell users exactly how you will use their information and emphasise what they will get in return for sharing this private data with you.
If you haven't done it already start reading up on web analytics. With the advent of free tracking from Google Analytics I think many more web site owners are aware of the benefits of tracking. In practice I believe the result in many cases is just more data that we do not know what to do with! There is no quick answer here other than reading and reading and then reading some more. The good news is that there are many great free resources on the web - just try a search for "web analytics" on any of the major search engines. The benefits from understanding what users are doing on your web site and implementing changes based on that can be great and I've typically seen improvements of between 20-50% in conversions. That sort of increase has a huge effect on your bottom line profits.
AH: You have any last remarks ?
TM: I believe that we are only at the beginning of the so called Internet revolution. There are so many opportunities for anyone who is prepared to put in the effort to learn about the Internet and identify their own niche. I'm probably a little bit biased but for me I can truly say the Internet has changed my life. I have enjoyed success and met great people doing a job that I love. Who was it that said "Do a job you enjoy and you'll never have to do a day's work in your life". It took me a long time but I can honestly say I now understand he meant. So my final advice to anyone thinking of getting involved would be - "Dive right in, the water's lovely!"
We like to thank Tony Marshall, Director of Viart Software for taking the time in participating today.
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