What's new for NetSuite Ecommerce...

Hey Readers,

This is a list of things that are coming for your NetSuite account... related to Ecommerce

NetSuite will be doing now 2 major releases per Year...Q1/Q2 and Q3/Q4

- Google Checkout in Q1/Q2 release

- Dynamic Merchandising based on Highest Margin Items, Top selling Items and better up selling algorithms. No Release Date defined.

- Your domain name instead of checkout.netsuite.com at checkout. No Release Date...

- The ability to write SuiteScripts for the Front End. This will happen but there is not date for release and nobody knows exactly yet in what sections of the website it will apply. Checkout? Maybe.

- PayPal Express Checkout released in Version 2007.1 but NS announced no fees until June 2008. Amazing.

- For Multi WebSite now you can select your payment processor per store, your Currency per store and you have Reporting per store. Nice!

There are other enhancements not related to Ecommerce that will make your NetSuite experience much more easier, faster, stable and amazing! Youll start seeing some new stuff in the next weeks...

I havent talked about SuiteBundler yet, because it is Partner specific in a way.. but its good, powerful and easy.

NetSuite is getting big and great and all the new stuff is 10/10.

Nothing is official until NetSuite publishes it, but you should have a great picture of what is coming...

Enjoy

NetSuite Revolution 2007 Sneak Peak

Hi Readers,

We just came back from the NetSuite CONFERENCE in San Francisco. We met great people and partners that are doing great stuff. The one that was very impressive was Explore Consulting Integration tool. A nice suite where you can manage all your integrations back and forth from NetSuite. Pretty amazing the reporting and UI.

Celigo followed the same direction and they did a very nice job too, plus they are offering now, seamless integration between Yahoo and NetSuite stores.

The partner community is amazing, healthy and growing. Interacting with different solution providers is always a rich experience.

The Skyytek people were great through all the days and again they got the top partner award. My congratulations to all of them. Great guys! Vijay, Micheal, Ray. Cheers!

NetSuite people were as always amazing. From top to bottom. Zach Nelson and Evan Goldberg were very friendly and always interacting. All other NetSuite people always acted like hosts... trying to make everyone feel good, smiling, and right on the spot on what do partners need!

We also had a great time with Alex Harris and Gproxy discussing the NetSuite Ecommerce market and scenarios. Different approaches and visions that will benefit the NetSuite ecommerce platform in a huge way. Next year should be big for all NetSuite ecommerce customers.

I hate talking about SuiteCommerce, but all the team had a great time in San Francisco. Now, back to Miami to keep it going...!!!

Ill write about the serious stuff in another post!

NetSuite is the way to go! Dont look back... or around.

"Successful e-commerce companies in the future will be those that completely intertwine sales and marketing with critical business units such as IT, operations and customer service as they harness the power of merged channels."
Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

This is exactly what SuiteCommerce believes. If you have take some time to read our "Company" section in the SuiteCommerce Website we state that "integration is KEY for success in ecommerce and that is why we focus on NetSuite".

What Bezos quotes is what NetSuite is and what NetSuite will be... and will always be.

360 degree view, all units in sync. Sweet. Suite. Beautiful.

I guess he stated "in the future" because he hasn't tried NetSuite... yet. :-)

Design Decisions Top or Left Navigation on NetSuite Web Sites

Before designing NetSuite web store we always investigate with the customer the different options about how the website will,

1- Navigate,
2- Top Funnels, and
3- how it will integrate to NetSuite to make it as dynamic as possible.

What we bring today is our input on Navigation.

Top horizontal vs. left vertical navigation vs. both.

Top horizontal navigation has the advantage of all being above the fold, and gets presented in a nice neat package up there with your logo. Furthermore, it doesn’t hoard much of your precious real estate, the way that left navigation does. After all, even if your left navigation only has seven or eight options, your designer will probably keep you from wrapping text around it (and thereby prevent you from using the white space below it. Although, you could use the space for surveys or testimonials or news or snippets from your blog.) Top horizontal has another advantage — you can add a blog much easier to your site. Blogs tend to have a side horizontal nav bar already. You could still do them on opposite sides of the page, especially if you don’t have to design for 800×600.

On the other hand, it is much harder to extend horizontal navigation - it can only get as wide as your customers’ browsers .

So I will make sweeping generalizations, if everyone who reads recognizes that the only “good” navigation is the one that is good for you. If you are a small lead generation website that wants to have Services, Products, Partners, About Us and Contact Us in your navigation (I really hate those, but more later), then go ahead and do the horizontal thing. If you are a large website, especially an e-commerce website with lots of products, you probably have to do the vertical navigation. If you are Amazon, you probably have so many products that you need to do both. And if you are a content site, like CNN (don’t you hate their newest redesign?) your whole site is really one big piece of navigation, because everywhere you turn, you are linking to another story.

Having said that, it depends. Yes, it depends. Always try to think about this as it is KEY for the success of your website. Create 3 funnels, and draw them in a piece of paper. What will the user see after each click? What if they entered the incorrect funnel, how can they go back and start again?

Detecting NetSuite Customer Center Orders

Setting up an Alert for orders placed through Customer Center is easy and will help you big time.

It is a known issue that orders placed through the NetSuite Customer Center sometimes come without payment or without a Credit Card Authorization number.

To detect these type of orders, you should create a Saved Search of Type: Transaction that will also be an Alert for any user of your NetSuite account.

Set the Saved Search Criteria to,

Source: Customer Center
Type: Sales Order
Account: Sales Orders
Status: Pending Approval

In the results Tab, select the fields you want to show on the Alert email.

Then on the Alerts Tab check the box "Available as an Alert" and select the users you want to notify.

Don't check the box "Send on Update" as any change to those records will result on an email.

Hope it helps!