A lot of our customers use POS systems to manage inventory, front of store transactions, etc.  The providers of this software are great at creating Point of Sale solutions – that’s what they do.   Some of these providers offer eCommerce software platforms (which integrate with their POS solution.  This is fine for customers with a need for a very simple eCommerce website.  For large companies wanting a professional approach to eCommerce, unfortunately these providers will sometimes be a bit opportunistic and over state the capabilities of these POS eCommerce solutions.   In short, it’s often the case that these eCommerce “add-on”s to a POS solution, are unsuitable for a professional eCommerce sites.

Apart from the fact that these eCommerce solutions are proprietary (see my post about the problems with this), they pose the following advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of an eCommerce solution offered by a POS provider

• They integrate seamlessly with the POS system – they’re created by the same vendor, so obviously work very well together.
• They’re typically much cheaper to setup.  The solutions are usually rather simple, and quick to setup, with a few configuration files, and few  template files to be edited to suit.

Disadvantages of an eCommerce solution offered by a POS provider

• They’re typically not SEO friendly (they may have some basic SEO capabilities) and they’re not built with SEO in mind.  They’re built with integration in mind, and the software vendors expertise is in POS systems, not eCommerce, so SEO is overlooked or given limited focus.
• Closed platform (proprietary).  As mentioned already, this makes it hard to customise, and almost impossible to partner with an expert eCommerce agency, as they’ll know almost nothing about the vendor’s system, and are unable to modify it to maximise your ROI.
• License costs – as with most proprietary software, there will be license costs.
• Product evolution – since the software has been written by a POS company – whose expertise and main focus is selling more POS systems, the product evolution will be slow in comparison to a dedicated eCommerce platform provider.
• Addons & customisations – if you need a new component built, or changes to the standard product, you need to pay the provider to do it – which is likely to take a while since they’re busy writing and selling POS solutions and may have many large customers – are you big enough to be a priority in their product development stream?

All of this is important to consider, however the overwhelming issue we see with most POS based proprietary eCommerce solutions is that they are an afterthought of the POS software;  they’re created to fill a perceived hole in the market, and while you may end up with a “suitable” software solution, you can often miss out on a “business changing”, well thought out, professionally executed, eCommerce solution that opens up a new channel to market for your business – which is what a good eCommerce solutoin is all about.

Who doesn’t love mobile apps? No question, they’re changing the way we do a lot of things – particularly communicate (have you seen heytell.com? Unbelievable!).  But does your business really need one?

I’m now starting to see apps made for the wrong reasons.  We’ve had customers ask us to build apps for things that just don’t need apps – I have to hose them down a little and help them understand why.

There is no doubt that mobile is huge – your website should have a mobile version – our new brand is being launched on July 1, and we’ll certainly have a specific mobile version of our site.  Nielson reported recently that smartphones account for 63% of the mobile market now, and as this continues to grow, users will require a more powerful mobile experience from the websites they visit on their phone.

mCommerce is also an incredibly fast growing industry.  Of PayPal 3.6 million active customers, 400,000 (over 10%) used PayPal on their phones in 2010, purchasing 2.5 million items from a mobile device – up from 1% in 2009… 1000% growth!

It’s crucial to understand however, that many brands and businesses just don’t need an actual app – a mobile enabled version of your website is fine, and in many cases, even more suitable, than an app.  Who, for example would download an app of the salsainternet.com.au website (except me!)? Apps are great if they actually provide extra functionality, that a person is actually likely to use, such as interacting with the phones camera or address book, for example.  Even GPS can be integrated with the site (as you can see on our customers mobile site – m.oovie.com.au).

Once you build an app, you’ve at the mercy of the platforms of the distributors – Apple, Google & Blackberry are often altering their systems, requiring further investment in updating apps to suit.  95% of what most people want to do on an app, is available on a mobile website.  In fact, business that are considering an app may want to consider a mobile site as a first step – it’s quicker, cheaper, and will give you some exposure into the mobile use of your brand before you take the plunge into an app. If you build it correctly, you can also leverage existing site content, so you only update content in one place, which is then reflected in your main site, and your mobile site.

Online retailers may benefit from actually having both a website and an app – I think this could only work if you’re a big brand, that users use for regular, repeat purchases!  oo.com.au (only online) have both, and believe that having the oo logo in the palm of the shoppers hand is priceless.  I’m not sure I agree,  since you can setup a mobile site to popup a message asking you to add an icon to your home screen – which effectively then has the same effect as an app icon.

Roses Only also have an app and mobile site – again, given the brand, and it’s likelihood for repeat purchases, running an app may very well be worth it – it’s also likely to make the purchase process incredibly simple for the user.  I can imagine getting a popup on your phone when it’s a week before your wife’s birthday, with a simple one click purchase to send her the same bouquet you sent her last time.  Awesome use of an app for a well established, popular retail brand.  Founder and CEO of Roses Only, James Stevens does agree however, that apps are not suitable for all brands – you wouldn’t necessarily buy large ticket items from an app, for example.

The take-out: If your app is just about delivering simplistic content – create a mobile site instead – not an app.  If you can actually deliver more useful, smart functionality that needs to either integrate with the phones technology, or something that can’t be done via the web browser, then you may very well need an app.

I’ve love to hear your thoughts, or of any other apps that you think are note worthy for our readers.

Thanks to BRW for some of the inspiration/stats in this article.

There are a bunch of new technologies popping up (is it just me, or do they sound like ice-cream flavours? Just me? OK).

My head is spinning trying to keep up with all the latest and greatest.  I’m enjoying it; loving learning new things.  I’ve included a few items in this post, with my understanding of what they do, and some opinions on how useful they are/not, or might become…

Quora.com. Their home page describes it nicely – “A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”.  Basically someone posts a question, and people answer it.  Others then comment on, or vote for the answer.  The goal is that it will eventually create a useful body of content for people to use to find answers to common questions.  I guess it’s kind of like Google, except utilises the “crowd sourcing” concept to gather comments and votes to determine what is ranked higher, compared to Google which uses in-bound links & content to determine which results are given priority.

RockMelt.com. ANOTHER web browser!  If it is as good as it claims, I think it will be awesome (except for their terrible logo). I already run 3 browsers – Firefox for business, Chrome for personal, Safari to run my Google calendar. I’d likely drop Safari and use Chrome for Google Calendar, and perhaps rockmelt for personal if its good enough.  I’m waiting for my early access invite to arrive, but from watching the video on their site.  It appears to do something I’ve been whining about for ages – bringing all your social experiences together.  LOVE that idea. Can’t wait to try it.

blekko.com. (still in beta).  A new search engine. Are they bloody crazy?  Actually, it’s pretty cool.  Will it last? Who knows, it’s pretty out there!  The CEO seems like a nice guy (watch his demo video), so I hope they do.  Pretty tough competition – they’re striving to become “the 3rd biggest search engine” (to Google & YouTube I guess).  The short of it: each site in the search index is tagged with keywords. When you do a search, you can use a slash ‘/’ to refine or order your results based on those tags.  For example, search for “web developer”, then add /design to find those that also have a design team.  You can use /date to sort chronologically.  Blekko also has some pretty cool SEO features – allowing you to easily view links into a site and also SEO information.

If you have experience with any of these tools, and/or have an opinion on them, I’d love to hear it.