Znode Buzz

At Wawa food stores, a personalized web site supports multichannel sales

 
This news story was published recently in the Internet Retailer about how Archer Group used Znode technology to create a personalized multi-channel web site for Wawa Inc., a chain of 570 fresh food and convenience stores:

http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=33400 

Znode at the TechColumbus Innovation Awards

Znode was nominated for the "Best Product" category at the TechColumbus Innovation Awards held at the Columbus Convention Center.  Here are some pictures of Znodians from the event last night...

  

 
 
 

Tom Bruce appointed as Znode CFO

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Tom Bruce as the new CFO at Znode effective this week.

Tom has 11 years of professional experience in financial and strategy-based leadership roles for growth-oriented organizations.  Mr. Bruce’s diverse mix of roles and accomplishments provides a unique set of qualifications that are building blocks for the successful business model execution for many ventures.  

Most recently, Tom served as the Vice President of Operations and Finance for VenJuvo, Inc., where he led the company to create facility, software and resource planning protocols designed to support the rollout of multiple fortune 100 retailers.  Prior to VenJuvo, Tom built and sold a practice that provided financial advisory and accounting services to growth-oriented companies.

Attend our partner's webinar today at 3pm EST

Webinar Today at 3pm EST: 

Adaptable E-Commerce, Make Your Website Yours. 

Presented by Znode Certified Partner, Tallan.

Sign up now at http://bit.ly/aZ99iZ

Znode re-branding product line in February 2010

Znode is constantly focused on delivering significant value to our customers and partners which enables us to impact their bottom-line.  Our core strategy is to build innovative products that help increase revenues and profitability for online retailers especially through multi-store and multi-view ecommerce strategies. 

Our products have evolved significantly over the last few years to be in line with this strategy. In order for us to better reflect what we do we are planning to change the names of our products soon.

• The "Storefront" product which currently has 2 editions will be re-named to "Multifront"  
• The "Viewpoint" product will be re-named to "Showcase"

The 2 products "Multifront" and "Showcase" will together enable online retailers to implement a highly effective e-commerce marketing strategy and increase their ROI. 

Note that "Singlefront" will continue to be sold and supported as a separate product.

The name change will take effect on February 1, 2010. Updates to our products will be available to existing customers that will reflect this change. 

Znode releases major version of Storefront 6.0

After a year of innovation, months of development and hundreds of hours of extensive product testing, we are very excited to release Znode Storefront 6.0 - a ground breaking e-commerce platform. I am confident that this product will help online retailers increase their ROI and Online Revenues using unique innovative marketing strategies.

Try out the new Multi-Store demo sites that are now live on znode.com - Click Here

Exciting New Features

Rich Web 2.0  Multi-Store Demo

The demo store that ships with Storefront 6.0, Multifront Edition has a completely new look and feel, illustrating the power of Storefront. This store highlights three separate site designs, showing the ability to quickly and easily create multiple storefronts. This template provides a solid starting point for your own web 2.0 enabled store that is branded exactly to your business.

Faceted Navigation 

Faceted Navigation allows catalog administrators to define product tags that are displayed on the Category page. Customers can then select the product tags that are of interest to them and see only those products that match their criteria. These tag selections are arranged so that customers will always have products to choose from when they make their selections. This ability for the customer to quickly define what is important to them means that they can get to products faster reducing abandonments and increasing cart values.

Product Quick View

Using our new Quick View feature, Customers can see product details and add items to the cart right from a category or search page. Quick View provides the full product description, alternate product images, color swatches, related items, customer reviews as well as other features. This shortens the purchase path for customers by allowing them to go from the category page directly to the shopping cart. 

Newly Redesigned Admin

Our already easy to use administrative interface has been completely redesigned to make it even faster and more intuitive. While the look of our Admin is completely new, existing users of Storefront will find many familiar touch points that allow them to transition to the new interface in just a few minutes.

Also included in this release are:

• Mini Shopping Cart which visually displays the products in the customer's cart on every shopping page
• An improved Recently Viewed Items section allowing customers to quickly get back to products they are interested in
• An extendable workflow for order processing that allows managers to approve all orders
• .NET 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 supported right out of the box.

We are very excited about this new product release. We hope to continue our quest for innovation and excellence in the e-commerce space.

Countdown begins to Znode Storefront v6.0 release!

Hope you are having a wonderful New Year.  The Znode product team has been working diligently to finish the final touches on the new product release.

We are expecting Znode Storefront v6.0 to be released on Jan 13th, 2010. This is a major product release for the Multifront edition that includes ground breaking capabilities not found in any other competing e-commerce platform.

Preview of Multifront Admin

 

Preview of Multifront Store

 

Znode's focus on absolute attention to detail and innovation sets us apart from competitors and adds significant value to our customers and partners. 

We are extremely excited about this new release. If you would like advance information or schedule a demo, etc please contact our sales team.

Increasing customers, revenues and reach using multi-brand strategies

In the worst US recession since the great depression, one toy company kept significantly increasing it's revenues over 3 consecutive Decembers.  The company is Toys"R"Us.

In a recent interview with the media, CEO Gerald Storch talked about their aggressive acquisition strategy. This year Toys"R"Us acquired Etoys.com, KbToys.com, Toys.com, Epregnancy.com, BabyUniverse.com, FAO Shwarz among others. The result - Toys"R"Us was able to not only survive but beat it's competition by offering the largest assortment of toys to its customers.  Competitors such as Walmart may offer heavily discounted pricing, but no one can beat the enormous selection of in-stock toys offered by Toys"R"Us.

At Znode, we are seeing that many of our customers are adopting similar strategies to rise above the noise and compete effectively. That is why we are experiencing a significant demand for our multi-store platform - Multifront. Our customers use Multifront to launch storefronts for each of their brand acquisitions rapidly. Best of all, these stores are all managed through a single administrative interface enabling marketing departments to have full control over promotions and pricing.

Znode's Viewpoint product complements Multifront by allowing online retailers to create and embed portable stores on third party websites and create an effective guided navigation system enabling their customers to find the right product FAST. This significantly increases brand presence and sales conversions.

Sneak preview of the new demo store

When Multifront v6.0 is released in January 2010, it will include a brand new multi-store demo out of the box. The demo store has been designed by a leading agency with rich UI features and special attention to usability.  

The new demo store will feature powerful capabilities including Personalized Navigation, Rich AJAX user interfaces, Intelligent Cross-Selling, Multi-Store Navigation (like Gap/ Old Navy) and much much more!

The design of this store will significantly enhance the end user experience and increase conversions for online retailers.  Solutions Developers can use this default store as a starting point to build world class Storefronts.

Mark your calendars for the next major Multifront release!

The product development team is working diligently towards the release of the next major version of Znode Multifront (6.0) - our innovative multi-store ecommerce platform.  This release is expected to be on Jan 8th, 2010.

This release has ground breaking features that would provide significant value to Online Retailers including Personalization, Rich Web 2.0 functionality, Multi-Store Cross Selling, Advanced Navigation and more. 

Over the next few weeks I will be discussing some of these enhancements. Stay tuned!