"The Banter" A Quarterly Newsletter: Vol. 5, 1st Quarter :: January 2009

Happy New Year from Intersoft! Even with the Poor Holiday Season Sales, Online Shopping Still Sees a Growth. Major Upgrades for xSellit eCommerce Storefront Scheduled For Release First Quarter of 2009 Tech Tips: How to Protect Yourself Online Our Clients in the Spotlight: Professional Remodelers of Ohio Make Me Laugh NEW: Quote of the Quarter Intersoft Jobs: Sales Positions Wanted Happy New Year from Intersoft! Welcome to the 5th Volume of Intersoft's Quarterly Newsletter! We hope you had a wonderful Holiday Season and hope you have a fantastic and prosperous New Year! I am extremely excited to tell you about some wonderful news this year. We would like to extend a warm welcome to Shelly Horn our newest Account Executive. Some of you may have already had the pleasure to talk with Shelly and have found the friendly voice that we at Intersoft have grown to know and enjoy. Shelly is available to answer any of your questions and can provide you assistance when determining your online needs. She is wonderful to talk with and has quickly become a great asset to our "Group". We have some big upgrades planned this year for our eCommerce Solution, xSellit eCommerce Storefront. Read about the new release coming out this quarter in this quarterly newsletter. We are also offering a competitive discount on our xSellit eCommerce Storefront. If you currently have an eCommerce solution by one of the listed competitors you can receive valuable discounts off a new xSellit eCommerce Storefront. Please contact sales@intersoftgroup.com for more information. Also, as we start off the New Year, we would like to remind all of our website development clients about our Support & Bug Fix Policy. ========================================================================== Support Policy: The Intersoft Group, Inc. provides Ninety (90) days of free support on all custom web applications or their modification. The Free Support Period begins immediately upon publish of the application or modification. Free support includes correction of programming code errors not discovered during the testing and review period, minor changes to content such as correcting spelling and grammatical errors, and problem troubleshooting. Free support does not include the addition or removal of functionality or the adding of pages or content. Nor does it include applications or part of applications that are not provided by Intersoft. Modification of the application by parties other than Intersoft may void the free support period. After the Free Support Period, and unless a Maintenance or Support Only Contract is purchased, Intersoft will charge it's normal billable rates for support. ========================================================================== If you would like more information on our Maintenance and/or Support Only Contract please contact, support@intersoftgroup.com As always we would like to extend our warmest thanks & wishes to our clients and a Happy New Year! Jessica Sudo Business Operations Manager Back to Top Even with the Poor Holiday Season Sales, Online Shopping Still Sees a Growth. Everyone knows that this holiday shopping season saw a decline in most retail industries, however, year-end online sale totals show a 6% growth, states comScore's "Summary of 2008 Holiday Online Retail Spending by Key Time Period" (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2658). "For an online holiday shopping season that recorded a disappointing 3-percent decline in sales, a positive note is that e-commerce trends outperformed overall consumer spending in several product categories, which is to say that e-commerce continued to capture an increasing share of consumers' wallet," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. "Clearly, 2008 was an extremely challenging time for many retailers, and the beginning of 2009 may not be much better. But when the consumer economy eventually does rebound, e-commerce is poised to benefit from its emergence as an important consumer sales channel." Another bright spot came on Cyber Monday (the Monday following Black Friday) this year, where sales increased 15% over last year, to $846 million. This was the second largest online shopping day in history, comScore reported. SpendingPulse, an information service provided by MasterCard Advisors, a subsidiary of MasterCard Worldwide, analyzed the eCommerce sector and found that eCommerce continues to be relatively strong. Another interesting tidbit would be that online holiday sales increased during the weeks when online retailers were offering Free Shipping incentives and as some retailers removed such incentives they saw their sales decrease. This shows a correlation between how consumers' use free shipping incentives and the dollars spent per order. Some good referral revenue generating tools that saw an increase this year were; email marketing which was up to over 16% from 2007; Comparison shopping websites also saw an increase in referral based revenue of 4.7%; Coupons rose a bit from 1.1% to 1.8%. With the email marketing increase this demonstrates that re-marketing to your existing customers is a great referral strategy for online retailers. Comparison shopping websites also demonstrate that this is a great way to generate new referral revenue for your online store. Back to Top Major Upgrades for xSellit eCommerce Storefront Scheduled For Release First Quarter of 2009 Being released the first quarter of 2009 are some major upgrades for the xSellit eCommerce Storefront product. Some of the upgrades will help online retailers comply with manufacturer's regulations and sell online. Other changes have made the xSellit product more efficient for the xSellit Retailer, thus saving them time & money. As we constantly strive to make xSellit Storefront the most Search Engine Friendly eCommerce product on the market, we have made further SEO (Search Engine Optimization) changes per requests from our SEO partners. Some of the new changes taking place will allow all pages within the xSellit Storefront system to have optimized content and updateable META tags. A link summary block will be added to the entire frame of the xSellit site allowing for more SEO optimized text. The displaying of discounts on the receipts has been reworked. Now the retail price and the purchased price will be shown, along with a "You Saved" label. This will make the receipts more user-friendly to the online consumer. xSellit retailers will now have more flexibility in the way they display certain items on a product's "More Information" page. The ability to "hide" products and categories within the xSellit system has also been added. A product keyword field for each product listing has been added which will make searching for products easier for the online consumer. An "Add to Cart for Pricing" option has been added which will allow xSellit retailers to comply with certain manufacturer's regulations. This feature will force the online consumer to add the product to the cart before seeing the price of the product. A "Call for Pricing" option is being added so that custom products can be displayed without having a price shown. A full blown Wholesaler system has been integrated into xSellit Storefront. This system will allow xSellit Retailers to turn off public pricing on their storefront. Allowing only logged in users to see the pricing and buy online. The xSellit Storefront is now able to act as a catalog system for the non-logged in users. Multiple price levels per customer are also available. Also available is special pricing per customer per product. Special pricing would override xSellit system pricing, allowing the xSellit retailers to offer each of their customers unique pricing per product for buying incentives. Quantity discounts are available as well, which will allow for 5 ranges of products sold in grouped quantities with discounted totals. Quantity discounts are great for those xSellit retailers who sell items in bulk. xSellit's order handling system has been improved to allow for easier and timely order management. Editing an order's billing & shipping address and updating the items purchased are just a few of the improvements being implemented. xSellit retailers will now have the choice to print out packing slips for each order directly out of the xSellit Storefront system. Retailers also will be able to set the shipping status, enter in a tracking number for shipped orders and email a standard message (which can also be customized) to the order recipient, all on one screen! Watch for the new release coming soon this quarter! www.goxsellit.com Back to Top Tech Tips: How to Protect Yourself Online By: Angela Iacofano Now-a-days your financial credit affects every aspect of your life. So no matter what you are doing online there is always a chance that someone can gather enough information about you to assume your identity or trash your credit. To keep control over your information please read the following tips. Online Passwords Online passwords are the easiest access point for an intruder. To stump them you will want to use the most unusual or complex password you can. Use a combination of letters, numbers and punctuation, as well as using both lowercase and uppercase letters. Also you will want to stay away from spelled out words so hackers who focus on commonly used words can't guess your password. In addition the longer the password the harder it is to crack so have at least 8-10 characters. Compromised Accounts Your accounts can be compromised in many ways. But one of the most prevalent lately is by phishing emails. These emails "phish" for your information which means they get you to interact and then you end up giving them your information. An example of these emails would seem to be sent by your own bank or by a familiar institution to you. It may say something like there is a security concern or issue with your account and then they direct you to click on a link in the email to resolve the issue, DON'T! This link actually takes you to another site that may even look like your institution site but it is not. Once you enter in any information they ask for, on that screen, you have now given the hacker your information and compromised your account. If you do receive an email like this you will want to delete it and then open your Web browser and manually type in the URL to the Web site where this account is (don't ever cut and paste a link). By going to the real web site yourself is the only way you can protect yourself from being misdirected to a false web site. Another recent attempt to compromise your account is through the phone. Someone may call you and hassle you to give them your personal information, again DON'T! They may call saying they represent your institution and try to get pertinent information about you or your account. Even if they sound legitimate, you never know who you are talking to, so do not trust giving away your information. If you are concerned simply hang up the phone and call that institutions 800 number and tell them the phone call you just received. They will be able to tell you if it was them and/or if there is anything wrong with your account. Rest assured that your institution will not be asking you for pertinent information since they already have it. If you Become a Victim If at any time your accounts are compromised you should proceed with the following steps: Contact your institution and close that particular account immediately Report the intrusion to the 3 credit bureaus. Equifax: (888) 766-0008, Experian: (888) 397-3742, TransUnion: (800) 680-7289 Report it to the FTC's Identity Theft Hotline: (877) IDTHEFT (877-438-4338) Check all other account online or access your credit report (visit www.annualcreditreport.com to get your free report) to make sure no other intrusion have occurred To keep prepared you will want to keep organized paper records about your accounts and statements for at least one year. In any case where you suspect that your information has been stolen you will need to prove your account transactions to the financial institution's fraud department. General Protections You will also want to protect the below information because they are the most pertinent pieces of information that thief's would like to get their hands on: All Credit card numbers (including your bank card) CW2 security numbers (3 or 4 digit codes on the back of your credit cards) Social security numbers Driver's license numbers Phone numbers Dates of birth Online passwords PIN numbers Home/business addresses Mortgage information E-mail addresses If you have a tech question that you would like us to write about email us at techtips@intersoftgroup.com. Back to Top Our Clients in the Spotlight: Professional Remodelers of Ohio Website: http://www.proohio.org Professional Remodelers of Ohio (PRO) is dedicated to being the best resource for knowledge and training in the remodeling industry. They help professionalize members of the home improvement industry and to serve as an ally to Ohio's homeowners. Back to Top Make Me Laugh We will feature a new comic every quarter that'll be sure to make you laugh! Back to Top Quote of the Quarter "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." ~ Albert Einstein Back to Top Intersoft Jobs: Sales Positions Wanted Intersoft is looking for qualified Sales Applicants to join our Group! If you know of anyone looking for a Sales position that you feel would be a good fit with our company please have them check out our job description at: http://www.intersoftgroup.com/jobs/jobs.aspx All qualified sales applicants can email their resume to: jobs@intersoftgroup.com Back to Top