Viva Las Vegas

We’re on the way to the airport headed to Las Vegas for the WSA Shoe Show, the largest shoe show in the world. We’re looking for new brands to carry at 2BigFeet.com.

I’m hoping we find a few manufacturers that can supply us with:

  • Dress shoes up to size 20
  • Athletic shoes up to size 20
  • Men’s slippers — hopefully to at least size 18
  • Rubber steel-toe work boots

We’ve got a list of potential manufacturers to meet with, so it should be a busy show.

Free Usability Report from Nielsen Norman Group

Normally, their reports are fairly expensive but as a holiday gift, Nielsen Norman Group is giving away a 148-page report:

Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities

I’m a sucker for freebies.

Finally! Magento Commerce is available…

Magento Commerce, the new open-source e-commerce platform I blogged about a few weeks ago has finally been released.

Checkout the demo on their website, or download the beta.

It’s not production ready (so they say) but the demo is very impressive and I’m hard at work installing and configuring on my own server. I’ll have a full report soon!

Confirmation Emails

Here is a great post on why confirmation emails are so important.

Lesson: Don’t miss a chance to connect to your customers! Use every communication to build that relationship.

New open source e-commerce platform launching in August

Magento is a new open source e-commerce platform launching (according to their website) in August. It looks like Magento might finally give me a reason to try an open source e-commerce software package.

Most open source e-commerce softwares are crippled with some major flaws. Many lack commercial support (which is absolutely essential for a live store), they have inconsistent, often buggy code due to the number and varied skillsets of the contributors, and they often go months, or even years without product updates.

Magento is being developed by successful e-commerce and web development company Varien, which appears to be have their stuff together (just look at their clients and portfolio).

Magento looks promising, and I hope to get my hands on it before or soon after launch to try it out and write a review. The screenshots and videos on their website are impressive, showing that open source software doesn’t have to have poorly designed UI and administrative area.

They appear to have put a lot of time and effort into making Magento easy to customize, which makes sense considering their background as developers. The feature list is impressive – the software looks like it could be a serious contender right out of the gate.

Check out the website for screenshots, videos and detailed list of features.