One of the less well reviewed products on this site is GoECart. I often chat with owners of shopping carts and they are quite happy to have legitimate criticism about them.

Manish Chowdhary, the CEO of GoECart, is an exception. The numerous bad reviews about his product have been handled by him in an interesting way. Improving his product and resolving customer issues? Nope. He’s chosen to take legal action against me.

I first heard from Manish in 2007 where he demanded I provide him with the IP addresses of reviews he didn’t like. Of course I didn’t comply. I have a whole series of fraud checks which, while they can never be 100% accurate, are pretty good. Let’s just say after running this site for about 10 years, I’ve learnt a few things and upgraded the review approval process a number of times to become increasingly sophisticated in detecting astroturfing activities.

Manish then contacted me in February 2011 asking to be left out of my site. When I say “ask” that would suggest a polite request. He demanded.

His email:

Subject: GoECart Trademark Infringement on Shopping-cart-reviews.com

Mark,

We do not wish to participate in your online reviews program and request that you remove all GoECart review pages (http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/carts/Go-E-Cart.aspx etc.) and all other mentions of GoECart from your site immediately. We are also troubled by the fact that you are exploiting our registered trademark (Trademark numbers: 3376888, 3371337, 77572916 and 77572899) to generate revenue for your site by selling paid sponsorships and promoting our competitors’ products. This is obviously intended to take a free ride on GoECart’s hard earned branding. We view such actions as intentional infringement of GoECart’s intellectual property for commercial gain in violation of Federal and state trademark and unfair competition laws. This practice, which is clearly intended to lure away prospective customers of GoECart’s products and services to competing businesses, inappropriately trades on the intellectual property rights of GoECart.

We kindly request that you immediately remove GoECart from all your review pages such as http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/carts/Go-E-Cart.aspx and remove all mentions of GoECart, from your site within five (5) business days following which we would have no option but to take strict legal action against you and your website hosting provider.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email.

Sincerely,
Manish Chowdhary

CEO, GoECart

203-336-2284 ext. 202

My response:

Hi Manish

Thank you for your email. I acknowledge that you own the trademarks as listed (2 current, 2 abandoned).

I deny that I am “intend(ing) to lure away prospective customers of GoECart’s products and services to competing businesses”. You have the same chance as any other product on my site. I send free traffic. You have received free traffic from me (I record all clicks). Others with more satisfied customers have received much much more.

Trademarks are designed to prevent “likelihood of confusion”: the standard legal term. There is no likelihood of confusion, the intent of my site is very clear – the word “reviews” in the domain and header supports that.

Any further attempts whatsoever you make at trying to bully your poor reviews off the internet (I suggest you redirect your legal fees to invest in improving your product) will result in me blogging this incident, and investing SEO effort into ensuring that the information appears prominently in Google for searches related to GoECart.

I received no response to that email, and assumed that he had backed off. Not so it seems.

This week, my webhosting company received a DCMA takedown request.

To whom it may concern,
This is a notice of request to takedown the following website. We consider this notice a formal “Cease and Desist”:

http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/carts/Go-E-Cart.aspx

GoECart has many federally registered trademarks which provide prima facie evidence of its trademark rights (and for those marks that have obtained incontestability, the registrations are conclusive evidence of GoECart’s rights. The above listed URL is currently infringing on our registered Copyright and Trademarks (Trademark numbers: 3376888, 3371337, 77572916 and 77572899). We ask that any and all references to GoECart and MachroTech LLC including all logos are removed immediately.

If we have not received written confirmation of your agreement to these terms by January 30, 2012, GoECart will not hesitate to take appropriate action to enforce its legal rights in its valuable intellectual property. GoECart is prepared to recover any damage that is fallen on our clients or liable damage of name that might result from exposure to unmitigated risk arising from the above domain name. Please note that this letter is not meant to be a complete statement of facts, and nothing contained herein should be deemed a waiver of our rights or defenses.
We appreciate your cooperation in this matter and do not hesitate to contact us for information.
Sincerely,

Manish Chowdhary
CEO

I’m very appreciative to my webhost, www.arvixe.com, for recognising Manish as the troll he is and not responding to his DCMA claim. I also think it’s funny that Manish continues to mention abandoned trademarks.

Manish seems to be thinking that either:

1. A trademark gives him complete 100% control over everytime someone ever utters his name, or;

2. He thinks I am stupid enough to be scared by believing that.

Manish, that’s not how a trademark works. A trademark protects you from people trying to pass themselves off as you. Ask a first year law student if you need help. If my page was somehow pretending to be a GoECart page, then it would be a legitimate claim. It’s very obviously not a GoECart page.

As I’ve said to you numerous times Manish, spend less time on legal action, more time on improving your product. I wish you and your business well, and genuinely hope you improve your product and increase your customer satisfaction. I look forward to seeing genuine positive reviews from your customers in the future.

To whom it may concern,
This is a notice of request to takedown the following website. We consider this notice a formal “Cease and Desist”:
http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/carts/Go-E-Cart.aspx

GoECart has many federally registered trademarks which provide prima facie evidence of its trademark rights (and for those marks that have obtained incontestability, the registrations are conclusive evidence of GoECart’s rights. The above listed URL is currently infringing on our registered Copyright and Trademarks (Trademark numbers: 3376888, 3371337, 77572916 and 77572899). We ask that any and all references to GoECart and MachroTech LLC including all logos are removed immediately.

If we have not received written confirmation of your agreement to these terms by January 30, 2012, GoECart will not hesitate to take appropriate action to enforce its legal rights in its valuable intellectual property. GoECart is prepared to recover any damage that is fallen on our clients or liable damage of name that might result from exposure to unmitigated risk arising from the above domain name. Please note that this letter is not meant to be a complete statement of facts, and nothing contained herein should be deemed a waiver of our rights or defenses.
We appreciate your cooperation in this matter and do not hesitate to contact us for information.
Sincerely,

Manish Chowdhary
CEO

Categories: Shopping Carts | Date: Jan 28th, 2012 | Author: Mark | No Comments

I’m still working hard (very hard – sleep? What’s that?) on my new Magento site. The new programmer is all I hoped and more. It makes a WORLD of difference having a great programmer. Just yesterday I found a significant requirement which I’d missed in my specs. I was kicking myself. Most of my products are very simple, but my content manager just spotted a few products where there are variations – choose a color. Fortunately, my programmer didn’t blink, and is sorting it out as I type. Shouldn’t be more than 1 day lost, probably less. Also, a key supplier had some major problems in their data feed. I’d asked them to look at changing their API but that stuff normally takes weeks/months at most companies. After spending hours with the programmer trying to find a way around it, I got an email a day later from the supplier saying “oh yeah, that is a bit silly, it’s fixed and live!”. Major relief. Makes it way easier to handle stock management on the backend.

Overall I’m on track to go live in a few weeks. The biggest hold up at this point might be some issues related to business/financial structure (beyond the scope of this blog). Overall the site is looking great and I’m really pleased.

Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 10th, 2012 | Author: Mark | No Comments

Successful ecommerce site owners know that happy online shoppers are shoppers who are confident that the information that they transmit is secure, and that the sites they purchase from have developed clear and easy-to-understand terms and conditions; designed to safeguard the safety and interests of both storeowners and consumers.

If you’re an ecommerce store owner, you owe it to yourself and your customers to take the time to spell out your TOS (terms of service) clearly and in writing on your site. If you’re not sure how to get started, here are some important things to include and keep in mind:

Liabilities And Warranties

Take a look at some of the TOS of other ecommerce sites. They likely include a statement to the affect that the owners of the site make no express or implied warranties, guaranties, statements or representations about the site.

If you scroll down a little further, you’ll also likely see what is known as a liability disclaimer, which basically says that the site owner can’t be held responsible for any type of liability or personal injury that occurs as a result of consumers accessing the site, or because of any information contained within the site itself.

Site Information And General Use

Your terms of service need to be easy to understand, and should inform your customers about what to expect (and what not to expect) from your site. This includes the most up-to-date information possible about your services, products, and your business as a whole.

It is also important to include a statement to the affect that you, either as an individual or acting as a representative of a company, legally own the website and the domain associated with it, and have the legal authority to use the site for the purposes outlined in your TOS.

Need more tips and information? Visit the official FTC (Federal Trade Commission) website for information on their policies and guidelines. http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus28-advertising-and-marketing-internet-rules-road

Aura Talbott is the SEO Writer and Lead Blogger at Miva Merchant, an ecommerce software and hosting company. You can read more of her blog posts and learn more about Miva Merchant at http://www.mivamerchant.com/blog.

Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 10th, 2012 | Author: Mark | No Comments

I had the privilege of having a chat with Matt Serralta, the COO of Prestashop. Matt has a background as a merchant using Prestashop and loved it so much he joined the company!

Have a listen to Matt tell us about how a small business can succeed online, how people fail and how to avoid that, and of course hear a bit about Prestashop.

Matt Serralta: Prestashop Interview

Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 21st, 2011 | Author: Mark | No Comments

I recently posted about my own Magento project. While some bits are going well, I’ve run into a major hitch with my developer. He wasn’t delivering on time and after warning him (probably too many warnings – I should have been stricter), I had to fire the programmer. I looked around to find a new one and with no luck through the usual channels I use, I posted an ad on the Magento job board (at $75, a bit on the high side, but as you’ll see it turned out). I got a bunch of applications, but it turned out the very first application was extremely well suited to my needs. So now I am (hopefully!) back on track.

Categories: Shopping Carts | Date: Dec 21st, 2011 | Author: Mark | No Comments

The good folks at Packt Publishing were kind enough to give me a copy of their new book, “Magento 1.4 Theming Cookbook”. This is particularly relevant to me at the moment as I’m building a Magento site at the moment.

The subtitle is “Over 40 recipes to create a full functional, feature rich, customized Magento theme”. This gives a clue as the the nature of the book – this isn’t a tutorial/how to book. There is a bit of theory, but mostly it’s right into very practical step by step solutions. You have a problem, or want to learn new tricks, this is the place to do it. It’s more a reference book, the sort of thing you’ve have sitting near by and open when you get stuck or want some best advice help, including code samples ready to copy and paste.

Topics include how to create a theme from scratch, how to modify an existing theme, more advanced theme stuff like light boxes and Cufon, and then into building simple extensions and localization. For those wanting to really get into themes there’s even a section on how to sell themes.

Certainly a few sections in this book very relevant to my project (I want to use Cufon for example), so it’s great to have around. A good book for all current and aspiring Magento developers.

Categories: General | Date: Dec 17th, 2011 | Author: Mark | No Comments

I have worked on, helped build, consulted on and run marketing campaigns for a lot of ecommerce sites. The first ever ecommerce site I worked on was in 1996, (www.carphonewarehouse.co.uk, I was a developer on it). However, I have never actually built and run my own ecommerce site.

That’s changing.

About 2 weeks ago I kicked off a project to build my own site. As you can tell by the title, it’s built on Magento. This is not an endorsement of Magento as the best shopping cart. I’ve always said to pick the best cart to meet your needs. For the majority of people Magento is not the best cart. For my particular needs, I believe it is. Let’s see in 6 months time if I’m cursing Magento

My role in the project is business owner/project manager. What I’ve done so far:

• Written a functional specification.
• Found and briefed an experienced Magento developer who I believe it a good match to my needs.
• Hired a social media strategist to create a social media strategy. That’s already been done. It’s someone I’ve worked with before (she helped with some of the social media for this site a while back).
• Written a content brief. For me, high quality content is one of the, if not the, most important type of marketing. I’ve found one writer and am in talks with a few more.
• Created an information architecture. I did this myself as it’s relatively straight forward and I have IA experience. I did hire an IA consultant to review my work. She did a good job and added to and refined my thinking.
• Started work on a customer service plan. Still a way to go on this, early days.
• Found a magento template I liked. I bought it because I really liked the structure/layout. I didn’t like the colours and images, so I have found and briefed a designer to just work on the style elements. Once done, my programmers will integrate it.
• I haven’t done a specific marketing plan. I’m leading with social media and content as the primary marketing channels. I’ll also do some SEO but I have a lot of experience with SEO so that’s fine, don’t need a detailed plan for that. I will probably also do a little PPC, but for reasons I won’t get into now I don’t expect to do a lot of that.

So that’s where I’m up to so far. I don’t endorse this as the best way to run a project, or even a good way. A lot of it is very much tailored to me and my experience. For example, I have a lot of experience managing developers. For someone with less experience I would suggest a more detailed plan than I’ve done. There’s definitely bits I’m winging.

I’ve also done a lot of stuff related to legal, suppliers, financial structures, fulfilment, etc, but I won’t be covering that in this blog as that is all very specific to my business and not applicable to anyone else. At this point I don’t plan to disclose the site, but I might change my mind.

Look for rather infrequent updates on this project. It’s keeping me very busy so not a lot of time. Also working on a major upgrade to this site, the biggest single upgrade in a few years. Already got a stable beta version, just sorting out some data issues. It’ll be live in 2 weeks at most.

Categories: Shopping Carts | Date: Nov 27th, 2011 | Author: Mark | 2 Comments

In today’s economy, it is impossible to ignore the importance of placing your business online. For companies that are already established as traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, the transition to having an online presence can be difficult. Among the challenges business owners face are choosing a web hosting company, designing a website and developing an effective internet marketing plan.

Web Hosting Companies

Although it can be tempting to simply go with the first web hosting company you look at, it is important to do some research about the many different web hosting companies and have an understanding of what services they offer before making a commitment to a host. There are several considerations you should factor into your decision.

Domain Name Registration Services – Not all web hosting providers offer you the ability to choose and register a domain name. Choosing a domain name can be extremely important because it is how your potential customers will identify you. Consider choosing a name that integrates primary keywords related to your products or services.

Shopping Cart Options – If you are branching out your services to include selling your products online via a website, then you will need to integrate an e-commerce shopping cart into your website. You may find that you want to utilize a shopping cart other than what the hosting company offers. Make sure the hosting company is able to support your chosen shopping cart program, a href=”http://www.shopping-cart-reviews.com/”>shopping-cart-reviews.com</a> can help you finding an appropriate shopping cart.

Bandwidth – Bandwidth can become important if you have a high number of visitors or a large developed website that integrates many pages. Lower cost website services often have a small amount of bandwidth that is shared on a server with hundreds of other sites. Dedicated servers are usually more expensive, but give you more flexibility in terms of number of pages for your site and number of visitors it is able to accommodate.

Website Design

Designing your website is also extremely important. Landing pages should be easy to read, not overly cluttered with flash images and integrate your primary and long string keywords in the text and content. While it is possible to choose a template for your overall website design, you will still need to set up elements such as page titles, meta descriptions, images and text content. Many small business owners choose to turn these tasks over to a website designer, rather than learn how to design a website on their own.

Internet Marketing Plan

In order to be successful with your internet venture, you need an internet marketing plan. The primary method of driving traffic to your website will be through search engine results. Using techniques such as social media marketing, building backlinks, integrating primary and long string keywords into content and article marketing can be extremely effective methods of improving your website’s search engine ranking.

Studies have repeatedly indicated that consumers conduct searches and click on results that appear on the first page of results. As a result, it is important to make a continued effort to make internet marketing a major part of your marketing strategy in order to improve your profits and make your transition to becoming an online business worthwhile.

About the author:

Sarah is a keen blogger and represents a number of businesses, today she writes for Aon Hewitt – the global leader in human capital consulting and outsourcing solutions. Their specialist fiduciary management unit meet trustees’ need for additional investment expertise to deliver improved fund performance. Download the 2011 Delegated Investment Survey Today.

Categories: Marketing | Date: Oct 14th, 2011 | Author: Mark | 1 Comment

I just had someone leave a comment on another blog post about Magento Go, the Magento Hosted offering. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet so I don’t have any personal comments, but thought this was a well written piece. Short version: Features ok, but the support is terrible. I think he whined a bit too much about the SSL, but that’s his perspective I guess. Overall good post.

http://www.kavoir.com/2011/09/magento-go-test-drive-review.html

Categories: Shopping Carts | Date: Oct 7th, 2011 | Author: Mark | No Comments

There’s been more hype about the X.Commerce Platform (on the impressive www.x.com domain). Details are still a bit sketchy, but it’s somehow aggregating all the Ebay properties – Ebay itself, Paypal and Magento. No word on GSI being involved yet but we’ll see. They’ve also partnered with the Kenshoo enterprise bid management platform, and Adobe’s Site Catalyst analytics platform (formerly Omniture).

However, it’s hard to get a straight answer as to what it actually is, which is unfortunately pretty typical of such products. After all,

It’s more than e-commerce. More than marketing automation. More than mobile transactions. It’s the first end-to-end, multi-channel commerce technology platform designed for all the ways consumers choose to shop today. And it’s the only platform that combines the power of eBay, PayPal, Magento, and all the ground-breaking commerce capabilities within the eBay Inc. family.

Doesn’t exactly say a lot. Best I can tell it’s a series of cloud based APIs that enable a bunch of common and growing ecommerce functions such as authentication, payments, mobile payments, checkout, reporting and more. I think it’s the evolution of the PayPal API, but not really clear.

Any seen a good summary?

Categories: General, Shopping Carts | Date: Sep 25th, 2011 | Author: Mark | 2 Comments