Optaros Blog

Etsy Raises Another $20 Million and Picks New COO

Posted by Jochen Krisch on 01 Sep 2010

Etsy has raised $20 million from a new financing round with Index Ventures. Also, Burda and Accel Partners have again participated in the round. According to insiders familiar to the deal, the financing is intended for paying out early business…

Ecommerce Trends – Content, Community, Commerce: Sears’ Shoes Experience

Posted by John Eckman on 27 Aug 2010

Today Sears announced the launch of a “new footwear experience” at sears.com/shoes. It’s worth checking out as yet another example of a mainstream, multichannel retailer embracing what we’ve been calling the assembled web, both in terms of the convergence of content, community and commerce and in terms of the widely decentralized and distributed nature of | View post »

Nordstrom Conversation-focused Redesign

Posted by John Eckman on 24 Aug 2010

I’m absolutely loving the new Nordstrom.com, launched over the weekend. They’ve dramatically simplified navigation on the homepage, offering the user the choice of Department, Brand, or Conversation: The main content in the center offers a flash-driven set of vignettes, allowing the Nordstrom team the ability to set up editorially driven, fashion magazine style interactions which | View post »

Magento Meetup: A New Approach to Metrics for Magento Ecommerce

Posted by Pat Keating on 24 Aug 2010

On Tuesday, Sept. 14, we are hosting a Magento Meetup: “A New Approach to Metrics for Magento Ecommerce.” This is the latest event for the New England Magento Meetup group, which I founded in April of this year to bring together Boston-area Magento developers and users. In these times, ecommerce projects must be justified, and | View post »

Viddler, Vimeo, Vzaar: Video Providers Surging to the iPad

Posted by Jochen Krisch on 21 Aug 2010

Online video provider Vimeo is constantly being used by online retailers (even though it doesn’t seem to be the wish of the makers). Interest in Vimeo may now even increase due to its recent availability on Flash incompatible end devices:…

Groupon Takes Over Darberry.ru, the Next Otto Holding

Posted by Jochen Krisch on 18 Aug 2010

Groupon expands further internationally by acquisitions and has followed up their Citydeal takeover now with majority investments in the Russian Darberry and Japanese Qpod. So reported the Wall Street Journal. Otto’s eVenture Capital Partners, who hold stakes in both Citydeal…

Facebook Like -I Like it like that Amazon Levis and the Facebook open graph

Posted by John Eckman on 17 Aug 2010

At the beginning of 2010, Facebook rolled out a number of significant changes to their platform, including most notably the introduction of the Open Graph protocol and Facebook social plugins. Since then, retailers have been trying to determine the best strategies for taking advantage of these options. Two significant strategies (at least) have emerged so | View post »

Customer service on Facebook?

Posted by John Eckman on 12 Aug 2010

Mashable had an interesting piece yesterday about the market for applications which connect your company’s Facebook page to its customer service function (Facebook Pages Become Customer Service Centers). They note two such applications — Parature for Facebook and Get Satisfaction’s Social Engagement Hub — and ask: Do you think Facebook Pages can serve as an | View post »

Magento Update: Where is Magento Today?

Posted by Jochen Krisch on 11 Aug 2010

Where is Magento now two years after launching? Roman Zenner, co-author of a new Magento handbook for developers (German language), has written a critique on his English language blog: "One thing is for sure: Magento has reached reality. Right now,…

Optaros Announces OCentric Ecommerce SaaS on Amazon Web Services

Posted by Marc Osofsky on 11 Aug 2010

Today, we are happy to announce that OCentric, our ecommerce SaaS, leveraging Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS). The economics of cloud computing now enable companies to have unique solutions at the same cost as generic ones. In addition, with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), OCentric clients can auto-scale servers to meet peak demand, which | View post »