Yahoo! Web Developer Going The Extra Mile!

Hello All,

So I know I haven’t written in awhile as I have been busy with our events and sponsors and I just didn’t have the urge to as nothing really affected me enough to make me want to write about it.  That all changed last week when I was invited to go to Solid Cactus’s Boot Camp to speak.  This was my 2nd Boot Camp that I have had the privilege of speaking at and I if I were to say that I was majorly impressed it would be the understatement of the year!

They really outdid themselves.  The quality of education they bring to their merchants is anything short of amazing!  Basically it was 3 days of hands on training (17 sessions) see complete schedule of sessions here http://bootcamp.solidcactus.com/sessions.html

The merchants were engaged, asking questions and then to top it off they had their choice of specialists at Solid Cactus Headquarters where they could schedule one on one time to discuss their own site and find ways to improve it.

To follow up each day of hard work/hands on training the merchants were entertained with no expense spared.  See complete list of events here http://bootcamp.solidcactus.com/evening.html

All in all it was an amazing 3 days of work and fun.  What I experienced there by talking to the merchants, seeing them engage with the team at Solid Cactus is what motivated me to write this post.  So here I go being a little controversial again but with good reason.  We all know that Solid Cactus has become the Red Headed Step Child of Yahoo! Web Developers because of their branching out to offer their merchants other solutions but let’s be real, in today’s economy merchants must be doing multi channel ecommerce, if they aren’t they will be left behind.  I have to say that the loyalty that Solid Cactus emotes from their merchants speaks volumes.  Everyone that I had the privilege to talk to was absolutely raving about Solid Cactus and how happy they were with their services, especially their Pay Per Click Management.  I was impressed with the success stories I heard and believe me there were plenty!

So, here is my point. Isn’t it the Developers responsibility to ensure their merchants are successful?  Wouldn’t the merchant’s success be even more valuable to Yahoo!?  I believe the answer to both of those questions is yes.  Solid Cactus is giving their merchants what they need to succeed, if that means helping them to multi-channel ecommerce then so be it, but ultimately that would help them with their overall success on Yahoo! right?

I personally used to feel that Solid Cactus was getting away from their core business of Yahoo! Web Development (which they are great at!) and it was going to hurt their business, but I was wrong. All of the tools and Services they offer, from email marketing, Pay Per Click Management, site search, feed perfect, shipping manager, call center…you can find their full list of services at http://www.solidcactus.com are all designed to give their clients what they need to succeed on line and why have them go elsewhere if you can give them what they need.  After all they know their merchants best and can help them through the whole process.

I know a few years back they had issues due to lack of staffing and not being able to scale as quickly as they needed to, but I can tell you this, they now have been able to scale and have over 140 employees spread throughout their numerous departments who are their willing and able to assist merchants in any of the needs they may have.  They even have a publication that goes out monthly http://www.ebizinsider.com and forums for the members at    http://forum.ebizinsider.com/index.php

I really believe that all providers need to be doing what Solid Cactus is doing, educating their merchants, building that relationship which instills trust and loyalty, which ultimately makes better business for the provider and the merchant.  It is a win win for all involved.

I want to thank Scott Sanfilippo and Joe Palko for giving me an insider’s look into your organization and helping me to understand all that you do for your merchants.  I am proud to have you as a partner of eCommerce Merchants Trade Association. http://www.ecmta.org Keep up the great work!!

Happy eCommerce

Cresta

Thank You!!

Hello All,

I am dedicating this post to thank everyone for their support of me, my first post and most importantly for voicing your concerns over what McAfee is to their merchants and helping me to make more merchants aware. I have received 1400 views, many comments as well as support from many colleagues. Thank you and Thank you again!

Special Thanks Go To :

Nir at http://www.hotbuckles.com , Joe Beaulaurier at http://www.prweb.com , Bryan Eisenberg at http://www.grokdotcom.com ,Donna Talarico at http://www.solidcactus.com ,Dave Davies at http://www.beanstalk-inc.com ,Wayne R. Dempsey at http://pelicanparts.com ,Tom Ham at http://www.stompernet.com ,Liz Broussard at http://www.classic-charms.com ,Pam Marcharola at http://www.blaircandy.com ,Karl at http://www.kaleidescopestoyou.com ,Michael Roebuck at http://www.allwebpromotion.com JP Diaz at http://www.ecmta.org ,Ed Shapiro at http://www.childbasics.com ,Bob Nelson at http://www.fastlabels.com ,Julie Swain at http://www.ithacasports.com ,DR at http://www.adanet.com ,CD at http://www.cdrates.com ,Chris at http://www.digitalslingshot.com ,Ty Ricker at http://www.deal4it.com ,Joel Comm at http://www.joelcomm.com ,Chip Ardnt at http://www.merchantadvantage.com ,Greg Beddor at http://www.webfu-design.com ,Jay Berkowitz at http://www.tengoldenrules.com ,Miles at http://www.marketingwithmiles.com/ ,Leslie Rohde at http://www.leslierohde.com

Again, thank you so much. I am currently in Boston attending Affiliate Summit where I plan to do some co-marketing with http://www.pepperjam.com as many of you know I run and educational trade association called eCommerce Merchants Trade Association, we also do in house Affiliate Management for our merchants. So I am here to gain new partnerships that can help me better serve our merchants.

Have a terrific weekend everyone and Happy eCommerce!!!

Here is what’s coming up for eCommere Merchants.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/08/prweb1182324.htm

Also for those of you that are wondering, yes we finalized the deal with Control Scan and I am pretty happy with the package we were able to put together for our members.

So for those of you that are truly looking for the essential eCommerce Security package it is finally available. See link below and tell them Cresta Pillsbury sent you. I am sure they will get a kick out of it.

www.controlscan.com/ecommercemerchants

Best Regards,

Cresta

McAfee (kind of) Stops Redirecting Merchants Traffic To Their Shopping Portal

So I will start by saying…can you believe it? McAfee actually got the message, and I won’t be so egotistical to believe that it was because of my post but because of all the merchants who actually called into McAfee and either canceled their subscription or threatened to. I just want to say Well Done Merchants!!!! Way to stand up for your well paid for traffic

For those of you first visiting my blog, you may wonder what all this is about, how my links don’t really make any sense, well my good friend Michael Roebuck experienced the same thing and here is an excerpt of an email I received from him yesterday that may shed some light for you.

Cresta,

I’d love to say my blog post made McAfee take action, but I think I must bow down to you. Looks like McAfee Secure removed the link to shopping. You don’t happen to have an old screen shot do you? I didn’t even think of taking one.

My updates, with screen shots this time. I can monitor changes with screen shots now.

http://www.michaelroebuck.com/blog/index.html

Michael Roebuck
All Web Promotion, Inc.
“Providing search engine marketing and Yahoo! store website design services”

So low and behold I went and checked it out and sure enough the link is gone. In answer to Michael’s question, yes I did take screen shots! See below.

Merchants Site

Old McAfee Seal with Attention Shoppers and link to shopping portal

McAfee Shopping portal that consumers were being directed to when either 2 links in the previous screen were clicked on.

Now the real question lies in now that McAfee has stopped redirecting merchants well paid for traffic to their shopping portal KIND OF, I say KIND OF because now if you click on the merchants URL in the cert you go to this page http://www.mcafeesecure.com/us/mcafee-certified-sites.jsp

And as you can see smack dab eye level is a box directing your visitors to their shopping portal. Now call me crazy but I find it somewhat deceptive to the consumer as well as the merchant when the link that takes you to the directory says About www.gothamcityonline.com: Yet after clicking on the link you don’t read or see anything about gothamcityonline??????

Here is a letter that a merchant received from McAfee when he contacted them about what they were doing.

Hello *

Yes, you are absolutely correct. When the certification mark is clicked, as with our former Hacker Safe certification, a window comes up that describes the certification. There are two options from that window “merchants” and “consumers”. When a consumer clicks on “consumer”, they are redirected to our McAfee Secure Shopping Portal. McAfee recognizes that the redirection from the certification mark to our McAfee Secure shopping portal is not something that is good for our clients. It is in the queue to be corrected. This could happen tonight or in a few weeks. Once this is corrected, corporate will notify us and in turn I will immediately notify you. We are working to resolve this in a timely fashion.

Thanks for sharing this concern with me. I will be in communication as I learn more. Please let me know if there are any other questions or concerns.

We look forward to earning your business.

Best Wishes

*Names withheld for privacy…

This is the part that truly concerns me. “McAfee recognizes that the redirection from the certification mark to our McAfee Secure shopping portal is not something that is good for our clients.

McAfee is a multimillion dollar company and in my opinion they should not be testing their services at the expense of the merchants who are their paying customers. While I appreciate them admitting that the current functionality is not in the best interest of the merchant it further underscores my concern that the new McAfee Secure is not the old Hacker Safe.

OK – a quick aside. As many of you know, I live in New York City and the changes by McAfee remind me a bit of a recent phenomenon in Manhattan real estate. Investors have been buying buildings that have a lot of rent controlled tenants in them, which historically they have avoided because those tenants do not move very often and they pay well below market rates. The new twist is that the investors buy the building and then try to evict as many tenants as possible with costly legal challenges in hopes that they can convert the unit into a market rate dwelling. Basically, they’re trying to work creative angles to improve their ROI.

I truly hope, for the many merchants who are still using McAfee Secure, this is not the mentality that is driving McAfee – “Let’s see how many places we can squeeze from extra revenue from.” As a security company, their judgment is held to a higher standard and running PPC shopping portals (OK, I’m not sure if the portal is pay-per-click but I wouldn’t be surprised) and cutting deals with Yahoo to influence search results by displaying warnings next to organic search traffic (not ppc traffic mind you, because that would discourage merchants from spending ppc dollars) is not what merchants are paying a security company for.

So they have acknoweledged that sending your paid for traffic to their shopping portal was not in the best interest of their customers and if they truly believe that…..I don’t know about you but if when I make a mistake with one of my customers I truly try to make it up to them refunds anyone?!

With all the marketing dollars that McAfee has why don’t they just market their shopping portal or at the very least have the about Gotham city or any other merchant really take you to a page about the merchant or to their items that they are selling??? Why try to direct traffic away from the same merchant that is paying them, and paying them well for their service. McAfee is a security company right??? Don’t get me wrong the success behind Hacker Safe was their ability to market the security to the consumer and the merchant. That is truly what set them apart and helped them to grow so quickly. I remember a time when the link to that directory was quite valuable. It was a page rank 8, yes, you heard me right-a page rank 8. Now it’s a page rank 1. If that doesn’t say how wrong it is I don’t know what does.

I say to McAfee and it is my suggestion that every other merchant say to McAfee to take the 3 boxes off of the directory if they insist on directing consumers to that page. Some of you may be wondering, how many people really click on that seal, is it really hurting us? The answer is Yes it is hurting you! I happen to know for a fact that when I was there the click through rate of the seal was extremely high!!! That is where all of our requests for information as well as isitsafe requests came from.

So for those of you that are truly looking for the essential eCommerce Security package it is finally available.   I have special pricing but I must keep it private due to channel conflict.  If you would like more information please email me at cresta.pillsbury@gmail.com and I will be happy to assist you.

Just so you all know, this will probably be my last post on McAfee…I have so much other valuable content to bring to you. My time and your time are far to valuable, let’s move on and start improving your business.

Well, that is enough for today. I welcome your comments and feedback. Have a terrific day and Happy eCommerce!!!!

Best Regards,

Cresta

More McAfee Info To Come – Stay Tuned

Hello Everyone,

I have alot more to say on the McAfee subject, just finished writing my post.  Waiting on my graphic designer and it will be ready to publish.  Please come back to read how the story is unfolding.  It is a definite must read   Have a happy eCommerce day!!!

Best Regards,

Cresta

Is there a security company that is better than the rest??

A number of people have asked me this question recently, and it’s an excellent, question so I’ve decided to dedicate an entire blog entry to this topic.

Had I been asked this question a year or two ago my answer would have been “Of course it matters! Hacker Safe is the best solution available and is an essential part of any website.” However, things have changed fairly dramatically in the past year.

Hacker Safe was the first company to successfully educate the consumer (shopper) about the importance of buying from a trusted website (merchant). They helped educate consumers on the dangers of credit card fraud and identity theft, and created a consistent way to identify “safe” websites. Just look for the Hacker Safe seal!

However, with the rebranding of Hacker Safe to McAfee secure, that brand recognition has changed. In fact, it has been greatly undermined. Between the rebranding of the seal and the introduction of a Shopping portal that siphons traffic from merchant websites (see my prior blog entry), the Hacker Safe of new is not the same company I promoted to merchants over the past four years.

My good friend Ed Shapiro from http://www.sensoryedge.com/recently echoed my thoughts that “many of those businesses [merchants] will change their business play as Hacker Safe has obviously decided to do with their shopping portal.”

In addition, Bryan Eisenberg whom I love and trust, has a truly great post on just this subject as well:

McAfee Pulls a “New Coke”: Will it Hurt Retailer’s Conversions

So the landscape has changed quite a bit and today any security company can go out and market their security to consumers. All they need is decent technology and an attractive logo and voila, they are competing with McAfee.

Of course, this has always been the case; it’s just that consumers aren’t familiar with the McAfee Secure logo so the brand recognition of Hacker Safe is gone.

Incidentally a surprising number of the consumers I have polled who are familiar with McAfee, think that the seal has to do with virus protection. In fact, I’ve had several people say that seal reminds them of the “annoying popups they get on their computer about their antivirus software subscription!” This last comment I don’t’ make lightly.

I remember a few months ago when the announcement came out that McAfee was buying Hacker Safe and I was still working at Hacker Safe. At the first tradeshow after the news, we promoted the change. Pretty much everyone we talked to that came by the booth said “I get a bad taste in my mouth when I think of McAfee, they aren’t going to change the Hacker Safe logo are they???” I told them we were assured that would never happen, but low and behold it has…

So, who do I recommend?

I am currently recommending Control Scan, for a few reasons.

1. They have a proven technology. I won’t compromise on service or features when I endorse a product and I can say with confidence that Control Scan does offer the protection a merchant needs. In fact, they’ve added some features, like Breach Protection, (included in the special package I have had customized for our merchants) that not even McAfee Secure offers!

2. They are a recognized brand. The nice thing about being number two in a space is that when number one goes away, voila you’re on top! Hacker Safe was THE brand in the space and McAfee Secure has a long road ahead of them which leaves the door wide open for Control Scan. As consumers become even more familiar with Control Scan (and any other vendor for that matter) the strength of the Control Scan brand will grow.

3. Control Scan is professional. Admittedly they’ve been my competitor in the past but I’ve never had anything but respect for the way they conduct their business. Their willingness to customize the “essential ecommerce security package” for me (details below or in my previous blog post) underscored their commitment to their customers.

By the way, we will have the special Control Scan pricing available at the end of this week for our members. I was recently approached by a company called gamasec, I have a call later this week to talk further with them.

I am looking for volunteers to try both of these services on a free trial basis, I believe it is 2 weeks, and give me their results for me to publish here. I want to know about the scanning services as well as how did it work to increase your online orders? I want to then take these results and compare them to McAfee. I also would be interested in any other scanning/trust badges companies that would like to participate in this case study. Based on the results I will then determine who eCommerce Merchants will refer to their members. I want them to have the best, most cost efficient and truly secure service to use on their site.

For those of my partners as well as the customers I signed up for Hacker Safe, I just want to say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and I only hope I can make this up to you. Either by partnering with your company in my new capacity to offer your services to our merchants or by finding you a truly valuable service to replace Hacker Safe that you won’t get any blow back from.

Please keep your questions and comments coming. I enjoy reading them and will do whatever I can to ensure that you as a company succeed and are able to find the best value in a service no matter what it is you seek.

For kicks and giggles, my good friend Leslie Rohde will definitely bring a smile to your face or even a definite Laugh out Loud with what he posted on his blog…happy reading

http://www.leslierohde.com/

What is McAfee thinking?????

Ahhh, where do I start….As many of you may know I worked for ScanAlert, the Hacker Safe company, now owned by McAfee, for over 4 years. I was in charge of Business Development and created the growth that made Hacker Safe the most recognized trustmark on the Internet. I considered Hacker Safe my baby. I swear I lived and breathed Hacker Safe. Heck, I even drank the Hacker Safe wine (no kidding) that was prominent in our conference booth. Any of you who know me knew how passionate I was about good ole Hacker Safe. So you might think that I was excited about becoming part of a larger company interested in expanding our brand. Well, I think the letter from the former CEO of Hacker Safe says it best…

Personal Recommendation from the CEO of Scan Alert (HACKER SAFE) now McAfee

Cresta was employed by ScanAlert for over 4 years. She started as a member of our sales team, where she was consistently the number-one performer. She was promoted to various other roles, ending her time with us as the Senior Director of Business Development. In that role she was instrumental in developing, closing and executing several key partnerships including VeriSign and Microsoft, as well as developing and managing a successful affiliate marketing program.
Due to her outstanding success in achieving the goals assigned to her she was slated to be promoted to a Vice Present position in 2008. Unfortunately, due to the acquisition of ScanAlert by McAfee her position was made redundant.
During her last two years with ScanAlert Cresta reported directly to me. I always found her to be highly effective and dedicated to achieving excellence in her work. She was instrumental in building the success of ScanAlert, and was always a pleasure to work with. I give her my highest personal recommendation, and would certainly heir her again given the opportunity.
Should you need any further information regarding Cresta’s employment at ScanAlert please contact me directly.
Sincerely,
Ken Leonard, CEO
ScanAlert, Inc.

So one day I was hard at work and then…hmmm we don’t need Cresta anymore. Needless to say I was shocked and upset. My life was turned upside down. There were calls with lawyers who wanted to represent me on a contigency basis, there were job offers that flooded in and (most importantly) there were numerous calls from the friends I had made over the years at various companies offering support and compassion (whom I wish to publicly thank now). So after many long discussions with my now current partners I decided to take the high road and start rebuilding.

For those of you who wonder where I have gone, I am now a partner with eCommerce Merchants Trade Association (www.ecommercemerchants.org) as well as the EVP of Business Development. I love what I am doing. Supporting my partners and my merchants so everyone is taken care of to the best of my ability. It is a perfect fit for me. Not to mention their is nothing better than being your own boss.

I really want you all to listen up because my goal is to help merchants improve their ecommerce business not to defame a company. I currently work with over 3000 merchants and even after all that hacker safe personally did to me I was going to partner with them because I felt they had the best product on the market to protect you and increase your conversion and I refuse to compromise when it comes to my customers.

Then I started getting calls from my partners that I had at hacker safe that are now my partners here at eCommerce Merchants letting me know they had yet to be paid, some were owed an upwards of over 15,000 dollars. They also informed me they had their lawyers send letters to McAfee demanding payment to no avail. I also launched an Affiliate Program while at hacker safe that really took off. When I left they turned the switch off and never paid my affiliates another dime…go figure. Then my merchants started calling me saying they were being harassed into doing an annual payment even though by paying monthly McAfee was making more from them. Then they changed their pricing to page views, tell me this…McAfee is a security company, not a marketing company and come on, give me a break how much does it really cost to serve an image off of Akamai???

So I got concerned. Clearly things were changing at McAfee’s Hacker Safe – and NOT for the better. I wanted our eCommerce Merchants to receive the best product and service available, but who should I work with? I knew I needed a security company as well as a seal for our merchants. So I reached out to Control Scan…I was still apprehensive about working with them because I didn’t believe in their web application scan. We had quite a few long discussions and I found out they have a breach protection product to where if you are compromised Control Scan will pay you up to 50,000 to deal with the breach. I know for a fact McAfee doesn’t have it because when I was there merchants were breached and I had to take the calls from my clients that now owe over 100,000 for their onsite audit etc..it was a nightmare. So when I found out the Control Scan offered this it eased much of my concern over working with them. On top of that I was able to negotiate a truly low rate for the service. I don’t think you can get this rate outside of my organization so that made me really happy.

But wait, there’s more!

One of my merchants called me yesterday…www.gothamcityonline.com and showed me something that blew me away and is in no way best practices for a merchant. Once you see this I know that you will all agree you cannot continue to use the seal. Anyone who is currently using the McAfee seal on their site is actually paying McAfee to take their traffic and send it to their competitors. What?!! I know but check out this link. www.gothamcityonline.com, now click on the McAfee seal https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify?ref=www.gothamcityonline.com , once you do this their are two different links that will take you to McAfee’s secure shopping portal which lists your competitors products. one is the “Attention Shoppers” the other is your company name directly under your URL…So tell me this, how is McAfee helping to increase your conversion if you are spending money for good traffic and they are directing it elsewhere? How is that good business practices?

Another thing that was brought to my attention is they are now messing with the integrity of organic search by influencing Yahoo!’s results with their Site Advisor product. This gorrilla marketing tactic has negatively affected two of my partners Endicia being one of them. I personally know them to conduct honest and professional business. Check this link out… http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu5ZsJpNIjTEBZSJXNyoA?p=endicia&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8

Funny how it isn’t in the sponsored listing though…I mean if protecting consumers was your main focus wouldn’t they have it everywhere? Of course not that would stop the sponsored dollars flowing into Yahoo! right? So much for unbiased reporting!

So in light of the above, I am now officially recommending that any ecommerce merchant interested in protecting their site and displaying a trust badge should use Control Scan. Whew, I said it!

If you’re ready to embrace the new “best-practice” in website security by using Control Scan, I would love to hear your results. Plus, you’re good friend Cresta has arranged for you to the ControlScan with Breach protection for 59.99 a month or w/out breach 49.99 a month. (FYI that is an AMAZING deal!) I would also love to hear from any one using either product and let me know their experiences and I will happily post them. I will be blogging about what I find that can truly help the small to midsize merchants, from best practices to top of the line technology.

I think that is enough for today! I wish everyone a terrific (and safe day, see you back here soon!

For those of you who would like to stay in touch with me my information is below, you can join our mailing list by visiting www.ecmta.org

Cresta Pillsbury

EVP, Business Development

E-Commerce Merchants

http://www.ecommercemerchants.org

P: 415-342-7075

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/B71/624

Skype: cresta.pillsbury

Skypein: 415-315-9453

Fax: 509-352-7075

cresta.pillsbury@ecmta.org

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