Okay, so we brought the E-ComBanner to a relatively small trade show in Orlando and made a big splash. It was time to get out of the wading pool and into the ocean by exhibiting at AdTech in San Francisco.
Here’s a show where every time we turned around, we were finding another great partnering opportunity. Turns out, there are hundreds of people trying to find their niche in this marketplace – and no one is selling from WITHIN a banner ad like us.
It was fun to watch people approach our booth with that look of boredom shadowing their faces, until they caught a piece of our video. People understood immediately that the E-ComBanner is truly something new. We heard comments like “provocative” and “this changes the game”.
The best part of working these shows is always meeting and chatting with people. We are constantly amazed at the niche businesses that are managed by people passionate about their missions. One guy summed up meeting us this way: “I’m glad I got to you now, ‘cause in a few months you won’t have time for guys like me.” As much as we’d like his prophecy to come true, we are dedicated to always having time for his kind of business passion.
So, there’s our challenge. We’re back at the office reviewing everything we learned and culling through the hundreds of business cards from people asking us to “call us right away – let’s get this going.” It’s time for us to manage our outreach effort, and that’s a pretty good place for us to be!
Bringing our E-ComBanner to market has been a lot like having a baby: we were pretty sure we knew what we were doing, but turns out, every day is a new learning experience. So when we signed up for the 2010 NAA (Newspaper Association of America) mediaXchange, it was like we had decided to take our baby to a public place for the first time. We planned and packed and gave each other pep talks about the inevitable welcome our baby would receive. But, like parents everywhere, we had no real clue how that baby would act out in public.
Turns out, our “baby”, the E-ComBanner, was the hit of the show. Amongst many attendees and exhibitors grumbling about the relative small size of this year’s show, we newbies found it the perfect forum to introduce our new technology. Attendees were looking for something new and fresh, and they found it in the E-ComBanner’s ability to sell from WITHIN a banner ad. We were the answer to that age-old elevator question, “see anything good today?” – the E-ComBanner was the consistent answer. Alisa Cromer of MediaInsider.com even gave us a spot in her top ten technology finds.
By the last day of the show, people were literally scrambling to get to us before we packed up. The E-ComBanner was the brilliant light of possibility for new ad revenue for this industry under attack. Kudos to the hundreds of attendees who recognize that print can survive through a good marriage with technology. These attendees immediately understood the beauty of the E-ComBanner: the “sticky” technology is a great asset to a news website.
Now, it’s up to us to handle the newfound popularity of our E-ComBanner. It’s a great feeling to have people oohing and aahing over our baby!
The E-ComBanner, released in May by LC E-Commerce Solutions, has been certified by Google Checkout as an Integration Partner. The updated E-ComBanner now includes enhanced shipping options and merchant customization features. The E-ComBanner allows instant deployment and management of an online shop with one-click checkout.
Lewiston, ME, August 24, 2009 – The E-ComBanner, which allows users to shop from directly within a banner, is now a certified Google Checkout Integration Partner. The certification comes as a result of enhancements to the E-ComBanner, including advanced shipping options and merchant customization features.
LC E-Commerce Solutions now joins the ranks of some of the best know integrators, with a totally unique product based on patent pending technology.The updated version that released this week incorporates a full featured shopping cart, and allows merchants to select a preferred shipping carrier for their products. APIs are included for shipping with UPS, Fedex, or USPS. Merchants can also choose to use fixed priced shipping options.
Additionally, enhanced customization is now in the hands of the merchant. Banners come standard w/ up to 10 items displayed, and anunlimited number of active search items “behind” it. This expanded search allows, for instance, a merchant to list a generic shirt as one of ten items in the banner. When the end user clicks on the shirt, all of the search parameters (color, size, etc.) become available.
“With a couple of months of test driving our E-ComBanner, we learned the true power behind the dashboard,” explains Wayne Burkholder, Director of Operations at LC E-Commerce Solutions, developer of the new e-commerce widget. “It has the capability to allow a merchant to add search features, so we wanted to make that capability easy for the merchant to manage from his or her own desktop. Furthermore, our small business clients testing the E-ComBanner reported that their biggest concern was in the shipping process, so we responded with a full range of shipping options for the merchant.”
“It will be exciting to see which application of the E-ComBanner becomes most popular,” adds Burkholder, “as a quick yet powerful shopping cart, or as a banner ad served to a 3rd party site. Both uses have the potential to generate lots of income for the merchant.”
LC E-Commerce Solutions originally released the E-ComBanner in May as part of its Tacoma RIA E-Commerce suite of applications. E-ComBanners allow instant deployment and management of an online shop in a unique banner which can be embedded into or float and dissolve within any web page.One-click checkout within the banner is powered by PayPal and Google Checkout and customers’ products and banners are managed by an easy-to-use desktop application. The application was built with Adobe® Flex® Builder and leverages Adobe® LiveCycle® Data Services ES and Adobe® AIR® for a unique combination of enterprise class data services capabilities, cross-platform reach, and an expressive user interface.
A SaaS (Software as a Service) application, E-ComBanners require no software or hosting. Additionally, data transferred to/from the BannerAdmin application is secured via SSL.
The E-ComBanner is the first of the Tacoma suite of products to be made available publicly. The E-ComBanner is intended to be the entry level product of the Tacoma suite of expandable and buildable e-commerce solutions. Users interested in growing their online presence can evolve from the E-ComBanner to the BoutiqueShop, which is a fully functional store that can be used as a stand-alone E-Commerce shop or fused into an existing static online store. Upcoming product releases of FlagShip and MallStore will provide complete turn-key enterprise level online stores capable of handling up to several hundred thousand products, built via Adobe Flex.
The fastest and easiest way to add e-commerce to any site!… but we will let you be the judge… simply download our 30 day free trial here:http://LCe-com.com
……it just keeps getting better! Our E-ComBanner now has full shopping cart functionality and expanded shipping options. With today’s release of the upgraded E-ComBanner, an end-user can now add multiple items to their shopping cart, increase quantities of selected items, and proceed to either Google Checkout or Paypal with the click of the mouse! Additionally, we’ve expanded and simplified the shipping panel, as well as added features which let the merchant customize the look of the banner. A “generate and copy code” feature was also included, allowing even novice webmasters the ability to publish the E-ComBanner into a site in less than a minute.
Fully functional Free Trial’s are still being offered, but not for long. What have you got to lose? Sign up today and see how easy and powerful this is.
Keep an eye on this blog, ’cause we’re expecting to have some more great news next week.