Hickey Freeman is a brand that’s rich in American history. Two young entrepreneurs named Jacob Freeman and Jeremiah Hickey started the company with the goal of  ”bringing high-quality hand-tailoring to men from coast to coast.” As they envisioned it, a Hickey Freeman suit would be a testament to both the delicate artistry of hand-craftsmanship and the steady consistency of modern technology. The new eCommerce site provides an online showcase for their craft, with high-resolution image zooms, multiple product shots and an overall graphic design that matches the elegance of the brand.

Hickey Freeman is one of several sites WebLinc developed for HMX LLC, formerly known as Hartmarx. Other sites include Bobby Jones and Exclusively Misook.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A solid technology foundation is one of the keys to success for eCommerce businesses looking to optimize their customer experiences, market effectively and creatively, and scale their business to make more meaningful contributions to their companies. But the range of solution types, models, and capabilities vary widely, and the search for the right vendor can be daunting. To support our small and medium-sized business (SMB) clients in finding eCommerce solutions best suited to their needs, Forrester surveyed the capabilities of eCommerce platform providers specializing in serving online SMBs. This research will help companies find the right solutions for their business as they develop their online channels, launch brands, go global, as well as reach and transact with customers directly — with many doing so for the first time.

The report is available for sale on the Forrester site for $499.

• Online sales doubled

• Conversion rates increased nearly twofold

• Site traffic increased dramatically

Progressive Lighting chose WebLinc because they needed an eCommerce solution that offered the showcase their products require. What they got was a fresh new redesign with easy-to-update content areas featuring interior design suggestions and inspiring articles and how-to videos. This content not only gives the Progressive Lighting team a space for search engine optimized copy, but also gives them a place to offer customers the kind of creative and conceptual ideas that prompt customers to convert, in addition to helping them choose how they want to light their homes. Also lending a hand to the increased conversion rates are a swath of new merchandising tools that come standard with WebLinc Direct such as new product detail features, high-resolution image zooms, a powerful promotions engine, faceted navigation and more.

“At our state-of-the-art Progressive Lighting and Lee Lighting retail showrooms, we give our customers the star treatment,” said Troy Lee, General Manager of Progressive Lighting, Inc. “With LightsOnline.com, we can now offer the same personalized experience to a national audience of customers.”

“We looked at the next three years and said, ‘There’s no way it’s going to be able to support the growth we’re seeing in our company and the growth that we expect to see online, so it’s time to make an investment in a new architecture and a new way.’”

Brooklyn Industry’s investment is already paying off – site traffic is up roughly 30 percent year-over-year since its launch, and units per transaction and average order value have grown, too.

WebLinc just launched the brand new mobile commerce site for Free People, a division of Urban Outfitters Inc. The new site fully replicates the experience customers have come to expect from Free People, and now with the aid of their smartphones, shoppers can access the site from just about anywhere.

A few things make this site and WebLinc’s capabilities different from other mobile development companies. For starters, there’s a shared cart. This means if customers log in from their phone and place items in their cart, then go to any other computer and log in, those items will still be in their cart.

There’s no product or content syncing needed between the mobile site and the non-mobile site. All the product data is exactly the same. Using the WebLinc Direct admin area, administrators can also choose to “hide” products and/or categories from the mobile site if they want. And all of the site’s discounts and promotions work on the mobile site, too.

On the front-end, customers are able to browse and purchase products, place and track orders, sign up for the email newsletter, sign up for an account, manage their wish list, search for a friend’s wish list and much more.

The site debuts a collection of beautiful apparel, displayed simply and attractively, allowing for the clothes to be the star of the site experience. A Look Book lets shoppers leaf through the online catalog, with links to product pages for each of the showcased fashions. Within each product page are multiple views and zooms of the high-end clothes. The site’s Share functionality lets shoppers share their discoveries using email, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and more, ensuring maximum exposure for the young brand.

Infinity Resources, Inc., already a leading online retailer known for their competitive prices and diverse offering of books, DVDs, CDs, and video games on deepdiscount.com, selected WebLinc to redesign and re-launch their online presence. The new site is a testament to the scalability of the WebLinc Direct eCommerce platform, as Deep Discount has expanded their eCommerce product catalog to include fragrances, costumes, party supplies and electronics. Deep Discount (deepdiscount.com) is #105 on the Internet Retailer Top 500.

WebLinc also developed and launched the new site for Brodart Library Supplies featuring tool sets and functionality unique to sites catering to B2B audiences. New functionality includes tiered pricing based on quantity, with volume pricing that changes at the product page level. In addition, WebLinc developed a dynamic option configurations represented by a series of drop-downs, allowing shoppers to easily create and order Brodart’s customizable shelving products.

Brooklyn Industries is a cutting-edge design company that sells its innovative clothes exclusively through its 12 retail stores and its new eCommerce site, built on WebLinc Direct. The site features a litany of new features including Shop By Look functionality, quick views, rollover zooms, customer reviews, advanced product “fit guides,” and more.

Misook.com is the new home for Exclusively Misook, a line of 100% wrinkle-free and machine-washable women’s apparel. The site represents the second eCommerce site developed by WebLinc for the HMX Group in Chicago, America’s leading tailored clothing company.

WebLinc anticipates launching an additional six new eCommerce sites prior to the end of the first quarter of 2010.

According to a survey taken by ComScore Inc. shoppers are responding to customer submitted product reviews in much higher numbers than in years past. We have seen product reviews getting love here, but seeing it happen market-wide to retailers both large and small just makes it that much more apparent and important. People shopping on the web are becoming more savvy to the limitations of in-store shopping and using the resources offered to make more informed decisions before taking the bait.

A smaller but still significant amount of people are members of company Facebook pages or using their friend’s Facebook recommendations to shop (6% and 7% respectively) while others still are following Twitter for deals and gift ideas.

“I think we are getting our first real glimpse at the impact social media will play on commerce as we enter the next decade.” – comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni.

There is still a lot of ground to cover but with Twitter opening up the firehose for more 3rd party applications, Google search going real time and Facebook actually starting to generate revenue as ad spending in offline sources like print and television decline, this trend has nowhere to go but up.

Google Goes Real Time

What does that mean for ecommerce, though? First and foremost it means get on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace and use them to your advantage. It means stay abreast of the shopping space you are a part of. It means use Twitter to provide coupons and Facebook to dish out Promo codes. It means create an incentive for customers to not only pay attention (and by proxy lend credibility) to you, but to actively engage your business. You obviously can’t personally reply to every single Facebook message or tweet that mentions you, nor should you, but you can certainly foster a conversation with and among your customers to create and exploit this unprecedented level of interactivity.

“Our users will get the results as they are produced.” – Amit Singhal

Another thing you have to pay attention to is that even though you’re working on getting your copy right and code clean and keywords in place – you may still be trumped when a twitter link scrolls in and takes your bite. This is the flipside of the nearly hypodermic interaction that social media applications create between you and your customer and, if you aren’t careful, can serve to take your business and branding out of the equation. But again, making sure you are an active and positive member of these communities will help to bring in these wandering members of your herd.

In so much as the aforementioned sounds alarming, this next bit should sound quite comforting (hopefully.) If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of and stay on top of your Twitter account, regularly update your facebook page, check your industry blogs and update your own blog. If that is the case your reward will be top billing on Google, thanks to your adoring fans, in addition to a savvy marketing campaign (and also, how cool is this feature??)

If not, well, there is no time like the present…

Numbers are impressive across the board:

• One WebLinc client had their best day ever in terms of revenue generated.
• Another retailer saw the number of transactions rise by 44%.
• One retailer saw a 30% increase in site traffic over traffic from the week before.

Lastly, a client who’s been using WebLinc Direct for several years saw a 51% jump in number of orders, versus the same time period last year. This is a testament to the scalability of WebLinc Direct, proving that the solution we put in place today can grow and adapt to your business needs in the future.