Point of Sale Software by MerchantOS

Call For Vendors To Integrate

Justin Laing — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:10:24 +0000

We are integrating our purchase order system with vendors/suppliers to make the process easier. Currently we are working with Quality Bicycle Products, Hawley, and Specialized Bicycles but we are ready to add more vendors.

With vendor integration you can

Make sure MerchantOS catalog search is always up-to-date with your vendor’s catalog.
Check item availability from the vendor within a MerchantOS purchase order. So you can find out if the items you are about to order are actually available.
Instantly transfer a PO you create within MerchantOS to a vendor’s web ordering system so you don’t have to enter your order twice.
Synchronize invoices from your vendor into a MerchantOS purchase order. When you receive your items pick your invoice from a drop down and it will fill in the MerchantOS PO (or synchronize and existing PO) so you can immediately start checking items in.
Have your items pre-labeled by the vendor with your description, barcode, and price.

Note: Vendors/suppliers/manufacturers will offer different levels of integration. The list above is full-all-features integration. Your vendor may not have all these functions available, but we will integrate with whatever functionality is available from your vendor.

What to do to get your vendor integrated into MerchantOS

Contact your vendor and try to get in touch with someone in the IT department who is in charge of integrations with POS systems (or the person who would start that initiative for the vendor). Ask that person to get in contact with us. They can call me (Justin) at 866-554-2453 x 92 or use our contact form to send us a message.

Bike Shop Sales Down 3.21% In May

Justin Laing — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:18:37 +0000

The latest data is in! Here’s the low down on how the Spring is shaping up for MerchantOS bike shops. We also have some more accurate data on the start of the year. This data was collected from over 60 point of sale registers running MerchantOS starting in January of ’08 and tracking those same retailers through May ’09.

The first graph shows a monthly percentage comparison of sales for 2009 versus 2008. The second graph plots average weekly sales per point of sale for 2009 and 2008.

'09 vs '08 Sales by Month for MerchantOS Bike Shops

'09 and '08 Weekly Avg Sales for MerchantOS Bike Shops

MerchantOS Featured on InYourShirt.tv

Justin Laing — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:16:27 +0000

10 Steps To Get Ranked Locally In Search Engines

Justin Laing — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:29:55 +0000

Increasingly local businesses are searched for and found online. The days of the big yellow book next to everyone’s phone are near their end. If you want your business to be found by your customers you need to be listed in the local search results of Google (most importantly), Yahoo, and Microsoft Live.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about here’s what you see when you search for “olympia bike shop” from a computer near Olympia, WA (where I live).

Because MerchantOS is getting into the business of hosting website’s for small retailers, I thought I should go over how to get your business to show up in that highly valuable position.

The 10 Steps To Ranking Locally

#1 Create / Claim Your Business Profile

#2 Setup Your Business Profile With Search In Mind

When you create your business listing within the search engines listed above make sure to fill out your details with care. Here are some important factors in your listing:

Use your products and services or business type in the title of your business listing. Say our bike shop is called “Justin’s Shop”. Our entry title should be “Justin’s Bike Shop” instead of just “Justin’s Shop”.
Consider putting your city and state within the title of your business listing. So for our bike shop we might put “Justin’s Bike Shop, Olympia WA”.
In the description of your business put your products and services, your business type, and your location (city and state). For our bike shop we would put “Bike/bicycle sales and service. We have road bikes, mountain bikes, cruisers and more. We can repair your flat, or give your bike a full tune-up. Conveniently located in Downtown Olympia, WA.”
Make sure you put your business in the proper category. If the category doesn’t exist create a new one if possible. This is very important; being in the incorrect category can make it very hard to rank for the search terms your customers are using.

#3 Get Listed Where Search Engines Can Verify Your Business

Make sure your business is listed in these data sources:

InfoUSA - At the bottom of the page find a link called “Update My Listing”
Superpages.com
Yellopages.com
Localeze.com
Insiderpages.com
Yelp.com
Merchantcircle.com
Universal Business Listings
Local.com

#4 List Your Address And Phone On Your Site

Make sure your local address and local phone number (not a national toll-free number) are listed on every page of your site.
If you use MerchantOS to host your website you can put this information in your footer (we will do this by default for you).

#5 A Good Contact / Directions Page

Create a Contact or Directions page that lists your location address, phone number, and directions including nearby landmarks to your store.

#6 Your Site’s Title Tag

The title of your website should include the term you want to be listed under and your city and state. For example for our bike shop in Olympia, WA, the title of our site would be “Justin’s Bike Shop, Olympia WA”.

#7 Call Out Your Products and Services In Your Content

Within your site you should use the phrases you want people to find you under on the search engines. Again with our bike shop the words “bike shop”, “bicycle shop”, “bike store”, and “bicycle store” would be used throughout our website text.

#8 Reference Your Location In Your Content

Include your city and state in the text of your site. Just like you want to include the terms you are targeting in your website text you also want to include your location. When talking about our Olympia, WA bike shop we might say something like “Our bike shop has been located in Olympia, Washington since 1981.” as well as other phrases that include our location throughout the site.

#9 Get Reviewed By Customers

Get your customers (real people) to review your business online. Ask them to review your business right inside of Google Local, Yahoo Local, and Live Local. Also ask them to review your business on sites like Yelp and MerchantCircle. Getting reviews inside of the search engines directly is more important than on third party sites like Yelp and MerchantCircle (in regards to ranking, though Yelp is becoming increasingly important especially for restaurants). Try to get at least 5 reviews on each site.

#10 Get Some Link Love

Search engines love links. The more links from other websites pointing to your website the better you will rank both in local search and general search. For local search you want links that contain your products and services, region, city and state. For our example bike shop we’d try to get links like these:



Justin's Olympia WA Bike Shop

Olympia WA Bike Shop

Justin's Bike Shop

Bike Repairs and Sales

and so on…
If you have a personal blog put a link from your blog to your store’s site. If your friends, family members, or business associates have websites or blogs ask them to put these links on their site. Be specific on how exactly you want the link when you ask. A couple links can really help your website rank better.

Local Search Resources

Google Help on Local Listings
Live Search Local Business Center Help
Yahoo Local Help
For The Advanced: Local search Ranking Factors
Updated: Small Business SEO: How To Launch That Web site (similar information as this article but adds some good suggestions and goes into more depth on some issues)

Have You Got Your Site Ranked?

Please leave a comment below to share your own tips and experience in getting your site ranked in the local search results for your area.

Economic Downturn Affects Bicycle Shops

Justin Laing — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:45:57 +0000

We analyzed the sales of our 130 bicycle shop customers to figure out how bad the economic downturn is hitting them. What we found is that Christmas ‘08 was bad. Sales were down by 21.1% from the previous year. The start of ‘09 is fairing a bit better, though still down from last year. January had sales down by 8.1%, February was down by 11%, and March 1st through 19th have been down by 5.8%. It does look like sales are improving as we move towards spring. This most recent weeks data (3/12 - 3/18) show sales as flat compared to last year.

The graph below shows average weekly sales per point of sale for MerchantOS bicycle shops. The data was collected starting with 40 shops in 2007 to 130 shops currently, so the most recent data is a much more accurate representation of the bicycle industry as a whole.

How is your bicycle or other type of retail business doing? Are you faring better or worse than our ‘average’ bicycle shop.

We plan to produce more reports like this one. If you’ve got an idea for one let us know.

Security Advantages of a Web Based POS

Justin Laing — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:08:21 +0000

Small Business and the Challenge of Computer Security

Security is a big issue for small businesses. There is a lot to know, more than most small retailers can handle. Is your computer safe from hackers? What about viruses? If a thief stole your computer would they be able to retrieve your customer’s credit card numbers? If your business was flooded and your computer destroyed could you recover your data with little or no loss? A web based system helps you by-pass these desperate situations.

What Is A Web Based POS?

Web based point of sale software is essentially like a standard POS system but it runs in your web browser and is hosted by your POS vendor. Instead of running the software and storing the data on your computer, it’s stored offsite.

If you’ve used Hotmail, Gmail, or AOL web mail you’ve used a web based system. Compare that to the old way of doing email where everything was stored on your computer. If your computer died or you accidentally deleted your e-mail files you were out of luck. Also if you were on a trip without your computer, you couldn’t access your email. The web changes all of that.

Top 5 Security Failures

	Traditional Point of Sale	Web Based Point of Sale
Infected With A Virus	You start to notice some strange behavior on your computer. Then one morning you come into work and your computer won’t start. You’ve been hit by a virus, your computer is toast.	Bring in a new computer or re-install your OS. You’re up and running before lunch.
Hackers Break Into Your Computer	You thought that virus just wiped out your hard-drive but the next week you get a call from a major credit card company. One of your customer’s credit card numbers was stolen, and they’ve traced it back to your computer. That virus not only wiped your hard-drive but it also allowed a hacker to gain access to your computer and steal your customer’s credit card information.	Credit card data is securely transferred between your computer and your POS vendor. It is never stored on your computer. Although you still should take steps to protect yourself from viruses and hackers, it’s much safer if your POS system does not keep credit card numbers stored on your computer.
You Haven’t Upgraded Your Software In Years	Your POS is ancient and so is the rest of the software on your computer. This has left you open to viruses and hackers, not to mention being slow and more difficult to use than an up-to-date system.	Your point of sale software is always up to date. You don’t have to buy or install updates. The system is updated behind the scenes by your vendor. You can upgrade your computer without re-installing or transferring your POS system.
	Traditional Point of Sale	Web Based Point of Sale
Hardware Failure	Your hard drive or another component of your computer fails. You just lost all your inventory, sales, and customer data.	Your data would be safe. All you’d need to do is bring in a new computer, plug it into the internet, and turn it on. You’re up and running within hours instead of days, weeks, or worse.
No Data Backup	After your hard drive is fried you realize you should have been doing regular data backups. Or maybe you’ve been doing backups but you never tested your backup and your data is actually useless. Now what?	Your POS vendor maintains redundant copies of your data at multiple data centers. When one of their servers fails you don’t even know it happened.

Luckily You Switched To a Web Based System

No one wants to stay up at night worrying about their data or trying to recover it after a hardware failure, virus, flood, or fire. So you’ve decided to go with a web based system.

Security Precautions Everyone Should Take

Having a web based system shouldn’t be an excuse to totally ignore security on your business computer(s). Here are a few simple things you should do:

Make Sure You Have A Firewall / Router

Don’t plug your computer straight into your modem. Get a router (they all have firewalls built in), plug it into your modem, and then plug your computer(s) into the router. You can also turn on the firewall within your OS: Turn on your Windows XP firewall, Turn on your Mac firewall.
Turn On Wireless Security

If you’re using a router or access point that creates a wireless network, make sure to turn on the password protection. Check your router/access point documentation for how to turn on wireless security. (Sometimes referred to as “WEP”)
Limit Employee Access

This can be as simple as setting a policy that employees are not allowed to visit random websites or install software on your shared business computers. When you fire an employee make sure they are no longer allowed access to the computer. Make sure you disable their logins/access to your POS system.
How To Avoid Viruses

You can run a virus protection application, but sometimes avoidance is the best protection.
1. Don’t install applications from websites you don’t know.
2. Keep your operating system up-to-date (turn on automatic updates). Windows XP Update. Vista and the latest Mac OS should update automatically by default.
3. Use Firefox (Recommended), Internet Explorer 7, or Safari (only recommended for Mac users) as your web browser. Do not use Internet Explorer 6 or other old browsers.
4. Use web mail like Gmail (Recommended), Yahoo, Hotmail / Windows Live. These services have built in virus detection for attachments.
5. Don’t open email attachments unless you’re sure they are safe. Help avoid computer viruses that spread through e-mail attachments
Don’t Store Credit Card Numbers!

Just don’t do it. Unless you know what you are doing (and if you’re reading this you probably don’t), do not store your customer’s credit card information on your computer. This is exactly the type of information that hackers are looking for. Not to mention that you can be fined and black-listed from credit card companies for doing it.

Further Reading:

Small Business Computer Security Guide and Quick Audit (Coming soon)
Small Business Security from Work.com
Microsoft Security Guide
Mac Security Guide

Swimming Upstream In 2009

Justin Laing — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:05:07 +0000

How Are You Going To Survive and Grow In 2009?

In general businesses are having a rough time. But there are always outliers, those who buck the trend and grow while others struggle. How are you going to survive and grow your business in 2009? Are you playing it conservative or trying a more aggressive strategy?

Here’s how MerchantOS plans to not only survive, but grow substantially in these turbulent economic times:

2008 A Year In Review For MerchantOS

Before you plan for the future it’s a good idea to assess how you’ve done in the past. How did MerchantOS do in 2008? Here are some core metrics:

Expanded from 130 retail locations to 276.
Our revenue doubled.
System usage grew from 900 logins/day to 1800 logins/day.
This website had 40k visitors.
We updated the system 30 times.
The founders (me and Ivan) got paid a livable wage for the first time in 4 years

MerchantOS Plans For 2009

We’ve got a lot of planned for 2009. Part of our strategy is to keep improving our core point of sale and inventory control product. You (our customers) have given us tons of suggestions for ways we can better meet your business needs. Here’s a few improvements to our core product we plan to make:

Color / Size (or Attribute) Matrix - so you can quickly take stock of your apparel and other products that come in various colors/sizes/styles.
More Vendor Integration - we want to integrate with more vendors so it’s easier for you to order product.
Better discounts and pricing options - so you can more easily set sales, define discounts, and generally manage your product pricing.
Many more incremental improvements - we are always taking suggestions and looking for ways to improve the system. We want to make sure our system keeps becoming easier to use and at the same time more powerful.

We also have some big plans for new directions:

Ecommerce

The first is Ecommerce. We’ve been working on this for a while, and running our own Ecommerce store on our new system. We are starting to open this up to customers. We’re going to keep improving it and working out the bugs. Soon we’ll open it up so all of you can get a website and online store that is integrated with your point of sale and inventory.

Global Product Catalog and Reviews

We want to create a giant product catalog that contains all the products in the industries we target. With the products cross referenced between vendors/suppliers so you can see who you can order a certain product from and at what price. We are going to add the ability to write reviews of products in this catalog, so you can share your opinions on products with other business owners. This catalog is going to be as content rich as we can make it - with pictures, long descriptions of items, reviews, where to buy these products, sales statistics, and more. We’re going to do our best to pre-populate this information with data we’ve collected from vendors and manufactures. But we also are going to rely on you to help us fill in the gaps. You’ll be helping yourself and the whole community - and benefiting from the same effort by others.

Employee and Community Communication and News

We think it’d be great if you could more easily broadcast information to your employees right inside of MerchantOS. Along side of that we have some ideas about how shops in the same industry could share news and advice with each other.

Growing In Hard Times: Our Plan

Invest In Our Core Product

We put the vast majority of our time and energy into continually improving our core product/service: point of sale and inventory control.

Develop New Products

By developing new products and services we hope to expand to new customers. Ecommerce and the Product Catalog I mentioned are the main thrusts of this strategy for the next year.

A Long Term Marketing Strategy

A Great Product and Service Is Easy To Sell - Our main marketing strategy has and will always be to make a great product and provide excellent customer service to go along with it. This is what we spend 80%+ of our time and energy doing. The other 20% is:
Search Engine Marketing - We are making a significant long term investment in search engine marketing, that means both paid advertisements on terms that are relevant (example: type in “bike shop software” in Google and you’ll see our ad), and search engine optimization.
Community Building - As discussed above we have some ideas about how to create more of community among you (our customers). We’ve always had good communication between us and our customers, now we want to start building communication between customers. For starters we’ve created a:
MerchantOS Facebook Company Page
MerchantOS Facebook User Group
MerchantOS Twitter Profile
Word Of Mouth - That’s You! - Since we’ve created a great product and provided excellent service, we’re counting on you to tell other business owners about it. Help us grow and we’ll keep re-investing in making the product and service you use better.

Happy New Year 2009!

What are your plans for 2009? How can we help make your business more successful?

What do you want to see from MerchantOS in 2009?
What about MerchantOS is a pain in the #!*%?
Have a big idea you think we should do?

We thrive on your input. So let us have it. We want to be the best possible product/service for your business and we can only do that with your help.

7 Common POS Mistakes

Justin Laing — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:46:37 +0000

Choosing a point of sale system can be a difficult process. There are many options and even more ways to make mistakes. It’s easy to waste time and money in the search for a perfect POS. From our experience, here are the most common problems and how to avoid them:

Avoid These Costly Point of Sale Pitfalls

#1 Buying Before You Try

Before you buy a POS system, make sure that’s easy to use. The only way to do that is to try the software yourself. Here are some things to try before you buy:

A basic cash sale.
Adding inventory.
Attach a customer to a sale.
Look up a customer.
Create a new item.
Do a refund from a receipt.
Create a purchase order.
Get a report of today’s sales.

If these basic operations don’t seem easy it’s probably not the right system. It only gets more complex from here, so make sure the basics are straightforward. You wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive would you? The same applies here.

#2 Ordering Hardware Before Software

Many people make the mistake of bargain hunting for POS hardware components before they choose their software. Not all software and hardware are compatible. Limiting your software choices because of hardware is short sighted. Make sure to choose your software first and then buy the recommended hardware for your system.

#3 Signing Up For Credit Card Processing Before Buying Software

This is the same as buying hardware before software. Not all software and credit card processing services are compatible. Buy your software first and then get a credit card processing service that integrates smoothly.

#4 Picking Your System Based On A Long Feature Checklist

It’s great to know what you want before you start looking. But if you have a list of 100+ specific features you want from your POS system, you are going to end up a with a hopelessly complex and difficult system. Focus on maybe 5 to 10 major functions that your business needs. Then find the easiest to use system that covers your core needs. Remember ease of use is more important than any specific feature. If it is not easy to use, you and your employees aren’t going to use it. And then it’s just a big waste of time and money.

#5 Hiring Someone To Choose For You

This goes along with having a huge list of specific features. A hired consultant will likely focus on every tiny detail of your business. And then find a piece of software that has a feature to cover every one of these minute details. This is the wrong way to choose POS software for most businesses. You need to make sure the software is easy for you. What is easy for a consultant that is familiar with complex software may not be easy for you and your employees. Make sure you try the software before you buy it, especially if someone else picked it out.

#6 Importing The Inventory From Your Old System

If you are buying a new POS system because your old one wasn’t working well you probably want to start fresh. It’s likely that your inventory isn’t accurate and the way your old system organized information was poor. If you import your old inventory records to your new system you’ll be bringing this chaos with you. Do yourself a favor and start with a fresh system. Shut down your business (or work at night) to get your inventory entered properly in your new system.
Recommendation: import your customer list from your old system, but leave the inventory out. You worked hard to collect customer contact info and it is not something you can easily regenerate.

#7 Waiting Until Opening Day

WARNING: Do not wait until opening day to set up your POS system and train your employees! There is nothing worse than making your first customer wait for you to fiddle with your cash register. Do yourself a huge favor and get your system setup and running before you open. Train your employees to make sure they know the basics. It’s a lot harder to do things while a customer is standing there. Avoid the stress and get familiar with your system prior to opening. Do a mock day of sales in your system (repeat for each employee):

Put some money in your cash drawer and do an opening count.
Have your friend/employee pose as a customer and buy some items.
Do a refund or exchange of that sale.
Run a credit card transaction in test mode (if you have the ability).
Create a customer record and attach it to a sale.
If you do layaways, try one. Same for special orders.
Do your closing count and shut down.

Make sure all of your employees can do these basics before you open. While you’re doing the mock day of sales take notes. When done call your software vendor and have them walk you through the areas where you had difficulty. Of course if you picked easy to use software you shouldn’t have trouble!

Retail Mastery System

Justin Laing — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:13:34 +0000

Retail Mastery System (click here to visit) is a training course for small retailers. From what I’ve seen, read, and heard it looks like a valuable tool for those who feel like they need help with their business. It claims to give you actionable advice on how to increase sales by:

Identifying target customers and finding ways to effectively market to them.
Finding and retaining the right employees.
Using merchandise signage to turn browsers into buyers.
Fully utilize your point of sale system.

However it isn’t cheap. The package sells for about $2,497.00. If it really delivers on it’s promises I’d say it’s worth it.

I would suggest you at least check out their website here. Even if your not sold on the system they post some great short videos regularly. You might also take a look at their other site WhizBang Training.

Have any of you tried this training system? Was it worth it?

Business Is Good: MerchantOS Hits 200 Retail Location Goal

Justin Laing — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:36:47 +0000

Thanks to all of you we’ve hit a milestone of 200 retail locations running MerchantOS to manage their point of sale and inventory. Last year at this time we had about 70 locations with us. That’s almost a 3x growth rate for our little company! We’re continuing to work hard improving the system and making sure that you are happy with our service.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!
and
Happy 4th of July