Last month we added a some new carts to our review listings that we would like to highlight.

Shoopz is a new free shopping cart solution. Currently in beta this cart offers an easy skinning solution to alter the appearance of the store. Review Shoopz

E-junkie provides you copy-paste buy now buttons and shopping cart to let you sell digital and tangible products. With E-junkie you can centrally manage your products while selling your products on multiple sites (your web site, your blog, MySpace, Craigslist, eBay etc.) at the same time. Review E-junkie

RMScart is an eCommerce Cart solution that integrates with Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS). Review RMScart

Wahmcart (Work At Home Mom Cart) is a hosted solution with a reasonable price tag. WAHMCart gives you the tools to Collect Leads , Develop Prospects, Maintain Strong Customer Relationships, Keep In Touch With and Train Your Affiliates, Track Your Marketing Efforts Run, Newsletters, Offer eCourses, Distribute Digital Products Automatically, and more. Review Wahmcart

These carts were submitted by our users. If you would like to add a new cart for review with us please use our submission form.

Try WAHMCart before the prices go up on August 15, 2008.

Everyone who has an ecommerce website knows the importance of having a reliable shopping cart as part of an automated business. Shopping carts that are easy to navigate and have secure credit card processing will eliminate customer frustration and will build consumer trust in your business.

WAHMCart is a full-feature shopping cart that has become the favorite shopping cart among work at home moms, men and small businesses!

This secure shopping cart includes the following features: unlimited autoresponders, tracking capabilities, recurring billing options, and affiliate software.

Basically, everything you need to build an online ecommerce business is included when you subscribe to WAHMCart’s service.

WAHMCart offers a 14-Day Risk Free Test Drive For Only $1

Today I took a look at a hosted-solution shopping cart geared toward the working mom. Apparently the ease of use, feature rich, cost-effective solution appeals to the work-at-home-mom niche! I’m guessing most of us can appreciate those qualities in a shopping cart.

Wahmcart is a full featured ecommerce solution that allows you to manage your Products, Sales, Prospects, Clients and Affiliates all in one place.

Highlighted features:

• Secure Shopping Cart so your customers can order with complete peace of mind.
• The ability to automate your product management
• Offering multiple payment options to your customers. Wahmcart works with most popular credit card merchant accounts.
• Unlimited autoresponders, newsletters and mailing lists to help you follow up automatically with your customers or prospects.
• Digitial product delivery so you can be free of manually emailing customers ebook orders and customers receive their purchases without waiting.
• Tracking system so you know exactly which promotional efforts are paying off and which are dead in the water, never to be repeated again.
• Affiliate management system so you can have a team of people selling for you even when you aren t working.

Wahmcart is well suited for, Selling Information Products (eBooks, Audio Books, Digital Videos, Special Reports, etc.), Products, Managing a Coaching or Consultants Business, Marketing Multiple Services and Managing a Paid Newsletter or Ezine.

WAHMCart gives you the tools to Collect Leads , Develop Prospects, Maintain Strong Customer Relationships, Keep In Touch With and Train Your Affiliates, Track Your Marketing Efforts Run, Newsletters, Offer eCourses, Distribute Digital Products Automatically, and so much More!

At present you can use this cart for $30 a month. A positive selling point is that there is currently no limit or price increase based on the number of products you sell on your site.

RMScart is an eCommerce Cart solution that completely and seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS).

This Microsoft RMS integrated Shopping Cart solution’s standard features far exceed those of any other Retail Management System - compatible Web Integration and Authoring Application. Inventory synchronization between a physical store and a web store can be immediate or scheduled for a later time. Although, RMS cart is a feature rich application, many features can be further customized to fit specific business needs.

Some of the advantages of this Microsoft RMS integrated eCommerce Cart Solution are:

• Customizable eCommerce Website
• Scheduled Inventory updates between RMS and Online Shopping Store
• Automatically Downloads Orders into RMS
• Show Standard and Matrix items with multiple images
• Accept payments through major payment gateways
• Creates New Customer Records in RMS
• Updates Shipping and Billing Information on each Customer
• Uses the Existing RMS Tax Structure
• Supports RMS Sale Pricing
• Intuitive and effortless navigation
• Powerful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools
• FREE RMS cart setup, FREE training

RMScart gives the ability to quickly create and manage an online store in combination with a brick and mortar retail operation running RMS. For either online businesses opening retail locations or retail stores adding online stores, Microsoft RMS and RMS shopping cart give any retail business a complete solution for maximum revenue in a global market.

RMS cart Solution, also known as Microsoft RMS ecommerce cart, has been developed by LAN Services, LLC to bring together the leaders in Information Technology (IT) and experts in Online Store design, custom application and database programming.

RMS cart’s web interface allows anyone to create a web store in just a few steps. Their team of professionals, at no additional cost, helps in creating a web store, selecting the products one wants to sell online, and launching the web store. The web store is built quickly and becomes an extension of any business, adding convenience and increasing revenue to the bottom line.

Microsoft RMS e-commerce solution, i.e, RMS integrated cart is a powerful eCommerce cart for use with your Retail Management System. A few clicks of the mouse on the Web Integrator interface and RMS cart creates product pages for all of the products in the Retail Management System database. Then, the RMS shopping cart publishes those pages in the web store. From this point forward, the store owner is providing products to customers walking in to his store and online customers who are surfing the Internet anywhere around the globe.

E-commerce transactions are provided using the state-of-the-art in merchant systems from the leaders in the banking industry, at the lowest rates in the industry, and all electronic transactions are supported 24X7 at no additional charge. After the customer makes a purchase, a fully customized rich text email is sent to the customer’s email address confirming the order. This email contains information such as Order Confirmation and hyperlinks that take one’s customer back to the store to get additional information about their order status, order history or complementary and available products in your store.

With RMS integration, you receive unlimited FREE technical support, FREE setup, FREE training, your own domain, secure hosting, Search Engine Optimization, registration with Search Engines, maintenance, email boxes, daily backups, storage, and 99.99% uptime.

The award confirms Sales-n-Stats as completely free from malware and thus being safe to be used without any concerns.

My recent experience with my email being flagged as spam may seem minor or even unrelated to the realm of ecommerce and shopping cart software. However the success of your email delivery can be a significant factor in the reception of your estore… both actual and perceived. Imagine you are following up with a customer, soliciting new customers or providing support via email and your emails never reach their intended recipients. Or they do get them but they are relegated to the user’s spam box or filter. Not exactly the impression you are working so hard to achieve.

Assuming you have not taken any part in bad e-mail practices you would think this would not apply to you, right? Not so. Perhaps they have been flagged as spam by commonly used services like Spamhaus or SORBS.

Let me explain. I recently had an issue where my email was getting flagged as spam and I had no idea how to resolve the issue. Like many web developers I have a web site that is hosted with a web host (HostGator) which offers POP/SMTP email. I then use MS Outlook to access that account in order to send and receive email using my website’s domain. This is common practice and allows you to have an address something like YourName@YourStoreDomain.com instead of YourName2008xyz@yahoo.com. I’ve done this for years with no problems. However, since I have many sites and thus many e-mails which tend to make their way out into the web I also get my fair share of spam. Solution? I activate SpamAssasin via my web host to allow me to flag and filter my emails and reduce my spam.

Things go well for a time with this solution. It’s is now easier to weed out the good from the bad and though the solution is not perfect it seems reasonable. That is until email from my own domain begins to get flagged as spam. At first I assume it is a fluke but then I test it by simply sending an email to myself and there it is again! So I view the details as reported by SpamAssasin.

Content analysis details: (6.4 points, 6.0 required)

pts rule name description
—- ———————- ————————————————–
5.0 RCVD_IN_PBL RBL: Received via a relay in Spamhaus PBL
[69.253.111.111 listed in zen.spamhaus.org]
3.0 RCVD_IN_SORBS_DUL RBL: SORBS: sent directly from dynamic IP address
[69.253.111.111 listed in dnsbl.sorbs.net]
0.7 SPF_SOFTFAIL SPF: sender does not match SPF record (softfail)
0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message
0.1 RDNS_DYNAMIC Delivered to trusted network by host with
dynamic-looking rDNS
0.3 DYN_RDNS_SHORT_HELO_HTML Sent by dynamic rDNS, short HELO, and HTML
-2.6 AWL AWL: From: address is in the auto white-list

If you are like me then this probably seems like mostly gibberish to you. However, I’m a reasonably smart guy. I’ve been using email for years and I haven’t made any changes. However, my email goes through the mail server with my web host so perhaps they have made some changes to the IP that I see listed in that gibberish above. I contact my web host and they are patient with my ignorance on the matter and inform me that the IP in question is my ISP’s which happens to be Comcast.

OK, so I probably should have done a tracert on the IP do see who it actually belonged to before pestering support but too late now. But I’d like to have a bit more info to provide to Comcast support in order to plead my case and get some resolution. I check my IP against SORBS and get the following details.

Dynamic IP Space (LAN, Cable, DSL & Dial Ups)
Netblock: 69.253.0.0/16 (69.253.0.0-69.253.255.255)
Record Created: Mon Apr 7 13:27:21 2008 GMT
Record Updated: Mon Apr 7 13:27:21 2008 GMT
Additional Information: [#193969 Comcast Supplied list - 07/04/08] Dynamic/Generic IP/rDNS address, use your ISPs mail server or get rDNS set to indicate static assignment.
Currently active and flagged to be published in DNS

Now armed with real info I muddle through the support pages of Comcast and quickly realize I’ll have to contact support. After a number of unrelated, automated and useless responses from them on how to configure my Outlook and connect to POP email I decide I’ll spend a little more time investigating in the hopes that I don’t need a real live support person from Comcast to help.

Let’s see what Spamhaus has to say…

Ref: PBL191960

69.253.0.0/16 is listed on the Policy Block List (PBL)

So far this is of no help either so I take a look at their FAQ and there I begin to understand my problem… and solution.

The first thing to know is: THE PBL IS NOT A BLACKLIST. You are not blacklisted for spamming or for anything you have done. The PBL is simply a list of ALL of the world’s dynamic broadband IP space, i.e: IP space normally assigned to broadband/ADSL customers. It is perfectly normal for dynamic IP addresses (DSL, DHCP, cable, dialup) to be listed on the PBL. In fact all dynamic IP addresses in the world should be on the PBL.

The PBL does not prevent you sending email unless your email program is not authenticating properly when it connects to your ISP or company’s mail server. This can happen if you have forgotten to turn on ‘Authentication’ or if you have switched ‘Authentication’ off by mistake.

If you are using a normal email program, such as Outlook, Entourage, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and you are being blocked by a Spamhaus PBL listing when you try to send email, the reason is simply that YOU NEED TO TURN ON ‘SMTP AUTHENTICATION’ in your email program’s account settings.

Great! Now we are getting somewhere. I go to my outlook and setup SMTP authentication and it works. Here are the basics if you have MS Outlook.

Start Outlook 2000 or Outlook Express. From the menu, select Tools, then Accounts. Click once on the appropriate account from the Mail tab. Select Properties. From the account properties dialog box, choose the Servers tab. Put a check in the box for “My server requires authentication”. Click on the “Settings” button. In the ‘Outgoing Mail Server’ dialog box, make sure “Use same settings as my incoming mail server” is selected. Press “OK”. Back at the “Properties”, click “Apply”, then “OK”. Click “OK” to close out of all dialog boxes.

Turns out my listings in Spamhaus and SORBS were normal for my type of ISP connection and the solution was quite simple for me. My e-mails are now finding their way back into inboxes. However, had I not been using SpamAssasin it may have taken me much longer to become aware of the situation.

I hope my small mishap can help others avoid or correct for this issue in their personal or business e-mail. Ecommerce tends to depend upon e-mail communications. Yet it seems that even legitimate e-mail is harder to get past the gatekeepers these days. Be diligent in testing and protecting your email service. Your customers expect this!

Qualiteam Software announces the release of X-Cart 4.1.10.

Qualiteam Software announces the release of Sales-n-Stats v2.1. This version contains a number of significant improvements including simplified web site integration, new skins, Skype support, improved search engines and third-party software integration.

As a successful Comodo SSL partner, Qualiteam Software now introducing HackerProof to broaden their portfolio with conversion building solutions that increase eCommerce sales.

Last week I mentioned some eBay updates that went into effect in January. Some of the updates affect how eBay sellers receive feedback and rewards. I found this brief article from eBay Chatter helpful for some easy tips and experience to improve your feedback ratings.