Beta to awards already?

[Martin]

Sorry to start this forum off with something of a gripe but is this article as wiffy as it sounds?

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/direc ... igCommerce

How does a shopping cart only recently out of beta get voted as easiest to use that quickly? Much vexed = me.

[CharlieFoxtrot]

In this case "award" = "press release". ("We're number one because we said so!")

Edit... also hover your mouse pointer over the "Big Commerce" logo and view the complete URL in your browser's status bar. It appears to be MORE than just an ordinary courtesy link.

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http://www.bigcommerce.com/?utm_source=practicalecommerce&utm_medium=directory&utm_campaign=bigcommerce

What I see is a link that helps Interspire keep track of the hits from this particular campaign... OR... it could be that this site gets an affiliate payout whenever someone signs up after clicking the special link.

Little wonder it receives such high praise. They have a financial MOTIVATION and INCENTIVE to speak so highly, so soon, about Big Commerce!

Smells fishy to me.

[Martin]

In fairness... where's marketing but right at the end of the "lies, damn lies, statistics... " line

For all the faults, it is something I'd recommend if it wasn't for the bugs that are in the tax, variations and protxdirect module.

[CharlieFoxtrot]

As a follow-up... Chris_B contacted me via PM in Interspire's Forum to explain what's going on in the link:

It's purely for tracking - no financial gain. Any link in to BigCommerce, you'll generally see has a similar tracking link. Purely because we need to know where our traffic is coming from, what's generating sales etc.

Generally it's what happens when you have SEO nuts go crazy on your website & do your link building. We're really big on Google Analytics as well.

Once again - no incentive or gain - can assure you of that.

I hope he won't mind my quoting his PM here, as it addresses my initial suspicions about the nature and purpose of the tracking link. The explanation does make sense, and I'll take his word at face value that the original site has no "per-click" financial incentive.

[Martin]

Good to know...

Also worth noting that I was told that the free accounts will stay free... counter to the message I was getting from all those emails...

I really do wish the communication consistency could actually hit the correct note instead of being all over the shop (Oh dear, that wasn't a deliberate pun either! ).