CommerceV3 Announces Move to Cloud for Long-Time Client Steve Weiss Music

Jan. 10, 2012 - PRLog -- (SAVANNAH, GA)  CommerceV3 (CV3) is proud to announce a move to the cloud for long-time client Steve Weiss Music.  Steve Weiss started collecting unique and rare percussion instruments over 45 years ago, which over the decades has evolved into being the leading specialty retailer of percussion instruments, music and supplies.

A CommerceV3 partner since 2006, Steve Weiss Music has developed its shopping cart utilizing many of the tools for which CV3 is known.  Now, the move to the cloud promises an even faster shopping experience for Weiss customers, as well as added security, as the application on the cloud is completely PCI compliant.

“We’re really excited about the cloud,” says Dan Sullivan, general manager of Steve Weiss Music.  “We were the first customers on Commerce V3 to use the cloud for product images, JavaScript and CSS.  We built our own system with input from CV3’s admin staff, so uploaded photographs went to Amazon S3 instead of to our server.  After it worked for us, CV3 started doing it with all of their customers.”

How exactly does the cloud enhance their business?  Sullivan explains that “overall, our customers’ biggest gripe is always downtime, and we feel the move to the cloud resolves that.  We’re also crazy about website speed; we do all kinds of optimization, and if we can shave one fifth of a second off our page-load time, we’ll spend time making that happen.”

Sullivan adds that proximity and bandwidth are what make the cloud so appealing to online retailers, whose customers shop from all over North America.  “It comes down to CDN--content delivery network,” Sullivan says.  “If a customer lives in Oregon and our website is hosted in Savannah or Atlanta, that shopper gets information from Georgia, which can take a second or two.  By contrast, the CDN offers five to six locations all over the U.S., so if the customer is in Oregon, that same photograph will come from a server closer to them.  Instead of taking one second to load, maybe it takes half a second.  When CommerceV3 made the change, it sped up our website a lot, and now all aspects of our website are on the cloud.  Google statistics show that increasing website speed by 1/2 of a second can increase conversion by twenty percent.  That’s crucial for us.

So far the results have been promising. “Visitors are shopping longer, buying more, and new visitors are converting more often.  We’re excited to see where CommerceV3 goes from here.”

Blake Ellis, CommerceV3’s founding partner and chief executive officer, adds, “Hosting options have come a long way in the last ten years, and this move puts us ahead of the curve. We did it to open the door to new possibilities for CV3 and our merchants--things like private clouds, distributed databases and more. We're just getting started. In fact, site speed hasn't even been our focus yet, so hold on to your hats in 2012!”

CommerceV3 has processed over one billion dollars in sales and is one of the few e-commerce platforms that appeals to merchants both large and small.  A hosted e-commerce platform with serious power for serious merchants, CV3 is PCI DSS Level 1 certified, secure, reliable, scalable and customizable.  With no transaction or bandwidth fees and unlimited sku counts, you have the freedom to take your online storefront to new heights.

To sign up for our newsletter and get marketing tips for growing your business online, please click here.  For more information, please contact CommerceV3 and Timberline Interactive PR Liaison Katherine Oxnard Ellis at pr@commercev3.com, 888-544-2211 or visit http://www.commercev3.com/ and http://www.steveweissmusic.com/.

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CommerceV3 is a hosted e-commerce platform with serious power for serious merchants. Secure, reliable, scalable and customizable, with no transaction or bandwidth fees and unlimited sku counts, CV3 takes your online storefront to new heights.