Here we are, in the end of 2009, patiently waiting for the New Year party and thinking about 2009, about the good and the bad and the next year :). We are all proud to have been able to enrich our software selling platforms with plenty of features, basically meant to help more vendors reach more clients.

And we were very happy to be rated as top eCommerce provider by our clients, in the survey made by Andy Brice.

We are particularly happy with the progress made with the Avangate shopping cart’s conversion rates. Using advanced analytics applications such as Omniture and extensive A/B testing, we obtained control over every tiny detail of the shopping cart – and this flexibility translated into higher conversion rates.

I’m really excited to bring to your attention the brand new book written by our friend and collaborator, Bob Walsh.  It’s called “The Web Startup Success Guide” and its official launch date is next week, on the 22nd of July, 2009 (you can find it on Amazon). The book promises to be a great resource for startups, the must-read type and I can’t wait to get a copy:). I promise a larger review after I read the whole book, until then, just wanted to share with you a short excerpt about Avangate.

Of course, other eCommerce providers are shortly reviewed in Bob’s book, but Avangate is his “no 1″:D. So here’s the whole description of Avangate in “The Web Startup Success Guide”:

"The Web Startup Success Guide", by Bob Walsh

The first alternative to PayPal I recommend is Avangate (http://www.avangate.com), for two reasons. First, over the years I’ve met and talked with a lot of Avangate’s management and staff at all sorts of startup/microISV conferences and events they sponsor or at which they speak or participate. This is a company that well and truly likes and supports startups.

Second, and more tellingly, when people running startups and microISVs swap recommendations as to who to use for e-commerce at those various conferences or at huge public forums such as Joel on Software Business of Software (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz) or private boards such as that run by the Association of Shareware Professionals (http://www.asp-shareware.org), you find nothing but positive recommendations when it comes to Avangate.

Avangate does more than process payments. From fielding a solid affiliate program to robust sales and lead analytics, software download, and physical fulfillment and registration key delivery, this company can make a lot of your startup’s headaches go away. Of course, more service means you pay for more than bare-bones credit card processing – depending on which services you want, you’ll pay somewhere between 4.9% and 8% per sale.

I bet that if you are reading the Avangate blog, you would love to hear how things are going around here. As head of the Avangate Marketing Department, I’m in the position to know a little bit about everything, which probably makes me the right person to talk about it.

Not sure if you know, but before starting Avangate, we were in the security business, with the RAV antivirus that we sold to Microsoft in 2003. And that included a lot of selling and marketing expertise we gathered during RAV’s 9 years. I know you might not perceive an eCommerce provider this way, but we are still in the business of selling software, just like you. In a way, everything that we’ve learned about selling software before applies here on a greater scale.

So, how does it feel to work for an eCommerce provider?