J Street Technology is proud to announce our new Certified CartGenie Web Design Partner Program. This program, which we’ve been working on launching for several months now, is designed to create a network of highly-qualified Web designers whom our CartGenie customers can call to make their Web site pop of the computer screen.

You can learn more about our new program here.

If you’re a Web designer and would like to apply to be a part of our program (it’s free!) click here.

Be sure to check out this month’s CartGenie Promotions here.

CartGenie Tip of the Week is a weekly series in which we review ways to use a feature in CartGenie.  Be sure to check back each week and learn something new!

Click here to view all our Tips of the Week.

This week, we’ll take a quick look at setting up the Payment Manager. When you first set up your online store with CartGenie, you have to define which forms of payment you are going to take online. Once you have set this up, from time to time you may need to add or delete a form of payment — say you now have the ability to accept American Express, for example. Both tasks are accomplished easily in the Payment Manager.

From the Commerce Menu, select “Payment Manager.”

In the blank rows, you will want to type in the types of credit cards you accept (e.g. “Visa,” “MasterCard,” etc.). Under “Display” choose “Yes,” assuming you want that credit card to be an option for your customers. Under “Card ID Required,” define whether you need the customer to enter the card’s unique ID number (sometimes referred to as the CVV2). Finally, click “Add/Update” to save changes.

In the bottom half of the Payment Manager, you have additional payment options. For example, if you allow customers to place an order online and then come into a physical store to pick up the order and pay in person, you would want to check the box for “In-Store/Will Call.”

Lastly, the “PayPal Payment Option” is if you are setting up PayPal integration. Learn about setting up CartGenie to work with PayPal from this Knowledge Base article.

Click “Add/Update” to save all changes and you’re done!

One of the questions I get quite a bit when speaking with potential clients goes like this: “And if we need support a year or two down the road or want to add functionality, what assurance do we have that you will be available?”

At first, I didn’t think much of this question until I realized it revealed a larger trend in the Custom Programming industry — namely, a dearth of longevity. I don’t mean to malign any particular development shop, but the reality is that many companies are one or two-person operations who work out of a home office. While many of these companies do excellent work and can provide great value to their clients, it can be inferred from this frequently asked question that they are also more susceptible to changing economic conditions and availability.

Small companies need less work to be profitable, but losing one or two key clients can be devastating and may even be cause for that solo developer to close down their freelance business and go work for a larger company with more job security. And the client who had a project with them a few years ago finds themselves out of luck today when they come back for more help. This client now has to find a new custom programming shop, who must spend some time (which the client pays for) to come up to speed on a system they didn’t build.

J Street isn’t a huge custom development shop. But we do have a team of developers who come in to work on a daily basis at our office. This allows our team to leverage each others’ strengths. Biff might be humming along on a project until he hits a piece of the application that requires a technology he’s not as familiar with. If Biff were a solo operation, his efficiency would plummet while he learns the new technology and comes up to speed on it. At J Street, Biff walks down across the hall and asks Trixie for some help. She helps Biff with that small piece of his project and then goes back to her own. The result is fewer hours of development and a lower overall cost for our customer.

But the bigger benefit to the client is continuity. Here at J Street, we’re pleased to have long-time employees. In an industry where 6-12 month stints are all too common, we have developers who have been here for 4, 5, 7 years — and longer. As a result, when one of our past clients comes calling we (1) are there to answer because we’re still in business and (2) know the system because we built it — often, we can even assign the original Phase 1 developer to Phase 2. Not having to start from scratch and come up to speed saves the customer hundreds — sometimes thousands — of dollars.

The decision for a potential client to choose us is a complex one with a lot of factors. But our hope is that companies consider continuity as one of them.