Governance is a key component to ensuring the success of your SharePoint 2010 deployment. Microsoft SP 2010 Team published a great overview of the SharePoint 2010 Governance and Tools http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepoint/archive/2010/10/14/sharepoint-2010-governance.aspx

The average shopping cart abandonment rate among online retailers is 36%. 38% of online users do not buy online because they have to register with a site before purchasing. Online customers return to a site an average of three times before making a purchase. 45% of online shoppers had abandoned carts more than once over a three week period, leaving behind baskets worth an average of $109. 39% of online non-buyers didn't purchase online because they thought "returns would be a hassle." Your next eCommerce platform of choice - Aivea Commerce Server - http://www.aiveacommerceserver.com

Operating System Requirements of SharePoint 2010 -- http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2010/01/22/operating-system-requirements-of-sharepoint-2010.aspx

Product Types allows you to define dynamic metadata for your entities such as Product, you can use these dynamic metadata elements to do guided navigation, product comparison, predictive search etc. Please visit www.aiveacommerceserver.com for more details about Product Types and new ACS release 1.8

An upsell is to get the customer to spend more money - buy a more expensive model of the same type of product, or add features / warranties that relate to the product in question. A cross-sell is to get the customer to spend more money buy adding more products from other categories than the product being viewed or purchased. "You may also like" recommendations “Recommended products” “You may also like” “Customers who bought X also bought” “Customers who viewed X also viewed” “Frequently bought together” “Stuff you need” (Radio Shack, for accessories) “Stuff you may want” (Radio Shack, for items in other categories) “More from this (category, brand, author, artist)” “Looks hot with” “Complete the look”

Marketing Charts posts the top 10 converting ecommerce sites. If you follow the updates, you’ll see usual suspects like Schwans, Proflowers, 1800flowers, Office Depot and QVC popping up month after month. Sure, a lot of these retailers enjoy high conversion rates for no-brainer, repeat purchases but that kind of loyalty is earned — and requires a smooth checkout process to make it happen.

Strong SEO - to capture the long-tail searches of late-stage customers who are ready to buy

Free Shipping

Checkout without registration

Powerful in-site search and navigation - proven to increase conversion rate by ensuring shoppers find what they're looking for

Product reviews and ratings - proven to increase conversion by making shoppers more comfortable with their choices

Gift certificates - easy for shoppers and desired by recipients, gift certificate use has grown steadily for years

Back-orders - enables sales if the product is out of stock

Pre-orders - capture sales of exciting not-yet-available products

Multiple payment options - proven to increase conversion

Flexible promotions - can be time-limited to trigger purchase

Cart & Checkout - designed to combat common causes of cart abandonment

Please checkout www.aiveacommerceserver.com

We have heard several people stating that it's impossible to convert an Hyper-V VHD based image to Virtual PC format, We found a way to do it, basically you need to remove integration services (Hyper-V Guest components) before copy vhd, then replace hal.dll. STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS 1) Before you copy VHD file, REMOVE Hyper-V Integration Services (Hyper-V Guest Components) 2) Stop the Virtual Machine and copy the VHD file (let's call VirtualMachine1.vhd) 3) Start another virtual machine inside Virtual PC with same OS and use as a Secondary Disk the previous copied file (VirtualMachine1.vhd) - You need to mount the drive after the OS is booted up 4) Using Windows Explorer from the previous started virtual machine open the Secondary Disk (let's suppose it's recognized as E:) 5) Replace hal.dll from the secondary disk (E:\WINDOWS\system32\HAL.DLL) using the file present into C: Partition - C:\WINDOWS\system32\HAL.DLL 6) Don't install ACPI drivers More details about HAL.DLL file on: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309283

1. SharePoint Server 2010 will be 64-bit only.
2. SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2.
3. SharePoint Server 2010 will require 64-bit SQL Server 2008 or 64-bit SQL Server 2005.

More information at http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/11/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx

Namaste!

From Soma's Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2009/05/18/visual-studio-2010-and-net-fx-4-beta-1-ships.aspx

SharePoint Server 2010 team has started testing with the Beta 1 bits.

Aivea Commerce Server team will soon start testing our product with .NET 4.0 Beta 1 as well.