Recently I had the opportunity to talk with Rick Wilson, the Executive Vice President of Miva Merchant about important upcoming events in the Miva Merchant community. With the 2008 conference just around the corner, and pending release of Miva 5.5 a few months away, I tried to get some details about what we can expect from Miva Merchant in the future.

MVC: For some people who don’t know, Miva Merchant was recently purchased by the Miva Merchant Management Team from its parent company Miva this last August. Can you explain why this happened, and also what this means for Miva Merchant’s growth in the future?

Rick Wilson: Well the story of how we came to purchase Miva Merchant from MIVA Corporation is very long. The short answer is that as the former VP of Sales and Business Development for Miva, when the company was being shopped around in January of 2007 by MIVA Corporation, they reached out to me to find out if I was interested in buying the company. The rest as they say is history.

As for what it means for Miva Merchant’s growth in the future, it means that we as a company are solely focused on providing the best e-commerce platform available, with the best service and support in the industry. This should be a welcome change from being a subsidiary of MIVA Corp, as we believe Miva Merchant wasn’t getting the focus it deserved.

MVC: Miva Merchant 5.5 is due to be released in March of 2008. What should current Miva 5 owners expect from this release and can you tell us about a few new features.

Rick Wilson: The primary thing current Miva Merchant 5 users should expect is that Miva Merchant 5.5 will not cause them problems when they update. This update is really about completing the feature set that we believe should’ve been present in Miva Merchant 5 all along. We’re not rewriting the API’s or changing the way modules interact with the software. We’re “completing” the software if you will.

We’ll be adding a lot of features to assist web designers in customizing the look and feel of their store (such as enhanced Dreamweaver integration and the ability to export and import your whole look and feel as a “skin”), as well as a focus on SEO and a cleaner more configurable Administration interface. In addition there’s about 30 new features that will either be released with 5.5 or streamed into 5.5 throughout 2008.

MVC: Search Engine Optimization for Miva Merchant has been a hot topic of conversation recently. Is there anything you can tell us in terms of built in SEO features coming in the new Miva 5.5 release?

Rick Wilson: Here’s what we expect to add into Miva Merchant 5.5 to make it more SEO friendly:

Shorter URL’s
Static URL’s
Site Map Creation
Creation of a static SEO friendly front page
Meta tags for product categories
Meta tags for product pages
Eliminate unneeded white space in the code

MVC: The 2008 Miva Merchant Conference is scheduled for the end of February and the beginning of March. What can we expect from the conference, and who should attend?

Rick Wilson: The conference is the single best place to network and meet people who earn their living either using, developing, designing or hosting Miva Merchant. This network is invaluable to someone whose lifeblood relies on Miva Merchant. It’s also the best place to learn about what we’ve got planned for the future of the product and the company and to communicate with us as a company what you’d like to see from us going forward.

The conference has 4 tracks (each track has 4 breakout sessions and the keynote will be divided into 4 segments each covering one track) and I think they go hand in hand with who should attend:

-Store owner track (This track will focus on implementing additional features and services designed to make store management easier, increase traffic conversion and innovative marketing techniques)
-Designer track (The designer track is going to be focused entirely on utilizing the new designer friendly features in Miva Merchant 5.5, specifically how to use the Dreamweaver integration and how to build and customize “skins”)
-Developer track (Developers will have a chance to work with Miva Merchant’s development team on everything from Q&A about how to better implement their current offerings with our software and an in-depth look at the Miva Merchant roadmap)
-Hosting track (Hosting partners will have a chance to learn some of the best practices that make the great Miva Merchant hosts great)

MVC: Recently Miva Merchant has partnered with payQuake to create a new payment processing system for Miva Merchant called Miva Merchant Payment. Can you elaborate on what this offers and the benefits for Miva store owners thinking of switching or signing up?

Rick Wilson: We understand the importance of the payment processing business in an e-commerce merchant’s livelihood. When we teamed up with payQuake we didn’t just want to find a partner, we literally went into business with them, forming a new joint venture that is itself becoming an ISO (which gives us the authority to directly sell Merchant Accounts). The reason we took this step is that it’s the only way we could figure out to truly offer a great fully integrated product and provide the level of customer service that’s our major focus going forward.

For most Merchant’s what they’ll notice about the new product offering is that it’s very competitively priced ($25 a month total for both the Payment Gateway and Merchant Account), the Payment Gateway is now more tightly integrated into Miva Merchant (both 4 and 5) and includes all of the advanced fraud protections free of charge as well as full support for recurring billing.

I would like thank Rick Wilson for taking the time to do this interview with us. His help and support both here and in the Miva Forums have been invaluable.