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Clear Block! TracksideSales.com Rides The Mainline
Clear Block is a railroad signal, indicating that the block of track ahead is clear and no train wrecks are in the offing. Joe Derouin, a 48-year-old who loves trains, dreamed of being in the model-railroad business. He got the “clear...
Robust International Market for Stolen Credit-Card Numbers
Think of it as sort-of a smorgasbord. For one dollar, a thief can purchase a stolen credit card number. He could buy it from another thief in one of hundreds of online, international chat-rooms set-up for that purpose. For three dollars,...
SEO Report Card: As-Seen-on-TV-Store-1.com
Even though I’ve received dozens of requests for site gradings, this month I’ve decided to pick a site that didn’t ask for it. Why? Because this month I’m going to air some poor, unsuspecting black-hat SEO’s dirty laundry in...
Consider a Catalog to Enhance Your eCommerce Business
A print catalog and an ecommerce store work extremely well together. The strengths in each channel complement the other’s weaknesses, and consumers frequently browse the catalog first and then go online to purchase the products.
The...
Hosting Companies: Many Options for eCommerce
It may seem like a daunting task to locate the right domain-hosting firm for your business, as there seems to be an endless sea of options. Wading through the many choices in the web hosting market can be frustrating and...
Control Panels Help with Website Management
Long gone are the days a user must contact his Internet service provider or domain hosting company to make changes to an account, add an email address, renew a domain or inquire about bandwidth usage. The advent of the control panel has...
Web Servers: Shared, Dedicated, and Virtual-Dedicated
When selecting a domain host for your business, one of the earliest questions you’ll need to resolve is whether you want a shared, dedicated or virtual-dedicated hosting plan.
The main difference between dedicated and shared hosting...
eCommerce Dictionary: Hosting Terms
Affiliate Program
An affiliate program is any type of revenue sharing program where a webmaster or website receives a portion of income for generating leads, traffic or sales through a graphic or text link to a merchant...
Zoovy CEO David Steel
The song, the one by Leroy VanDyke in 1959, tells about a boy from Arkansas who longs to be an auctioneer. He went off to school and learned how to say things like, “Thirty dollar bid it now,...
Greatlookz.com: Persistence Pays for Zoovy Store Owner
SEO: Optimizing Your Content
This month, I'd like to build on what I've already covered in past issues regarding keyword research (November 2005 issue) and writing for search engines (December 2005 issue) and integrate them together into a plan for optimizing your...
SEO Report Card: Airtroductions.com
This month I decided to evaluate a different sort of ecommerce site – not your standard run-of-the-mill online catalog website. AirTroductions (www.airtroductions.com) is an ecommerce-enabled matchmaking service for road warriors...
RSS Basics
Want more traffic to your ecommerce site? Need an easy way to distribute news and updates? An RSS feed may be your answer.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a format for syndicating website content such as might be found...
Web Analytics: Data Collection Methods
Web analytics software helps ecommerce operators understand what their online visitors are up to. Which search engine did the visitors come from? How long did they remain on the site? Which web pages did they exit the site from? And so...
2nd Tier Search Engines - Are They Worth It?
As far as most advertisers are concerned, there are only two pay-per-click search engines that deserve their attention - Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.
After all, these are the most popular search engines that dominate the...
Web Hosting: Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst
Last month we discussed web development agreements. Next question: Who is going to host your site? My advice is to know whom you are dealing with, and then make sure that if something goes wrong you have an exit strategy. In other words,...
Quick Query: Jeremy Hanks
What's Doba.com?
Doba.com helps simplify product sourcing. That is, we streamline product sourcing for the emerging market of web-based entrepreneurs starting and growing a retail business....
Website Conversion - Revisited
For those of you new to the concept of web conversion, I thought that it might be useful to address some of the key ideas around this strategy.
What is Conversion?
A website is a...
Tech Support: May 2006
What is “keyword density” and how does it affect me?
Keyword density is a phrase that is used to describe how relevant a keyword “topic” is to text on a web page. Keyword density is measured in much the same way that normal...
Giving Them What They Want
Listen to your customers.
Part of my job is to rip online stores apart and present solutions, all focused on existing and potential customers. It still shocks me to see so many online businesses implement bad ideas because the head...
Payment Options and Simple Checkout
A truly successful and customer service friendly ecommerce shop will have an intuitive and welldesigned checkout system. The more difficult it is to purchase something from you, the less likely a customer will try. Here are some tips to...
Credit Card Processing: How It All Works
The credit card processing system is confusing. The players are numerous and the process is complex. To understand how it all works, it helps to grasp the types of companies that are involved, and...
Payment Processing: Choose the System that Fits
One of the most critical decisions business owners have to make is how they are going to process payments from their website. Entrepreneurs frequently find themselves asking if a merchant account is what they need or if they need a private...
eCommerce Fraud: Build a Human Firewall
There is a fellow from Europe named Kevin Mitnick, who can find your Social Security number online in 15 seconds. He was the hacker who was elevated to “computer terrorist” status by the FBI and Interpol. They caught him and put him in...
Web Analytics: Translating the Wall of Data
Assume an ecommerce operator launches a paid-search advertising campaign. That is, assume the operator purchases several keywords on Yahoo! Search, Google, MSN and others, and then assembles text ads on those search engines to attract...
Shopping Carts: Features to Consider
A shopping cart system should be able to accommodate a business’ needs, rather than requiring the business to adjust goals and strategies to match the capabilities of the shopping cart.
We've put together a template of sorts that you...
Accepting ACH Payments and eChecks
A consumer must have a credit card to purchase products from an ecommerce site, right?
Not necessarily. There are payment-processing options that allow ecommerce operators to deduct the purchase price directly from the bank account of a...
Email Marketing: Tips for Success
MAKE THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR LIST YOUR NUMBER ONE GOAL.
"If you are serious about wanting to do email professionally, you need to be diligent in how you sign up contacts, using double...
Winning the Fight Against Click Fraud
If somebody were to tell you that 20% of your advertising budget was being wasted on fraud, would you be worried? If you advertise on pay-per-click search engines, such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), MIVA,...
SEO: Tools for Link Building
In last month's issue, I discussed links and their importance in search engine optimization. Now let's get acquainted with some powerful tools to aide us in our link building efforts. Yahoo! Site Explorer...
SEO Report Card: Golfgods.com
This time around we're going to be taking a slightly different tack, as I was privy to a redesign in-the-making–of golf equipment seller Golfgods.com – with numerous SEO and usability improvements, along with a shift in ecommerce...
Authorize.Net President Roy Banks
The credit card industry has come a long way since 1951, when Diners Club issued a credit card to about 200 members, which they could use at any of 27 restaurants in the New York City area. Then in the 1960s Bank of America began issuing...
TheGroceryGame.com Scores With Coupons
Owner: Teri Gault
URL: TheGroceryGame.com
Established: 1999
Products: Weekly list of grocery coupons; system for saving on groceries.
Shopping Cart: Custom
Payment Gateway: Authorize.Net
Quote:...
Quick Query - Melih Abdulhayoglu
Internet commerce depends on safe and secure transactions. Because of that, we’ve asked a few questions to Melih Abdulhayoglu, an Internet security expert and CEO of Comodo, a leading provider of security software and encryption products...
Effective Landing Pages, Part 2
Last month we introduced the concept of website landing pages, and discussed a few key ideas on how they can be used. This month, we’ll look at some ways to develop effective landing pages.
I mentioned last month that landing pages are...
Is Live Chat Worth It?
It was a phase, until it started costing money and taking time away from already busy schedules. Too many business owners had the wrong expectations, so links to the tool are seen less these days. I’m talking about live chat between...
Tech Support - April 2006
What’s a page rank and how does it work?
PageRank is Google’s system to rank the relative popularity of a website. Developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, the PageRank system uses the Internet’s vast linking...
Web Development Contracts
We get an interesting mix of client inquiries each week. Sometimes we are asked to draft a “simple” or “basic” contract, neither of which really exist in the online world. We don’t even attempt to do that. Or, in the other...
Finding Loyal Customers in Cyberspace
This year, one of the most popular topics at online industry conferences such as eTail and Shop.org’s FirstLook has been the development of customer loyalty in the fickle medium of the world wide web. While returning visitors are the...
Seals Help Boost Customer Confidence
Have you ever been shopping on a website and noticed a seal at the bottom that proudly boasts their security level, or maybe how customer service friendly they are? Did you feel better about buying from that site once you saw that? Perhaps...
Shopping Cart Abandonment
Online shopping cart abandonment is like finding a shopping cart abandoned in your local store: Someone has placed products in their cart and walked away before completing the purchase process. Like your local store, ecommerce operators...
Paid Search Advertising
How big is paid search advertising? For 2005, Google, whose business is based on paid search advertising, reported total sales of $6.1 billion and operating cash flow of $2.624 billion. That’s for a company that didn’t exist ten years...
Analytics Software Improves Paid Search Campaigns
John Marshall wants to know what happens after the click. Marshall is CEO and founder of ClickTracks, a company that provides software to analyze the online behavior of website visitors. “It’s not enough to purchase keywords on a...
Bullish on Blogging
A few years ago the investment firm Merrill Lynch coined the term “We’re Bullish.” It became the company’s corporate mantra of sorts. In stock trade terminology, being bullish represents a rise in value. I’m bullish on blogging,...
MIVA CEO Craig Pisaris-Henderson
The concept is as old as sales itself. Somebody delivers qualified customer leads to you and you pay them for each lead. It is up to you to convert that lead into a sale. It’s not too hard to...
SEO: Weaving a Web of Links
Links are the currency of the web. Not only do their drive traffic in their own right, but they also are essential to high search engine rankings. Without good inbound links to your web site, your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts...
RecoverySuperStore.com Offers a Web of Support
Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. So was Anthony Baggett. Elvis reached the pinnacle of success and then died of drug abuse in 1977. Anthony was a success and an addict, but his story is...
Attracting Local Customers Using Pay-Per-Click
Many business owners have a perception that just because they cater to a local market, they can’t use the power of online advertising to attract new customers. The reality is quite different.
Recent developments in the pay-per-click...
Seek Quality Visitors
I’m no Search Engine Optimization expert. Never have been, and most likely never will be. I’ve found that SEO is such a niche market that anyone offering these services shouldn’t have time to do anything but.
I do, however, work...
Helpful Websites That Sell
It’s easy to publish an inventory of merchandise on a web page, but we’ve discovered a few sites that get a leg up on the competition by adding relevant content to aid in their sales. After all, when you’re operating in a medium...
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