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Amazon & Marketplaces
Data Platform Identifies Counterfeits on Amazon, Other Marketplaces
March 13, 2017 • Kerry Murdock
The dominance of Amazon and its marketplace is clear. What’s not so clear are the counterfeit items that are also sold there. Rob Dunkel is the founder of 3PM Marketplace ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
For Merchants, How to Navigate Amazon’s Marketplace?
January 13, 2017 • Kerry Murdock
The increasing dominance of Amazon has many merchants scratching their heads, wondering how exactly to work with that company, and how that company will impact their own businesses. I recently spoke ...
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Business
U.S. Robotics Founder on Early-day Internet, Entrepreneurship
December 14, 2016 • Kerry Murdock
Without U.S. Robotics, the pioneering modem manufacturer, there arguably would not be a World Wide Web. I recently spoke with the co-founder of U.S. Robotics, Casey Cowell, to discuss that company,
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Business
Former Amazon Exec on Marketplace Selling Strategies
October 30, 2015 • Kerry Murdock
Selling on Amazon’s marketplace can be challenging. There are, to be sure, millions of prospective customers. But there are also many competitors selling there, often at prices that are difficult ...
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Business
Steve Case on SMB Ecommerce; BigCommerce Investment
January 19, 2015 • Kerry Murdock
Steve Case, the co-founder of America Online, is by any measure an Internet visionary. His private equity firm, Revolution, invested, in 2013, $40 million in BigCommerce, a leading platform for ...
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Business
Dr. Ralph Wilson on the Founding of Web Marketing Today
July 18, 2012 • Kerry Murdock
Before Google, Netscape, and Internet Explorer, there was Web Marketing Today. Dr. Ralph F. Wilson founded it back in 1995 as a vehicle to supplement his then-fledgling web development practice.
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SEO
Too Much SEO Can Harm an Ecommerce Business
January 26, 2012 • Kerry Murdock
Balancing SEO with usability was the topic when we recently spoke with Hamlet Batista. He is a pioneering SEO innovator and the founder of Hamlet Batista Group, an SEO consultancy.
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Business
Entrepreneur Describes Selling an Ecommerce Business
October 26, 2011 • Kerry Murdock
Many merchants dream of building a successful ecommerce business and then selling it. Shirley Tan, the founder of AmericanBridal.com, did just that. She launched the business, built annual revenue to $6.5 million, and then sold it. We spoke with her ...
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Business
Cloud Computing Future of Web, Says Shopify Exec
May 5, 2011 • Kerry Murdock
Cloud computing is a term that's frequently discussed, and also frequently misunderstood. Google Docs would be an example of cloud computing, whereas, Microsoft Office, locally installed on a computer, is not. Among the many hosted, cloud platforms on the web, Shopify is an ecommerce le...
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Design & Development
PCI Council General Manager Bob Russo
January 27, 2011 • Kerry Murdock
Most merchants like the idea of the credit card industry policing itself, versus lawmakers getting involved. PCI Security Standards Council is the industry’s attempt to do just that. But how ...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Best Bully Sticks Thrives on Teamwork
September 28, 2010 • Kerry Murdock
“Lessons Learned” is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences. For this installment we visited with Avrum Elmakis, owner and president of Best Bully Sticks,
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Business
Lessons Learned: Dog-Toy Merchant Stresses Branding; Cites Early SEO Miscues
September 14, 2010 • Kerry Murdock
Candy Blakeslee once ordered a toy for her dog. She ordered the toy on eBay because she and her husband, Dean, had sold antiques there and she figured it would be a good place to buy dog toys, too. The year was 2000. "I decided I should buy my dog a toy from eBay." said Blakeslee....
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Business
Live Chat: Magento’s Roy Rubin
August 20, 2010 • Kerry Murdock
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Design & Development
Not PCI Compliant? No Problem
July 14, 2010 • Kerry Murdock
By Practical eCommerce's count, there are nearly 600 English-language shopping carts. These include hosted carts, licensed software carts and open-source carts. There are small ones with just a few clients, and large ones with tens of thousands of clients. But, as of July 14, only 40 o...
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Design & Development
Need a Five-Pound Gummy Bear? Try Vat19.com
April 30, 2010 • Kerry Murdock
An ecommerce merchant in St. Louis launched his business in 2006 after having written the programming code for his own shopping cart. That business, called Vat19, sells offbeat gifts (such ...
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Payments
Visa to Acquire CyberSource, Authorize.Net
April 22, 2010 • Kerry Murdock
The proposed acquisition by Visa of Authorize.Net’s parent company is the latest evolution for the storied payment gateway. Visa announced on April 21 its agreement to purchase CyberSource, Authorize.Net’s parent, for $26 per common share, or roughly $2 billion in cash. The deal is exp...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne on Holiday Sales, Free Shipping
December 21, 2009 • Kerry Murdock
It's not every day that we speak with a Stanford PhD who has funded the construction of schools around the world. That same person started dabbling in ecommerce a decade or so ago and his company is now a publicly traded retailing powerhouse. He is Patrick Byrne, and the company is Ov...
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Design & Development
Miva Merchant Launches In-house Hosted Platform
December 7, 2009 • Kerry Murdock
The evolution of Miva Merchant continues. The shopping cart was first launched in 1995 as "HTML Script." It then renamed itself Miva and quickly gained market share in the late 1990s, largely by selling licensed copies to hosting companies. The company suffered with the first dot-com...
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Business
Newegg.com: Common Stock Filing Reveals Fast Growing, Profitable Firm
October 8, 2009 • Kerry Murdock
Newegg.com, the electronics retailer, intends to raise some $175 million through the initial public sale of its common stock. The company filed registration documents with the U. S.
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Business
Cybersource CEO: “Secular Trends Favor Ecommerce Businesses”
February 26, 2009 • Kerry Murdock
Bill McKiernan founded a credit card payment gateway company back in 1994 when the concept of an online “buy” button was new. Fast-forward to 2009 and his company, Cybersource, is a publicly-traded (NASDAQ: CYBS) credit-card-processing colossus. It acts as the payment gateway for such c...
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Business
Pay-per-click Expert on Advertising in a Recession
December 18, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
News reports indicate that revenue growth for Google and other search engines is slowing. Bids on keywords and keyword phrases, some say, are softening. Could all of this be ...
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Platforms & Apps
NetSuite CEO on the Rise of Hosted Software
December 10, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
Many experts predict that hosted software solutions will continue to grow. Software-as-a-service is another term for these hosted solutions, and examples of larger ones are NetSuite.com, Salesforce.com and Google Apps. NetSuite’s solution includes an ecommerce component, and we’ve rece...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Exec on Outsourcing Fulfillment
November 26, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
Every ecommerce merchant must address, at least in some capacity, the issues of fulfillment. One merchant who does this in a big way is Amazon.com. Amazon now offers its fulfillment and warehousing expertise to any ecommerce merchant via its “Fulfillment by Amazon” service.
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Business
Video for eCommerce: "Increases Conversion, Drives Traffic"
November 21, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
The use of video in ecommerce sites is becoming increasingly popular. Merchants are using video to both increase conversion rates and to drive traffic to their sites. And video is ...
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Business
Christian Science Monitor Editor on Future of News Delivery
November 14, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
The Christian Science Monitor, a 100 year-old Pulitzer-prize-winning newspaper, recently announced plans to drop its daily printed paper in favor of a mainly web-based publishing model. Other newspapers will almost ...
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Code
David Heinemeier Hansson, Ruby on Rails Creator
August 25, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
David Heinemeier Hansson created the Ruby on Rails software framework. He’s also a partner in 37signals, producers of the popular Basecamp suite of online collaboration tools. In this excerpt from a longer audio interview, Heinemeier Hansson discusses the state of ecommerce. PeC: What...
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Business
Practical eCommerce Increases Digital Offerings, Drops Printed Magazine
August 15, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
Practical eCommerce is dropping its printed magazine to focus exclusively on the digital delivery of its editorial content. The company began in July 2005 with a mission to publish easy-to-follow articles and advice that help businesses succeed online. This editorial content was origin...
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Business
Shaun Ryan, CEO Of SLI Systems
July 22, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
SLI Systems CEO Shaun Ryan discusses site search and SLI’s hosted site search solution with Practical eCommerce Publisher Kerry Murdock.
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Business
Welcome to the New Practical eCommerce
January 1, 2007 • Kerry Murdock
Practical eCommerce is changing, growing and improving. <img src="/images/articleimages/1167938482/pecrev.gif" alt="Practical Ecommerce" class="imgLeft" /> Our new website is bigger, more interactive and completely free. This follows from user recom...
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Conversion
Email as a Mini-sale
October 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock
Sales professionals have a notion of “mini-sales.” A mini-sale occurs when a prospect agrees to learn more about you or your product, but has not yet agreed to a purchase. Say, for example, that you sell cleaning supplies to restaurants. You may call a restaurant owner and ask him to p...