Design & Development
The nuts and bolts of an ecommerce site are design and development. We address design innovation and trends — including layouts, colors, photography, logos, video, and more. We explain the basics of code — HTML, CSS, JavaScript — as well as platforms, themes, plugins, open source, and related topics.
Code | Design & Dev Tools | Platforms & Apps | Schools & Resources | Typography & Fonts | User Experience-
Design & Development
Ecommerce Sales from Smartphones Slow; 5 Suggestions to Help
May 20, 2011 • Charles Nicholls
It seems as if everyone’s talking about mobile commerce, but not many consumers are actually participating in it. It’s not that there is no mobile commerce happening on mobile-optimized sites; it’s just that it is very small. Two different estimates forecast the value of mobile commerc...
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Schools & Resources
5 Free Business Training Opportunities
May 19, 2011 • Armando Roggio
Ecommerce entrepreneurs are responsible for every area of their business, from accounting to order processing to website maintenance. So it is common for some small business owners to find that they need to learn new skills to either get their business started or help it grow. In this ...
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Platforms & Apps
16 Live Meeting and Webinar Platforms
May 18, 2011 • Sig Ueland
With web conferencing you can reach a broad audience, whether it’s a 25-person live meeting or a 2,500-person webinar. Here is a list of live-conferencing services. Many of these distinguish between smaller meetings and larger webinars, offering services for both categories. While t...
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Design & Development
4 Ways to Make Site-Search Effective
May 18, 2011 • Gagan Mehra
Search is the second-most critical function on an ecommerce site, after the shopping cart checkout. Shoppers use site search even if they are familiar with the navigation of your site. You can relate to this by thinking of all the instances when you have gone to Amazon.com looking for a...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: HiConversion Founder Zee Aganovic
May 17, 2011 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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User Experience
SEO: Is a Mobile Site Necessary to Win Mobile Searchers?
May 16, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown
Today’s superphones finally make mobile search a reality. After all, they sport 1GHz processors, 4 inch screens, 4G data connections and browsers that can execute Flash and JavaScript with relative ...
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Design & Development
10 Geolocation Apps for Business
May 13, 2011 • Sig Ueland
You need to be places. With geolocation mobile apps — which attach real-world locations to mobile phones — you now have the tools manage the location of your business wherever ...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: ZippyCart Co-Founders Nick Grant and Amy Balliett
May 6, 2011 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with Nick Grant and Amy Balliett, co-founders of ZippyCart, an ecommerce solution provider offering shopping cart...
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Platforms & Apps
Ubuntu Linux: A User-Friendly, Desktop Operating System
May 4, 2011 • Armando Roggio
Last week, Canonical — the open-source development firm — released a new version of its Ubuntu Linux operating system, seemingly aimed at offering casual Windows and Mac users a feature-rich alternative. Although it is certainly a bit of hyperbole to say that Ubuntu 11.04 will send Ap...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Optify CEO Brian Goffman
May 3, 2011 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Design & Development
11 Google Business-Class Apps and Services
April 27, 2011 • PEC Staff
Google releases a steady stream of tools and apps for businesses. And although free versions exist, they are limited in their scope and function. Many of those same tools are offered at a business-class level for a price. Here is a list of many of the business-class apps available from...
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Design & Development
Notable Views: Mobify CEO on Mobile Commerce
April 20, 2011 • PEC Staff
Editor's Note: "Notable Views” is a series where we ask leading experts to address critical, ecommerce-related topics. For this installment, we corresponded with Igor Faletski, a mobile-commerce authority and CEO of Mobify, a mobile development firm. "Retailers Retool Sites to Ease Mo...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: SteelHouse CEO Mark Douglas
April 19, 2011 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with Mark ...
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Platforms & Apps
Internet Explorer 10 Is Coming
April 18, 2011 • Armando Roggio
Microsoft released a preview version of its forthcoming Internet Explorer 10 web browser at the MIX11 developer conference in Las Vegas last week. The browser preview provides important insights into what might be a new salvo in the browser wars and could affect how online businesses develop websites and applications.
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: DYMO Endicia Founder Amine Khechfe
April 13, 2011 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Design & Development
Optimizing an Ecommerce Site for Mobile Devices, Part 4: Implementation and Launch
April 11, 2011 • PEC Staff
Editor's Note: In September 2010 we published "Volunteer for a Free Mobile-Optimized Ecommerce Site," soliciting merchants to volunteer for a mobile optimization case study in which we follow the process of creating a mobile site step-by-step. Dozens of merchants submitted their sites, ...
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Design & Development
Denial-of-Service Attack: Steps to Prevent, Defend
April 6, 2011 • Michael Stearns
If you own an ecommerce website, about the last place you want to find yourself is on the receiving end of a distributed denial of service — DDoS — attack. A DDoS attack involves a malicious person(s) flooding a computer network or web server with so much traffic that it no longer func...
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Code
What Makes HTML5 Special?
April 4, 2011 • Armando Roggio
HTML5 promises to make the Internet more functional and interactive. It seeks to transform a World Wide Web of relatively flat, static pages into one filled with web applications —
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Design & Development
Cookies Make Shoppers Feel Welcome
March 28, 2011 • Armando Roggio
In web development, a "cookie" stores basic user information on the user's own computer, potentially improving the browsing experience and even making visitors to an ecommerce site feel more welcome. Cookies are often used to save a visitor's username and password so that the visitor d...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Ji Kim of DiJiPop
March 25, 2011 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. In this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Platforms & Apps
Miva Merchant President on Acquisitions, SaaS Moves
March 22, 2011 • PEC Staff
Miva Merchant launched its shopping cart in the late 1990s and the company's evolution continues. An independent investor group acquired Miva Merchant in 2007, and executives there have since been evolving that product to a hosted platform, enhancing the company's revenue, and generally...
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Schools & Resources
An Introduction to Flash Cookies; How to Manage Them
March 16, 2011 • PEC Staff
The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) proposed "Do Not Track" legislation has generated a lot of interest in how websites track visitor behavior. In this article, I am going to introduce Flash cookies and explain how they may be used to violate consumer's privacy. What Is a Flash Cookie...
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Platforms & Apps
Mobile Devices to Alter Retail Landscape; 3 Predictions
March 16, 2011 • Armando Roggio
Internet-enabled mobile devices are going to have a huge impact on retail sales in just the next few years, especially affecting small ecommerce businesses. Anytime one discusses the future of a particular industry or where a trending technology or behavior may be taking some segment, ...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: 1SaleADay CEO Ben Federman
March 15, 2011 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. In this installment, we corresponded with Ben ...
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Design & Dev Tools
30 Yahoo! and Bing Tools for Ecommerce Businesses
March 15, 2011 • PEC Staff
Google may have the biggest impact on the web overall with tools and products that have become indispensable. But Google’s competitors, Yahoo! and Bing, offer a wide array of free tools that ecommerce merchants often underutilize. Take advantage of all the tools that every major search ...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: iGoDigital President Eric Tobias
March 11, 2011 • PEC Staff
In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
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Code
5 CSS-Generating Tools To Help with Small Code Tasks
March 10, 2011 • PEC Staff
Merchants know that the code and script languages that power ecommerce sites are difficult to learn and are best left to developers. But the do-it-yourself ethos is at the heart of ecommerce. For that occasional small code adjustment — where hiring a developer is too expensive — code-ge...
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Platforms & Apps
Magento Releases Hosted, SaaS Version
March 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio
Magento, the open-source ecommerce platform, officially launched a hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) version. The Magento platform — in my view — is one of the most robust and effective ecommerce solutions available. If, in fact, Magento has any drawbacks or weaknesses, it is that ...
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Design & Development
Google Translate Launches iPhone App; Machine Translations Improve
March 3, 2011 • Jeff Muendel
Google has recently released a Google Translate app for iPhone. The real-time language translation app was previously available as a browser-based app, and as an Android app, but now it is available as a native iPhone app. It is condensed from the full, desktop version of Translate, and...
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Platforms & Apps
New Firefox 4 Mobile Released
February 28, 2011 • Armando Roggio
Last week, Mozilla released a new version of its Firefox 4 Beta for Android and Nokia Maemo-based mobile devices that is reported to be more than twice as fast as the devices' native web browsers. Earlier versions of Firefox for mobile have had some challenges with stability and perfor...