Business
An ecommerce site is a business. Our Management & Finance category addresses online payments, funding needs, employee issues, merchant profiles, key metrics, multichannel and omnichannel strategies, cross-border analyses, inventory management, accounting topics, sales taxes, and much more.
Amazon & Marketplaces | B2B | Cross-border Selling | Finance | Fraud Prevention | Inventory | Local Business | Payments | Shipping & Fulfillment | Staffing-
Business
How to Respond to a Breach of Customer Data
November 22, 2016 • John Di Giacomo
Data breaches seem to be the norm these days, whether they are at Yahoo, Home Depot, or, more recently, Michigan State University. And ecommerce merchants are not immune. My firm ...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
5 Holiday Shipping Tips for Online Retailers
November 20, 2016 • Armando Roggio
When the holiday season peaks, some small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses often struggle to meet customer demand and customer expectations. While there are many factors that contribute to just how you ...
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Cross-border Selling
China’s 2016 Singles Day Establishes New Sales Record
November 16, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan
Ignoring concerns about their country’s slowing economy, Chinese shoppers spent a record amount of money in the 24-hour period on Nov. 11 known as Singles Day. Written numerically, 11.11 represents “bare ...
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Business
Using ROAS to Measure Advertising Results
November 11, 2016 • Armando Roggio
Monitoring how your advertising campaigns directly impact your company’s profitability or revenue may help you make better marketing decisions, reduce advertising waste, and improve your business. While you could choose one ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Does President Trump affect ecommerce?
November 10, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
November 9 in the U.S. likely felt about the same to many folks there as June 24 did here in the U.K. We had Brexit. The U.S. has Donald Trump.
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Business
Shift in Holiday Shopping Benefits Ecommerce
November 9, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan
Analysts are predicting that 2016 holiday ecommerce shopping will break records as national economic indicators improve and consumer purchasing continues its shift from physical stores to the Internet. Following are ...
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Business
If Your Ecommerce Business Fails, Consider These 4 Things
November 4, 2016 • Armando Roggio
Not every online store is a success. In fact, many experts believe that most ecommerce businesses will fail. But failure is not the end for an entrepreneur. It is, instead,
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B2B
Does B2B Ecommerce Eliminate Sales Teams?
November 3, 2016 • Lori McDonald
The success of many business-to-business companies was built through a strong sales team. This causes B2B owners and managers to often resist ecommerce because they see it as competing with ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
A blueprint for Black Friday planning
November 1, 2016 • Peter Keller
Black Friday is many things. It’s a great day for deals, a garish celebration of consumerism, and a huge opportunity and a huge headache for retailers. It’s been pivotal in ...
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Business
October 2016 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts
November 1, 2016 • PEC Staff
Here are our 10 most popular articles for October 2016, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. 19 Free ...
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Business
For Success in Ecommerce, Answer ‘Why?’
October 31, 2016 • Dale Traxler
Since you are reading this on Practical Ecommerce, you presumably run an ecommerce business or are thinking about it. The purpose of this article is to ask you “Why?” That ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Are Amazon ‘Sponsored Products’ Ads Worth It?
October 27, 2016 • Rob Sieracki
Are you considering advertising on Amazon this holiday season? Curious if Amazon’s “Sponsored Products” campaigns are worth the money? In this article, I’ll offer a high-level analysis to help determine if Sponsored ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Wedding rentals (and order thresholds) boost revenue
October 24, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
When I launched My Wedding Decor in April 2015, the site had just 80 or so products for sale. Three weeks passed and I received my first order, from a Sydney-based ...
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Fraud Prevention
9 Ways to Recover Sales after a DDoS Attack
October 24, 2016 • Pamela Hazelton
If yours was one of the thousands of online stores that suffered from the October 21 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, you likely saw a decline in sales. Hopefully,
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Business
Applying the Scientific Method to Ecommerce Marketing
October 24, 2016 • Armando Roggio
Using a process derived from the scientific method, ecommerce marketers may be able to make their ads and other promotions more effective, increasing return on advertising spend and encouraging growth. The ...
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Business
10 Great Ecommerce Ideas for October 2016
October 21, 2016 • Nic Murdock
Practical Ecommerce periodically asks industry insiders to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce company. Here’s what 10 of them had to say for the October 2016
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Amazon & Marketplaces
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Merchant Voice
Implications of Amazon’s repricing software
October 13, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
In “The end of automated Amazon repricing?,” my post from 2014, I raised the prospect of Amazon creating its own repricing tool. Well, that tool now exists. It’s called “Amazon ...
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B2B
Amazon’s B2B Site Evolving, Growing Rapidly
October 12, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan
When AmazonSupply became Amazon Business in April 2015, much more than a rebranding occurred. With AmazonSupply, the company was the only seller. But Amazon Business copied the very successful marketplace ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Common Mistakes from Amazon Sellers
October 5, 2016 • Rob Sieracki
My agency is often called on to do formal audits of Amazon seller accounts. In the last 12 months, we’ve audited more than a dozen small-to-medium sized accounts, from companies ...
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Business
6 Ways Machine Learning Will Impact Ecommerce
October 3, 2016 • Armando Roggio
Machine learning is a discipline aimed at having computers discover patterns or trends in some set of data without being explicitly programmed to recognize the pattern or trend. A counter example ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Technology stack for FringeSport
October 2, 2016 • Peter Keller
I’ve read columnist Eric Bandholz’s post on the technology stack for his company, Beardbrand. In this article, I’ll address the same for my company, FringeSport. These are the tools that ...
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Payments
Credit Card Processing: Better to Work with Resellers or Processors?
September 29, 2016 • Phil Hinke
My recent series on working with credit card salespeople prompted good feedback and questions from readers. I addressed some of the questions in my August article. For this article, I will ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Developing a new market for our art
September 28, 2016 • David Sasson
At the heart of every ecommerce business is the need to sell goods or services at a profit. In the past year, we at overstockArt have been considering how to grow our ...
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B2B
8 Innovative B2B Ecommerce Sites
September 27, 2016 • Lori McDonald
B2B ecommerce sites are typically more complicated, with more features, than B2C. In this article, I will address eight innovative B2B ecommerce sites. My company has no business relationship with these ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
The Anatomy of an Amazon Legal Dispute
September 21, 2016 • John Di Giacomo
I represent a number of sellers who utilize Amazon’s various services to increase their ecommerce sales. Though I often advise clients against relying on Amazon as their sole source of fulfillment or ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Whom do I work for?
September 20, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
One of the attractions to being an independent online retailer is to be your own boss. You supposedly answer to no one and set your own hours. But the reality ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
How I maximize my holiday promotions
September 15, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
The critical holiday selling season is almost here. Here are five items that I’m focusing on to get the most of my holiday marketing activities. Offer coupons for additional info. Offer ...
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Local Business
3 Phases to Engaging (and Retaining) Local Prospects
September 14, 2016 • Bill Hartzer
You’ve created a website for your business. You’ve set up your social media profiles, and you’ve even set up all your local business listings, such as your Google My Business ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Juggernaut Rolls; Third-party Sellers Benefit
September 13, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan
Amazon’s 2016 second-quarter financial statements for the period ending June 30 showed robust growth, extending its profitability to a fifth straight quarter after years of spotty results. Revenue was $30.4 billion compared ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
A tale of two domain purchases
August 31, 2016 • Peter Keller
We’ve all been there. We have a great idea for a company and we log on to a domain registrar. We type our dream domain name, hit enter, and bam. Someone is sitting ...