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
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Merchant Voice
Will Brexit affect my U.K.-based ecommerce business?
June 28, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
To read the newspapers and listen to the television commentators, some would think that the surprise vote in the U.K. to leave the E.U. is a disaster, to change everything.
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Amazon & Marketplaces
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Merchant Voice
Ecommerce brands vs. Amazon sellers
June 27, 2016 • Peter Keller
I’ve worked in ecommerce for 15 years. When I started, those of us in the industry made the rules as we went along. No one knew for sure what would ...
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Payments
Partnering with Credit-card-processing Salespeople, Part 2: Setting Expectations
June 24, 2016 • Phil Hinke
Before you signed your current credit card processing agreement, did you tell the salesperson what you expected from him and the provider? Did you ask him what he expected from ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
5 ways to alienate your customers
June 22, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
In a single month, I’ve encountered the following five instances of poor customer service from online companies. All could have been easily avoided. Silence after a payment. If you don’t contact ...
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Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce in India: Marketplaces, Cash on Delivery Dominate
June 21, 2016 • Gagan Mehra
India is the second most populated country in the world with a large, educated workforce. It is a robust market for selling online. Ecommerce started in India in the late ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
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Merchant Voice
For marketplace selling, know written and unwritten rules
June 18, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
If you are selling on a third-party site like Amazon or Ebay, it is important to understand the rules — the written rules and the unwritten ones. The unwritten rules ...
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Business
Legal: How to Sell (or Buy) an Ecommerce Business
June 17, 2016 • John Di Giacomo
For many ecommerce storeowners, the purpose of building their business is to eventually sell it. Other times, after creating a successful ecommerce venture, an entrepreneur may decide to move on to ...
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Finance
Will LinkedIn Change after Microsoft Purchase?
June 15, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan
On Monday Microsoft announced that it is acquiring LinkedIn — the social media site for business professionals — for $26.2 billion in a cash deal, its biggest acquisition ever. The ...
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B2B
Using Site Search to Grow B2B Revenue
June 15, 2016 • Lori McDonald
If you help ecommerce shoppers quickly find what they are looking for, you will likely sell more. To accomplish this, look at your site’s navigation as well as its search ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Developing custom, manufactured products
June 10, 2016 • Eric Bandholz
Building a business requires a lot of moving parts. From cultivating relationships with peers and customers to branding and marketing, there are many factors that go into being successful. But ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Payments: Pros, Cons for Ecommerce Merchants
June 9, 2016 • Bruce Harpham
Fewer than 10 percent of Amazon’s 304 million customers reportedly used Amazon Payments on third-party sites in 2014 and 2015. This, potentially, could be an opportunity for ecommerce merchants that ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
A tale of overzealous security
June 5, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
I will be publishing my normal monthly post in a week or so. Until then, I wanted to share some stupidity with you, following from “Hacked off” and “Are your ...
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Business
May 2016 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts
June 1, 2016 • PEC Staff
Here are our 10 most popular articles for May 2016, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. 25 Free Web Design ...
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Payments
Partnering with Credit-card-processing Salespeople, Part 1: Detailed Statements Key
May 25, 2016 • Phil Hinke
The pay of most salespeople in the credit-card-processing industry is 100-percent commission. Salespeople therefore presumably do not want to lose an account from an ecommerce or any other business. Unfortunately, many ...
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Business
Avoiding Copyright Infringement in Product Photos
May 17, 2016 • John Di Giacomo
In the last few years, my law firm has handled a growing number of copyright infringement matters, including litigation, involving product photography. With increasing numbers of SKUs in ecommerce stores, the ...
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Business
4 Ways to Increase Multi-unit Sales
May 16, 2016 • Stephen Bulger
For many ecommerce retailers, generating sales is often a race to the bottom to offer prices lower than their competitors. While this can be good for consumers, it’s usually bad ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Hacked off
May 15, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
All ecommerce sites are vulnerable to being hacked. No matter how large you are, no matter how much you invest in security and infrastructure, you remain vulnerable. If hackers can penetrate ...
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Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce in Taiwan: Thriving Market, Huge Mobile
May 12, 2016 • Gagan Mehra
Taiwan might be a small island but it is big on ecommerce. Taiwan is among the world leaders in terms of ecommerce penetration — the percentage of residents that have ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
To grow an ecommerce business, step away
May 11, 2016 • Eric Bandholz
I recently returned from a trip to Amsterdam. It wasn’t a holiday, but a strategy meeting. The three owners of Beardbrand spent a week in the city to focus on ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Dollars per visitor more important than conversion rate
May 10, 2016 • David Sasson
Conversion optimization has been discussed in ecommerce circles since, well, the dawn of ecommerce. Improving conversions can have a major impact on revenue. Making small tweaks to your website — such ...
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Local Business
Should Ecommerce Merchants Claim Local Business Listings?
May 9, 2016 • Bill Hartzer
If you are an ecommerce retailer or a servicer provider with nationwide clients, you may not want to claim your online local business listings. In fact, there are situations where ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
How I measure ecommerce success
May 5, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
Most merchants measure ecommerce success by revenue. Shopify’s dashboard notes tell me my website is in the top five percent of those launched in the last 12 months. But I don’t ...
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B2B
11 Critical Features for B2B Ecommerce Sites
May 4, 2016 • Lori McDonald
An important part of redesigning or launching a business-to-business ecommerce site is to identify the required features. They can be available out of the box in your ecommerce platform, or ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Why FringeSport uses Shopify
May 3, 2016 • Peter Keller
FringeSport has used Shopify for six years. I started on the platform after reading an early Tim Ferriss blog post, where he pimped the brand. We’ve never looked back. I get ...
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Business
April 2016 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts
April 28, 2016 • PEC Staff
Here are our 10 most popular articles for April 2016, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. 19 Free Website ...
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Business
Electronically-signed Contracts Enforceable?
April 15, 2016 • John Di Giacomo
When Shakespeare wrote “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” he was not writing about electronic signatures. But, thankfully, the law has mostly evolved to no longer ...
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Business
6 Principles for Small Business Automation
April 14, 2016 • Armando Roggio
Entrepreneurs and small business managers are hands-on folks. They are often involved in nearly every aspect of the business — from marketing to fulfillment to accounting to website design. At ...
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Finance
6 Alternative Funding Resources for Ecommerce Businesses
April 13, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan
Small businesses often struggle to find affordable funds to keep their businesses running. Online lending solutions offer an alternative to conventional bank loans with the advantages of a much shorter ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Are your passwords secure?
April 12, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
As an online merchant, I have to review my company’s security procedures to retain PCI compliance. Whilst I am not sure of the merits of PCI compliance — I cynically ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Does your company have a soul?
April 9, 2016 • Eric Bandholz
When they hit a plateau on the growth of their business, entrepreneurs often look at ways to initiate a spark. One of the biggest things that companies overlook is the ...