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-
Shipping & Fulfillment
Will Robots Take Over Ecommerce Warehouses?
September 10, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan
Robots have always played a prominent role in movies, television, and children’s toys. They are now navigating a new arena — warehouses — and changing the way businesses handle their ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
8 tips for setting up gift certificates, for ecommerce
September 9, 2015 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
With the festive season fast approaching, setting up a gift certificate option on your website can increase sales. This is something I plan to add on my wedding decor site, like ...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
8 Obstacles to Drone Delivery, for Ecommerce
September 4, 2015 • Gagan Mehra
The military has used drones for years, for a variety of missions. Now ecommerce retailers are evaluating their use. Consumer research firm eDigitalResearch conducted a survey that found that 33 percent ...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
What’s the True Cost of Inventory?
August 31, 2015 • Michael Manzione
Inventory is often the largest asset of ecommerce merchants. Inventory defines merchants’ businesses and their position in the marketplace. It defines customers’ expectations of the business. For most ecommerce merchants, the ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Multichannel selling: How to evaluate solution providers
August 29, 2015 • Richard Stubbings
In “Selling on multiple channels creates headaches,” my previous post, I detailed some of the problems a retailer has when trying to sell on third-party websites. There are companies that provide ...
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Local Business
Local SEO Ranking Factors for Multi-location Businesses
August 27, 2015 • Bill Hartzer
Google has made significant changes in the last few years concerning how it ranks websites for businesses that have multiple locations and now frowns upon many of the optimization techniques that were used in the past.
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Payments
EMV Credit Cards: Beware Misleading Equipment Sales Tactics
August 26, 2015 • Phil Hinke
This article is mainly for brick-and-mortar merchants, regarding the October 1, 2015 fraud-liability rule changes and misleading sales tactics surrounding the changes. The new rules are causing a high percentage of retail merchants ...
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Business
Language Translation for Ecommerce: Good and Bad Examples
August 20, 2015 • Gagan Mehra
This is the fourth installment in a 4-part series on language translation for ecommerce sites, following “Language Translation Tools for Ecommerce Sites,” “5 Keys for Building a Global Ecommerce Site,”
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Fulfillment by Amazon Necessary for Marketplace Sellers?
August 20, 2015 • James Thomson
Amazon launched Fulfillment by Amazon ten years ago as a mechanism to help sellers scale their fulfillment and customer service operations. Yet, the single most important feature had nothing to do with operational effectiveness,
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Life after in-house fulfillment
August 18, 2015 • Kenny Kane
In “My search for a third-party fulfillment company,” I wrote that location, automation, and accommodation were key factors in making my final decision. Once we had penned an agreement that satisfied ...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Drop Shipping: Be Cautious of Automation
August 18, 2015 • Jeremy Hanks
The primary benefit of drop shipping for retailers is the ability to access merchandise without incurring physical inventory carrying costs. It also enables suppliers to open new channels or penetrate existing ...
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Local Business
Google Local Search Updates Could Affect Your Ranking
August 17, 2015 • Paul Chaney
Google just made a series of updates that have bearing on how well local businesses appear in search results. Here's a rundown of the changes and how they could affect your ranking.
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Business
Trademark Infringement from Search Subject of Amazon Lawsuit
August 10, 2015 • Elizabeth Lewis
Several lawsuits have made headlines over the past few years regarding the use of trademarked phrases in search ads against those that sell the ads (see Rosetta Stone Ltd. v.
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Finance
Ecommerce Attracts Investors, Becomes More International
August 6, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan
Ecommerce continues to be a favored investment for venture capitalists — with a strong showing in the second quarter of 2015. While in the past American ecommerce firms were the ...
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Local Business
8 Mobile App-building Platforms for Local Business Use
August 3, 2015 • Paul Chaney
The rapid rise of mobile device use has forced local businesses to rethink their marketing strategy to include mobile-optimized websites, mobile advertising, and mobile-enabled customer loyalty programs.
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Business
A Random (8-year) Walk in Ecommerce
August 3, 2015 • Michael Manzione
For eight years I’ve held executive positions with third-party ecommerce fulfillment companies — functioning as intermediaries between merchants and customers. It’s a unique perspective, as I’m able to see what ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
How I implement new ecommerce ideas
July 31, 2015 • David Sasson
I often take time during the workweek to think about new ideas and to look for new trends that can affect our company — positively or negatively. Sometimes the new ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Selling on multiple channels creates headaches
July 30, 2015 • Richard Stubbings
Many ecommerce retailers are finding it difficult to compete by selling solely on their own sites. Many have started listing their inventory on other sites, such as Amazon and Ebay ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
How 10 Shopify apps have impacted my sales
July 30, 2015 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
I have installed 15 apps from the Shopify store since launching My Wedding Decor in late April. Here I examine the impact of 10 of those apps on my sales. Quantity ...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
My search for a third-party fulfillment company
July 22, 2015 • Kenny Kane
I can’t help but reflect on this time last year as one of my greatest ecommerce successes. The Stupid Cancer store had rounded a corner of success that there was ...
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Business
Shoppers Turn to Small Online Retailers for Unique, Hard-to-find Items
July 22, 2015 • Armando Roggio
When online shoppers cannot find niche products at big box stores or large ecommerce shops, they seek out small Internet retailers. Online stores like Amazon and Walmart carry thousands of products. These and similar massive online retailers
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Amazon & Marketplaces
7 Common Mistakes of New Amazon Sellers
July 21, 2015 • James Thomson
It’s easy for new Amazon sellers to get caught up in the excitement of 240 million shoppers. But, while Amazon recruits more than 100,000 new sellers each year to the ...
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Payments
Credit Card Processing: Detailed Statements Essential for Merchants
July 20, 2015 • Phil Hinke
I presented a Practical Ecommerce webinar last month on lowering merchant processing costs. I’ve received several questions since then regarding my views on processing statements. Therefore, I want to address ...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Drop Shipping: 5 Tactics of Successful Retailers
July 19, 2015 • Jeremy Hanks
In "Drop Shipping for Ecommerce, Part 2: The Basics," I explained that one of the challenges with drop shipping is sellers believe it will be easy to implement. It sort of oversells itself, in fact. Think of the powerful terms that are often used to describe it: “Inventory Free Retail,” “Endless Aisle.”
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Business
Language Translation: Machines vs. Humans
July 15, 2015 • Gagan Mehra
This is my third article in a series on operating an ecommerce business in multiple countries. In “Language Translation Tools for Ecommerce Sites,” I reviewed various translation platforms and services.
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Cross-border Selling
Canada: Opportunity for U.S., U.K. Ecommerce Merchants?
July 9, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan
Canada is the top choice of 84 percent of U.S. merchants who sell cross-border, according to the 2014 Multichannel Merchant Outlook report. Obvious advantages are a common language (most of ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
What drives ecommerce sales?
July 8, 2015 • David Sasson
Presumably all online retailers want to increase sales. I know we do at overstockArt.com. I came to the office on a recent Monday and, as usual, I checked our sales from ...
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Business
Free and Easy Returns Build Customer Loyalty
July 8, 2015 • Armando Roggio
Shoppers have generally come to expect online stores to offer returns, refunds, and exchanges for items that are defective, damaged, or otherwise not as expected. And when retailers don’t have ...
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Business
5 Keys for Building a Global Ecommerce Site
July 7, 2015 • Gagan Mehra
In “Language Translation Tools for Ecommerce Sites,” my post in June, I described translation tools for different types of ecommerce platforms. But building a global site often requires more than ...
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Business
Proposed U.S. Overtime Rules Bad for Small Businesses?
July 7, 2015 • Elizabeth Lewis
There has been much talk recently about the proposed federal rules in the U.S. regarding overtime pay. Many observers are confused about exactly who would be entitled to overtime and ...