http://www.practicalecommerce.com Practical eCommerce is the magazine to help grow your own ecommerce business. We provide practical articles, tips, tools, guides and resources, including help with ecommerce software, marketing, conversions, analytics, SEO and more to our subscribers who are growing their online businesses! en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Mon, 12 May 2008 15:44:06 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/734/Lessons-Learned-Scanpancookwarecom-Owner-Allan-Regenbaum/ "Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask seasoned ecommerce professionals about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we've asked Allan Regenbaum, owner of Keylan, Inc., a company that sells cookware, coffee machines and fitness products online. Keylan, Inc. is 12 years old and based in Atlanta. It has two employees, Regenbaum and his wife Robyn, with an annual revenue approaching $1 million. It offers about 200 products. Here we give you Regenbaum's experiences and suggestions. On general advice for ecommerce merchants "People like to speak to other people. Customers yearn to speak to someone with good product knowledge. They are tired of minimum wage, gum-chewing salespeople who have zero product knowledge. Compete in areas where Amazon.com cannot, for example where just being there to explain the product to the client is a unique differentiator. For high-ticket items, I think the web is going to be used more and more to push customers to call... Mon, 12 May 2008 15:44:06 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/734/Lessons-Learned-Scanpancookwarecom-Owner-Allan-Regenbaum/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/733/SEO-Report-Card-Pawleyfarmcom/ This month's report card website is Pawleyfarm.com, a small site that sells personalized country photographs and note cards. The home page says, "Just as a home-cooked meal nourishes body and soul, our custom matted and framed artwork carries along a bit of peace and contentment." The down-home look and feel of the site is pleasant to the eye, but does it do well with the search engines? The site is simple and built on the Yahoo! ecommerce platform (not the best platform ever), but many basic SEO attributes are in place. Let's take a look. Home Page Content The home page has plenty of text, and while there are pleasant graphics, they are secondary to the textual content. While graphics are not necessarily an SEO problem, they need to be balanced with permanent, keyword-rich textual content as represented here. There is a sitemap linked to the home page, and alt tags are properly used. It may not be the slickest home page, but it is quite optimal for search engines. Inbound... Mon, 12 May 2008 15:36:02 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/733/SEO-Report-Card-Pawleyfarmcom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/732/Quick-Keyword-Research-Tools/ At the core of many search engine optimization campaigns is keyword research. In order to target what Internet users are looking for, the choice of words they use to describe those things must be known. By following tendencies in keyword choices, a website can target searches for those terms to capture traffic from search engines, internal searches and even social media entities. There are many keyword research tools of varying size and complexity, but often only a quick and simple reference is needed. When a large number of pages is being optimized (as they often are in ecommerce situations, such as creating or improving product pages) the subject is obvious, time is of the essence, and only a cursory amount of keyword research is needed. An effective and basic tool for this scenario is actually right at your fingertips: Google Suggest. Google Suggest began as a separate interface within the Google itself as an experimental page that would offer a dropdown menu of... Wed, 07 May 2008 17:56:34 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/732/Quick-Keyword-Research-Tools/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/731/Shopping-Search-Engines-Six-To-Consider/ If you consider yourself an online retailer, you most likely are familiar with the major pay-per-click (PPC) search-advertising providers: Google, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN. Advertising on these search engines can bring sales to your site. However, you may be missing out on a lot of sales if you have not considered getting listed in the shopping search engines. Let's take a look at shopping search engines and see what each of them has to offer. NexTag NexTag is a comparison-shopping site. Sellers can "pay-per-performance," meaning that you will pay-per-click depending on how much you bid for each click. Minimum bid prices are already set, and there is a rather large minimum CPC (cost per click) by category chart on the site. The minimum CPCs range anywhere from $.15 per click (books, movies and music) to $1 per click (printer supplies, plasma and LCD TVs). The homes and real estate category is currently set at $.01 per click for a minimum bid. Based on my organic SEO... Wed, 07 May 2008 17:50:59 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/731/Shopping-Search-Engines-Six-To-Consider/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/730/Five-Fast-Steps-to-Improve-Website-Usability/ Problem: Your website doesn't work like it should, and every day you're losing sales because of it. As much as you'd like to take the time to comprehensively study the problem, you've decided you can't afford to wait. In many instances, you should take some time to step back and look at your entire website and how its usability can be improved. However, there are some things you can begin looking at right now. 1. Checkout More sales are lost at checkout than any single spot on a website. Look at your analytics to see if you have an unusually large number of visitors who abandon their shopping cart before completing the sale. This may indicate a technical or design problem. Have someone look at your checkout procedure to see if it performs as it was initially designed. If it's not, you're likely losing sales. Things to consider include ease of use, payment terms, cart accessibility from each page of your site and helpful instructions. Ask friends to recommend sites and checkout... Wed, 07 May 2008 17:24:42 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/730/Five-Fast-Steps-to-Improve-Website-Usability/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/727/Many-Effective-Tools-to-Detect-Stolen-Credit-Cards-Part-3-of-3/ This is the third and final installment in a series outlining and explaining tools to identify and prevent credit card fraud. Previously, we discussed different methods of verification and geographic order tracking. Here are a few more methods you can use to combat fraud. Fraud scoring systems Through custom-built software or made-to-order fraud scoring services, results of the previous tests on good orders are scored and averaged. Every incoming order is then compared against that average, and given a rating of 1 to 100 with 100 being the highest. Points are given for different elements of a transaction, from IP Address, to free e-mail account, to time of day (most cases of fraud occur between midnight and 2 a.m., according to one source), AVS results, amount of sale, type of products ordered, shipment method, different shipping/billing address, certain zip codes, indicative browsing patterns, and so on. Merchants can set their own rules, lowering a score if the country isn't... Mon, 05 May 2008 15:28:41 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/727/Many-Effective-Tools-to-Detect-Stolen-Credit-Cards-Part-3-of-3/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/728/Conversion-Proflowerscom-Ranks-High/ When Nielsen Online releases its list of highest converting ecommerce websites, Proflowers.com is frequently in the top ten. The latest numbers has it at a stunning 15 percent conversion rate. I'm always open to learn from the best, and while I'm not going to do a page-by-page review of Proflowers.com's site, I thought it would be interesting to review some of the overall concepts that I think make it one of the most successful conversion sites on the web. 1. Do one thing, and do it well. Even though you can purchase cookies, chocolate-covered strawberries and other gourmet gifts via the site, Proflowers.com is primarily focused on flowers. Within flowers it has a great selection of products, with many options to satisfy different visitor types. 2. Landing pages are clear, compelling, and attractive. You experience a sense of having landed in the right place when you visit ProFlowers.com. It's just what you'd expect, with a clear visual indication of the nature of the... Mon, 05 May 2008 12:57:58 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/728/Conversion-Proflowerscom-Ranks-High/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/729/Pay-per-click-Advertising-Try-The-Home-Page-For-A-Landing-Page/ Over the last couple years a lot of emphasis has been put on creating the perfect pay-per-click landing page. The overall landing page strategy is to create a clear call to action on the page and to have relevant content relating to the search query and ad text. After you've followed these guidelines and even split-tested different variations, what happens if the keyword still doesn't convert? In my experience, a home page can sometimes be the solution. The value of landing visitors on a home page through paid search should not be overlooked. The main reason is because your home page is a reflection of your business. People always say, "You don't get a second chance at a first impression." While it may be a cliché, the adage is oftentimes true. A well-contrasted, clean-cut home page will give first-time visitors a warm and fuzzy feeling when they find your ecommerce business. Not only will this help conversions, but it could potentially turn those first-time visitors into... Mon, 05 May 2008 11:09:49 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/729/Pay-per-click-Advertising-Try-The-Home-Page-For-A-Landing-Page/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/725/Effective-Tools-to-Detect-Stolen-Credit-Cards-Part-2-Of-3/ Many online merchants are already on board with fraud-detection technology. To fill in the gaps, here is part two of a comprehensive list of fraud detection strategies. Previously we discussed authorization and address and credit card verification. Here are five more ways to catch fraudsters in the act. Telephone verification The telephone number can be used for several fraud checks. First, the area code can be cross-checked against the address, to see if the two match. "I use WhitePages.com's 'Reverse Lookup' tool for that," says Michelle Rahm, owner of the jewelry selling site JewelryImpressions.com. "It's free and easy." Phone numbers also can be used by merchant-initiated services such as VariLogiX, PhoneConfirm, StrikeIron and MaxMind to automatically place a call. The person on the other end of the line is given a 4-digit code and then must enter that code into the order form. The payment process can proceed if the correct code is entered. Fraudsters notified of... Mon, 05 May 2008 10:27:45 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/725/Effective-Tools-to-Detect-Stolen-Credit-Cards-Part-2-Of-3/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/722/Effective-Tools-to-Detect-Stolen-Credit-Cards-Part-1-Of-3/ There are hundreds of branded tools that ecommerce merchants can turn to for help in catching fraudulent credit card orders. Some tools are free, and some come bundled or offered as additional features in payment processing systems like Authorize.net and Google Checkout. Others can be subscribed to, purchased as software or outsourced. As yet there doesn't appear to be any all-in-one solution, although some come close. Many online merchants are already on board with fraud detection technology. The average merchant uses 4.4 fraud detection tools according to the 2008 "Online Fraud Report" from CyberSource, a major electronic payment and risk management solution provider. The trick is to wade through all of the tools to determine which ones are best for your type of sales, your type of data storage and your type of customer. These articles should give you a sense of where to start or what you might be missing. Online merchants are one step ahead of the game if they can catch... Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:05:04 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/722/Effective-Tools-to-Detect-Stolen-Credit-Cards-Part-1-Of-3/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/726/Internet-Security-The-Seatbelt-Is-In-The-Trunk/ Suppose you took delivery on your new car and the salesman told you, as you signed the order, that the seatbelt, antilock brakes, and the airbags were in a box in the trunk and that if you want to be safer you might want to have an expensive expert install them. That would be about the time you scream a long string of epithets we cannot print here and go running from the showroom. So how come we all allow our software to be delivered with all the safety features set to a default that allows the porno peddler in Lithuania to store his entire inventory on your computer, not to mention borrowing the username and password to your bank account? And what can we do about it? Those are the kinds of questions that plague men like Clint Kreitner at the Center for Internet Security (CIS). Kreitner is a Naval Academy grad - went to school with John McCain - who served his country for 13 years and then went into the private sector. He ran some very successful IT companies and a... Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:45:30 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/726/Internet-Security-The-Seatbelt-Is-In-The-Trunk/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/724/A-Social-Media-Symphony/ How often do you find a classical musician who is not only a virtuoso on his or her appointed instrument, but who demonstrates Internet marketing virtuosity as well? Allow me to introduce you to classical pianist Grace Nikae (Gracenikae.com). From looking at her website, it's obvious the piano is not the only keyboard Grace spends time on. Her site is a convergence of standard web content, social media and ecommerce. Blog/email newsletter: a two-part invention I've long been a fan of using a blog in concert (yes, pun intended) with email, a more traditional form of marketing. The combination works as well together as two skilled hands playing two parts on a Bach composition. Grace utilizes this approach on her site. While I've yet to receive a newsletter to determine whether it's simply repurposed blog content (think Feedblitz) or something else altogether, the fact that she offers two forms of media to appeal to different audiences is a communications strategy worth... Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:39:48 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/724/A-Social-Media-Symphony/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/723/PCI-Compliance-Is-Industry-Self-Regulation/ The major credit card companies, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express, have collaborated on minimum payment-processing security requirements. These requirements make up the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Merchants and merchant account providers who work with each of those four credit card companies must follow these standards. In that sense, the PCI standard is not law, but industry self-regulation steps that the credit card companies have adopted. We asked a PCI compliance expert, Sweta Duseja, to explain these standards to us. Duseja is Product Marketing Manager for nCircle, a security risk and compliance management firm. PeC: PCI compliance is not a law, but self-regulation by the credit card industry. Can you explain? DUSEJA: Many different industries have requirements that dictate security and privacy. Some of these are laws and regulations - mandates passed by federal government and by individual state governments - and others are... Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:27:26 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/723/PCI-Compliance-Is-Industry-Self-Regulation/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/721/Interview-AuthorizeNet-President-On-Fraud-Prevention/ Authorize.Net, a CyberSource Solution, is a leading payment gateway company with many years experience in combating credit card fraud. We asked Roy Banks, President of Authorize.Net, about common errors that merchants make with fraud prevention. PeC: What's the biggest fraud-prevention mistake made by ecommerce merchants? BANKS: Failure to use the Address Verification Service. It's a free option from most payment gateway companies and will potentially lower a merchant's processing costs when used. Unfortunately, many merchants don't use it. Another common mistake is merchants don't always require the card verification code from the cardholder at the time of sale. This is also a service that is free from most payment gateway providers. By using both AVS and Card Verification Code, merchants will be able to better detect and prevent thieves who attempt to purchase with a stolen credit card number. PeC: Where can a merchant turn if he's confused or has questions related to... Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:11:16 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/721/Interview-AuthorizeNet-President-On-Fraud-Prevention/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/720/Credit-Card-Fraud-How-Big-Is-The-Problem/ Reports of website data breaches, identity theft and credit card fraud are increasingly in the news. But is the problem as widespread as the coverage suggests? Anyone who collects payments or customer information online runs the risk of being targeted by thieves. However, the likelihood of being hit by a virtual shoplifter is statistically on the decline. Meanwhile, industry watchers say that rather than an influx of database hacking, it's the new breach reporting laws, enacted in many states, which account for the recent surge in reported breach activity. Indeed, merchants who maintain and regularly update their security procedures for credit-card data and processing seem to mitigate their risks. For now, let's tackle this question: What is the scope of credit card-related fraud and the subsequent impact on an e-merchant? In 2000, North American e-merchants lost an average 3.6 percent of their sales to stolen or fraudulent credit cards. In 2007, that figure was down to 1.4... Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:42:20 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/720/Credit-Card-Fraud-How-Big-Is-The-Problem/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/719/Online-Reputation-Management/ Like it or not, people are talking about you online. They're talking about your brand, your products, industry and competition. Do you know what they are saying? If not, why not? Can you afford not to listen? There is a relatively new industry burgeoning on the Internet. It's called Online Reputation Management. This is the practice of monitoring the conversation going on about you or your brand via the various forms of social media, such as blogs, instant messaging, social networks, forums, ranking and review sites, or anywhere people have the opportunity to express their opinion. According to Wikipedia, a complete reputation management strategy involves three components: 1. Maximizing the appearances of positive online references for a person or company. 2. Building an online identity in the event the web presence is minimal or nonexistent. 3. Solving online reputation problems. Monitoring the conversation that's taking place is a fundamental part of this... Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:40:32 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/719/Online-Reputation-Management/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/718/Insuring-Against-Fraud-Data-Breaches/ A few insurance companies provide policies for credit card fraud and data breaches, covering both a merchant's hard cost of fraudulent sales and any liability for data breaches. AIG, the publicly-traded insurance company, was one of the first. AIG has offered Web Merchant Guard since 2001, a policy "designed for merchants that take card-not-present transactions and looking for catastrophic protection from online fraud," says Mark Camillo, AVP for AIG's Identity Theft and Fraud Group. "It's not something that's going to pay for the first dollar of loss, but it will pay for fraud that exceeds your normal level." The annual deductible for Web Merchant Guard is typically around 1 percent of a merchant's total sales, with premiums of several thousand dollars per year. Three to six other insurance companies offer similar coverage. "I don't think small merchants are aware of the repercussions of fraud," says Dan Clements, president of Card Cops, a website that gathers compromised... Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:27:40 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/718/Insuring-Against-Fraud-Data-Breaches/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/717/Merchants-Liable-For-Data-Breaches/ What do online merchants Art.com, Geeks.com and Bananas.com have in common? They're three in a small, but growing, list of ecommerce sites hacked for their customer's credit card data. Not only are there legal ramifications for not protecting customers' private data, but breached companies also stand to lose an average of $128 in business per compromised record. That's according to a 2007 survey of 35 breached merchants by Ponemon Institute, an independent privacy-management-research firm in Michigan. It's the Federal Trade Commission that sets guidelines for e-merchants holding customer data. Merchants must "protect the security, confidentiality, and integrity of personal information collected from or about consumers." Ones that don't take "reasonable steps" to do so, can be required by the FTC to submit to, and pay for, security audits for up to 20 years-even without a security breach. Since 2002, the commission has charged 20 companies for breachable data. The FTC can't... Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:06:14 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/717/Merchants-Liable-For-Data-Breaches/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/716/Analytics-Collect-The-Right-Data/ "If you had just..." often starts a phrase of regret. If you had just left on time. If you had just bought that stock. In web analytics, "If you had just..." nearly always relates to loss of data. Here are two ways that data loss can erode the value of your web analytics implementation, and how to fix them both. Holes in the coverage Unless you are doing log file analysis (which analyzes data that are automatically collected by your web server), your web analytics tool relies on a small code snippet on each page to give a picture of visitor behavior. If that code snippet is missing from some of your pages, you could miss critical information about visitors' behavior on the site. So, the first step of proper implementation is to have your webmaster ensure that your web analytics code snippet is placed on each page on the website. Your webmaster can search the source code of all files on your site to see if any were missed. Once you have the complete picture, it's... Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:10:11 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/716/Analytics-Collect-The-Right-Data/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/715/Legal-Security-Regulation-Is-Coming/ Let's consider the problem first. It wasn't until 1997 that credit cards could be "securely" used online. Obviously the definition of "securely" was rather subjective, but the consuming public was told to trust the new world of ecommerce. Ten years later, data breaches and related identity thefts are exploding in volume. Reported losses of sensitive personal data such as credit card numbers or financial information are up 40 percent, and in 2007 there were reportedly 446 breaches exposing over 128 million records. Since the very infancy of viable online commerce, there has been in the making a recipe for disaster. And that recipe begins with a little bit of self-indulgence, continues with a tad of self-regulation, is spiced up with a spoonful of regulatory intervention, and is consummated with a heaping helping of new laws. And new laws are the ingredients of today, laws that will control the life of data. How important is control of data to the online world? Pretty important.... Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:59:56 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/715/Legal-Security-Regulation-Is-Coming/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/ Back-end store security: It's the most important, yet the oft-overlooked parameter of running an online business. Without securing customer data, you have no claim to running a legitimate business. I often hear excuses of ignorance, which makes me wonder how many online store owners take the time to read the latest ecommerce news and even merchant account information that comes in the mail? But it doesn't matter. You'll learn now, and you'll commit-right now-to taking the steps to make it right. I've my own gripes and rants about the lack of attention to security, and they're vast. So I've picked a few key points and will preface with this fact: Nearly 80 percent of the online stores, upon my first entry, compromise customer information and sensitive sales information. Most heed to the warnings, but I have had to outright refuse to work on stores that ignored recommendations and continued to violate either legal or moral issues when it comes to security. Forget about what a... Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:00:37 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/714/Protect-Customers-Data-Or-Lose-Your-Business/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/713/Email-Marketing-Avoid-This-Deadly-Mistake/ Over the years, I've seen many ecommerce store owners make one simple but deadly mistake when they get started with email marketing: They send emails to old, obsolete email addresses. Does this sound like you? You started your ecommerce store a few years ago. Even back then, you had the foresight to start collecting email addresses because you knew you'd be sending marketing emails someday. Finally, you locate an email service provider (ESP). You spend hours designing and testing your first campaign, and you hit the send button. Then your email service provider shuts down your account because you've been blacklisted by all the major Internet service providers (ISPs). What gives? For one, people change email addresses all the time, such as when they get new jobs or switch ISPs. Or they get inundated with so much spam at one email address that they create a fresh email account, so all those emails you sent to them will bounce. Too many bounces tell the ISPs that your list is... Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:43:31 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/713/Email-Marketing-Avoid-This-Deadly-Mistake/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/712/Lessons-Learned-Wetsuitwearhousecoms-Moleskie/ "Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask seasoned ecommerce professionals about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we've asked Chris Moleskie, owner and president of Wetsuit Wearhouse, Inc., a Hagerstown, Md.-based online retailer of wetsuits and accessories. It was launched in 2003, with Moleskie as its only employee. It now has three employees, but varies seasonally, with annual revenue of over $1 million. It offers over 300 unique products. Here we give you Moleskie's experiences and suggestions. On general advice for ecommerce merchants "It is tough to tell this to new merchants who are very budget conscious, but you get what you pay for. Most of our early mistakes could have been avoided by not going cheap." On shopping cart mistakes "We have always used Miva Merchant. It has been excellent for us, since anything is possible with regards to customization. One mistake was hosting with the cheapest provider who lacked top-notch tech support.... Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:33:32 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/712/Lessons-Learned-Wetsuitwearhousecoms-Moleskie/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/711/Alternative-Pay-per-click-Advertising/ When should you consider advertising your products on sites other than on Google, Yahoo! and MSN? By properly identifying and evaluating various second-tier PPC advertising options, you may uncover a diamond in the rough. Investigating your options is not as hard as you think. Payperclicksearchengines.com has a list of its "Top 10 PPC Search Engines." You could start with that list. However, if you are in a niche market, consider other options as well. Payperclicksearchengines.com also contains a directory, or, alternatively, consider one of the sites listed in other directories such as DMOZ. If I have a niche product to sell, such as tennis balls, I could go further and search Google for the phrase "tennis pay per click." Having done that, I found that Business.com has a tennis category where I can pay for each click. Once you have narrowed down your options, consider developing a short list of potential websites. Contact each of these sites by phone, if possible. Tell the... Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:12:14 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/711/Alternative-Pay-per-click-Advertising/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/710/Conversion-Report-Card-Firststreetonlinecom/ FirstStreet Online is a large, Virginia-based ecommerce company that offers gifts and lifestyle products to "boomers and beyond." The staff of FirstStreet asked Practical eCommerce to grade its site for conversion issues, which we are pleased to do. A site that is easy to find and easy to navigate will convert many visitors into customers. Let's see how First Street Online stacks up. Findability Qualified prospects must first find your website, and once at your site it must be easy for them to locate products they are interested in. We conducted a range of relevant searches in Google. The site ranked well for common phrases. The site did not rank well for long-tail terms such as "gifts for arthritis sufferers," nor for some of FirstStreet's top sellers, such as "Philips HeartStart defibrillator." The on-site search was easy to locate and worked reasonably well. The site search responded effectively to need-based searches but was not tolerant to errors. Searches... Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:39:10 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/710/Conversion-Report-Card-Firststreetonlinecom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/709/Quick-Query-PayPal-Exec-On-Payment-Disputes/ Many ecommerce merchants allow customers to pay for their products using PayPal, the popular payment service that's owned by eBay. But some of these merchants say PayPal unfairly sides with customers if the customers dispute legitimate purchases. We asked Colin Rule, PayPal's Director of Online Dispute Resolution, about this assertion, and how, exactly, PayPal resolves disputes between ecommerce merchants and their customers. PeC: If an ecommerce customer pays for a legitimate product using PayPal and then decides he doesn't like it and complains to PayPal, what will PayPal do? RULE: In cases where the buyer is simply disappointed in the item, we would encourage the buyer to work directly with the seller. PayPal does offer buyer protection, but this protection covers buyers for items that they didn't receive and for items that are significantly not as described. It does not cover cases where the buyer is merely disappointed with the item or where the item did not meet the... Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:04:45 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/709/Quick-Query-PayPal-Exec-On-Payment-Disputes/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/708/SEO-Report-Card-Pinkorpunkcom/ I have to admit that both the design and focus of this month's report card recipient stood out from the many requests I receive. The website is not subtle, and it's probably not even pretty in the classical sense, but it's certainly fun. Pinkorpunk.com sells clothing accessories that have one of two things in common: They are pink or they are punk. Need a white leather piano keyboard belt? Not pink, but very punk, and imagine how cool you'd look at the office with it around your waist! But while the site is visually intriguing, there are improvements that can be made to its search engine optimization. Let's take a look. Homepage Content While visually interesting, Pinkorpunk.com does not feature enough textual content on its homepage. At the top of the page, the line "Welcome to PinkorPunk.com" appears, but that simply isn't enough. Some good keyword research is in order to determine what a potential customer might be searching for. Those identified terms should then be added... Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:45:27 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/708/SEO-Report-Card-Pinkorpunkcom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/707/Bells-And-Whistles-Or-Accessibility-Stop-Signs/ With the advent of high-speed Internet, a treasure trove of possibilities presented themselves to the web developer. Java, embedded video, Flash and other coding options afforded online retailers the opportunity to provide entertainment, in addition to merchandise. Something to keep in mind is that while you might find a catchy tune or nifty Flash animation appealing on your home page, you may be putting up impenetrable barriers to people with disabilities. Let's say you sell music. Having a snippet of a popular song play when a visitor arrives would seem to be a natural sales aid. But do you offer an option to turn the music off? Is there a SKIP INTRO button? Do you allow for a few seconds between the time your page loads and the start of your music or video clip? If not, you should. The visitor using assistive technology may not be able to hear his/her screen reader if there is, simultaneously, music or video content playing. If that user cannot hear the contents of the page... Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:30:06 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/707/Bells-And-Whistles-Or-Accessibility-Stop-Signs/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/706/When-SEO-Isnt-Really-SEO/ A potential client recently asked a good question. She regularly reads various search-engine-optimization websites, and she was confused as to the current meaning of the term "SEO." What, she wondered, was the difference between SEO and online marketing? Search engine optimization, or SEO, is constantly changing. As the major search engines update their algorithms and redefine how their search results will be determined and displayed, the SEO industry must adjust and redefine to follow those trends. But there is a new trend as well: Search optimizers going well beyond search engine results and into other marketing areas but still calling it SEO. It gets a bit confusing. By definition, SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website with the goal of having major search engines (primarily Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live Search) return pages from that website in highly-ranked search engine results. SEO is almost always employed as a form of marketing, but it is a very specific form... Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:22:46 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/706/When-SEO-Isnt-Really-SEO/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/705/Field-Test-Fraud-Prevention-Part-3-of-3/ In Field Test, Practical eCommerce gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is fraud prevention. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Chris Stump, Only Hammocks; Mike Feiman, PoolDawg; Dan Stewart, Xtreme Diesel Performance; Roman Kagan, Appliance Parts Pros; Cindy Barrileaux, Write Your Best; Claudette Cyr, Gear-Source; Mike Butler, Bloom Designs Nursery; Kristen Taylor, Juvie; Jeff Muchnik, RedBox Tools; Kara English, Candles And Such PeC: Has your ecommerce business been the victim of credit card fraud? FIELD TESTER 7: Yes. FIELD TESTER 8: Many people have tried to commit fraud with stolen credit cards, but no customers have been successful. FIELD TESTER 9: No. FIELD TESTER 10: One attempt, but we caught it before the order was processed and before the credit card was charged. PeC: How did the fraud occur? FIELD TESTER 7:... Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:22:15 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/705/Field-Test-Fraud-Prevention-Part-3-of-3/