http://www.practicalecommerce.com/authors/13/Massimo-Arrigoni/ Massimo Arrigoni is CEO and co-founder of Early Impact, whose flagship shopping cart software, ProductCart, is used by companies worldwide. He can be reached at marrigoni@earlyimpact.com or online at www.Earlyimpact.com. en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Wed, 14 May 2008 17:50:52 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/736/Gift-Certificates-Create-Automatic-New-Customers/ Electronic gift certificates can be a great way to acquire new customers. When an existing customer buys one for a friend, the friend becomes a free and automatic customer acquisition, unless they were already shopping with you. When a new customer buys a gift certificate for a friend, you acquire two customers at once. Given that the customer acquisition cost is zero for the new customer and that there is normally a real cost associated with acquiring a new customer for your business (very roughly, total monthly marketing expenses divided by total new customers per month), you can afford to build incentives into your offering. For example, you could launch this promotion: "If you buy a gift certificate, and it is redeemed by a new customer, we will give you another gift certificate for free." The redemption value for the second gift certificate should be lower than your average customer acquisition cost, so if the customer buys a $50 gift certificate, and the person redeeming the... Wed, 14 May 2008 17:50:52 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/736/Gift-Certificates-Create-Automatic-New-Customers/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/469/Analysis-The-New-PayPal/ To more than 50 million users, PayPal used to signify a peer-to-peer payment exchange that relied largely on email notifications. Not anymore. While PayPal still stands as one of the most recognized brands in the ecommerce world, it’s no longer a single payment system: It's a suite of different payment options that can assist merchants to start accepting payments online or enhance their existing payment functions. What are they? How do they differ from each other? Which ones should you use, if any? Let's take a look. 1. Website Payments Standard uses PayPal’s own website to process payments for you. Customers temporarily leave your store and pay on the PayPal website, with or without a credit card (e.g. they might use their PayPal account, which contains funds deposited from their checking account). Customers are taken back to your website at the end of the transaction. 2. Website Payments Pro combines two payment systems: * Direct Payments, whereby customers pay at... Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:19:03 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/469/Analysis-The-New-PayPal/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/49/Overseas-Customers-Just-Clicks-Away/ Your web store is a few clicks away, regardless of where those clicks geographically occur. Clearly, international sales can help you increase your online sales, and many internet merchants are taking advantage of them. But there are several challenges that are associated with selling products and services to foreign customers over the Internet. An April 2005 survey conducted by Internet Retailer indicated that in the United States 71 percent of ecommerce websites sell outside the country, with 36 percent of them reporting that more than 10 percent of their sales come from abroad. Canada and the UK rank as the top foreign markets for America-based web stores. In the same survey, the stores that do not process international orders pointed to the difficulty and cost of shipping as the main reason for doing so. The second biggest concern was fraud. Let’s look at these and other challenges associated with selling abroad. SHIPPING Assume that you are selling products that... Fri, 01 Jul 2005 12:00:00 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/49/Overseas-Customers-Just-Clicks-Away/