http://www.practicalecommerce.com/authors/64/Jennifer-D-Meacham/ Jennifer D. Meacham is an entrepreneur, journalist and book author who comes to Practical eCommerce as Money Correspondent for American Public Media-financed Gather.com, Money Matters blogger for RedwoodAge.com and business trends writer for The Oregonian newspaper. She's hails from Revenue, an international business magazine for Internet performance marketers where she served as managing editor, and The Seattle Times, where as staff reporter she covered everything from online ticket sales to business growth trends. en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:53:35 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/766/Shopping-Cart-Functionality-Can-Increase-Sales/ The tenet of customer service in the online shopping process is simple: the more you engage potential customers, and provide links relevant to their needs, the more they’ll buy and the longer they’ll remain a customer. As it turns out, the solution to that challenge may be as simple as using shopping cart functionality to its fullest. Later shopping made easy—User-initiated actions like printing out the items in the cart or emailing a copy of the cart to a friend should be as simple as one click. Some carts offer “Save for Later” functionality, as well. “Giving them [these options] creates a bond between your customer and your site,” says MarketLive’s “The Perfect Shopping Cart” report. “They’ve left something behind, something they put time into, and they can return whenever they like.” Merchants in The E-Tailing Group’s 7th Annual Merchant Survey Report reported cart-integrated “email a friend” tools are in the top-half of their cart add-ons with... Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:53:35 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/766/Shopping-Cart-Functionality-Can-Increase-Sales/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/763/Third-Party-Integrations-Make-Shopping-Carts-Easier-To-Use/ By day Sean Dupuis is a courier for FedEx. By night, he sends out packages of his own: boxes of boots and moccasins and sheepskin bags for his bustling website business called Sheepskin and Things. Stretched thin, he’s able to get it all done because his shopping cart and its third-party integrations do much of the work for him. “You get home, you check your email, it tells you if there’s a new order, you log into your control panel, you print out the completed invoice and completed airway bill for UPS, you pull the inventory and apply the invoice and airway bill to the package, and out the door it goes,” says Dupuis, age 36. In the process he’s using seamless 256-bit encryption from Starfield Technologies and shipping from UPS. He’s using payment transfers from PayPal and credit card processing through an international gateway. He’s using sales leads from Google Product Search and web analytics from Traffic Facts. And he’s doing his search-engine submissions... Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:47:40 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/763/Third-Party-Integrations-Make-Shopping-Carts-Easier-To-Use/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/761/Shopping-Carts-And-Search-Engines/ When searching for “educational toys” on Google, at No. 5 on the list you’ll find BrainwavesToys.com—up from No. 78 a year ago. Michael Stebbins, co-founder of the business, employed a series of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies within his cart to achieve this result. “A lot of people have these ideas that they’re optimizing for an entire site, and oftentimes it’s not about that,” says Stebbins. “It’s really about the fact that any page that you want the search engines to list, including cart pages, must expose the relevant content in a way that the search engines will understand.” Brainwaves Educational Toys was conceived as a case study for Market Motive, where Stebbins is also CEO. Market Motive is an online subscription service providing search engine SEO and web analytics consulting. The reasons for services like his are simple. Search engines are the “most valued source of information” for shopping research, according to a survey... Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:42:47 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/761/Shopping-Carts-And-Search-Engines/ 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/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/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/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/677/Email-Blacklists-Kind-Of-A-Crazy-Thing/ What is an email blacklist? Email blacklists are compiled by industry watchers who track down the originating servers for emails that have the earmarks of spam. The resulting lists of web hosts, domains or IP addresses are used by anti-spam software companies, Internet service providers and corporate IT departments to determine what emails get through. - Jennifer D. Meacham Bob Frady is making his mark as vice president of direct marketing for LiveNation.com, a concert ticket mega-site based in Beverly Hills, Calif. With 26 million members, LiveNation’s emailed notices and newsletters bring in millions in ticket, CD and T-shirt sales. It’s Frady’s job to ensure those emails get through. “Sometimes I feel like the Internet service providers are playing a game of ‘What am I thinking?’ and responding with ‘You should know,’” Frady said. “Whatever the rules are, we’ll follow them. We just want to know what the rules are.” Frady already follows... Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:21:16 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/677/Email-Blacklists-Kind-Of-A-Crazy-Thing/