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Code
Web Design Tips: Combining jQuery Effects and Plugins For A Great Marketing Effect
September 8, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The lightweight (small file size) and concise jQuery library makes it relatively easy to add interactive effects and merchandising to just about any ecommerce website. In this edition of “Web Design ...
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Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: PowerReviews
September 3, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The term "Web 2.0" has come to describe web design and architecture that facilitates user interaction. And on ecommerce sites, that interaction often takes the form of customer-generated product or service reviews. PowerReviews and PowerReviews Express offer online retailers—from multi...
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Design & Development
Ecommerce Know-How: Making Use of Use Cases
September 1, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Developing clear and concise use cases when you design or redesign your ecommerce website, can improve user experience and satisfaction, potentially leading to more sales and more profits. Use cases have their beginnings in software engineering, where they were used to visually or text...
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User Experience
The Shopping Experience: Newegg
August 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Newegg, the second largest ecommerce retailer in the U.S., provided a flawless shopping experience that made it easy to understand why the company has become one of the most trusted and respected electronics retailers, bar none. Newegg set an excellent example of how online retailers c...
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Schools & Resources
The PeC Review: “Online Marketing Inside Out” Is a Helpful Book
August 26, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Boiled down to its essence, ecommerce is really about marketing. In the brick-and-mortar world, a small retailer might have a half-dozen competitors citywide, and location, longevity, and luck can be as important as marketing. For example, there is a small, dirty bike shop I know that ...
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Design & Development
Web Design Tips: Three Ecommerce Web Design Trends
August 25, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Like fashion and architecture, web design enjoys an ever changing ebb and flow as trends become popular, become mainstream, and then become passé. To maintain a modern and aesthetically-pleasing look, web designers should examine current trends, estimate their staying power, and impleme...
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Keyword Research
Ecommerce Know-How: Understanding Brand-Influenced Search Queries
August 25, 2009 • Armando Roggio
When shoppers navigate to a search engine and begin their queries, they usually have some idea of what they are looking for. In many cases, that initial idea is the result of brand-influence. In very general terms, search engine queries fall on a specificity scale. On one end of this s...
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Customer Retention
The PeC Review: Runa Converts Reluctant Website Visitors
August 21, 2009 • Armando Roggio
By some estimates, fewer than 20 percent of online retailers have conversion rates above 5 percent. Most Internet merchants experience sales conversions of only 2-to-3 percent. To compensate for such low conversion rates, many companies make significant advertising investments to boost ...
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Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce Know-How: Translate Your Ecommerce Site
August 19, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Language translation is an increasingly important part of ecommerce marketing, as many small- to mid-size businesses seek non-English-speaking customers. But translating a product detail page into Spanish, French, Czech, or Chinese is, frankly, not as simple as hopping over to Google, ...
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Platforms & Apps
Twenty Design Examples of Magento Commerce-based Stores
August 14, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Magento Commerce is perhaps the most popular open-source ecommerce platform available today because of its rich feature set, excellent backend, and extremely flexible theme structure. Magento's theme structure is of particular interest to ecommerce web designers because it allows for a...
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Analytics & Data
PeC Review: Clicky Web Analytics
August 12, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Web analytics newcomer Clicky offers real-time site data, Twitter activity, and custom data tracking for a nominal monthly fee, making it an attractive choice for some ecommerce businesses. Web analytics have become the definitive means of measuring marketing campaigns and search engin...
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Social Media
PeC Traffic Report: Generate Buzz and Traffic With Contest Marketing
August 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Ecommerce marketers can use contests to boost traffic and improve sales. If I guaranteed you an additional $10,000 in annual sales just for reading this article and posting a comment, would you do it? What about if I said you had a 1-in-100 chance of getting an additional $10,000 in a...
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Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Marketing to the Hispanic Community
August 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The Hispanic community is one of the fastest growing online consumer segments in the U.S. It represents some 11 percent of the total U.S. online market and it is, therefore, an important segment for ecommerce marketers to consider. According to comScore, an Internet trend tracking firm...
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Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: Silkfair Is An Easy and Flexible eCommerce Platform
August 5, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The Silkfair marketplace and ecommerce platform gives small ecommerce entrepreneurs an easy to use and flexible solution. It could have some online merchants selling in less than an hour without a single dime in out of pocket costs. Silkfair's market shops, which are somewhat analogo...
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Staffing
Ecommerce Know-how: Selecting a Search Engine Optimizer
August 3, 2009 • Armando Roggio
A steady flow of organic search engine traffic can be the difference between a successful ecommerce business and a failed one. Thus choosing a professional to help optimize your online store is a critical business decision. But how will you decide which SEO professional to hire? But how will you decide wh...
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User Experience
The Shopping Experience: Gap.com
July 31, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The Gap.com provides a positive online shopping experience that emanates professionalism, trustworthiness, and quality. But it is an experience that even small ecommerce businesses can emulate. In 1996, the actress Sharon Stone wore a black Gap turtleneck to Hollywood's grandest gala, ...
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Code
Web Design Tips: jQuery UI Accordion Widget
July 30, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Adding an interactive accordion widget to your ecommerce site can provide a great design feature that conveys professionalism and makes your content more readable. There are plenty of instances in website design when we would like to have a lot of content on a page, but, unless you are...
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Email Marketing
The PeC Review: GetResponse Is A Capable Email Campaign Tool
July 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio
GetResponse 6.0 is an easy-to-use email campaign management tool that makes customizing HTML newsletters and email promotions relatively simple. It will also automatically update a blog or Twitter account with newsletter content. GetResponse has an impressive design and a number of fe...
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Technical SEO
Ecommerce Know-How: Adobe Flash vs. Search Engine Optimization
July 27, 2009 • Armando Roggio
New technology, user demand, and search-engine-optimized design are making it possible for search engines to index, rank and display sites developed completely with the Adobe Flash platform. To be sure, rich Internet applications (RIAs), like those created with Flash and Flex, are a ch...
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Design & Dev Tools
The PeC Review: Use 99 Designs for Crowd-sourced Graphics
July 23, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The appearance of your online store matters. Customers use a store's logo and website design to judge its trustworthiness and professionalism. But ecommerce storeowners and managers are businesspeople, not necessarily graphic or web designers. So their expertise is in merchandising, bu...
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Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Know-How: Should You Host Your Own Website?
July 22, 2009 • Armando Roggio
For some ecommerce businesses, operating an in-house HTTP server and the associated server software can improve website performance, increase data security, and lower overall costs. But hosting your site yourself is not for everyone. Ecommerce businesses rely on the Internet. It is the...
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Technical SEO
PeC Traffic Report: Searches for “Saving” Words Slowing in 2009
July 20, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Google search queries for "saving" words like "coupon" and "discount" were relatively flat in the first half of 2009. This is in spite of a U.S. national unemployment rate that has risen 69.6 percent in a year and the remaining effects of widespread recession. Relative data from Google...
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Google Ads
Survey Results: Online Merchants Likely to Use Bing Pay-per-click Advertising
July 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Two thirds of respondents to a June 2009 Practical eCommerce survey said they were either using or would use Microsoft's Bing search engine for pay-per-click advertising, and an additional 25.3 percent said they would consider Bing. Altogether, some 92 percent of survey respondents sai...
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Schools & Resources
The PeC Review: “The Unofficial Magento User Guide” Helpful for Novices
July 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Magento Commerce, the open source ecommerce platform, has a massive following and an engaged development community. So it is no surprise that one of its devotees has released an unofficial users' guide designed to help do-it-yourselfers implement this powerful platform. James D. Ballo...
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Design & Development
Thirteen Great Flash-based Ecommerce Sites
July 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The Adobe Flash platform is bringing stunning new examples of rich media to ecommerce sites. New site design techniques make Flash, Flex, and ActionScript, all from Adobe, very viable choices for adding video, audio, or just plain aesthetic awesomeness to any website's design. In this ...
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Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Turn Customers Into Members
July 14, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Focusing a portion of marketing efforts on reselling existing customers or acquiring frequent shoppers could help boost sales for many online merchants. Often online retail marketing focuses on increasing site traffic and converting visitors. This strategy is really the heart of sellin...
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Platforms & Apps
Google Operating System May Speed Mobile Ecommerce
July 13, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Google recently announced that it had begun work on a computer operating system that might accelerate interest in the popular mobile Internet device market. Mobile Internet devices (MIDs), which are sometimes called netbooks, are physically small and application-lite laptop computers d...
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Schools & Resources
Ten Inspiring Ecommerce Site Designs
July 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Creating a great (and successful) ecommerce site requires a mix of terrific products, strong marketing, informative content, and strong site aesthetics. In this article, I have located ten ecommerce sites that offer inspiration for the site aesthetics portion of this mixture. Certa...
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Code
Web Design Tips: Mobilizing Your Site Using CSS
July 8, 2009 • Armando Roggio
With a second style sheet and minor changes to a page's HTML, many online stores can offer an excellent mobile shopping experience without creating a second web page or registering a mobile specific domain. Mobile Internet use is on the rise. And online merchants presumably want to pro...
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Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Know-How: Mobile Commerce in Four Steps
July 7, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Internet-enabled mobile handsets, mobile Internet devices, and new wireless broadband standards are all making it easier for consumers to shop online while on the move. So, is your store ready to serve these mobile customers? In the evolution of modern shopping, consumers have very rec...