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Conversion
Quantifying Conversion Funnel Opportunities
September 12, 2007 • PEC Staff
In my last article, I discussed the practice of breaking the ecommerce conversion funnel down into four distinct transition points to help establish benchmarks and to locate and isolate the greatest opportunities for profitable improvement. Measuring these transition points is a valuabl...
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Business
Quick Query: Avalara Founder Rory Rawlings
September 10, 2007 • PEC Staff
Rory Rawlings is the founder and chief tax automation officer of Avalara, Inc., a Washington-based firm that provides sales-tax-compliance applications for ecommerce merchants. PeC: Avalara helps ecommerce firms manage sales tax compliance. Could you explain? Rawlings: There are ove...
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Business
Betterphoto.com’s Jim Miotke
September 7, 2007 • PEC Staff
Callahan is joined by Betterphoto.com’s President and Founder Jim Miotke. The two discuss the latest in photography, including tips and tricks for product photography.
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Business
Sunfitters.com's Bill Mirabito
September 4, 2007 • PEC Staff
Launching a business takes a tremendous amount of planning and research, but launching a multichannel endeavor within a 12-month period can provide a unique set of challenges. Bill Mirabito, founder and president of Sunfitters, has done just that. In November 2006, the company launched...
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Conversion
Product Spotlight: Photo Editing, AudioFlash And More
August 28, 2007 • PEC Staff
Web-based Photo Editing Picnik is a web-based photo editing service that is accessed through your computer's browser. Users can quickly fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye or apply effects to photos. Minimum hardware requirements are Microsoft Windows XP or Mac OS X, with a 1GHz pr...
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Platforms & Apps
Debate: Hosted Shopping Carts ‘Perfect For Most Entrepreneurs’
August 27, 2007 • PEC Staff
1ShoppingCart is a hosted shopping cart with thousands of small business customers. Michael Valiant, 1ShoppingCart's product management and marketing specialist, offers his views on hosted cart solutions. PeC: Why should an ecommerce business consider a hosted shopping cart, versus pu...
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Platforms & Apps
Debate: Licensed Carts Offer Flexibility and Portability
August 27, 2007 • PEC Staff
ProductCart is a licensed shopping cart used by thousands of ecommerce merchants. We asked its CEO, Massimo Arrigoni, whether licensed shopping-cart software is better for smaller businesses than hosted cart solutions. PeC: Why should an ecommerce business consider a licensed shopping...
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Business
Insider Hosting’s CEO Steve Mizrahie
August 22, 2007 • PEC Staff
Callahan is joined by Insider Hosting’s CEO, Steve Mizrahie.
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Business
GuardedID’s George Waller
August 22, 2007 • PEC Staff
There are so many ways for thieves to steal identities that it's hard to keep up with it all. Take, for example, keylogging. This occurs when thieves track the keystrokes of unsuspecting Internet users via surveillance software, called a keylogger recorder. If a thief can successfully i...
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Conversion
Five Ways To Prepare Your Website For Universal Search
August 20, 2007 • PEC Staff
The way Google handles search is changing. You may not have heard of universal search yet, but it is going to affect the way your website and your company show up in search engine results, at least for Google. You may have noticed that pictures, videos and even press releases are showin...
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Conversion
Consumers Want Merchandise Their Way
August 13, 2007 • PEC Staff
At the e-tailing group, we continue to believe a two-faceted convenience will drive new prospects to test the online shopping waters, which generally results in the web receiving a greater share of this customer’s wallet. Consequently, what follows are some of the highlights from the e-...
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Business
Convention(al) Wisdom: The Best Pay-Per-Click Seminars
August 8, 2007 • PEC Staff
One fortunate thing about being in the pay-per-click industry today is that there is easy access to a lot of useful and high-quality information. Whether it is magazines (such as this one), blogs, websites, and conferences and tradeshows — all are meant to help you grow your business th...
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Conversion
Maintaining Sanity Amid Multiple PPC Campaigns
August 1, 2007 • PEC Staff
Pay-per-click search engine campaigns are becoming sophisticated to the point that they frequently require a full-time resource to manage them. In the small-business world, that’s a problem considering most small businesses don't have the funds to hire somebody full time to do that work...
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Business
Matthew MacDonald, Author Of Creating Websites Part Two
August 1, 2007 • PEC Staff
Listen in as Practical eCommerce Contributing Editor Pat Callahan is joined by Matthew MacDonald, author of Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual for the second part of this interview. The ...
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Business
Netshops.com Finds Its Niche
July 29, 2007 • PEC Staff
Company Name: NetShops Established: 1999 Revenue: About $62 million Products: Niche specialty stores Shopping Cart: Custom Quote: "We saw the opportunity to acquire and build sites...around a specific need." NetShops launched its first site in 2001 and in the past six years has amass...
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Business
Matthew MacDonald, Author Of Creating Websites
July 26, 2007 • PEC Staff
Listen in as Practical eCommerce Contributing Editor Pat Callahan is joined by Matthew MacDonald, author of Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual. The conversation includes a topical discussion about the ...
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Business
Bloglist: Marshall Sponder
July 22, 2007 • PEC Staff
In Bloglist, we ask ecommerce professionals to identify their favorite blogs. For this installment, we asked Marshall Sponder with Now.SEO. Name: Marshall Sponder Company: Now.Seo and IBM.com Blogs: Webmetricsguru.com, Artnewyorkcity.com Contributor to: Smartmobs.com, Biggreenblog.com ...
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Business
Earn An Ecommerce Degree
July 22, 2007 • PEC Staff
Many online entrepreneurs may feel like they have earned an ecommerce degree from the school of hard knocks. However, for those interested in a more traditional education experience, there are degree programs specializing in ebusiness. Bachelor and master's degrees in ecommerce are ava...
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Business
The Ins And Outs Of Importing
July 22, 2007 • PEC Staff
Importing can provide your ebusiness with cutting-edge products at rock-bottom prices. But it's a complicated process, and not one you want to go through alone. "Customs brokers and freight forwarders are your gateway into the world of international trade," explained Customhouse Broker...
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Business
Learning Bookkeeping Basics
July 12, 2007 • PEC Staff
Poor financial management is one key contributor to why more than 50 percent of small businesses fail in the first five years of existence, according to the Small Business Administration. Because ecommerce has such low barriers to entry — a few bucks for a hosted shopping cart and a fe...
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Business
Boosting Your Programming Skills
July 4, 2007 • PEC Staff
If you're tired of calling your web design firm every time you want to make a minor tweak to your site, there are online courses you can take to boost your knowledge in HTML, JavaScript, cascading style sheets and more. In fact, there are so many online options to improve programming s...
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Conversion
Six Surefire Ways To Boost Sales
July 2, 2007 • PEC Staff
I would venture to say that not a single website in the world has reached its peak of effectiveness or earnings potential. No matter the circumstances, every site can "better its best." If a "magic" formula for website success existed, you'd see the big boys like Google and Yahoo using ...
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Conversion
Google AdWords: It Just Keeps Getting Better
July 1, 2007 • PEC Staff
Over the past few months, Google has announced a number of new features in the AdWords interface. Some are relatively minor and simply affect the interface; some offer new functionality and a lot of value to the advertiser. Either way, they can help you run your AdWords campaigns more ...
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Design & Development
Quick Query: Alternative Payment Option eBillme
June 27, 2007 • PEC Staff
Marwan Forzley is president and CEO of online payment alternative eBillme (Modasolutions.com), formerly known as SECURE-eBill. How does a consumer use eBillme? Forzley: When you are at the checkout, there are all kinds of payment options. You've got Visa, MasterCard and American Exp...
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Fraud Prevention
Click Fraud Not Top PPC Concern
June 27, 2007 • PEC Staff
Click fraud has been a popular topic of discussion for a number of years, and it doesn’t appear the issue will fade away anytime soon. The industry is full of various numbers thrown around putting the click fraud rate anywhere from .02 percent (claimed by Google) to 30 percent or more. ...
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Conversion
Merchants Should Be Preparing For The Holidays Now
June 20, 2007 • PEC Staff
Just as most consumers begin to enjoy summer, it's time for savvy merchants to put the finishing touches on holiday sales plans. While it is difficult to estimate the volume of "gifting" purchases made online, there is no doubt about the customers' penchant for buying gifts via this cha...
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Conversion
eBay Isn’t The Only Auction Site
June 20, 2007 • PEC Staff
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Curabitur et quam. Aliquam erat volutpat. Vivamus et elit. Fusce tincidunt nisl at arcu. Praesent dolor turpis, pharetra non, commodo eget, pharetra sit amet, nulla. Phasellus sit amet ante sit amet ipsum tristique tristique. Ves...
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Conversion
Product Spotlight: Mercado 4, Surveys, And More
June 13, 2007 • PEC Staff
One Stop Site for Wholesale Products WorldwideBrands’ new OneSource is an online database of thousands of wholesalers representing millions of wholesale products. Users can search by product category for specific items and can export results to Word and Excel. The site contains market ...
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Design & Development
Product Spotlight: eBay Items, Mouse & Tablet, And More
June 8, 2007 • PEC Staff
Blog Your eBay Items Have you ever found something on eBay that you really wanted to let your friends know about? Or is your business selling items on eBay and you want to cross-promote those items in your businesses' blog? If so, eBay To Go is for you. It's a way for you to share inte...
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Business
Bloglist: Ecommerce Potpourri
June 7, 2007 • PEC Staff
In Bloglist, we ask ecommerce professionals to identify their favorite blogs. For this installment, we've asked Thomas Holmes with logic+intuition. Name: Thomas Holmes Founder, logic+intuition Company: logic+intuition *Blogs: *Yclick.it, Thomasholmes.info [Grokdotcom.com] This blo...