Armando Roggio

Articles by: Armando Roggio

Armando Roggio

Armando Roggio is the longtime senior contributor to Practical Ecommerce. He's a global ecommerce authority and a practicing merchant, developer, and journalist.

Since 2008 he's written over 1,300 articles for Practical Ecommerce addressing all matters of ecommerce and presented dozens of webinars.

His previous positions include director of ecommerce for a regional retail chain and marketing publications manager at Micron Technology, a publicly-traded computer-chip manufacturer. He holds a B.A. in English Writing and Journalism from The University of Pittsburgh.

Contact Armando via email or LinkedIn. Follow his ecommerce tweets at @ecommerceboy.

Marketing & Advertising
The 5 C’s of Ecommerce Marketing

November 12, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The 5C marketing framework provides a structured way to evaluate and describe a business's position in a market. The framework, applied consistently, could guide decisions as the business promotes its brand and products.
Analytics & Data
Cookieless Browsers Will Upend Ad Tracking

November 11, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Trends toward greater consumer privacy may force ecommerce marketers to change methods of measuring performance, including turning to "marketing mix modeling," a 70-year-old technique. Most digital marketers depend on some form of multi-touch attribution modeling to measure the effectiveness of their various promotions.
Business
Google Tables Can Help with Projects, Products, Support

November 9, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Thanks to a new service from Google, small and mid-sized merchants may have a new option for lightweight project management, help desk ticket tracking, and similar tasks. Google Tables blends some of the features and capabilities of a structured database with a simple spreadsheet.
Business
Your Ecommerce Platform Can Help with That

November 5, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The coronavirus pandemic has encouraged many entrepreneurs and small-business owners to either start selling online or significantly expand their ecommerce operations. Evidence of this trend can be found in Shopify's June 30, 2020, quarterly report. The company achieved a 28-percent increase in subscription revenue for that three-month period.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for December 2020

November 1, 2020 • Armando Roggio

In December 2020, online retailers and B2B sellers can focus their content marketing on getting things done during Covid, launching a YouTube channel, profiling the Nobel Prizes, teaching skills, and raising AIDS awareness. Content marketing starts with creating or curating content such as articles, videos, graphics, or podcasts.
Business
Automobile Sales Are Moving Online

October 29, 2020 • Armando Roggio

For many consumers, a car or truck is the second largest purchase they will make after buying a house. In July 2020, for example, the average new vehicle price in the United States was $38,378, according to a Kelley Blue Book release. Despite the cost, automobile sales could be moving online.
Fraud Prevention
Crooks Are Creating Synthetic Shoppers

October 26, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The ongoing global pandemic has forced the rapid expansion of ecommerce and a general migration toward digital transactions. Unfortunately, Covid-19 also may be fueling an increase in so-called synthetic identity fraud.
Marketing & Advertising
The Value of Personalized Marketing for Ecommerce

October 22, 2020 • Armando Roggio

A well-executed personalized marketing program may resemble person-to-person conversations like those a shopper could experience in a brick-and-mortar retail store. It is easy to recognize a genuinely good customer experience when you have it.
Business
For Omnichannel Retailers, Hedgehogs Beat Foxes

October 18, 2020 • Armando Roggio

In his 2001 book "Good to Great," author and researcher Jim Collins sought to explain "why some companies make the leap [from good to great] and others don't." His answer plays out over about 300 pages, and it includes the Hedgehog Concept.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing Should Mimic Publishing, Broadcasting

October 12, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The best content marketing is so good, so useful, so entertaining that it holds an audience's attention like a good newspaper, magazine, or TV show. The process, however, can require a substantial commitment.
Content Marketing
Privacy Concerns Will Increase the Value of Content Marketing

October 7, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Increased emphasis on personal privacy, particularly with changes to Apple's Identifier for Advertisers and the probability of cookie-less browsers in the near future, could increase the need for content marketing.
Business
5 Content Marketing Ideas for November 2020

October 5, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The U.S. presidential election, family-oriented observances, blogging, and even entrepreneurship are all good topics for your business's content marketing in November 2020. Content marketing is the act of creating or curating content, publishing that content, and promoting it with the aim of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers.
Business
2020 ‘Time Machine’ Elevates All of Ecommerce

September 30, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The ongoing global pandemic has accelerated retail and B2B trends that make it relatively more difficult for some businesses to survive while upping the competitive bar for the entire ecommerce industry. These trends include everything from an increase in online sales and the growth of click-and-collect shopping to how software is built and integrated.
B2B
Covid-19 Exposes Inefficiencies in B2B Accounts Receivable

September 24, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The ongoing pandemic has exacerbated long-standing inefficiencies with the B2B accounts receivable process, such as manual entry, little standardization, and errant data. Accounts receivable personnel have historically overcome many of these problems, but an increase in remote work may require B2B sellers to move to a more automated or integrated process.
Business
Covid-19 Is Driving Some Brands to DTC

September 21, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the pace of digital transformation in retail, prompting some brands to focus on direct-to-consumer channels. The retail and wholesale industries have long been undergoing an evolution toward ecommerce, digital brands, and DTC sales. But Covid-19 changed retail abruptly.
Marketing & Advertising
2020 Holiday Shopping Is a Tale of 2 Consumers

September 17, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Covid-19 has throttled the U.S. economy, dropping the nation's gross domestic product 31.7 percent in the second quarter of the year. The economic effect, however, has impacted folks differently.
Marketing & Advertising
Privacy Changes on Apple Devices, Chrome Will Impact Targeted Advertising

September 14, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Privacy-related changes impacting Apple mobile devices and Google's Chrome browser will make it more difficult for businesses to target advertising at specific customers across platforms, applications, and devices. At issue are two separate technologies that are connected because of their privacy implications.
Business
5 Predictions for the 2020 Holiday Shopping Season

September 10, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Despite strong increases in the past several months, predicting this year's holiday ecommerce sales made me feel a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge. I wanted to be optimistic about the Christmas sales, but three of my five predictions are negative overall. The other two, click-and-collect ecommerce and gig-economy delivery, are generally positive.
Platforms & Apps
Is JAMstack Right for Your Ecommerce Business?

September 8, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Looming changes in ecommerce development could provide a short-term competitive advantage for some businesses. Many platforms give a business just about everything needed to build an ecommerce site. They are comprehensive and monolithic. But they are also restrictive, or so JAMstack proponents imply.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for October 2020

September 3, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing can help connect with new customers or deepen relationships with existing ones. But some businesses struggle to find topics to address. The good news is that opportunities abound in October 2020, when a company could cover National Taco Day, raise cybersecurity awareness, profile customers, provide a brief history of products, or identify Halloween do-it-yourself projects.
Product Pages
Essential Elements of an Ecommerce Product Page

September 1, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The elements of an ecommerce product detail page should work together to help shoppers make sound buying decisions. Each element — prose description, a list of features, product photos, videos — should tell part of an item's story.
Google Ads
What Is Performance Marketing?

August 26, 2020 • Armando Roggio

With performance marketing, businesses pay only when they get results. While it doesn't necessarily guarantee a good return on investment, performance marketing is often a contributor to success for ecommerce merchants.
Marketing & Advertising
OTT Ads Are an Opportunity for Established Retailers

August 25, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Streaming commercials — which are called over-the-top (OTT) ads because most cable and streaming boxes used to sit on top of televisions — can provide a level of audience targeting that is similar to search engine marketing, social media advertising, and affiliate marketing.
Marketing & Advertising
Live Streaming Can Drive Affiliate Revenue

August 19, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Live streaming is a popular way to sell products in 2020, thanks, in part, to how the pandemic has impacted retailing. But within this broader trend, at least a few entrepreneurs are finding a new niche promoting products to social media friends and followers.
Payments
‘Payment Request API’ to Streamline Ecommerce Checkouts, Improve Security

August 17, 2020 • Armando Roggio

A standard application programming interface is helping to eliminate website checkout forms and improve the ecommerce experience on desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. Ecommerce businesses that adopt the approach early could gain a competitive advantage.
Fraud Prevention
Share Customer Data Anonymously to Combat Fraud

August 11, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce fraud prevention depends on good data. That data can come from payment card providers, credit bureaus, address listings, and, more recently, other merchants.
Business
Holiday Selling without the Crowds

August 9, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Pandemic-induced social distancing, reduced hours of operation, and even continued lockdowns and closures could dramatically change Christmas shopping behaviors in 2020, requiring retailers to find new ways to serve holiday shoppers and generate sales.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for September 2020

August 6, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and promoting articles, podcasts, and videos with the intent of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. Here are five content marketing ideas your business can try in September 2020.
Local Business
The First Steps in Adding Ecommerce to a Brick-and-mortar Store

August 2, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Brick-and-mortar retail businesses are turning toward ecommerce to generate revenue — online and click-and-collect. As they make this digital transformation, those merchants will likely have questions about ecommerce platforms, themes, and design. While all of these are important, a company's focus should be on products and marketing first, in my experience.
Content Marketing
Inject New Life into Old Content

July 30, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing is a long game. A business must publish regularly over an extended period. This inevitably means that some of the content created will get old or outdated. Fortunately, a marketer can inject new life into old content, making it valuable again.