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.

Conversion
5 Essentials for Ecommerce Site Search in 2021

December 22, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce site search is vital for navigation and conversions. Picking the right provider should be based on features, data, and measurability. Here are a few tips to help you decide.
Marketing & Advertising
5 Ways to Boost January 2021 Retail Sales

December 16, 2020 • Armando Roggio

For many retailers, January sales feel like a slump after the high-flying holiday season. But stores can still take steps to earn relatively more. Here are five tactics to try.
Influencers & Affiliates
How Influencer Marketing Drives Holiday Sales

December 13, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Influencers have the power to help drive ecommerce sales the way old school media did in years past. Advertising on 1950s television and other mass media was successful because of the audiences. Today, the same thing may be true for influencer marketing.
Payments
The Long-term Effect of Buy Now, Pay Later

December 9, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Point-of-sale financing services such as Klarna and Affirm make it easy for online shoppers to buy now and pay later. These financial tech companies have the ability to reduce checkout friction and please customers, but they may affect ecommerce in other, perhaps unexpected, ways.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2021

December 3, 2020 • Armando Roggio

January 2021 can represent a beginning for content marketers to build communities, stream live videos, write about national holidays, report industry news, or visually expose interesting industry data. Content marketing is the act of curating or creating content such as articles, podcasts, videos, and graphics.
Conversion
Covid and the Long Tail

November 25, 2020 • Armando Roggio

An interesting development is happening on the way to retail recovery during the covid pandemic: Brands and retailers are cutting back on the breadth of products they make and sell. In August 2020, for example, Todd Kahn, president and interim CEO of Coach, announced during an earnings conference call that the brand would slash the number of products it offered this holiday season.
Business
Managing Projects with Gantt Charts

November 24, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Gantt charts have been around for more than 100 years, but these visual project management tools are still among the best ways to manage deadlines, keeping them on time and on budget.
B2B
5 B2B Ecommerce Trends for 2021

November 23, 2020 • Armando Roggio

B2B ecommerce was already growing rapidly when the global pandemic struck in early 2020, accelerating the wholesale industry's digital transformation. And while it would be possible to list many industry shifts for the coming year, five trends could be especially disruptive.
Business
During Covid, Ecommerce Founders Can Invigorate Their Companies

November 19, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Entrepreneur-lead businesses can become unwieldy as they grow. To survive, founders often must embrace a management system and delegate responsibilities. "An entrepreneur slips and falls off the edge of a cliff. On his way down, he manages to grab onto the end of a vine," wrote Gino Wickman, in his book, "Traction."
Content Marketing
Last-minute Holiday Social Media Checkup for Ecommerce

November 18, 2020 • Armando Roggio

A quick checkup can ensure that holiday social media posts achieve a company's objectives. Think of it as a tune-up for an important journey. What follows is a holiday social media checklist. It will likely take a few minutes to complete and offer a measure of certainty about holiday social campaigns.
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.