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.

Business
Will New Ecommerce Sellers Squeeze Existing Merchants?

May 15, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The coronavirus pandemic has forced some brick-and-mortar businesses to focus on ecommerce, but this shift in focus is not likely to stop many permanent closures. There is a parallel between the virus and its economic impact: Patients and businesses that are already in poor health are much more likely to die from the infection.
Content Marketing
SEO, Content, and Email Work Better Combined

May 14, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Search engine optimization, content marketing, and email marketing can work together to create a virtuous cycle attracting customers to your ecommerce store, encouraging them to engage with your brand, and bringing them back for purchase after purchase.
Link Building
Yes, Toxic Backlinks Can Still Harm Search Rankings

May 12, 2020 • Armando Roggio

When a website links to your online store, that site is indicating it finds your content valuable enough to share with its own audience. Google and other search engines recognize this vote of confidence, which may boost your site's ranking. For this reason, many search engine optimizers covet backlinks.
Shipping & Fulfillment
The Good News and Bad News for Ecommerce Shipping

May 10, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce sales are up and shipping carriers such as USPS, UPS, and FedEx have responded admirably to demand in the face of numerous coronavirus-induced shutdowns and restrictions. That is the good news for ecommerce sellers. Unfortunately, supply chains have suffered. That’s the bad news.
Conversion
Pandemic Alters Retail Return Policies

May 4, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The coronavirus pandemic has forced retailers large and small to make significant, temporary changes to their return practices. Since March, retailers have handled returns in two ways, generally.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for June 2020

May 3, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing is the act of creating or curating content, publishing that content, and distributing it all with the aim of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can use in June 2020.
Business
Coronavirus Shutdown Drives Click-and-collect Ecommerce

April 27, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Even before the coronavirus-induced shutdown, click-and-collect ecommerce was growing quickly. But now as many Americans stay at home or keep their distance to flatten the Covid-19 curve, some unexpected businesses are taking online orders for pick up, too.
Marketing & Advertising
How to Write Better SMS Marketing Messages

April 24, 2020 • Armando Roggio

SMS messages are powerful for transactional communication. The messages are easy to write when the content contains only a shipping notice or an access code. But composing marketing SMS messages can be much more challenging. Here are four tips for writing better SMS messages for marketing.
Design & Development
Capture Gmail Messages in a Google Sheet

April 22, 2020 • Armando Roggio

With Google Apps Script, marketers can capture Gmail messages, parse them for relevant information, and add them row-by-row to a Google spreadsheet. This can be especially helpful for capturing leads or contacts.
Marketing & Advertising
Marketing in the Pandemic Creates Opportunities Afterward

April 17, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The coronavirus pandemic has changed everything. Retail shopping habits have been upended. Businesses that attract new customers and retain existing ones — right now — could recover or grow quickly when the economy reopens and moves forward.
Fraud Prevention
Ecommerce Fraud Detection during the Pandemic

April 13, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The coronavirus pandemic has led to significant changes in consumer purchase behavior and raised concerns about ecommerce fraud. Fortunately, overall ecommerce fraud does not appear to have risen disproportionately to the number of online purchases.
Business
Optimize DTC Profits with Price Elasticity Analysis

April 9, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Direct-to-consumer companies, including Amazon sellers with private label products, can use the price elasticity of demand to determine the optimal price for a given product and, thereby, potentially increase revenue, profit, or both.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for May 2020

April 5, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The coronavirus pandemic will almost certainly be the top news story in May 2020 as it was in March and April. But there are still opportunities for marketers to publish content that will attract an audience.
Business
Covid-19 Grants, Loans Could Help Ecommerce Companies

April 1, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Grants and loans from the U.S. government, state and local governments, Facebook, and Google could help small businesses during the Covid-19-induced economic slowdown.
Local Business
Covid-19 Is an Opportunity for Some Local Merchants

March 30, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The coronavirus pandemic is bad news. It has shut down a significant portion of the world's economy and killed far too many people. If, however, you're willing to hunt for a silver lining, the shutdowns and social distancing could be an opportunity for some brick-and-mortar companies to finally get online.
Google Ads
Performance Marketing in the Coronavirus Downturn

March 25, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Even in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, ecommerce merchants should optimize advertising campaigns. That includes performance marketing, which is online promotions that cost the advertiser only when a potential customer takes some action, such as clicking a pay-per-click ad or starting a chat on Facebook Messenger.
Business
The Coronavirus Could Drive Car Dealers to Ecommerce

March 19, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Managing the coronavirus pandemic in the United States has led to temporary store closures, social distancing, and economic concerns. People and industries are affected, including car dealers.
Inventory
How to Calculate and Interpret Inventory Turnover

March 18, 2020 • Armando Roggio

How quickly a business sells its inventory is typically a strong indicator of efficiency, cash flow, and general well being. Thus inventory turnover — and the related inventory turnover ratio — is a powerful key performance indicator.
Conversion
U-shaped Marketing Attribution for Ecommerce

March 13, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The so-called "u-shaped" marketing attribution model emphasizes a shopper's first and last marketing interactions before a conversion. The model can help identify the marketing tactics that are closing sales.
SEO
Should Internal Search Results Pages Be Indexed?

March 10, 2020 • Armando Roggio

No, your website's own search results pages should not be indexed by Google and other search engines in most cases. Long-standing search-engine-optimization wisdom says the results pages from your site-search should block search engine bots and not be included in a search engine's index of pages.
Design & Development
Brave, a Privacy-focused Web Browser, Attracts Techies

March 6, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Brave is a niche web browser popular with tech enthusiasts for its privacy, ad blocking, and unique crypto-currency-based advertising and rewards system.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for April 2020

March 4, 2020 • Armando Roggio

The goal of content marketing is to attract and engage customers for your business. It can also build organic search traffic. Achieving these ends, however, takes compelling topics. Here are five content marketing ideas your business can try.
Staffing
What to Do When an Employee Leaves

February 28, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Employees quit. It is a reality of every business. Large companies with dedicated human resource teams have a process or checklist they follow when someone decides to leave. But small and mid-sized firms may not have a plan in place.
Content Marketing
Tips on Writing from 4,700 Articles, 24 Years of Journalism

February 25, 2020 • Armando Roggio

While much could be said about the writing process, in this post I'll share five tips from my own experience as a writer. These tips I've have developed from more than 24 years of journalism and more than 4,700 published, bylined articles. Perhaps at least one of these tips will help you.
Shipping & Fulfillment
First-party Logistics Could Transform Ecommerce

February 19, 2020 • Armando Roggio

In 2020, Amazon will deliver roughly 3.5 billion packages in the United States — more than FedEx. That could signal a trend toward first-party logistics, price pressure, and fragmentation in the package delivery industry.
Business
Managing Custom Prices in BigCommerce

February 18, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Not every customer pays the same price. Online merchants sometimes offer different prices to different sorts of customers. Businesses on BigCommerce's Enterprise plan can assign prices to customer groups, such as wholesalers or retailers.
Content Marketing
5 Helpful Chrome Extensions for Content Marketers

February 11, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Content marketers who research topics, look for guest post opportunities, compose articles, and even make instructional videos could improve their productivity with a few helpful Chrome browser extensions.
SEO
Compare SEO Stats for Acquisition Candidates, Guest Post Options

February 7, 2020 • Armando Roggio

There are plenty of instances that require an in-depth analysis of organic search performance. But other times a quick overview is enough. An example of the latter is a brief comparison of multiple domains. In this post, I will address the benefits of contrasting SEO across multiple domains.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for March 2020

February 5, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing is the act of creating content and then publishing and distributing it with the goal of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. To help achieve these ends, here are five content marketing ideas your company can try in March 2020.
Content Marketing
Analyze Competitors for High-traffic Content Ideas

February 3, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce competitors can be a good source of inspiration and ideas. Analyzing a competitor's content could generate ideas for your own company's articles, videos, podcasts, or similar. In this post, I'll look at a simple way to produce content marketing ideas from your competitors.