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.

Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for December 2018

November 5, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Connect with potential customers in December 2018 with humor, a history of eggnog, and holiday happenings. What follows are five content marketing ideas your business can use for December 2018.
Shipping & Fulfillment
7 Tried-and-true Free Shipping Promotions to Drive Holiday Sales

November 1, 2018 • Armando Roggio

A free shipping offer is a powerful ecommerce promotion. It can boost conversion rates and increase average order values. Like other forms of advertising and promotion, free shipping is an expense.
Shipping & Fulfillment
6 Holiday Ecommerce Shipping Mistakes to Avoid

October 24, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Customers expect delivery. For online stores that sell tangible products, order fulfillment is arguably the single most essential task. It is the culmination of marketing, web development, and customer service.
Social Media
Use Facebook Groups to Promote Your Ecommerce Business

October 22, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce businesses can use Facebook groups to help potential customers, build strong reciprocal relationships, and encourage sales. Maintaining or contributing to a Facebook group is a form of both social media ...
Staffing
Workers’ Compensation Basics for Ecommerce, Retail

October 18, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Retailers selling in a brick-and-mortar store or via ecommerce may have a statutory requirement to purchase workers' compensation insurance to ensure that employees get the care they need when accidents happen. The specifics of these compensation programs are state regulated. So the requirements for a particular company will depend on state law.
Fraud Prevention
2 Prominent Ecommerce Fraud Risks in 2018 Holiday Season

October 16, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Incidents of ecommerce payment fraud rise in proportion to holiday sales. But merchants can protect themselves. The key is to recognize popular forms of fraud and then employ steps to prevent them. Two prominent examples this holiday season are account takeovers and coupon abuse.
SEO
SEO: Include Images and Videos in Sitemaps

October 15, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Including image and video content in an XML sitemap may help Google discover more about them to include in image and video search results. XML sitemaps are a convenient way to share page information with search engines such as Google. While submitting a sitemap will not guarantee that a page will be indexed, it will not hurt rankings.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for November 2018

October 5, 2018 • Armando Roggio

In November 2018, your business can attract, engage, and retain customers with content around surviving the peak of the holiday shopping season; little-known celebrations; and Facebook groups. Content marketing is the ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Understanding Sitemaps for Ecommerce Stores

October 3, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Sitemaps inform search engines which pages on a website should be crawled, and may help search engines discover and index those pages. While sitemaps can be a simple text file listing ...
Content Marketing
9 Ways to Promote Your Marketing Content

September 27, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Content only works, only influences potential customers, when those would-be customers can find it. Thus promotion is an important aspect of any content marketing campaign. In a sense, content marketing consists ...
Keyword Research
SEO: Use ‘Niche Down’ Keyword Research for Content Ideas

September 25, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Keyword research is one of the most effective search engine optimization practices. It can open the door to compelling content marketing ideas and link building. The so-called “niche down” method of ...
Marketing & Advertising
2018 Holiday Ecommerce Marketing Checklist

September 24, 2018 • Armando Roggio

For many online stores, the Christmas shopping season can represent a significant percentage of total annual sales. Thus it’s important to get holiday ecommerce marketing right. What follows is a checklist ...
Content Marketing
Content Marketing Reaches Baby Boomers

September 19, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Shoppers aged 54 to 72 represent a significant portion of the total U.S. consumer market. And they have the financial wherewithal to be among the top customers of an ecommerce company. This group of potential customers can be reached with content marketing.
Business
4 Predictions for 2018 Holiday Shopping Season

September 13, 2018 • Armando Roggio

The Christmas shopping season will be here before you know it. Shoppers begin making holiday purchases as soon as October. Those earlier purchases could help drive online sales to a ...
Local Business
5 Ways Local Brick-and-mortar Retailers Can Earn More Profit in 2019

September 10, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Profit might be the most important performance indicator for retail businesses. What follows are five suggestions to earn more profit for a local, brick-and-mortar retailer in the coming year. 1. Sell ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for October 2018

September 4, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing requires a steady flow of topics. For this October 2018, consider covering Halloween, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, vegetarianism, Oktoberfest, and what's streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.
Content Marketing
5 Tips for Better Content Marketing in 2019

August 28, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing has to provide real value, something that pierces all of the noise of social media and advertising. What follows are five tips that start with value. If embraced, these could make your content marketing efforts more successful in the coming year.
SEO
The Key to Effective Guest Posting (for SEO)

August 23, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Guest posting is a long-standing link-building technique used by many in the search engine optimization industry. But Google has discouraged guest posting for the sole purpose of link building and ...
Keyword Research
Mine Competitors for Top Keywords

August 21, 2018 • Armando Roggio

One of the best ways to discover keyword opportunities is to identify which phrases your company's competitors are ranking for on popular search engines. In this article, I'll address a few ways to identify the keywords that may be working well for your competitors.
Fraud Prevention
Account Takeover Fraud a Growing Problem for Ecommerce

August 17, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Account takeover fraud is a form of identity theft, wherein a criminal gains access to a registered customer’s account. The criminal then logs in, posing as a known and trusted ...
Link Building
SEO Broken Link Building as a Content Marketing Strategy

August 14, 2018 • Armando Roggio

A popular link-building tactic is also an excellent way to identify content marketing topics. When combined, broken link building and content marketing could generate traffic for your site and provide ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for September 2018

August 6, 2018 • Armando Roggio

From celebrating the contributions of Hispanic Americans to talking like a pirate, September 2018 is full of opportunities to create engaging content that could drive traffic to your website and ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
One Click Retail Exec on Amazon’s Private Label Brands

July 19, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Amazon has made significant investments in its own private label brands, in areas such as diapers, dog food, and paper towels. The company’s private label strategy could be indicative of ...
Link Building
SEO Link Building Tactics for Ecommerce Businesses

July 17, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Link building, the process of getting links from other websites, improves search engine rankings and traffic, ultimately generating more sales for your business. Link building is one of the tasks a ...
SEO
How to Attract Clicks on a Search Engine Results Page

July 10, 2018 • Armando Roggio

You’ve done the technical search engine optimization steps. You’ve worked hard to create useful, even authoritative content that answers common questions — keyword queries — for your industry. You’ve earned ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for August 2018

July 3, 2018 • Armando Roggio

There is something magical about content. Articles, video, and interactive web pages can engage potential customers and build trust and a sense of reciprocity. Content marketing is the act of creating,
Amazon & Marketplaces
Are Amazon’s Private Label Brands a Trend for Other Merchants?

July 2, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Amazon has made significant investments in its own private label brands, such as diapers, dog food, and paper towels. The company’s private label strategy may be indicative of a burgeoning ...
Marketing & Advertising
Google’s Smart Campaigns May Help Small Brick-and-click Retailers

June 28, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Google’s new “Smart campaigns” is the first advertising product under the new Google Ads brand. Smart campaigns use machine-learning algorithms to help small businesses become more successful online advertisers. The tool ...
Business
7 Lessons from Confucius for Ecommerce Businesses

June 25, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Wisdom, personal or corporate, has not changed much in 2,500 years, or so it would seem. Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher and politician, has much to teach us about operating ...
Fraud Prevention
3 Reminders about Online Payment Fraud in 2018

June 22, 2018 • Armando Roggio

At the global scale, online businesses and their customers suffer billions of dollars in fraud losses annually. There are some important things ecommerce businesses should keep in mind. Start with a ...