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
How to Land a Great Ecommerce Job

June 15, 2018 • Armando Roggio

There are many good reasons to work in ecommerce. Perhaps you’re attracted to the industry’s rapid growth. Or maybe you see ecommerce marketing or operations as a challenge — a ...
Design & Development
70 Leading Retailers’ Lighthouse Scores Revealed

June 12, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Online retailers need to improve site performance and accessibility but they are optimized for search engines based on an audit of 70 recognizable retail websites. On June 9 and 10, 2018,
Staffing
How to Find (Great) Ecommerce Employees

June 10, 2018 • Armando Roggio

You’re hiring. Your ecommerce operation is growing. You need help. But how do you find that just-right person for your company? I recently had hiring opportunities. I added five roles to ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for July 2018

June 4, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Need content marketing ideas to fuel your ecommerce business in July 2018? Consider being nice to New Jersey, introducing a little pandemonium, or focusing on customers and products. Content marketing is ...
Inventory
Strategies for Discontinued Inventory Pages

May 30, 2018 • Armando Roggio

When an item in an ecommerce store is temporarily out of stock, the site can add a notice or send a message to a shopper. But what should an online ...
Inventory
9 Tips to Manage Out-of-stock Inventory

May 28, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Sometimes even the most-prepared retailers sell out of popular items. How these inventory shortages are communicated on an ecommerce website may impact shopper experience, search engine optimization, and sales. Although not ...
Business
Custom Apparel Business Overthinks a Routine Problem

May 25, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Roy needed product category pages, not custom online stores. What his competitors were really providing was a landing page on their own websites. The header, navigation, and layout were the same for all customers. Only the products displayed and a header graphic were unique to the specific team, business, or organization.
Marketing & Advertising
Is Text Messaging a Game-changer for Ecommerce?

May 17, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Mobile devices are ubiquitous. I don't go anywhere without mine, and I bet you have a smartphone with you now. But are you doing everything you can to connect with shoppers on mobile? According to a survey from Quiq, a provider of chat software, 66 percent of consumer-respondents ranked mobile messaging as their preferred channel for contacting a company. I recently spoke with Chris Albro, head of enterprise sales for Quiq.
Design & Dev Tools
Google Lighthouse: Monitor Site Performance, SEO, Accessibility

May 8, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Lighthouse is Google’s free, open source, and automated site monitoring tool. It can help ecommerce businesses track site load times, accessibility, and search engine optimization. Lighthouse is available in a few ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for June 2018

May 6, 2018 • Armando Roggio

The Stanley Cup playoffs, summertime weddings, Father’s Day, and old fishing stories provide content marketers with interesting topics to cover in June 2018. Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing,
Business
Net Promoter Score Is the Best KPI for Ecommerce Growth

May 3, 2018 • Armando Roggio

“Net Promoter Score” is a simple-to-understand customer loyalty indicator closely associated with sales and profit growth. Online sellers can use this metric and associated customer interactions to improve customer service,
Design & Development
WompMobile CEO on PWAs and AMPs

May 2, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Not long ago mobile optimization could provide a competitive advantage. But as the mobile internet has grown, responsive websites are no longer optional. They are essential to doing business online. WompMobile ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Former Amazon Exec on Maintaining Brand Control

April 25, 2018 • Armando Roggio

James Thomson spent six years as head of Amazon Services, which recruits sellers to Amazon’s marketplace. He is now co-founder and partner of Buy Box Experts, a consultancy, and co-founder ...
Product Pages
5 Product Page Differentiators for 2018

April 20, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Performance and superior communications set ecommerce product pages apart from the crowd in 2018. Thanks to established user-interface conventions, online sellers know the components of a good product detail page. They ...
Marketing & Advertising
Upgrading an AdWords Landing Page Experience

April 17, 2018 • Armando Roggio

The web page that potential customers see when they click on a Google AdWords ad could be affecting how much an ecommerce business pays per click and where it appears in search results. Google AdWords Landing Page Experience is a measurement of how well an ad's landing page serves potential customers. It describes whether Google believes the landing page is likely to meet user expectations.
Marketing & Advertising
How to Write Text Ads in AdWords, for Ecommerce

April 12, 2018 • Armando Roggio

AdWords, Google’s advertising platform, is the engine driving online sales for many small and mid-sized ecommerce operations. Sellers that want to get the most from text ads in AdWords should ...
Marketing & Advertising
How to Create Video Ads That Sell

April 9, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Direct response video ads on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and similar platforms have the potential to drive shoppers to your ecommerce site and help your company sell more. While the creative substance ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for May 2018

April 5, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Whether your business launches a new video series, composes a post about filmmaker Wes Anderson, or features any of the month’s many holidays, there is no shortage of content marketing ...
Business
The Next Generation of Ecommerce Management

April 2, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce is disruptive. It has changed the way millions of people shop. But the management of many ecommerce businesses has not evolved. It often operates, seemingly, as an old-world dictatorship or a fiefdom. What follows are several ideas to organize and manage an ecommerce business in 2018 and beyond. Some of these are concepts may seem revolutionary. But, then again, so is ecommerce.
Design & Development
Are PWAs the Future of Mobile Commerce?

March 29, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Compared to a typical, mobile-optimized web page, progressive web apps may give mobile shoppers a better browsing and buying experience while helping online sellers earn more sales and profit. It is for these reasons, progressive web apps — PWAs — may be the next phase of mobile web optimization.
Marketing & Advertising
For Ecommerce, Better to Use Search Ads or Display?

March 19, 2018 • Armando Roggio

For online sellers, digital advertising is not a choice between search ads or display ads, but rather understanding how each of these tools can help generate sales. The term "search advertising" describes placing ads on a search engine results page. Search ads target specific keywords and seek to capture potential customers intent on finding some piece of information or, perhaps, finding a product.
Technical SEO
Gzip Compression Could Make Your Site 90-percent Faster

March 16, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Not using gzip on your web server? Your company should be. Enabling gzip compression could improve initial page load times by as much as 90 percent. Your business's faster web pages may even lead to better search engine rankings, an increase in site traffic, and more sales.
Code
Enable HTTP/2 for Happier Customers, Better SEO

March 12, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Enabling your company's website to use HTTP/2 could result in better performance, happier customers, and improved rankings on search engines. All of that, in turn, could help your site generate more traffic, more conversions, and more profit. The HTTP/2 standard is a significant update of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that has been used to connect computers via the internet since 1991.
SEO
5 Ecommerce SEO Tactics to Try Today

March 9, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Search engine optimization seeks to help search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo understand a page's purpose and content in the hope the search engine will serve up a highly-ranked link in search results. An ecommerce business could spend months or even years optimizing search engine traffic. Some SEO techniques require wholesale changes in site structure, a nearly constant flow of new content, or days of keyword research.
Schools & Resources
Crisis Communications Checklist for Retail Businesses

March 7, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Has your business committed a social media faux pas? An employee, perhaps, did something embarrassing, or maybe your entire industry is getting bad press. How your company communicates through a crisis may impact the entire organization, including profitability and viability.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing Can Drive Long-tail SEO

March 5, 2018 • Armando Roggio

A robust content marketing campaign may attract shoppers searching on long-tail keyword phrases, which could generate additional sales. The term “long tail” describes statistical distributions where there are many points, if ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for April 2018

March 4, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Need inspiration for your company's April content marketing? Write about baseball, American filmmaking, holidays, or springtime activities and shopping. Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and distributing articles, videos, podcasts, or even graphics with the aim of attracting, engaging, and retaining an audience of customers and potential customers. It is marketing based on reciprocity.
Marketing & Advertising
A Brief Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Ecommerce

February 21, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Affiliate marketing is a promotional model that connects merchants with independent marketers who are willing to invest time and money to sell a merchant's products. Put another way, affiliate marketing connects a business that has a product to sell with a marketer who can sell it. Affiliate marketing is performance based. Thus advertisers only pay when affiliates deliver a specified customer action. In the ecommerce context, this action is typically an online purchase, which makes affiliate marketing very cost effective.
Business
Manage Your Business Blog with a Kanban Board

February 15, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Content is an important part of ecommerce marketing. Often, content marketing begins with a consistent, well-written, and well-managed blog. For sole proprietorships and small businesses, it is possible to manage a ...
Business
From Retail to Manufacturing, Kanban Improves Efficiency

February 12, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Kanban is a project management approach that can be applied to nearly any step-by-step process to increase efficiency, reduce waste, and help a business improve. Although Kanban was developed in the 1940s and 1950s to boost manufacturing efficiency at Toyota factories in Japan, the system has been adapted to many industries, including software development, publishing, and retail management.