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.

Schools & Resources
5 Ecommerce Site Design Trends for 2018

November 23, 2017 • Armando Roggio

New techniques, technologies, and user behaviors drive ecommerce website and application design every year. In 2018, expect ecommerce sites to employ the CSS Grid Layout, use mobile-friendly full-screen modal windows,
Marketing & Advertising
Coupon Codes Can Measure Ecommerce Marketing Results

November 20, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Coupon or discount codes your customers enter during the ecommerce checkout process can help your business monitor and measure marketing and advertising effectiveness and make better promotional decisions. For a professional ...
Local Business
4 Marketing Lessons from Opening a Brick-and-mortar Store

November 15, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Lessons learned from opening a brick-and-mortar retail store may apply to online merchants, providing insights about promoting products, driving sales, and engaging shoppers. On November 9 through 11, 2017, I helped ...
Marketing & Advertising
5 Unconventional Black Friday Marketing Tactics, for Ecommerce

November 10, 2017 • Armando Roggio

The competition for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales is stiff. Online sellers — from the smallest garaged-based startup right up through Amazon — are sending email messages, buying pay-per-click ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for December 2017

November 5, 2017 • Armando Roggio

From curated wish lists to telling your company’s story, December 2017 offers content marketers many opportunities to connect with shoppers. Content marketing is the act of creating, publishing, and distributing articles,
Content Marketing
How to Use Retail Co-op Funds for Content Marketing

November 3, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Manufacturers and distributors that supply mid-market and enterprise retail businesses will sometimes pay those retailers to place ads alongside content as part of a cooperative advertising program. The secret to ...
Code
Frameworks Such as PhoneGap and React Native Ease Mobile App Development

October 22, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Development frameworks such as PhoneGap and, more recently, React Native make it significantly easier for retail businesses to build and deploy mobile applications for consumers and internal teams. Radio-frequency identification readers ...
SEO
B2B SEO Requires an Integrated Approach

October 19, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Complex products and long buying cycles make search engine optimization for B2B sites different than for B2C. The difference, however, is not in the specific techniques, but in the way SEO ...
Code
A Short Introduction to CSS Grid Layout for Ecommerce Sites

October 13, 2017 • Armando Roggio

CSS Grid is a two-dimensional layout model that can be combined with CSS media queries to produce complex and responsive website layouts, including layouts for ecommerce stores. The Internet and the ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for November 2017

October 8, 2017 • Armando Roggio

From Thanksgiving how-tos and holiday buying guides to sporting events and odd observances, there are plenty of content topics your business can use in November 2017. Content marketing is the act ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
When to Use USPS for Ecommerce Shipping

October 4, 2017 • Armando Roggio

The United States Postal Service is a popular shipping solution for American ecommerce businesses. It stacks up well against other carriers in several situations. The USPS may be particularly effective when ...
Content Marketing
3 Ways to Integrate Products You Sell with Content You Publish

September 29, 2017 • Armando Roggio

There is a subtle art to content marketing, to balance the need to sell products while offering audience-centric, helpful information. The value of that content must take precedence over short-term product ...
Design & Development
6 Uncommon Marketing Tactics to Try This Christmas

September 26, 2017 • Armando Roggio

A good marketing plan can include a mixture of tried and true tactics and, also, somewhat unusual or uncommon promotions. With the 2017 Christmas shopping season closing in, your marketing department ...
Business
4 Predictions for the 2017 Holiday Shopping Season

September 24, 2017 • Armando Roggio

During the 2017 holiday shopping season, expect weather, mobile commerce, and self-gifting to contribute to an 18 percent growth in U.S. digital retail sales. For the last few years, I have ...
Platforms & Apps
From Shopping Cart to Ecommerce Platform and Back Again?

September 21, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Ten or 15 years ago many of the companies selling goods and services online would have described their ecommerce software as a “shopping cart.” Now, changes in software development could ...
Business
Using MoSCoW Prioritization for Ecommerce Projects

September 19, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce businesses, like all businesses, have tasks or jobs that need to be done. Organizing tasks into priorities may help ecommerce owners and managers improve how their companies operate and ...
Marketing & Advertising
7 Tips for Selling Products at Events, Shows

September 15, 2017 • Armando Roggio

When online sellers step out of the office or warehouse to set up shop at a sporting event, a fair, or a similar show, those businesses have a good opportunity to ...
Marketing & Advertising
5 Reasons Your Omnichannel Retail Strategy Is Failing

September 11, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Even for established retailers with years of experience in one sales channel, providing a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels — brick-and-mortar, online, mobile, and beyond — can be challenging. Omnichannel retailing ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for October 2017

September 7, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Retail competition is stiff and businesses selling simply on price or selection will find themselves in head-to-head competition with massive sellers like Amazon and Walmart. For many ecommerce businesses, the best ...
Local Business
5 Ways Brick-and-mortar Retailers Can Get Started in Ecommerce

August 31, 2017 • Armando Roggio

In spite of what you may have heard, not every retailer is selling online, not every physical store is closing, and some successful brick-and-mortar shops have real concerns about getting ...
Business
Why Isn’t Bitcoin More Popular with Shoppers?

August 25, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies cost nothing to process, are almost immune to fraud, and keep customers’ financial information safe. So why aren’t more online shoppers using them? And why aren’t ...
Marketing & Advertising
Niche Retailers Have an Opportunity in Customer Experience

August 20, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Your customers are in control, and that could be very good for your ecommerce business. When stores compete on customer experience, small and mid-sized online retailers have an opportunity to ...
Email & Text Marketing
5 Email Marketing Tips to Try This Week

August 17, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools an ecommerce business can use to increase sales. Depending on who you ask, email marketing can generate a return on investment between ...
Platforms & Apps
Omnichannel Commerce Needs a New Kind of CMS

August 11, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Businesses striving to provide shoppers with omnichannel experiences need to find new ways to manage, store, and present product information. Commerce is changing. For retailers, shoppers now have many ways to ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for September 2017

August 9, 2017 • Armando Roggio

What do bacon, spaceships, naval vessels, pop culture, and Christmas all have in common? They are all topics you can use to fuel your content marketing in September 2017. Content marketing ...
Content Marketing
How to Reuse Content, to Supercharge Marketing

August 4, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Good content marketing ideas can be hard to come by. To get the most out of each idea, develop a plan to reuse your content. It can supercharge your marketing ...
Platforms & Apps
Which Comes First, the Ecommerce Platform or the Developer?

July 31, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Your ecommerce business needs a new platform and a developer — but in what order? An ecommerce platform is the software your business will use to conduct online transactions and a developer ...
Business
To Build a Remote Workforce, Think Differently

July 25, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Remote employees can supercharge a company. Remote workers are often happier, more loyal, and more productive than their office-bound counterparts. But a business needs to manage remote employees differently and ...
Marketing & Advertising
Channel Signal C.E.O. on Product Review Analytics

July 21, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Product reviews can play an important role in ecommerce. Almost nine out of 10 shoppers read product reviews, and many studies over many years have shown that reviews help shoppers ...
Business
Lessons from ‘Retail Apocalypse’: Invest in Technology, People

July 20, 2017 • Armando Roggio

Perhaps as many as 4,000 brick-and-mortar stores have closed in the United States since last year, creating what some are calling a “retail apocalypse.” This would-be industry-wide meltdown can teach ...