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.

Design & Development
Mobile Ecommerce Sites Should Be Fast and Robust

July 22, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Internet users, and online shoppers specifically, want fast and robust online experiences regardless of whether they are using a desktop computer or the most basic smartphone. Ecommerce businesses competing in this era of the emerging mobile web must take steps to provide useful and ric...
Business
5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Opening an Ecommerce Business

July 18, 2013 • Armando Roggio

You might be prepared to open an online retail business. You have the funding, cash flow planned, inventory managed, and even a marketing campaign ready to launch. But there are some other things you’ll want to know before you start doing business. U.S. ecommerce sales grew 13 percent ...
Social Media
4 Tips for Better Contest Forms

July 16, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Contest marketing is a good way to engage potential customers, increase your social media fan base, give folks positive things to say about your store, and collect data that can improve both your business’s bottom line and your customers' online experiences. Consider for a moment just ...
Marketing & Advertising
5 Ways to Get More Site Traffic

July 10, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Online stores need shoppers and getting more potential customers to visit an online retailer’s site is an important part of ecommerce marketing. Many Internet merchants rely primarily on search engine optimization to drive traffic — and spend a lot of time focused on good title tags. T...
Inventory
4 Tips for Finding your Ecommerce Niche

July 5, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Finding your ecommerce niche is an exercise in discovering passions, solving problems, networking, and testing for supply, sales, and competition viability. But once discovered, marketing and selling products to a niche can lead to online retail success. Nearly anything can be sold onl...
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Platforms: Design Control vs. Ease of Launching

July 3, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Online shoppers judge an Internet retailer’s trustworthiness and a product’s value based, at least in part, on how good a site or product detail page looks. Given its importance, one might think that design control would be an essential part of every available ecommerce platform. But ma...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Selling on Marketplaces: 4 Common Mistakes

June 28, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Marketplaces like Ebay and Amazon can be a boon for the bottom line since they present your products to millions of interested shoppers. But a huge audience also means that mistakes can be glaring and costly. Amazon gets something like 21 million visitors a day and more than 100 millio...
Email & Text Marketing
Cart-abandonment Email Best Practices

June 25, 2013 • Armando Roggio

An abandoned shopping cart is like a broken promise. For the merchant, there is a lost sale and unclaimed revenue. For the shopper, there is an unfulfilled need or want. Fortunately, a quick series of cart abandonment emails may renew that promise, helping both the customer and the reta...
Staffing
5 Considerations for Choosing a Developer or Designer

June 24, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Software developers and website designers can be an extension of your online store’s marketing and branding team since these professionals have a significant amount of influence over how your ecommerce site looks and functions. Choosing an individual freelancer or agency to do design o...
Checkout Tactics
Reviewing the Checkout Process of 10 Leading Online Retailers

June 19, 2013 • Armando Roggio

The checkout process is the last step in completing an online transaction and making a sale. A well-planned checkout experience can significantly boost conversions. Leading online retailers have made their checkouts more adaptive, rewarding registered users, and giving site visitors ple...
Local Business
How to Sell Online if You Already Have a Physical Store

June 14, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Small brick-and-mortar retailers can find new customers, experiment with new products, and generally grow their business when they start selling online. For established retailers, the first steps toward ecommerce often begin with product preparation, software selection and integration, ...
Business
One-third of U.S. Adults Own Tablets

June 12, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Thirty four percent of American adults now own a tablet computer like the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus, or Amazon Kindle Fire, up from 18 percent last year. This doubling in U.S. tablet penetration will almost certainly impact ecommerce. Since 2010, the Pew Research Cen...
Shipping & Fulfillment
3 Tips for Starting a Drop-ship Online Store

June 7, 2013 • Armando Roggio

An ecommerce entrepreneur with passion and great supplier relationships can earn good profits without making large investments or holding lots of product inventory. Drop shipping allows retailers to sell products without holding actual inventory. When a customer places an online order ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
The Perfect Return Merchandise Authorization System

June 6, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Sometimes the shoe just doesn’t fit. Or maybe it was the wrong color. Most every ecommerce business deals with product returns and exchanges, and the ecommerce platform processing those returns often dictates how smoothly the exchange or return goes. A return merchandise authorization ...
Social Media
Facebook Promoted Post Generates Sales, Traffic

May 28, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Although recent studies demonstrate that social media sites like Facebook work best to augment other ecommerce marketing campaigns, anecdotal data from a small Facebook ad test demonstrated that the promotion could boost both direct traffic and sales. “In its most recent [Ecommerce Qua...
Social Media
Don’t Focus on Social Media Traffic

May 24, 2013 • Armando Roggio

New data from a leading marketing optimization firm indicates that social media is not a significant traffic driver for online merchants, but traffic may not be the only indicator of success for social media marketing. Social media represented about 1.55 percent of traffic to ecommerce...
Design & Development
3-part Mobile Commerce App Strategy

May 23, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Purchases from smartphones and tablets reached $5.9 billion in the U.S. for the first three months of this year. comScore and the U.S. Commerce Department each reported that mobile commerce sales, excluding things like groceries, airplane tickets, and automobiles, accounted for 11 perce...
Cross-border Selling
Cross-border Ecommerce Can Reduce Closeouts, Clearance

May 17, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Seasonal or discontinued products sitting in inventory limit cash flow and may make it more difficult for merchants to invest in newer, faster-selling or higher-margin products. While many retailers discount or close out these products, there may be an opportunity to maintain higher mar...
User Experience
Optimizing an Ecommerce Site for Mobile Shopping

May 14, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Improving how quickly a page loads and how easy it is to use that page once it has loaded might be one of the most important things online merchants can do to help tablet and smartphone shoppers and take part in the mobile commerce trend. Mobile commerce may have reached between $5.7 a...
Cross-border Selling
5 Quick Tips for Shipping Internationally

May 10, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Cross-border online sales may account for a significant portion of total ecommerce orders in just the next few years, according to some reports. But for many small online retailers the task of actually shipping a package internationally and understanding all of the associated rules, reg...
Design & Development
Mobile Commerce Grows 31 Percent in Q1

May 7, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Mobile ecommerce sales rose 31 percent in the first quarter of 2013 as tablet-fueled, couch commerce is rapidly becoming the most popular form of online shopping with the so-called multi-channel shopper. Data from the IBM Online Retail Index and the U.S. Department of Commerce suggeste...
Shipping & Fulfillment
7 Ways to Improve a Customer’s Shipping Experience

April 30, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Shipping can be one of the most stressful parts of an online transaction. The customer has already paid for a product, but does not actually have it in hand. And the retailer — devoted to excellent customer service — has no control over the carrier. In spite of this, there are some co...
Design & Development
3 Important Mobile Commerce Trends

April 26, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Tablet-based purchases, an explosion in video watching, and shopping activity of men are among the hottest mobile commerce trends that could impact how online retailers market and sell. Mobile commerce — mcommerce — is the fastest growing retail segment as more shoppers make purchases...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Marketplaces: How to Sell More in 2013

April 23, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Online marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, and Amazon offer retailers profitable, high-volume sales channels that can significantly improve the bottom line. But as more businesses discover and use these marketplaces, competition increases, meaning businesses need to market well in these chann...
Payments
Bitcoins: 3 Things Online Merchants Must Know

April 18, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Bitcoin is a mostly anonymous, peer-to-peer electronic payment system that could allow online retailers to accept cash-like payments from anyone, potentially, opening up new market segments and reaching new customers. But bitcoin is not without risks. Earlier this month, a single bitco...
Amazon & Marketplaces
How to Start Selling on the Amazon Marketplace

April 10, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Amazon allows other retailers to sell products on its marketplace, where millions of interested shoppers visit daily. This creates an opportunity for sellers — large and small. It is possible to start selling on the Amazon Marketplace in a matter of hours; the barrier to entry is very l...
Platforms & Apps
4 Reasons Every Retailer Should Have a Mobile App

April 3, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Mobile applications resonate with shoppers, are easy to implement, come with a variety of abilities and purposes, and are becoming the standard for online retailers. There are at least four reasons nearly every retailer should offer a mobile application. Mobile commerce is among the fa...
Design & Development
7 Ways Mobile Commerce Will Change Retail

March 28, 2013 • Armando Roggio

As the online and offline worlds converge, mobile commerce has the potential to eclipse desktop-based ecommerce and, perhaps, even replace a significant portion of traditional retail shopping. Mobile-driven online sales in the U.S. are expected to reach $2.12 billion in 2013 and explod...
Amazon & Marketplaces
5 Tips for Increasing Amazon Sales by 50 Percent

March 20, 2013 • Armando Roggio

The Amazon marketplace gives online retailers big and small the opportunity to sell to millions of potential customers, significantly increase sales, and acquire loyal shoppers. Competition on Amazon can be fierce. By some estimates, Amazon receives nearly 90 million unique visitors ea...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Google’s ‘Merchant Quality Score’ Could Make Marketplaces More Attractive

March 14, 2013 • Armando Roggio

A possible change to the way Google ranks merchants on its results pages might make multi-channel selling on marketplaces or comparison shopping engines important. During a recent panel discussion at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference and Festival, Matt Cutts, who is the head of ...