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.

Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Know-How: Should You Host Your Own Website?

July 22, 2009 • Armando Roggio

For some ecommerce businesses, operating an in-house HTTP server and the associated server software can improve website performance, increase data security, and lower overall costs. But hosting your site yourself is not for everyone. Ecommerce businesses rely on the Internet. It is the...
Technical SEO
PeC Traffic Report: Searches for “Saving” Words Slowing in 2009

July 20, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Google search queries for "saving" words like "coupon" and "discount" were relatively flat in the first half of 2009. This is in spite of a U.S. national unemployment rate that has risen 69.6 percent in a year and the remaining effects of widespread recession. Relative data from Google...
Google Ads
Survey Results: Online Merchants Likely to Use Bing Pay-per-click Advertising

July 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Two thirds of respondents to a June 2009 Practical eCommerce survey said they were either using or would use Microsoft's Bing search engine for pay-per-click advertising, and an additional 25.3 percent said they would consider Bing. Altogether, some 92 percent of survey respondents sai...
Schools & Resources
The PeC Review: “The Unofficial Magento User Guide” Helpful for Novices

July 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Magento Commerce, the open source ecommerce platform, has a massive following and an engaged development community. So it is no surprise that one of its devotees has released an unofficial users' guide designed to help do-it-yourselfers implement this powerful platform. James D. Ballo...
Design & Development
Thirteen Great Flash-based Ecommerce Sites

July 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Adobe Flash platform is bringing stunning new examples of rich media to ecommerce sites. New site design techniques make Flash, Flex, and ActionScript, all from Adobe, very viable choices for adding video, audio, or just plain aesthetic awesomeness to any website's design. In this ...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Turn Customers Into Members

July 14, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Focusing a portion of marketing efforts on reselling existing customers or acquiring frequent shoppers could help boost sales for many online merchants. Often online retail marketing focuses on increasing site traffic and converting visitors. This strategy is really the heart of sellin...
Platforms & Apps
Google Operating System May Speed Mobile Ecommerce

July 13, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Google recently announced that it had begun work on a computer operating system that might accelerate interest in the popular mobile Internet device market. Mobile Internet devices (MIDs), which are sometimes called netbooks, are physically small and application-lite laptop computers d...
Schools & Resources
Ten Inspiring Ecommerce Site Designs

July 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Creating a great (and successful) ecommerce site requires a mix of terrific products, strong marketing, informative content, and strong site aesthetics. In this article, I have located ten ecommerce sites that offer inspiration for the site aesthetics portion of this mixture. Certa...
Code
Web Design Tips: Mobilizing Your Site Using CSS

July 8, 2009 • Armando Roggio

With a second style sheet and minor changes to a page's HTML, many online stores can offer an excellent mobile shopping experience without creating a second web page or registering a mobile specific domain. Mobile Internet use is on the rise. And online merchants presumably want to pro...
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Know-How: Mobile Commerce in Four Steps

July 7, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Internet-enabled mobile handsets, mobile Internet devices, and new wireless broadband standards are all making it easier for consumers to shop online while on the move. So, is your store ready to serve these mobile customers? In the evolution of modern shopping, consumers have very rec...
Schools & Resources
The PeC Review: MIT OpenCourseWare A Great Educational Resource

July 6, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the leading universities in the world, offers free online courses that can provide ecommerce business owners and managers with MBA-quality course material. MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) provides open access to the MIT faculty’s course ...
Design & Dev Tools
The Shopping Experience: Icon Dock Excels at Downloadable Graphics

July 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Icon Dock is a beautifully designed, easy-to-use online retailer specializing in downloadable, vector graphic icons. Each month, Practical eCommerce sends me shopping. I make a purchase from a real online merchant—like Icon Dock—and report back to you about the overall checkout process,...
Cross-border Selling
The PeC Review: Bing’s Language Translator

July 1, 2009 • Armando Roggio

In some ways the Internet is like a giant global mall, with shoppers from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico mingling with like-minded buyers from India, Japan, and Spain. To better serve that mall, many online merchants choose to present product information, site navigation, and store polici...
Checkout Tactics
Ecommerce Know-How: Identify Related Products and Boost Sales

June 29, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Good on-site marketing, such as related-product promotions, encourages emotion-driven "joy buying," potentially boosting per-customer revenue and profit. Online shopping can be both a practical and an emotional activity. Often buyers begin an online shopping experience because they see...
Design & Dev Tools
The PeC Review: Adobe Kuler Creates Stunning Colors for Websites

June 23, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Adobe Kuler is a free web application that can help ecommerce site designers select beautiful and communicative color palettes, earning it four-and-a-half stars in "The PeC Review." "Color is such a pervasive part of everyday life that one tends to take it for granted," wrote Ayn E. Cr...
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Know-How: Picking the Right Shopping Cart

June 22, 2009 • Armando Roggio

An online retailer is an online marketer. Often the difference between a successful online business and a failed one is not the product or products available for sale, but how the product is promoted. As an example, consider the case of Marcel Salathé, a Swiss artist and theoretical bi...
Typography & Fonts
Web Design Tips: Cufón is a Fast Font Replacement Solution

June 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio

An easy-to-implement JavaScript called Cufón allows web designers to quickly embed visually interesting fonts on their web pages, opening up new opportunities for typographical design elements. Every medium has constraints. For print, there are things like size, ink density, and paper ...
Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: KompoZer is a Capable, Free Web Authoring System

June 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio

KompoZer is a complete, open-source, and free web authoring system that combines web file management, coding hints, and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) page editor that is easy for non-technical site owners or designers to grasp. The KompoZer editor has an interesting history...
Fraud Prevention
Ecommerce Know-How: Be Ready to Go Beyond PCI DSS Compliance

June 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Although ecommerce fraud incidents as related to sales are at historically low rates, online retailers (particularly small ones) should be concerned about credit card information theft and transaction fraud even beyond the familiar Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS...
Customer Retention
PeC Traffic Report: Four Good Web Tools to Identify Traffic-Building Trends

June 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Participating in trends that matter to your customers can attract significant website traffic, but knowing what trends to follow (or even how to interact with those trends) is a difficult task. In January of this year, Practical eCommerce published a column about developing customer-ce...
Amazon & Marketplaces
The PeC Review: Shopster Is a Brilliant Idea That Needs a Little Polish

June 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Shopster is a unique combination of a hosted ecommerce cart and a relatively easy supply-chain solution that promises to help many small merchants get up and running with a functional and fully-stocked online retail business. The Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based company provides its cust...
Social Media
Ecommerce Know-How: Use Twitter to Build a Community of Loyal Customers

June 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Microblogging site Twitter has the potential to be a powerful marketing and brand-building tool for ecommerce businesses interested in engaging their customers and being part of a community. But successful marketing on Twitter, or any microblogging site, requires more than just posting ...
User Experience
Web Design Tips: The Laws of Ecommerce Navigation Design

June 4, 2009 • Armando Roggio

CSS, Flash, jQuery, and an arsenal of other powerful web techniques and technologies have unbound website design, creating the opportunity to develop either exceptional user interfaces or really frustrating ones. Furthermore, the growth of "cookie-cutter" ecommerce templates (i.e., “i...
Design & Development
The PeC Review: Magento User Guide eBook

June 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Magento Commerce is becoming one of the most popular and, perhaps, most exciting ecommerce platforms available. But with all of its online retailing prowess comes some level of complexity that at least a few merchants find daunting. A new ebook seeks to make using this powerful ecommerc...
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Know-How: Cloud Computing in the Ecommerce Forecast

June 1, 2009 • Armando Roggio

If meteorologists predicted ecommerce and computing trends, the forecast would be at least partly cloudy as more computational and transactional applications join the cloud computing front. But are the wispy clouds on the near horizon the harbinger of a gentle, growth-encouraging rain o...
Finance
Ecommerce Know-How: Alternative Financing

May 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The United States and much of the western world is in the midst of a recession that has made business credit difficult to find. More than 1 million Americans lost their jobs in the third quarter of 2008, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released May 19, 2009. And perhap...
Social Media
The PeC Review: Tinker Sorts Your Twitter Tweets for Brand-Safe Marketing

May 27, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Tinker sorts and organizes Twitter.com tweets around brands, products, and other topics or events. This potentially gives ecommerce businesses a new, brand-safe way to market via social media and a means of monitoring popular trends. Tinker allows users to create so-called events based...
Photography & Video
The Shopping Experience: Envato’s FlashDen Has Broad Selection of Flash Files for Developers

May 22, 2009 • Armando Roggio

FlashDen.net sells Adobe Flash-based plugins, content sliders, animations, preloaders, and menus that web developers can integrate into their designs saving a lot of time. While the site had a great selection of downloadable products, easy navigation, a strong community, and great aes...
Inventory
Ecommerce Know-How: Improve Cash Flow by Delaying Suppliers

May 21, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Cash flow can be the strongest indicator of an ecommerce business's success or failure, and properly managing your accounts payable and receivable can be the difference between success or insolvency. Years ago, I read an article that described cash flow as the difference in time betwee...
Photography & Video
Web Design Tips: Use this PNG Fix for Attractive Images in Older Browsers

May 20, 2009 • Armando Roggio

For most website designs, the portable network graphic, or PNG, is simply the best available image format. But older, noncompliant versions of the Internet Explorer browser (IE) poorly managed this extensible file format's powerful transparency capabilities, making it hard to design for...