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Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Sure Solutions’ Actinic Shopping Cart
November 21, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In this, our "Cart of the Week" feature, we’ll profile—but not evaluate—a specific shopping cart and ask its management about its strengths and weaknesses. We’ll then ask a customer about the cart, too. In this in...
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Conversion
Survey: Female Shoppers are Influenced by Their Friends
November 19, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Personal recommendations and coupons or flyers passed on by friends are key factors in how female shoppers select products, according to a survey of 2,000 women from SheSpeaks, a marketing agency and social network for women. “SheSpeaks members are representative of influential and eng...
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Checkout Tactics
Secure Checkout Most Important in Attracting New Customers
November 19, 2008 • Armando Roggio
A newly released consumer survey from Harris Interactive, a research firm, and Volusion, a hosted shopping cart company, suggests that payment security is—not surprisingly—a top issue for online shoppers. The survey asked more than 2,400 online shoppers aged 18 or older what factors in...
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Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: MightyMerchant Offers Full-Service Ecommerce Platform
November 14, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In this, our “Cart Of The Week” feature, we’ll profile—but not evaluate—a specific shopping cart and ask its management about its strengths and weaknesses. We’ll then ask a competitor or a customer about the cart, to...
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Conversion
Direct Traffic is Better Than Google Traffic
November 14, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Not all web traffic is equal and understanding the value of direct traffic can help online retailers hone their marketing. “Direct traffic” is web traffic you get from people who already know about your website or store. They either click a bookmark to come to your site or type your si...
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Fraud Prevention
New PCI Compliance Standards Take Effect
November 13, 2008 • Armando Roggio
The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council recently released a new version of its Data Security Standard (DSS), making minor but important changes and clarifications to the PCI compliance standard that responsible online merchants follow to protect their customers and av...
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Conversion
Online Retailers Want More Web Traffic
November 12, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Preliminary results from a new Practical eCommerce survey showed that at least 63 percent of respondents thought traffic generation was a big challenge, and more than 31 percent saw it as their biggest challenge. Practical eCommerce launched the first of a series of reader surveys on N...
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Platforms & Apps
Maxthon: China’s Ad Smashing, Proxy Switching, Web Browser
November 11, 2008 • Armando Roggio
The Maxthon web browser brings several great features to the same platform as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and lets users pretend to be from other counties so they can access otherwise restricted sites. For the past several weeks, Practical eCommerce has been reviewing the leadin...
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Platforms & Apps
Opera 9.6 Browser: Links Email, Desktop, and Mobile
November 4, 2008 • Armando Roggio
If you want evidence that there is a hot browser war underway, you need look no further than the new Opera 9.6 web browser that some believe is a response to Google’s game-changing Chrome browser. When Google launched the beta version of its Chrome browser on September 2, 2008,...
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Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Interspire “Obsesses Over Quality”
October 31, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. This includes licensed carts, hosted carts, and open-source carts. In this, our "Cart of the Week" feature, we’ll profile—but not evaluate—a specific shopping cart asking about its strengths and weaknesses. We’ll the...
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Platforms & Apps
Google’s Chrome: The Prototype for Tomorrow’s Browsers
October 28, 2008 • Armando Roggio
When Google introduced its Chrome browser on September 2, 2008, it began the foundation for an improved Internet experience—full of rich web applications—and launched the next round of commercial combat with chief rival Microsoft. If Google is going to compete against Microsoft for a sh...
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Customer Retention
Use Comparison Shopping Sites To Boost Leads
October 21, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Savvy online retailers can attract thrifty customers this holiday season with a sound comparison shopping strategy, but those merchants must be careful not to create a lot of extra work, damage their reputation, or waste money. Comparison shopping sites like Shopping.com, Bizrate.com, ...
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Platforms & Apps
Browser Review: Mozilla Firefox 3
October 14, 2008 • Armando Roggio
By some estimates, more than 1.4 billion people use the Internet for work, entertainment, or commerce. All of those web surfers must use a browser to visit websites or shop at online stores, and if browsing speed, security, and functionality matter, those users should be cruising the in...
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Platforms & Apps
Browser Review: Internet Explorer
October 7, 2008 • Armando Roggio
When Google introduced its Chrome web browser in September, it fired the first shot in a new browser war, challenging Microsoft’s supremacy, frightening its open-source ally, Firefox, and initiating a race toward better usability and more features. To be fair, there had been plenty of ...
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Payments
Amazon Payment Service Allows for Advanced Options
October 6, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Amazon.com has been offering a beta version of its Flexible Payment Service (FPS) to merchants for almost a year now. With many developer-friendly features, some sellers could benefit from adding Amazon FPS to their payment options, especially if they’re already using Amazon to sell the...
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Business
Quick Query: Pilot Identifies Niche With PDF Aviation Maps
October 3, 2008 • Armando Roggio
In the United States there will be 590,349 pilots collectively flying some 28 million hours in 228,000 different aircraft this year alone, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). To navigate, those pilots use altimeters, global positioning, and good old-fashioned ma...
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Photography & Video
Video Boosts Sales for Online Retailers
October 1, 2008 • Armando Roggio
At brick-and-mortar retailers, shoppers can stroll the isles, handle items, speak to clerks, and receive well placed merchandising messages. It’s not that easy for ecommerce merchants. They must find new and inventive ways to engage and convert customers; using well written and persuasi...
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Google Ads
Seven Tactics to Boost Online Banner-ad Response Rates
September 26, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Ecommerce has been the great equalizer for retailers—a small book store in Iowa can oftentimes compete with Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon for customers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or the world, but equality isn't always good. There are times when it's good to have a comp...
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Platforms & Apps
Magento's iPhone Theme: Mobile Commerce for the Masses?
September 24, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Magento Commerce, an open source ecommerce platform, has introduced an Apple iPhone specific theme that is potentially the first step toward leveling the playing field for small online retailers who want to compete in the lucrative and booming mobile ecommerce market. Mobile eCommerce ...
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Platforms & Apps
Yahoo! Store Users: SSL Servers are Moving
September 22, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, a leading ecommerce provider, is migrating its secure socket layer (SSL) certificates to new servers, improving their system's flexibility, but forcing some e-retailers to make changes to their stores before an October 15 deadline to avoid cart errors. The SS...