January 18, 2011 • PEC Staff

Editor's Note: "Notable Views” is a new series where we ask leading experts to address critical, ecommerce-related topics. For this inaugural installment, we corresponded with Henry Wong, founder and CEO of Adgregate Markets, a provider of Facebook-enabled ecommerce platforms. Social c...

January 13, 2011 • PEC Staff

Photographs enhance an ecommerce site. Photos can feature products, customers or even a company's staff. Photos can personalize a site and increase ecommerce sales. But, depending on a merchant's ecommerce platform, photos can be tricky to upload and limited in their location, quantity...

January 12, 2011 • PEC Staff

Many ecommerce merchants sell products from large manufacturers and suppliers. Increasingly, those manufacturers and suppliers also sell — on a retail basis — the same products. Shopatron is a company ...

January 12, 2011 • PEC Staff

January 10, 2011 • PEC Staff

”Lessons Learned” is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Virgil Dickerson, CEO and owner of Suburban Home ...

January 7, 2011 • PEC Staff

“Ask an Expert” is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about advertising with Google versus Facebook. The question comes from Matthew Johnson, owner and artist behind Seventh.Ink, a Palm Harb...

January 5, 2011 • PEC Staff

Mobile commerce is here and with it comes a steady stream of new mobile browsers. There are device-specific browsers like the BlackBerry browser, Android’s browser and Palm’s WebOS browser. There ...

January 4, 2011 • PEC Staff

In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite books and blogs and tell us why they read them. In this installment, we spoke to Josh ...

December 30, 2010 • PEC Staff

As 2010 draws to a close, we've compiled a list of the 25 most popular Practical eCommerce articles for the year, based on the number of page views. Social media was predominantly on the minds of our readers in 2010, with articles about Facebook taking the top three spots. Other subje...

December 29, 2010 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce business owners depend on Google’s vast array of tools and services to keep their businesses running smoothly. But, the service that made Google famous – the search engine – can be underutilized by ecommerce merchants and their customers. Need an area or zip code for shipping? Find it on Google. Need to track shipments? Track it on Google.

December 28, 2010 • PEC Staff

December 27, 2010 • PEC Staff

Obtaining a loan from a bank to launch that dream ecommerce business can be difficult. But, fortunately there are new funding sources sprouting up that target this niche. “Financing for ...

December 24, 2010 • PEC Staff

Merchants have almost 600 online shopping carts to choose from, including hosted carts, licensed carts and open-sourced carts. Each week in “Cart Talk” we interview a merchant that uses a ...

December 23, 2010 • PEC Staff

In Reading List, we ask ecommerce professionals to share some of their favorite books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we spoke to ...

December 22, 2010 • PEC Staff

“Ask an Expert” is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about email distribution providers that allow purchased ...

December 17, 2010 • PEC Staff

With close to 600 ecommerce shopping carts on the market, merchants have a lot to choose from. Each week in “Cart Talk,” we interview a merchant that uses a particular cart — including hosted carts, licensed carts and open-sourced carts — to get frank, real-world feedback on its use: wh...

December 16, 2010 • PEC Staff

There are many widely used web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. And there are dozens of mobile browsers available, with more in development as each new ...

December 15, 2010 • PEC Staff

In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. In this installment, we ...

December 15, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Lee Wright, president of Ma Mi Skin Care, an Orlando, Fla.-based online store that sells all-natural skin care products. Ma Mi Skin Care launc...

December 14, 2010 • PEC Staff

Obtaining loans to grow ecommerce businesses can be difficult. But, fortunately there are financing sources sprouting up that target this niche. “Financing for Ecommerce” is our occasional series on identifying ...

December 10, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about registering websites with search engines. It comes from Lee Wright, president of Ma Mi Skin Care, a retailer of skin care products f...

December 10, 2010 • PEC Staff

Merchants have almost 600 online shopping carts to choose from, including hosted carts, licensed carts and open-sourced carts. Each week in “Cart Talk” we will be interviewing a merchant that ...

December 8, 2010 • PEC Staff

The adoption continues of product videos on ecommerce sites, and most every merchant, seemingly, can benefit from them. We recently discussed product videos with Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo, a company that provides video solutions for ecommerce merchants. PEC: What factors can determin...

December 6, 2010 • PEC Staff

Editor’s Note: In September we published “Volunteer for a Free Mobile-Optimized Ecommerce Site,” soliciting merchants to volunteer for a mobile optimization case study in which we follow the process of ...

December 3, 2010 • PEC Staff

Editor’s Note: “Cart Talk” is our new, weekly discussion about shopping carts with the merchants that use them. For this inaugural installment, we visit with a merchant that sells both ...

December 2, 2010 • PEC Staff

The “Find Us On Facebook” button has become ubiquitous on the web. Any merchant can embed this button (and many others) into a website in minutes with very little understanding of programming code and a few free online tools, giving consumers quick access to the company's existing soci...

November 23, 2010 • PEC Staff

Remarketing is an advertising concept to solicit consumers who have visited ecommerce sites and left without purchasing. There are different forms of remarketing. One method places a "cookie" in a consumer's web browser when that consumer visits a site, and subsequently shows relevant d...

November 22, 2010 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce merchants may feel more compelled than ever to jump on the nearest mobile platform, but they need to decide if consumers are actually buying products – both digital and tangible – on mobile devices. To be sure, there is a frenzy of excitement around m-commerce, but let’s take ...

November 18, 2010 • PEC Staff

Remarketing is an advertising concept to bring back consumers who have visited ecommerce sites and left without purchasing. In general, the remarketing services fall into two camps. We discussed the first remarketing camp, targeted banner ads, in “Remarketing 101, Part 1: Targeted Banne...

November 12, 2010 • PEC Staff

Remarketing is way for merchants to advertise to consumers that have visited the merchants' stores previously. When a consumer visits a site and a merchant is running one of the available remarketing tools, the merchant can subsequently advertise to that consumer. This advertising is cu...