PEC Staff
Practical Ecommerce is a leading online magazine for ecommerce businesses. Its mission is to provide independent editorial and commentary to help merchants of all sizes.
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Design & Development
Does Google Checkout Affect Your Business?
September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
On June 30, 2006 Google launched a service called Google Checkout. This is a new application allowing businesses to process online orders through Google. It serves as an alternative to PayPal or regular credit-card processing. It’s interesting to look at the launch of this service from...
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Conversion
Customer Conversion: Testing Brings Science To Marketing
September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
There are two things every ecommerce business should strive to achieve. The first is increasing conversion, turning a higher percentage of browsers into buyers. The second is optimizing marketing spend, driving higher rates of return from existing advertising dollars being spent. The m...
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Conversion
Usability Report Card: FugitiveToys.com
September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Josh Pigford was confident enough to put his site, Fugitivetoys.com up for the inaugural “Usability Report Card.” While a lot of attention is paid to search engine optimization and online advertising, usability is sometimes given the cold shoulder by small ecommerce businesses. However,...
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Design & Development
GoECart’s Manish Chowdhary
September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Manish Chowdhary of GoECart outlines in great detail his vision of the future of online shopping carts as well as discussed some of the differences between software solutions and hosted ...
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Business
Product Sourcing: Six Questions
September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
If you’ve got a question about your ebusiness, someone else has probably already asked it. Matt Hedges, customer support manager of Worldwidebrands.com, answers the six most common productsourcing questions he gets from customers wanting to start an online endeavor: Will suppliers car...
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Design & Development
Create Your Own Online TV Station
August 28, 2006 • PEC Staff
It will happen! TV and the Internet will eventually merge into one giant multi-media "melting pot" that includes everything from live footage and old reruns to garage videos posted by your next door neighbor's kid. Just like cable TV fractured network TV, the Internet will enable everyo...
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Conversion
Ten Ways to Grow Your Online Store Sales, Part 1
August 28, 2006 • PEC Staff
These days, setting up an online storefront is easier, less expensive and more valuable than ever as more and more people get comfortable shopping online. Setting up an online storefront is a great way to start a business or grow sales by extending the reach of your current business. Wh...
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Business
Authorize.Net’s Corey Koenig
August 21, 2006 • PEC Staff
Corey Koenig, channel sales manager for Authorize.Net, provides an interesting insight into the landscape of shopping carts and what a payment gateway like Authorize.Net is concerned about. Koenig also discusses ...
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Conversion
Growing Your Sales Using eBay Sales Data
August 20, 2006 • PEC Staff
Understanding product markets can help you determine what you should sell online and how you should sell it. The right product at the wrong time or sold the wrong way can be an eBay seller’s downfall. There are many resources for gauging what methods will work best for you. You can use ...
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Business
What Should I Sell Online?
August 15, 2006 • PEC Staff
Everyone who starts an ebiz faces the question: What do I sell? And most everyone seems to make two classic mistakes in the beginning: They try to sell what everyone else is selling: DVDs, electronics and designer clothing. The problem they encounter is that the market is already s...
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Business
The Price is Right!
August 4, 2006 • PEC Staff
Avoiding Common Mistakes A trap many eBiz owners fall into is trying to set their prices by simply adding a percentage or flat amount to an item's cost– they buy a watch for $20, slap another $20 on the price tag, and pass it along to their customers. The problem with this type of pric...
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Design & Development
Stay Safe with Your Wireless Network
August 4, 2006 • PEC Staff
A wireless network can bring tremendous flexibility to your office, freeing employees to use laptops, tablet PCs and other devices at any desk-side meeting or conference-room presentation anywhere in the office suite. It can also eliminate the costs and restrictions involved with numero...
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Conversion
Vertical Search Could Mean Better ROI
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Raise your hand if you’ve implemented or managed a Google AdWords campaign for your online business. Instantly, thousands of hands just touched the sky. According to JupiterResearch, advertising trends online have mirrored those in traditional television and print media. What many onli...
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Conversion
With Limited Ad Dollars, What’s The Answer
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Each small ecommerce business tries to squeeze every drop of value out of his limited advertising dollars. Online advertising options have grown very congested in the last few years, saturating the marketplace and making it more difficult for a business to get noticed — unless it is dol...
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Conversion
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Evaluating Options
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Practical eCommerce recently conducted a pay-per-click advertising test with four search engines — Google, Yahoo!, Ask and MSN. On behalf of two online businesses, the magazine purchased $50 of identical ads for both of them on each search engine. In addition to measuring number of cli...
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Conversion
Analysis: Search Engines Are Not Created Equal
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
The pay-per-click test Practical eCommerce conducted on search engines Google, Yahoo!, Ask and MSN netted some interesting data, but perhaps the most valuable information came outside the numbers. I have never set up this type of pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, so I came to this project ...
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Conversion
Q&A: Outlook for Search Advertising Prices
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Will ecommerce firms pay more or less for paid search ads in the near future? Google’s net profit in 2005 exceeded 30 percent of gross revenue. This is a huge profit margin compared to many other companies and industries. Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com are investing heavily for a portion of t...
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Conversion
PPC Expense: What Is A Customer Worth?
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
When determining how much to spend on a pay-per-click campaign, an etailer should first calculate what a customer is worth to his business. Getting a customer to purchase a single product isn’t the goal of most ecommerce site owners. However, most owners fail to calculate the potential...
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Business
Product Sourcing: The Skinny on Government Auctions
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Are government auctions really a good source for purchasing products for resale? The answer to that is they can be, but you have to know what you are doing. Where do government auctions get their products? Government auctions can be held online, live ‘in-person’ or sealedbid. They acq...
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Conversion
Use In-store Kiosks to Promote Website
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
When was the last time you were shopping for an item you just had to have, only to discover when you got to the store you couldn’t buy it in the color or size you wanted? If you are like most retail shoppers, you have experienced an out-of-stock situation recently. This is one of the m...
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Business
Quick Query: RedRoller.com’s Bill Van Wyck
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
What Travelocity does for travel, RedRoller does for shipping packages. The site is built to look and feel like an etravel site. Shipping for small businesses is a day-to-day occurrence. The typical ecommerce business spends close to $1,000 per month and ships 120-150 packages every month.
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Conversion
Pay-Per-Call: New Player on the Scene?
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Online advertising is heating up and growing quickly in popularity. However, many companies are missing out if they don’t have a website or if their services are not fit to be sold over the web. Fortunately, a new version of paid advertising has emerged recently — pay-per-call. Pay-per...
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Conversion
Web Design: Function Trumps Form
July 11, 2006 • PEC Staff
A well-designed site is important, but it will not be the key factor in determining your sales success. It's not uncommon for a business owner to turn to a design-oriented person to help create a website for his company. That may, however, be a mistake. Conversion specialists routinely...
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Conversion
Turning Visitors Into Customers
July 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
It may be the most common problem ecommerce businesses face: plenty of traffic but few sales. Converting visitors into customers is a blend of both art and science and, once it’s understood, it’s a skill that will reap rewards for a company’s bottom line. The Web Analytics Association ...
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Conversion
Measuring Conversion Success
July 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
An ecommerce site with 6 to 9 percent of its visitors making purchases can be considered a success, according to conversion experts. With an industry standard hovering around 1 to 2 percent, most sites are failing to capture all the business they can have. Once a company makes a commit...
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Business
Quick Query: Coremetrics’ Jane Paolucci
July 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
PeC: Why is conversion important to ecommerce businesses? Paolucci: Ecommerce businesses are constantly seeking new ways to enhance their websites to drive incremental revenue, reduce costs associated with customer acquisition and sales and increase customer loyalty. While driving ...
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Google Ads
Tips & Tricks for Discovering Lowcost Keywords
July 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Keywords are considered the lifeline of any successful pay per click campaign. If you select the wrong ones, you can zip through your entire advertising budget without getting anything in return. If you choose the right ones, you can beat your competition to the punch and get a better R...
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Conversion
Personalization Lures Customers
June 11, 2006 • PEC Staff
Everyone likes the personal touch, and these sites offer their customers the ability to personalize unique gifts for friends and loved ones. Creative, personalized gifts and speedy service will lure their customers back. PhotoWow.com Ordinary snaps can be turned into treasures with th...
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Conversion
Grow Profits by Split-Testing Ads
June 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Successful business owners and marketing professionals know that great results from advertising are rarely owed to luck and guessing. Whether they specialize in online or offline promotion, they have known for years that the secret to achieving high return of investment is through split...
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Business
Drop Shipping: Pros and Cons
June 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Drop shipping remains a hot topic among etailers but, even though it has many benefits, it isn’t the best option for every business. A drop shipper is a product supplier who is willing to ship individual orders. Usually when products are purchased for resale, you have to buy them in bu...
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