Design & Development
The nuts and bolts of an ecommerce site are design and development. We address design innovation and trends — including layouts, colors, photography, logos, video, and more. We explain the basics of code — HTML, CSS, JavaScript — as well as platforms, themes, plugins, open source, and related topics.
Code | Design & Dev Tools | Platforms & Apps | Schools & Resources | Typography & Fonts | User Experience-
Design & Development
Strategies for Global Domain Names
December 20, 2010 • Christian Arno
Domain names have become big business in the world of ecommerce. Logo.com recently sold (according to TechCrunch) for $500,000 to a company called – you guessed it – Logo.com. The ...
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Platforms & Apps
Cart Talk: HipsAndHair.com Owner on the Yahoo! Shopping Cart
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...
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Design & Development
Prepare for the Mobile Commerce Surge
December 16, 2010 • Armando Roggio
In the past year, mobile commerce has doubled in volume and by 2015 consumers could be spending nearly $24 billion per year from Internet-enabled mobile devices in the U.S. alone. The mobile commerce market must be taken seriously, explained TRUSTe's director of mobile products Janet J...
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Design & Development
How to Test a Website on Different Browsers
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 ...
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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Mobify CEO Igor Faletski
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 ...
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Business
Internet Explorer 9 to Include Tracking Protection, Content Blocking
December 14, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Microsoft announced that its forthcoming Internet Explorer (IE) 9 web browser will include an opt-in anti-tracking feature that will block third-party content, and even prevent programs like Google Analytics from working. This is on the heels of a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rep...
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Platforms & Apps
Cart Talk: Seventh.Ink Owner on LemonStand Shopping Cart
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 ...
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Business
Opera Mail Brings a Feature-Rich Mail Client to Your Browser
December 7, 2010 • Armando Roggio
The free Opera web browser includes a built-in and feature-rich email client that lets you surf the web, subscribe to feeds, and manage your email from a single platform. There are a number of excellent email clients available, including Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, Mac OS X Mail, and...
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User Experience
Optimizing an Ecommerce Site for Mobile Devices, Part 2: Layout and Design
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 ...
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Platforms & Apps
Cart Talk: SuburbanHomeRecords.com CEO on ‘Limited Pressing’ Shopping Cart
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 ...
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Design & Development
How to Install Buttons from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
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...
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Platforms & Apps
Opera 11 Launches Tab Stacking
November 29, 2010 • Armando Roggio
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Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Yahoo! Clues, for Trend Tracking
November 29, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Yahoo! has released a new trend-tracking tool that identifies what users looked for before and after a particular search term and estimates those users' annual incomes, potentially providing online retailers with good customer intelligence. Search marketing, whether via pay-per-click (...
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Design & Development
Are Consumers Really Buying Products on Mobile Devices?
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 ...
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Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Yahoo! Meme for Microblogging, Sharing
November 22, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Social media marketing is proving to be an effective way to engage customers and improve sales for online stores. The social media landscape is, at least for the moment, dominated by two major services, Facebook and Twitter. But there are many other services that offer the possibility ...
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Platforms & Apps
RockMelt, The Next Social Browser?
November 19, 2010 • Armando Roggio
RockMelt is a new web browser that integrates with Facebook so that every page can be quickly shared and every post from a friend discovered. RockMelt is built using Chromium, which is the open-source web browser project that underlies Chrome; so it performs almost as well as the speed...
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Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Wufoo Online Form Builder
November 15, 2010 • Armando Roggio
In the Internet age, consumers encounter web forms with regularity. There are registration forms, login forms, contact forms, customer service forms, survey forms, content submission forms, package tracking forms, or checkout forms on just about every website. Web forms are, as such, o...
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Business
Mobile Bandwidth: An Expert Explains 3G, 4G, WiFi
November 11, 2010 • PEC Staff
The usability of a mobile website frequently depends on the speed of the wireless connection. A mobile user with a 3G cellular connection, for example, would likely be frustrated with the relative slow response to a WiFi-optimized mobile site. But what, exactly, is the difference betwe...
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Design & Development
6 Reasons to Use URL Redirects
November 10, 2010 • Michael Stearns
A URL redirect is a mapping from one web page address to another. You can set it up on your web server or even in the source of a web page that you have created. You don't need to be at technical whiz to run a successful ecommerce business, but redirects are one of those small technical...
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Design & Development
Merchant Shares Experiences with Mobile-Optimized Site
November 8, 2010 • PEC Staff
Ecommerce retailers who contemplate mobile commerce must ask several questions. One is whether to develop a mobile-optimized site or a mobile app. Another is whether to include special mobile search. And there are other questions, too. One ecommerce firm that developed its own mobile-op...
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Design & Dev Tools
The PEC Review: Google Docs
November 8, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Managing a small-to-midsized retail business often includes tracking, updating, and storing a lot of information. Spreadsheets filled with vendor pricing, co-op advertising submission forms, project documents, wireframes for a website redevelopment,
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Design & Development
Conversion Tip: Persistent Carts Help ‘Wish List’ Shoppers
November 4, 2010 • Charles Nicholls
Editor's Note: This week's "Conversion Tip" addresses the reality of shoppers that abandon carts, and then return to them later to purchase. The author is Charles Nicholls, founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy, a conversion and abandonment-recovery firm. Research published by U...
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Design & Development
Optimizing an Ecommerce Site for Mobile Devices, Part 1: Getting Started
November 3, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons
In September we published "Volunteer for a Free Mobile-Optimized Ecommerce Site," an offer for one merchant to volunteer for a mobile optimization case study in which we follow the process of creating a mobile site step-by-step. Dozens of merchants submitted their sites, and after a rev...
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Platforms & Apps
Become an Opera Power User in 3 Steps
November 2, 2010 • Armando Roggio
The Opera browser offers one of the most innovative user experiences available. Clearly the browser is a trendsetter. It was the first to introduce tabs, the first to maximize the page-viewing area and minimize controls, and it continues to include new features and new ways for users t...
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Design & Development
Switch to Cloud Hosting Pays Off for SoundsTrue.com
October 28, 2010 • PEC Staff
Every ecommerce site has a web host. Some are hosted by shopping cart providers; others are hosted by third-party companies. And increasingly, many are hosted by cloud providers, where bandwidth and usage can adjust with the seasonal needs of a site. One ecommerce company that has recen...
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Design & Development
ThePopcornFactory.com VP Touts New Mobile Version
October 26, 2010 • PEC Staff
Many merchants, large and small, are contemplating their mobile commerce strategies, and one merchant that has just launched a mobile version of its ecommerce site is The Popcorn Factory. The person responsible for marketing that company and that site is Tom Russell. He's senior vice pr...
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Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Use Jira for Bug Tracking, Project Management
October 25, 2010 • Armando Roggio
As ecommerce businesses grow from entrepreneurial startups to mid-sized retailers, they can become much more complex to manage. As a startup, the operation was likely managed by one or two people. Fixing website glitches was pretty straightforward. You saw something wrong. You fixed it...
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Platforms & Apps
Managing Pop-Ups in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome
October 22, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Ecommerce professionals spend many hours each day online. They monitor their businesses, check email, market products, post to social media sites, watch the competition, or otherwise do any one of a hundred business-related activities. Into the midst of this online experience come pop-ups — ads, forms, controls, whatever.
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Design & Development
Interview: Subscription Revenues Can Supplement Ecommerce Sales
October 21, 2010 • PEC Staff
The notion of adding additional revenue to an ecommerce business presumably appeals to merchants. And, increasingly, one way to do that is with the use of subscriptions. Amazon Prime may be the best example of a merchant selling subscriptions, but there are many ways smaller merchants c...
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Business
Internet Explorer 9: Managing Cookies and Cache
October 19, 2010 • Armando Roggio
From managing cookies to clearing your browser cache, there are essential tasks that every web surfer needs to know. Think of it this way. Many professionals and entrepreneurs use a web browser like Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to access web-based email, conduct research, or even...