Category

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

Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Internet Explorer 9

September 20, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Microsoft released a preview of its Internet Explorer (IE) 9 web browser on September 15, promising users "a more beautiful web." Historically, Microsoft's IE browsers are widely used by Internet novices and widely hated by Internet regulars. Web developers, ecommerce merchants, and ...
Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Firefox 4 Panorama

September 13, 2010 • Armando Roggio

On average, Americans spent about 56 hours on the Internet in June 2010, according to a recent Nielsen Wire report. Ecommerce merchants, whose workplace is on the web, likely spend many more hours online than the average user. With so much time spent online, a web browser's features an...
Design & Development
Volunteer for a Free Mobile-Optimized Ecommerce Site

September 6, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Editor's Note: We published the following article seeking a merchant for our forthcoming mobile optimization series. Many merchants replied, and we selected DecalGirl.com, a seller of mobile device "skins," or coverings. You can follow our series on mobile optimizing DecalGirls' ecommer...
Typography & Fonts
The PEC Review: Fontspring, the Typographical Fountain

August 30, 2010 • Armando Roggio

The very letters and words on a web page can help build a brand and engage customers. Thanks to better browser support and several new services, the Internet is being filled with rich and diverse fonts even now. For years, so-called web safe fonts—meaning the most common fonts supporte...
Business
New Firefox Release: Faster, Better Video, Different Look

August 26, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Last week, the Mozilla Foundation released a new version of its Firefox 4 web browser. The new version offers better performance, improved tab management, more HTML5 video support, synchronization, and ...
Design & Development
APIs: What Online Merchants Need to Know

August 25, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Editor's Note: In our "Need to Know" series, we explain complex web topics on an executive-level, "need to know" basis. For this installment, Contributing Editor Armando Roggio explains application programming interfaces. The "Need to Know" Series Five Web Design Concepts Ecommerce M...
Design & Dev Tools
The PEC Review: Feedingo Organizes Feeds, Keeps Me Informed

August 23, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Informed ecommerce entrepreneurs must stay on top of industry news, web trends, and best practices. To achieve this, some wander around the web from one blog or site to another, or they absorb dozens of email newsletters. It would be better if all of the best blog posts, articles, and...
Design & Development
Databases: What Online Merchants Need to Know

August 19, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Editor's Note: We continue our "Need to Know" series, where we explain complex web topics on an executive-level, "need to know" basis. For this installment, Contributing Editor Armando Roggio explains relational databases. The "Need to Know" Series Five Web Design Concepts Ecommerce ...
Design & Development
Synchronized Applications Transformed Two Businesses

August 17, 2010 • PEC Staff

InkJetSuperstore.com and Wrigleyville Sports were once losing customers and sales. Now they are both successful and growing. In fact, just prior to a recent Practical eCommerce webinar, InkJetSuperstore.com CEO Ilan Douek spilled the beans about his prior day’s order volume. It was more...
Design & Development
Google Docs: Word Processing, Collaboration, More

August 17, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Google offers a variety of useful free tools merchants can use in place of other more costly software. One of these is Google Docs, a free word processing tool with plenty of room for file storage and many unique tools unmatched by other word processors. The most important of these is t...
Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Shopify

August 16, 2010 • Armando Roggio

There are nearly 600 different shopping cart solutions to choose from. While many of these carts are functional, a relative few rise to the top in terms of their ease of use, how much creative freedom they allow, and how well they help a merchant present their products. Shopify is on...
Platforms & Apps
ProStores Upgrades Platform, Simplifies Store Design and Management

August 12, 2010 • PEC Staff

Editor's Note: Ecommerce service providers frequently launch new, interesting products, or issue upgrades to existing ones. We address these new products and upgrades periodically, and in this installment Contributing Editor Lisa Morgan explains eBay Prostores' new upgrade to its hosted...
Platforms & Apps
Getting Started in Ecommerce: What’s a Shopping Cart?

August 11, 2010 • Armando Roggio

The ecommerce shopping cart is a software package that accepts customer payment and shipping information and facilitates the distribution of that information to merchants, payment processors, or others. At the surface, an ecommerce shopping cart is really something that every beginning...
Design & Dev Tools
The PEC Review: Mockingbird, for Wireframes

August 9, 2010 • Armando Roggio

In terms of website design, wireframes serve as a visual guide to page structure and interface. Web designers use wireframes in much the same way that builders use an architect's blueprints. It is certainly possible to build a website without a wireframe, just like it is possible to bu...
Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Comodo Dragon, A Web Browser

August 2, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce merchants are digital natives. They live, in a sense, online, operating their businesses, marketing, and even servicing customers on the World Wide Web. But the Internet can be a wild place, and sometimes digital natives become a little too comfortable with their surroundings...
Design & Development
Great User Experience Is More than a Pretty Ecommerce Site

July 29, 2010 • PEC Staff

Many ecommerce merchants think of user experience in terms of the user interface. They take great pains to optimize the aesthetic appearance of their sites with the goal of increasing conversions. Yet, it’s often the less sexy backend issues that are driving customers away, and increa...
User Experience
Screen Readers: Eight Frequently Asked Questions

July 27, 2010 • PEC Staff

Editor's Note: The article below discusses screen readers, the software that reads aloud text on a computer screen. Screen reader software allows visually handicapped consumers to use Internet sites. To help text-reading consumers understand what a visually-handicapped user experiences,...
Design & Development
The PEC Review: IETester for Browser Testing

July 19, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce entrepreneurs and marketers must pay careful attention to website analytics. Like conscientious doctors watching a patient for any sign of improvement, site owners and marketers study many details of visitor data, including which web browsers those visitors are using. Thanks...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: nsCommerceSpace by Network Solutions

July 16, 2010 • Kate Monteith

There are nearly 600 online shopping carts. And each week we feature one, interviewing both the cart's developer and a customer. "Cart of the Week" is not a review or an evaluation, but rather an opportunity to learn about a shopping cart from the people who build it and use it. This w...
Design & Development
Not PCI Compliant? No Problem

July 14, 2010 • Kerry Murdock

By Practical eCommerce's count, there are nearly 600 English-language shopping carts. These include hosted carts, licensed software carts and open-source carts. There are small ones with just a few clients, and large ones with tens of thousands of clients. But, as of July 14, only 40 o...
Design & Development
8 Questions on Cloud Computing

July 13, 2010 • PEC Staff

Traditional web hosting assumes that customers pay for a fixed amount of storage space and a fixed amount of bandwidth. But the traffic to many websites varies, and storage and bandwidth needs fluctuate over time. For those websites, cloud computing, or cloud hosting, could save them ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: FatFreeCartPro by E-junkie

July 9, 2010 • Kate Monteith

This week, we'll hear from Robin Kohli, founder and lead developer for E-junkie, the company behind FatFreeCartPro, an online shopping cart. E-junkie is headquartered in New Delhi, India, with its support team based in Tucson, Ariz. According to Kohli, there are roughly 9,000 merchants using FatFreeCartPro, “As well as a couple thousand other users who are in the trial period
Schools & Resources
Booklist: Invodo CEO Craig Wax

July 6, 2010 • Nic Murdock

In “Booklist” we ask Internet professionals about the books and blogs they read, and why. For this list, we asked Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo, an ecommerce video company. Wax leads ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Digital River’s CCNow

July 2, 2010 • Kate Monteith

This week, we'll hear from Brant Pallazza, vice president of marketing for Digital River, the parent company of the online shopping cart known as CCNow. Digital River is based in Minneapolis, Minn., and its CCNow ecommerce platform serves roughly 10,000 users. We'll also hear from a CCNow customer, Buddy Carr.
Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Magento 1.3 Sales Tactics Cookbook

June 28, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Not everyone that downloads Magento can, frankly, figure it out since the platform's effectiveness comes with certain a level of complexity.
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: DesignCart

June 25, 2010 • Kate Monteith

There are more than 500 online shopping carts. And each week we feature one, interviewing both the cart's developer and a customer. "Cart of the Week" is not a review or an evaluation, but rather an opportunity to learn about a shopping cart from the people who build it and use it. Thi...
Design & Development
What’s a Video Codec?

June 21, 2010 • PEC Staff

Editor's Note: Most observers agree that video enhances an ecommerce site and likely increases its conversion rate. But there are many different video formats, and the terminology surrounding the use of video can be daunting. To help us sort through some of these complexities, we contin...
Design & Development
Prebuilt Ecommerce Templates Save Money, Says AlgoZone’s CEO

June 17, 2010 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce merchants frequently incur development fees to obtain specific features or appearances for their websites. But there are also prebuilt templates that can do this, at prices much less than custom-built solutions. One maker of these is AlgoZone. It offers hundreds of ready-mad...
Code
What Are AJAX and Dynamic JavaScript?

June 16, 2010 • Joseph C. Dolson

Editor's Note: Ecommerce merchants operate businesses using complex technologies. We launched our "Need to Know" series to help merchants obtain a basic understanding of these technologies, recognizing that most merchants are not web developers or programmers. In this installment, contr...
Code
HTML5 Video: 12 Frequently Asked Questions

June 14, 2010 • PEC Staff

Editor's Note: Many observers believe the new version of HTML, called HTML5, will change online video because of the <video> tag that the new version contains. But, there are many unresolved details involving HTML5 video, and we asked a video expert about some of these. The exper...

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