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
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
Design & Development
Language Translation for Ecommerce Video

October 15, 2010 • Christian Arno

Editor's Note: We welcome Christian Arno as our new language-translation contributor. Arno is a professional linguist, and the founder of Lingo24, a translation and localization firm with translators located worldwide. With the advent of the digital age, borders have become blurred. Wh...
Design & Dev Tools
Google Apps: Free Business Tools, Plus Collaboration Services

October 13, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

As Google expands the number of tools and services it offers, it also seeks to package those services so they can be linked with each other and between the main user and other collaborators. This is the idea behind Google Apps, a suite of productivity and collaboration tools. Google l...
Platforms & Apps
8 Keyboard Shortcuts for Internet Explorer 9

October 12, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 is a modern, fast, and efficient web browser that will speed up the web for its users. But, if you really want to get the most out of this new and vastly improved web browser, you've got to take advantage of keyboard shortcuts. Every browser has keyboar...
Design & Development
Preparing for Mobile Devices: Commonly Asked Questions

October 8, 2010 • PEC Staff

The shift to a mobile web has many ecommerce merchants wondering what their options are. Should they develop a mobile-optimized site that can be displayed by common web browsers? Or, should they develop platform-specific applications for iPhone and Android devices? And, importantly, how...
Platforms & Apps
5 Essential Firefox Add-ons

October 5, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Mozilla's Firefox web browser helped pioneer the concept of browser add-ons and extensions, making custom web surfing experiences and tools possible. The Firefox Add-on directory includes more than 13,000 browser extensions. According to Mozilla, the browser's various add-ons have be...
User Experience
9 Mouse Gestures For the Opera Browser

September 28, 2010 • Armando Roggio

The Opera web browser allows web surfers to use quick, predetermined mouse movements to complete many common browsing tasks, such as going back to a previous page, opening new tabs, or reloading a page. Once users become familiar with these mouse gestures, they can surf the web potenti...
Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Libsyn for Video, Audio Podcasting

September 27, 2010 • Armando Roggio

From product or how-to videos to expert audio podcasts, many online merchants use multimedia to help sell products and engage customers. Examples of ecommerce companies using video and audio abound, but they include REI and Maker SHED. Yet, both of these examples are from relatively ...
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...

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