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

Design & Development
Hosting Companies: Many Options for eCommerce

May 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

It may seem like a daunting task to locate the right domain-hosting firm for your business, as there seems to be an endless sea of options. Wading through the many choices in the web hosting market can be frustrating and confusing. Rather than looking for a hosting company that offers ...
Design & Development
Control Panels Help with Website Management

May 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Long gone are the days a user must contact his Internet service provider or domain hosting company to make changes to an account, add an email address, renew a domain or inquire about bandwidth usage. The advent of the control panel has placed immediate control in the hands of the accou...
Design & Development
Web Servers: Shared, Dedicated, and Virtual-Dedicated

May 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

When selecting a domain host for your business, one of the earliest questions you’ll need to resolve is whether you want a shared, dedicated or virtual-dedicated hosting plan. The main difference between dedicated and shared hosting is how the web server is utilized. In a shared enviro...
Platforms & Apps
Shopping Carts: Features to Consider

April 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

A shopping cart system should be able to accommodate a business’ needs, rather than requiring the business to adjust goals and strategies to match the capabilities of the shopping cart. We've put together a template of sorts that you can use to help decide on a shopping cart system base...
Design & Development
Credit Card Processing: How It All Works

April 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

The credit card processing system is confusing. The players are numerous and the process is complex. To understand how it all works, it helps to grasp the types of companies that are involved, and how much money they typically charge for processing a transaction. David Schwartz is dire...
Design & Development
Web Analytics: Translating the Wall of Data

April 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

Assume an ecommerce operator launches a paid-search advertising campaign. That is, assume the operator purchases several keywords on Yahoo! Search, Google, MSN and others, and then assembles text ads on those search engines to attract visitors to his site. Assume that the campaign start...
Design & Development
Accepting ACH Payments and eChecks

April 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

A consumer must have a credit card to purchase products from an ecommerce site, right? Not necessarily. There are payment-processing options that allow ecommerce operators to deduct the purchase price directly from the bank account of a customer, without the customer having or providin...
Design & Development
Tech Support – April 2006

April 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

What’s a page rank and how does it work? PageRank is Google’s system to rank the relative popularity of a website. Developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, the PageRank system uses the Internet’s vast linking structure to measure an individual web page. A link from o...
Design & Development
Analytics Software Improves Paid Search Campaigns

March 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

John Marshall wants to know what happens after the click. Marshall is CEO and founder of Click Tracks, a company that provides software to analyze the online behavior of website visitors. “It’s not enough to purchase keywords on a search engine merely to attract visitors to a website,” ...
Design & Development
Fulfillment Companies Offer Benefits

February 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Imagine having a state-of-the-art fulfillment department. This fulfillment department would have the most up-to-date order management software, computer hardware and warehousing functions. The employees of the fulfillment department would be experienced and professionally trained. Shipm...
Design & Development
Macromedia Exec Sees “Dreamy” Future

February 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

It is generally agreed among non-programmers that Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash, more than almost any other software products, brought the production of quality, functional websites within reach of non-programmers and changed the way the Internet looked, felt, and sounded....
Code
Optimizing HTML Code for Maximum SEO

February 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Overview Search engine optimization has come to the forefront in recent years as competition for search engine rankings increases. Online business owners often times rely heavily on search engines to generate traffic to their websites, which in turn increases the chances of those visit...
Code
Combining CSS and JavaScript to Save Page Space

February 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Overview Real estate on a website has become a valuable commodity. Website owners and designers are faced with the challenge of providing enough content to satisfy their visitors, while also maintaining the visual appeal and usability of the website. On one end of the spectrum is a web...
Code
HTML Email: Effectiveness Requires Planning

January 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Email can be an essential tool for every online retailer. Professional-looking emails instill confidence, build brand awareness, and increase customer loyalty. Retailers can send email communications using HTML that are as visually engaging and effective. There are a couple of points, h...
Code
An Introduction to CSS – Part 3

January 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Overview In our last two tutorials about Cascading Style Sheets, we covered how to apply styles to all instances of an HTML tag, and also how to create style classes and then selectively apply styles to only certain HTML tags. For the most part, our styles were limited to font treatmen...
Code
Encoding Images Using HTML

January 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Overview One of the most basic HTML elements is the image tag, which is used to tell a browser to display an image on a webpage. While it is a simple tag to learn, the image tag has quite a few attributes that are important to be aware of. For example, using these attributes we can tel...
Platforms & Apps
osCommerce Founder: Open Source Encourages Collaboration

January 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Harald Ponce de Leon had an idea to create an online shopping cart system that would serve as a guide to other ecommerce developers. That was in 2000. In order to attract interest, he released his cart, then called the Exchange Project, under a free, open-source license. Nearly six year...
Design & Development
Optimizing Your Product Images

December 1, 2005 • Brian Getting

Overview Product presentation is more important for an online store than it is for a brick-and-mortar store. Rather than being able to touch an item, inspect it for quality, or try it on as the case may be, an online shopper has only two-dimensional images on which to base their decisi...
Design & Development
Introduction to XML: Creating a Google Sitemap

December 1, 2005 • Brian Getting

Overview Last month, we featured a basic introduction of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and how to begin writing your own XML documents. While we were able to create an XML document to describe data, it may not be clear why this is useful. In an effort to utilize what we learned ...
Code
An Introduction to CSS – Part 2

December 1, 2005 • Brian Getting

Overview In our last Cascading Style Sheets (“CSS”) tutorial we learned how to apply CSS styles to HTML tags using tag selectors. Using these tag selectors we were able to format information using an external style sheet rather than putting all the formatting code into our HTML documen...
Design & Development
An Introduction to XML

November 1, 2005 • Brian Getting

Overview Something about XML is inherently intimidating, and although we all probably hear it referred to a lot. or are aware that it exists, most people do not have any idea what it is. There is a good reason for this, since XML is a technology that is admittedly difficult to nail do...
Code
An Introduction to CSS

November 1, 2005 • Brian Getting

Overview Building HTML pages that are both search engine friendly and appealing to your users is crucial to the success of an online business. In the past, there was a give-and-take relationship between the structure and the formatting of websites. The more appealing the site was to th...
Platforms & Apps
Stephanie Leffler, CEO of MonsterCommerce

November 1, 2005 • Michael A. Cox

Stephanie Leffler says anybody who thinks a successful ecommerce business is about putting up a website in five minutes and counting the money in their pajamas is in for a rude awakening. To her, ecommerce is a real business that requires every bit the investment of time, energy and mon...
Design & Development
Understanding Common Web Error Messages

October 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

Over the years in the interactive marketing business, any consultant worth his or her salt has faced the dilemma of assisting a company whose primary issue is that its “Web site broke.” No more information than that. “It broke.” Many a parent can identify with this description as it p...
Design & Development
Securing an SSL Certificate

October 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

Overview How do you know that I am who I say I am? Likewise, how do I know you are who you say you are? And, if we can’t catapult past this initial, basic level of trust – how will we ever be able to conduct business together? In the Web world, it’s done with an SSL certificate. SSL ...
Design & Dev Tools
Hosting Companies: Top 10 Questions to Ask

October 1, 2005 • Pamela Hazelton

I field many phone calls in any given day. And never does a day pass where I don’t get a call about someone having trouble with their host. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue, and many would be shocked at some of the stories I’ve heard. I think it’s time to just start referring people ...
Platforms & Apps
Blog Platforms: Choose One that Fits Your Need

October 1, 2005 • Paul Chaney

You have bitten the bullet and decided to add a blog to your ecommerce site and make it a part of your marketing mix. You made the strategic decision of why you want to blog, determined what your core message will be and the audience you wish to target. Now, you have to make some tactic...
Design & Development
Web Graphics: Why Are We So Limited?

September 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

As a Web designer and developer, I have worked with graphics in a variety of formats. Anybody who uses Adobe Photoshop – the standard for design production in the interactive business – has learned his or her way around JPG, GIF, TIF, EPS, PSD, PCX and BMP files. Those types of files s...
Code
HTML Primer for the Tech-Challenged

September 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

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Platforms & Apps
How To Choose A Shopping Cart

September 1, 2005 • Michael A. Cox

Good business is about good decisions. Good decisions are ones made after serious research and data gathering. One of the decisions that must be made by ecommerce people is choosing the right shopping cart for their business. The problem is there is a lot to choose from. Mark Baartse, ...

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