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
Use Scripting for Dynamic Websites

August 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

One of the first tasks when planning a website is to develop a strategy for delivering content and functionality to visitors. Since a website is a collection of HTML documents, the most basic approach is to simply code the information you want into these documents. Using this method re...
Design & Development
Control Panels Simplify Tasks

July 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Every website needs to be hosted somewhere, and every web developer will need access to the hosting server in order to perform tasks such as setting up email accounts, managing databases and creating FTP (file transfer protocol) accounts. Since most websites are hosted with a third-part...
Design & Development
Tech Support – July 2006

July 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Question: I’m contemplating either DSL, cable or a T-1 line for my business. How can I determine which Internet connection is best for my company? Brian Getting: While DSL, cable and T-1 lines all provide a high-speed, "always on" connection to the Internet, they differ in both the co...
Design & Development
Tech Support: June 2006

July 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Question: What’s the difference between a web server and an email server? Brian Getting: In this case, both the web server and the email server are software packages that provide services, rather than referring to a hardware server that is running these applications. Web server sof...
Design & Development
RSS Can Help Your eCommerce Business

June 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Last month we introduced the technology commonly called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and explained how it is being used to distribute online content. This month we will look at how ecommerce business owners can use RSS to improve their online presence. Announcements RSS is a syndic...
Design & Dev Tools
Tools of the Trade

June 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Welcome to our first installment of “Programming Notes,” a column designed to help novice web designers and developers with some of the challenges that they may face. Creating and maintaining a website requires someone to be familiar with graphic design, computer programming, server adm...
Design & Development
Robust International Market for Stolen Credit-Card Numbers

May 30, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

Think of it as sort-of a smorgasbord. For one dollar, a thief can purchase a stolen credit card number. He could buy it from another thief in one of hundreds of online, international chat-rooms set-up for that purpose. For three dollars, he could buy the credit card number with the thre...
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...
Design & Development
eCommerce Dictionary: Hosting Terms

May 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

Affiliate Program An affiliate program is any type of revenue sharing program where a webmaster or website receives a portion of income for generating leads, traffic or sales through a graphic or text link to a merchant website. Alias A name that points to another name. Aliases are use...
Design & Development
Web Analytics: Data Collection Methods

May 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

Web analytics software helps ecommerce operators understand what their online visitors are up to. Which search engine did the visitors come from? How long did they remain on the site? Which web pages did they exit the site from? And so forth. Utilizing the data that web analytics packa...
Design & Development
Tech Support: May 2006

May 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

What is “keyword density” and how does it affect me? Keyword density is a phrase that is used to describe how relevant a keyword “topic” is to text on a web page. Keyword density is measured in much the same way that normal density is measured- by comparing the number of times a keywor...
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...
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,” ...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...

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