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
Google’s Chrome: The Prototype for Tomorrow’s Browsers

October 28, 2008 • Armando Roggio

When Google introduced its Chrome browser on September 2, 2008, it began the foundation for an improved Internet experience—full of rich web applications—and launched the next round of commercial combat with chief rival Microsoft. If Google is going to compete against Microsoft for a sh...
Platforms & Apps
Cart Of The Week: ShopSite

October 24, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. This includes licensed carts, hosted carts, and open-source carts. In this, our "Cart of the Week" feature, we’ll profile (but not evaluate) a specific shopping cart and ask personnel of that cart about its strengths...
Design & Development
Apple’s Safari Browser: “A Weak Contender”

October 23, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons

In the ongoing battle for browser supremacy Apple’s Safari is little more than humdrum, but like all things Apple it has a committed and loyal following and an opportunity to be important for mobile devices. Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) are by far the most u...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Miva Merchant

October 17, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons

Practical Eommerce counts over 300 shopping cart platforms. In this installment of “Cart of the Week,” we profile Miva Merchant, a popular licensed cart launched in 1996.
Design & Development
Mobilizing The Web With Cascading Style Sheets

October 16, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

Benjamin Chui isn’t taking ecommerce sitting down. The founder of Ben’s Bargain Center is striding through San Francisco’s financial district, with a smartphone in his hand and one of three mobile versions of his ecommerce website on tap. For his site Bensbargains.net, the transition t...
Platforms & Apps
Browser Review: Mozilla Firefox 3

October 14, 2008 • Armando Roggio

By some estimates, more than 1.4 billion people use the Internet for work, entertainment, or commerce. All of those web surfers must use a browser to visit websites or shop at online stores, and if browsing speed, security, and functionality matter, those users should be cruising the in...
Design & Development
Mobile Commerce: 800 Million Untapped Users

October 9, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

Web-capable mobile handsets and their nearly 800 million users worldwide represent a significant and largely untapped market for ecommerce retailers. Selling by phone is a concept almost as old as Alexander Graham Bell, but in the 21st century mobile commerce (m-commerce) might be more...
Platforms & Apps
Browser Review: Internet Explorer

October 7, 2008 • Armando Roggio

When Google introduced its Chrome web browser in September, it fired the first shot in a new browser war, challenging Microsoft’s supremacy, frightening its open-source ally, Firefox, and initiating a race toward better usability and more features. To be fair, there had been plenty of ...
Platforms & Apps
Magento's iPhone Theme: Mobile Commerce for the Masses?

September 24, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Magento Commerce, an open source ecommerce platform, has introduced an Apple iPhone specific theme that is potentially the first step toward leveling the playing field for small online retailers who want to compete in the lucrative and booming mobile ecommerce market. Mobile eCommerce ...
Platforms & Apps
Yahoo! Store Users: SSL Servers are Moving

September 22, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, a leading ecommerce provider, is migrating its secure socket layer (SSL) certificates to new servers, improving their system's flexibility, but forcing some e-retailers to make changes to their stores before an October 15 deadline to avoid cart errors. The SS...
Design & Development
Open-Source Alternatives To Microsoft Office, Part II

September 17, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

In part I of this series we looked at why the use of open-source software is now gaining momentum. Here, we take a look at some of the most-recognized open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office “Light” desktop MS Office alternatives KOffice is one “light” answer to Microsoft Office ...
Design & Development
Open-Source Alternatives To Microsoft Office, Part I

September 15, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

Ten years ago, a tiny software community launched free Microsoft-like programs for those with UNIX or Linux computer operating systems. A few months ago, this software community—known as KDE—rolled out its first free Office-style software for Windows users. It’s a competitive first fo...
Code
Video Tutorial: CSS Positioning

September 12, 2008 • Brian Getting

The transition from using tables to create a page layout to using Cascading Style Sheets can be difficult to grasp at first, particularly when it comes to positioning elements correctly on the screen. In this video tutorial by Practical eCommerce's chief architect Brian Getting, we wil...
Design & Development
PCI Report Card: Merchant X (A Photography Accessory Retailer)

September 10, 2008 • Tim Erlin

Welcome to the inaugural PCI Report Card. In previous Practical eCommerce report cards, we’ve always been clear about the name of the merchants we’re grading. However, when dealing with security issues, such as compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, some discr...
Design & Development
Comodo CEO On EV SSLs, Site Seals

August 30, 2008 • PEC Staff

Melih Abdulhayoglu is founder and CEO of Comodo, a firm that provides Internet-security and fraud prevention services to ecommerce and other web-based firms. Adulhayoglu received in 2008 an Ernest &
Design & Development
The Challenges of Extended Validation SSLs

August 27, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

This piece, part two in Practical Ecommerce’s series on the new Extended Validation SSL certificates, looks at the challenges still to face for consumer-wide adoption of EV SSL. Part one of the series is an interview with an EV SSL expert at Comodo, an EV SSL issuer. Online shoppers kn...
Code
David Heinemeier Hansson, Ruby on Rails Creator

August 25, 2008 • Kerry Murdock

David Heinemeier Hansson created the Ruby on Rails software framework. He’s also a partner in 37signals, producers of the popular Basecamp suite of online collaboration tools. In this excerpt from a longer audio interview, Heinemeier Hansson discusses the state of ecommerce. PeC: What...
Design & Development
Interview: Comodo Exec On Extended Validation SSL Certificates

August 22, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

Like its SSL precursor, EV SSL certification encrypts customer inputted information and marks the page with a yellow padlock icon. Unlike SSL, this new form of certification comes with much more vetting and a bonus “green bar” in the URL area of most web browsers that clearly indicates ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart Of The Week: Shopify

August 13, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons

We count over 300 shopping cart platforms. This includes licensed carts, hosted carts, and open-source carts. In this, our new "Cart of the Week" feature, we’ll profile a specific shopping cart and ask its personnel about its strengths and weaknesses.
Design & Development
Safe Ways To Accept International Payments

August 13, 2008 • Hal Selim

Many ecommerce businesses receive international orders for both single items as well as large quantities. These businesses usually take credit card payments for the orders, which puts them at great risk of incurring chargebacks, especially for large ticket items and large transactions. ...
User Experience
Customer Service For The Hearing Impaired

July 15, 2008 • Joseph C. Dolson

In an era of Internet commerce, it’s an unsurprising phenomenon that we expect the vast majority of our interactions with customers to happen in an online environment. The expectation is that people will send an email, contact us through support forms or simply place an order. But it’s ...
Platforms & Apps
Shopping Cart Functionality Can Increase Sales

June 25, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

The tenet of customer service in the online shopping process is simple: the more you engage potential customers, and provide links relevant to their needs, the more they’ll buy and the longer they’ll remain a customer. As it turns out, the solution to that challenge may be as simple as ...
Platforms & Apps
Third-Party Integrations Make Shopping Carts Easier To Use

June 23, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

By day Sean Dupuis is a courier for FedEx. By night, he sends out packages of his own: boxes of boots and moccasins and sheepskin bags for his bustling website business called Sheepskin and Things. Stretched thin, he’s able to get it all done because his shopping cart and its third-part...
Platforms & Apps
Shopping Carts And Search Engines

June 18, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

When searching for “educational toys” on Google, at No. 5 on the list you’ll find BrainwavesToys.com—up from No. 78 a year ago. Michael Stebbins, co-founder of the business, employed a series of search engine optimization (SEO) strategies within his cart to achieve this result. “A lot ...
Platforms & Apps
Magento Shopping Cart and 20,000 Friends

June 18, 2008 • Michael A. Cox

Roy Rubin held the cyber equivalent of a barn raising and had several thousand of his closest friends over for the event. Of course, everyone actually stayed home and did the work from their own little cubicles, kitchen tables, laptops on airplanes and Blackberrys on bar tops.
Design & Development
Programmers: Web 2.0 Forms

June 3, 2008 • Brian Getting

Online forms have become much more elegant and usable in the last couple of years as developers take advantage of “Web 2.0” technologies like visual effects and “behind-the-scenes” calls to the server. In fact, I have seen forms that are just downright fun to fill out, which is somethin...
Design & Development
Quick Query: Credit Card Expert Stresses Integrity

June 2, 2008 • PEC Staff

Virtually every ecommerce merchant processes credit card payments. We asked Michael Shatz, publisher of The Merchant’s Guide, a resource to help merchants understand credit card processing issues (at Themerchantsguide.com), to share his views on choices merchants must face when deciding...
Platforms & Apps
Field Test: Shopping Carts, Part Three Of Three

May 28, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered twelve seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is shopping carts. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, Mut...
Design & Development
Internet Security: The Seatbelt Is In The Trunk

April 30, 2008 • Michael A. Cox

Suppose you took delivery on your new car and the salesman told you, as you signed the order, that the seatbelt, antilock brakes, and the airbags were in a box in the trunk and that if you want to be safer you might want to have an expensive expert install them. That would be about the ...
Design & Development
PCI Compliance Is “Industry Self-Regulation”

April 28, 2008 • PEC Staff

The major credit card companies, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express, have collaborated on minimum payment-processing security requirements. These requirements make up the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Merchants and merchant account providers who wo...

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