Page 132 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Design & Development
5 Ways to Improve Mobile Commerce in 2016

March 24, 2016 • Armando Roggio

Mobile commerce sales accounted for about 29 percent of all ecommerce sales in 2015, according to published reports. In spite of this, many online retailers have yet to master the ...
B2B
7 Mistakes That Will Kill Your B2B Ecommerce Launch

March 23, 2016 • Lori McDonald

I’ve worked in the B2B ecommerce industry for 18 years. I’ve seen it all — good and bad. Here are seven mistakes that often cause failures in B2B ecommerce launches. 1.
Product Pages
4 Simple Product Page Layouts That Work

March 22, 2016 • Pamela Hazelton

I’ve written a great deal about design and functionality and the important role each plays in the usability of an online store. Usability is the driving force behind conversions. Even ...
Business
Sales Tax: How to Collect, Process for Your Online Store

March 21, 2016 • Armando Roggio

Sales tax is relatively straightforward for brick-and-mortar retail stores. A shopper goes into a store, buys something, and pays the sales tax for the state, county, and city where the store ...
Schools & Resources
11 New Ecommerce Books for Spring 2016

March 20, 2016 • Sig Ueland

Spring is here, which means it’s time to look at the new ecommerce books. There are titles on content marketing, crowdfunding, platform enterprises, brand identity, startup strategy, and building a ...
Code
What CSS Means for Ecommerce Merchants

March 18, 2016 • Eric Davis

Last month, in “What HTML5 Means for Ecommerce Merchants,” I described the purpose of HyperText Markup Language, and how HTML5 is better than previous versions. In this article, I’ll review ...
Content Marketing
Content Marketing: The Hard Working Listicle

March 17, 2016 • Armando Roggio

An article in list form or a simple list extensively annotated, the listicle is at once popular, traffic-driving, and an easy-to-comprehend form of journalism and content marketing. It is the ...
Business > Merchant Voice
The evolution of FringeSport’s KPIs

March 16, 2016 • Peter Keller

How do you run your business? What numbers are meaningful, and on what intervals do you review them? When FringeSport was a side project, I mainly looked at revenue and gross ...
Email & Text Marketing
Pros, Cons of Email Preference Centers

March 15, 2016 • Carolyn Nye

Years ago, email preference centers popped up on all kinds of websites. Preference centers were an effort to curb email unsubscribes and to protect a core digital asset: the email ...
Business
Search-marketing Insights from Connect Search Engine Watch Conference

March 15, 2016 • Richard Sexton

I recently attended the Connect Search Engine Watch Conference in Miami. The conference covered two tracks — “Engage with Organic” and “Innovate with Paid” — over two days. I spent ...
Email & Text Marketing
6 Ecommerce Email Marketing Campaigns for Q2 2016

March 14, 2016 • Armando Roggio

The months of April, May, and June are full of email marketing possibilities centered on traditional retail events like April Fools’ Day, Mother’s Day, and the beginning of summer. In the ...
SEO
SEO: Getting More vs. Losing Ground

March 11, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown

Every company needs more of something. Maybe your company’s goals focus on more customers. Or maybe it’s more conversions. Whether it’s more sales, more leads, more registrations, more items sold ...
Business
How to select a new ecommerce platform

March 10, 2016 • Kenny Kane

In “Why change ecommerce platforms?,” my post last month, I discussed my decision to switch ecommerce platforms — from Volusion to Bigcommerce — in the fall of 2013. I made ...
Marketing & Advertising
How to Run a Proper Online Contest

March 10, 2016 • Armando Roggio

A well run online contest can bolster your social media following, energize loyal customers, collect information about the folks who enter, and help build lists for further marketing. Contest marketing uses ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Pop-ups bad for the web, bad for business

March 9, 2016 • Eric Bandholz

Our company is approached frequently by app makers that are selling pop-ups, or modals, for our ecommerce site. The pitch is usually the same: Use our pop-up to get more ...
Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce in South Korea: Aggressive Discounting, Rewards

March 9, 2016 • Gagan Mehra

South Korea is the seventh largest retail ecommerce market in the world and the third largest in Asia Pacific, after China and Japan. It boasts the fastest Internet speeds in ...
Business > Merchant Voice
A tale of two suppliers

March 9, 2016 • Richard Stubbings

The attitude of some suppliers amazes me. Recently, we have been going to trade shows to find new products. We have been looking for quality, niche suppliers that have higher-value ...
Product Pages
3 Ways to Sell Products That Don’t Sell

March 8, 2016 • Pamela Hazelton

Most ecommerce sites have some products that are of great quality and do a good job, but don’t sell very well. The problem may be pricing, positioning, or presentation. Many storeowners ...
Content Marketing
Developing a Content-marketing Editorial Calendar for Ecommerce

March 7, 2016 • Armando Roggio

A content-marketing editorial calendar is simply a list of what content your ecommerce business will publish. It includes where that content will be published and promoted and when it will ...
SEO Tools
26 Free SEO Tools for Merchants

March 6, 2016 • Sig Ueland

To optimize your website for search engines, you need a variety of tools to monitor performance and discover opportunities. Fortunately, many of those tools are free. Here is a list of ...
Social Media
Facebook ‘Lead Ads’ Good for Competitive Markets

March 3, 2016 • Michael Stancil

Are you advertising in an expensive market? Is the cost per click for a top term too expensive? If you rely on leads for your business, there is a solution:
Google Ads
Using Pinterest Ads to Drive Ecommerce Sales, Reach Mobile Consumers

March 2, 2016 • Robert Brady

The amount of time people spend on their smartphones is amazing. Americans reportedly spend 4.7 hours each day on their smartphones and they check social media accounts 17 times daily. That’s a ...
Inventory
5 Ecommerce Inventory Spring-cleaning Tips

March 2, 2016 • Armando Roggio

As spring arrives, many online retailers find that they need to change products or product lines — winter coats won’t sell as well in April or May. Last season’s fashions, innovations,
Influencers & Affiliates
Study: 3 Factors in Affiliate Marketing Will Drive Growth

March 1, 2016 • Carolyn Kmet

In August 2015, Rakuten Affiliate Network commissioned Forrester, the research company, to conduct a study on the factors driving growth in the affiliate industry. Forrester surveyed decisionmakers at 151 large U.S.
Social Media
12 Brands that Use Instagram to Show Products, Share Culture

February 29, 2016 • Sig Ueland

Instagram is the social platform for visual content. For brands, Instagram can be a place to show off products, celebrate your culture, feature your community, and even make some sales. Here ...
User Experience
How to Make Videos Accessible for Blind, Disabled Users

February 28, 2016 • Joseph C. Dolson

A video is a compelling option when you want to demonstrate a product or show off its features. But a video can cause accessibility challenges. They aren’t insurmountable, by any ...
Technical SEO
SEO: AMP for Ecommerce

February 26, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown

News on the mobile web is now four times faster, thanks to Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP, as the project is known, is targeted at Google mobile searchers looking for long-form ...
Conversion
February 2016: Most Popular Articles

February 26, 2016 • Web Marketing Today

Each month, we compile a list of the ten most popular articles published during the month, based on the number of page views. Here are the ten most popular for February 2016, recognizing that articles published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones.
Code
What HTML5 Means for Ecommerce Merchants

February 25, 2016 • Eric Davis

What is one thing all ecommerce stores have in common? They use HTML. In fact, just about every website uses HTML. That means when an update to HTML comes out, it ...
Code
Image Recognition APIs May Help Ecommerce

February 25, 2016 • Armando Roggio

A pair of new image-analysis solutions could open the door for powerful ecommerce and retail applications that significantly improve shopping experiences or create new marketing opportunities. On Feb. 18, 2016, Google ...