Page 139 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Local Business
10 Text Messaging Tools for Local Business Marketing

October 28, 2015 • Kathleen Fealy

Text messaging, also known as SMS (Short Message Service), lets businesses communicate with consumers through their cell phones in 160 character messages. It gives businesses the opportunity to present relevant information, enhanced customer experiences and service, and special offers.
Social Media
Twitter Share Counts Are Going Away; Now What?

October 28, 2015 • Michael Stancil

There’s a big change coming to your Twitter buttons: The tweet count number is going away by Nov. 20, 2015. In this article, I will elaborate on what Twitter said, what ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for November 2015

October 27, 2015 • Armando Roggio

National holidays, a James Bond movie, creative writing, and cancer prevention might all be topics for your content marketing this November. Content marketing seeks to attract, engage, and retain customers by ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Fulfillment: How to Speed up the Picking Process

October 27, 2015 • Michael Manzione

In “Holiday Checklist for Ecommerce Operations,” my article last month, I shared steps to assist in your preparation for the upcoming seasonal rush. In this article, I’ll offer tips to your warehouse team, to ...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: American Express OptBlue Rates Often Wrong

October 26, 2015 • Phil Hinke

Did you change credit card providers or renegotiate pricing with your existing provider in the last year? If so, did you verify that you were actually receiving the rates and ...
Schools & Resources
8 Digital Marketing Awards to Follow, for Inspiration

October 26, 2015 • Sig Ueland

When developing digital content for your brand, why not learn from the best? Annual digital marketing awards are good for discovering creative content and effective campaigns on the Internet. And ...
Marketing & Advertising
5 Essential Content Marketing Skills for Ecommerce Merchants

October 25, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Modern content marketing is often an exercise in education, so that content marketers not only need to market, design, and write, but educate too. At bottom, content marketing is about attracting,
Business
Benefits of third-party ecommerce apps

October 23, 2015 • Kenny Kane

One of the good things about being on a leading ecommerce platform — Bigcommerce, in my case — is the ability to easily connect third-party apps to your store. Apps are ...
Conversion
Promo Codes: Discounts vs. Benefits, for Ecommerce

October 23, 2015 • Abhi Jadhav

Shoppers will be looking for discounts on holiday items in the next few weeks. If designed right, a promo code can offer the discounts shoppers seek, and help merchants increase ...
Business
3 Holiday KPIs for Your Ecommerce Store

October 22, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Three tried-and-true key performance indicators may help online stores focus on what matters most during the busy, high-volume Christmas shopping season. “Really there are three things a retailer has to do,” said ...
Customer Retention
Use Shopping Surveys to Increase Conversions

October 21, 2015 • Pamela Hazelton

If you ever want to know what online shoppers are thinking, ask them. Shopping surveys tell you what’s working and what isn’t. They can also tell you things you never ...
Social Media
Maximizing Facebook Ads for Ecommerce Sales

October 21, 2015 • Michael Stancil

Facebook ads are the rage lately — and for good reason. If you can supply at least a few valuable targeting components of your prospective customers, Facebook can do the rest and start ...
Business
Jet vs. Amazon: A Quick Comparison

October 20, 2015 • Gagan Mehra

Jet launched a few months back, claiming that it will be the Amazon killer. Jet’s original model was similar to Costco, where consumers must pay a membership fee to shop ...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing: 3 Examples, Good and Bad

October 20, 2015 • Carolyn Nye

Sometimes the success of an email marketing campaign can boil down to how much it grabbed the attention of recipients. In this post, I’ll review three examples of attention-grabbing emails. Event-driven Email:
Local Business
Hyperlocal Marketing: 5 Ways to Drive In-store Traffic

October 19, 2015 • Paul Chaney

The dictionary defines the term hyperlocal as “relating to or focused on a very small geographic community.” Hyperlocal marketing, therefore, consists of marketing activities that also concentrate on a tight geographic circle. Most local business marketing fits within the hyperlocal category.
Design & Development
3 Ways to Use ‘Haul’ Videos in Ecommerce Marketing

October 18, 2015 • Armando Roggio

According to Google, about 40 percent of shoppers who watch “haul” videos — which are a sort of show-and-tell for shoppers — will go to a store’s website or physical ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Published Shipping Policies Can Protect Merchants

October 15, 2015 • Elizabeth Lewis

As we head into the holiday season, shipping of products goes into high gear. Ecommerce merchants must make sure that they have updated their shipping policies prior to Black Friday ...
Marketing & Advertising
Social Engagement for Ecommerce: How to Build, Measure, Improve

October 14, 2015 • Richard Sexton

Building engaging social campaigns can seem like an overwhelming task. To begin with, there is the problem of defining social engagement itself. How do you measure this all-important aspect of ...
Social Media
9 Essential Blogs for Small Business Owners

October 14, 2015 • Kristine Wirth

Keeping up with small business social marketing techniques and trends can be time-consuming. There are thousands of blogs that you could follow, to get advice. The problem lies in deciding which ones best suit your needs.
Design & Development
4 Ways to Improve Ecommerce Security for the Holidays

October 13, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Site security is an important part of running an online retail business. Before the holiday shopping season arrives and your online store experiences increased traffic, it is important to check ...
Social Media
Setting Up Facebook Remarketing, for Ecommerce

October 13, 2015 • Michael Stancil

Not every visitor to an ecommerce site converts, and not every customer comes back to buy more. But, don’t fret, with remarketing on Facebook there’s a way to get more ...
Customer Service
10 Live Chat Tools for Ecommerce Merchants

October 11, 2015 • Sig Ueland

A live chat tool can be a good way to provide quick answers and a personalized experience to shoppers. Here is a list of live chat tools. Many of these tools ...
Marketing & Advertising
Study: 5 Star Reviews Not Necessarily Helpful

October 9, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan

With the holiday gift-giving season just around the corner, product reviews take on added importance. While common sense would seem to indicate that merchants should strive to achieve nothing less ...
Marketing & Advertising
Content Marketing for Mobile Moments

October 9, 2015 • Armando Roggio

In this mobile age, when many folks carry a Internet-connected device with them everywhere, useful content marketing that helps potential customers complete specific tasks may be a powerful way to ...
Business
‘Internet of Things’ Helping Ecommerce Merchants

October 8, 2015 • Gagan Mehra

The adoption of Internet of Things has grown in the retail world since I last wrote about it in December 2013. While larger companies are benefitting from this technology, many ...
Business
5 Tips for Starting an Ecommerce Business

October 7, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Online retail sales are growing fast and creating significant opportunities for entrepreneurs. In fact, there may already be as many as 650,000 online stores earning more than $1,000 each month.
Amazon & Marketplaces
How to Overcome Negative Feedback on Amazon’s Marketplace

October 7, 2015 • James Thomson

Say you are shopping on Amazon and you find the perfect product to buy. But you notice that the seller offering the product has 90 percent positive feedback. Yes, one ...
Product Pages
Mobile Product Page Design: The Inverted Pyramid

October 6, 2015 • Pamela Hazelton

Now that the holiday shopping season has started, make sure your mobile product pages are designed for conversion. While there is a time constraint, you may, nonetheless, want to look ...
Social Media
SEO: YouTube Doubles Down for Search and Content

October 5, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

YouTube is more than a venue for cute kittens and dancing children. It’s a powerful social search engine with an engaged audience. Any company, with any size budget, can use ...
Social Media
6 Social Media Lessons from the BBC, for Ecommerce

October 5, 2015 • Samantha Collier

The British Broadcasting Corporation operates 11 U.K.-based radio networks, 10 television channels, and popular consumer broadcasts — such as Top Gear, The Great British Bake Off, and Strictly Come Dancing.