Page 147 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Fraud Prevention
25 Online Security Tools for Small Businesses

April 26, 2015 • Sig Ueland

Recent cyber breaches at Target, Sony, and The White House reveal one simple truth: Online security is everyone’s concern. As larger businesses take steps to secure their networks, less secure ...
SEO
SEO: ‘Mobilegeddon’ Is Here, Now What?

April 24, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update, dubbed “Mobilegeddon” by the search engine community, began rolling out Tuesday, April 21. Here’s what that means and what to do about it. What Is ‘Mobilegeddon’? The popular ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Sues Fake Product Review Websites

April 23, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan

Ecommerce merchants know the importance of favorable customer reviews. Results of a 2013 survey of 1,046 American consumers by research firm Dimensional Research show that 90 percent of consumers who ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Mobile friendly, but just barely

April 22, 2015 • Erica Tevis

Google’s long awaited “mobile friendly” algorithm change occurred yesterday, April 21. Sites that weren’t mobile friendly (as determined by Google) presumably experienced a reduction in mobile-search rankings. In this post,
Business
How to Build a Trustworthy Ecommerce Brand

April 22, 2015 • Armando Roggio

When customers trust your business and recognize your brand they will often make repeat purchases, pay a slight premium for your products and tell others about your store. To encourage ...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO: Mobile-friendly Websites No Longer Optional

April 22, 2015 • Nick Mouledous

The value of having a mobile-friendly website has grown in recent years, and now Google has stepped in to affirm its importance. Starting April 21, Google began rewarding and demoting sites in mobile search results based on their mobile-friendliness — a shakeup so significant it is being called “Mobilegeddon.”
Product Pages
Optimizing Price for Products with Attributes, Options

April 21, 2015 • Pamela Hazelton

Many products sold online come in different colors, sizes, and flavors. When it comes to displaying such items to shoppers, it is important to make clear the options as well ...
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics Reports for Conversion Optimization

April 20, 2015 • Kunle Campbell

Conversion rate optimization begins with identifying problem areas in your conversion funnel that will benefit from testing and improvements. But how do you establish exactly what to test and improve? Google Analytics ...
Social Media
7 Restaurant Rating Sites, for Owners to Monitor

April 20, 2015 • Paul Chaney

Not only do people talk to each other when sharing a meal at a restaurant, but they also talk about the restaurant on rating-and-review sites. As such, it is in the restaurateur's best interest to find out what's on patrons' minds in terms of their experience with the establishment.
Marketing & Advertising
4 Ways to Use Social Proof on an Ecommerce Site

April 19, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Building trust and putting online shoppers at ease are important parts of ecommerce marketing and merchandising, since very few folks will hand over payment card information to a business they ...
On-page SEO
SEO: Last-minute ‘Mobile-friendly’ Planning

April 17, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

After almost seven weeks of hand wringing in the ecommerce world, Google’s “mobile-friendly” algorithm update will go live on Tuesday, April 21. For the first time, Google will use mobile friendliness ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Drop Shipping: How to Manage Returns

April 16, 2015 • Jeremy Hanks

Drop shipping requires three major data integrations between the retailer and the supplier: product catalog, inventory, and orders. The order integration and workflow culminates with fulfillment and shipment from the ...
Finance
13 New Equity Crowdfunding Success Stories, for Ecommerce

April 16, 2015 • Sig Ueland

It’s been three years since the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was signed into law. Currently, Title II is in effect, allowing small businesses to solicit investments from accredited ...
Social Media
Twitter: 4 Ways to Promote Your Business for Free

April 16, 2015 • Kristine Wirth

According to Twitter, 35 percent of users follow businesses to get discounts and promotions. Not every small business has the funds to engage in a full-scale paid promotional campaign, however. The good news is that Twitter offers a variety of ways that smaller companies can market themselves for free.
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing to Smartphone Users Challenging, Doable

April 15, 2015 • Carolyn Nye

The dramatic shift to mobile devices affects how consumers interact with brands and websites. The shift presents challenges for email marketing by ecommerce companies. In this article, I’ll review three new mobile email metrics faced by ...
Marketing & Advertising
2015 Black Friday, Cyber Monday Ecommerce Planning Guide

April 15, 2015 • Armando Roggio

November 27 and 30, 2015 may be two of the most important days of the year for ecommerce, and now is not too soon to start planning. In fact, your ...
Business > Merchant Voice
China-based merchants ship to U.S. for free

April 13, 2015 • David Sasson

As ecommerce leaders and professionals, it is our responsibility to occasionally look at the landscape of the ecommerce industry as well as our specific space within ecommerce and explore potential ...
Local Business
6 Local Business Online Marketing Platforms, Apps

April 13, 2015 • Paul Chaney

For a small business, managing multiple online marketing channels is a complex process that can require a sizable amount of the owner's time and resources. Knowing how to produce content that resonates with customers and prospects, learning the nuances of how various channels work, and understanding the contribution each makes to ROI, only adds to the challenge.
Analytics & Data
Essential SEO Data, to Manage Performance

April 12, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

It’s impossible to analyze historical data you don’t collect. In search engine optimization, much of the data you need to manage performance over time is only temporarily available. These temporary reports ...
Marketing & Advertising
4 Customer Service Lessons from a Big Sale

April 10, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Spending hours at a brick-and-click retailer’s “big sale” offered some important reminders about retail customer experiences. These reminders — like showrooming, price, easily offended folks and customer relationships — make ...
Business > Merchant Voice
7 tips for building your YouTube channel

April 10, 2015 • Jamie Salvatori

My company’s YouTube channel has roughly 1.2 million subscribers. Here are seven pointers that have helped us reach that number. 1. Determine Your Goals for the Channel First, it’s important to decide ...
Business > Merchant Voice
The swift countdown to launching my new site

April 9, 2015 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Launching a new website takes a lot of preparation and planning. I first addressed my new ecommerce business, My Wedding Decor, back in February, in “Launching my third website business in 15
B2B
B2B Ecommerce Growing; Becoming More Like B2C

April 9, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan

While B2C ecommerce gets the most media attention, B2B ecommerce is the bigger revenue generator, both globally and in the United States. The entry of ecommerce giants such as Alibaba ...
Business
Can Lawsuits Remedy Bad Online Reviews?

April 8, 2015 • Elizabeth Lewis

Yelp.com is no stranger to lawsuits involving libel, defamation, and privacy laws. As Yelp is one of the largest rating sites, a body of case law has started to form ...
Marketing & Advertising
7 Tips for Content Marketing Success, for Ecommerce

April 8, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing may help businesses both increase site traffic and boost actual sales, but it can also be expensive, hard to execute, slow, and somewhat difficult to measure. Fortunately there ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
How Shipping Methods and Policies Affect Conversions

April 7, 2015 • Pamela Hazelton

Ask any group of online shoppers their top reason for abandoning a shopping cart and they’ll likely refer to shipping. However, it’s not always about the cost of delivery. The way ...
Photography & Video
Video Styles that Attract and Convert Shoppers, for Ecommerce

April 6, 2015 • Jason Lawrence

In today’s marketing world, companies spend much time and money deciding how to create the most compelling content to promote their brands. One way to do this is with video. There ...
Product Pages
7 Product Detail Page Differentiators for 2015

April 6, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Product videos, user content, and customer service options are among the features that leading online retailers are using to differentiate product detail pages and, possibly, boost sales. Good product detail pages ...
Social Media
13 Instagram Tools for Businesses

April 5, 2015 • Sig Ueland

Instagram is a platform to share quirky moments and inspirational experiences. With 300 million monthly users, it’s also a place for businesses to develop and post engaging content, monitor posts ...
Social Media
Pinterest: 4 Ways to Optimize Images for More Repins

April 3, 2015 • Kristine Wirth

Pinterest is a site that lets people pin their favorite images on virtual bulletin boards categorized by topic or interest. Many businesses use Pinterest to get their products in front of its growing user base.