Page 149 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

User Experience
SEO: Google to Make ‘Mobile-friendly’ a Ranking Signal

March 15, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

Do you have a mobile or responsive site? If not, on April 21 you may find it harder to rank in Google’s mobile search results. Google announced algorithm updates that will ...
Local Business
10 Great Local Marketing Ideas for March 2015

March 13, 2015 • Web Marketing Today

Web Marketing Today asked ten industry insiders to share their best advice for helping local small businesses market online. Here’s what they had to say.
Product Pages
Inspiring Ecommerce Product Descriptions to Learn From

March 13, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Product descriptions are vital for ecommerce success. So when you see a great one take note, learn from it, and try to improve your own product detail pages. In a recent ...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO: 3 Steps to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

March 12, 2015 • Nick Mouledous

Optimizing your website to attract search engine attention — a practice known as on-site optimization — is an often multifaceted and complex process. However, following three simple steps can help improve your ranking, which may result in more visits to your site.
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics: Tracking 4 Stages of Customer Interaction

March 11, 2015 • Kunle Campbell

Ecommerce businesses typically have four key stages of customer interaction. They are: Attracting prospects or site visitors; Engaging with the visitors in a bid to drive conversions; Tracking the engagement and conversion performance; Retaining ...
Finance
Can Etsy Keep Artistic Roots with IPO?

March 11, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan

Etsy, the online marketplace that offers artists, crafters, and vintage collectors a venue to sell their goods, filed for an initial public offering earlier this month. The company plans to ...
Conversion
Ecommerce Personalization Similar to Dating

March 10, 2015 • Armando Roggio

There is a good analogy between marketing for long-term, loyal ecommerce customers and dating someone you hope to one day marry. Marketers who think about building customer relationships the same ...
Social Media
Location-based Marketing for Small Businesses

March 10, 2015 • Paul Chaney

As Internet users become increasingly mobile-savvy, they rely on smartphones and other mobile devices to discover new businesses, find directions, read consumer reviews, and access business contact information. One way local small businesses can take advantage of this trend is through the use of location-based marketing.
Checkout Tactics
How Landing Pages Convert Visitors into Educated Buyers

March 9, 2015 • Pamela Hazelton

You’ve heard the term for years, but do you really know what a landing page is? More importantly, have you implemented any properly? To many storeowners, a landing page is a ...
Design & Dev Tools
20 Podcasting Tools, for High-quality Content

March 9, 2015 • Sig Ueland

Podcasting continues to be an effective way to generate rich content for your website. With so many inexpensive and relatively simple tools available to capture and edit audio and video,
Analytics & Data
SEO: Measuring Key Performance Indicators

March 6, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

One of the most rewarding aspects of improving an ecommerce site is the ability to measure the bottom-line impact of your search engine optimization program. Conversion measurement is theoretically simple with ...
Business
Competing on Customer Experience

March 5, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce merchants seeking to acquire and retain customers will compete to provide exceptional customer experiences that may make price and even product quality less relevant, according to a new survey. Some 53
Business > Merchant Voice
From Magento to WooCommerce, part 3

March 5, 2015 • Richard Stubbings

This is the third installment of a series in which I describe my decision to leave the Magento platform, and test WooCommerce. In “part 1,” I explained my disillusionment with ...
Google Ads
Google AdWords Launches Call-only Campaigns

March 4, 2015 • Robert Brady

A major update to Google AdWords occurred in 2013 with the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns. It was designed to streamline campaign management across multiple devices. But, in the process, it eliminated ...
Design & Development
How to Choose Charitable Auction Software

March 4, 2015 • Cathy Qori

Many non-profit organizations (NPOs) hold charitable auctions to raise funds. Often, software is needed to manage bidding, checkout, and administrative functions. To choose the software package that best fits your needs, consider the options you must have, those it would be good to have, and those you won’t use.
Business
7 Surprises When Adding Clicks to Bricks

March 3, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Adding an online store may help traditional retailers increase sales and, ultimately, grow and improve. But transitioning from brick and mortar to brick and click will not be without problems. There ...
Social Media
5 Consumer Review Sites that Impact Your Business

March 3, 2015 • Paul Chaney

Thanks to sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Angie's List, local businesses often find themselves at the mercy of consumer reviews. Because people rely on the opinion of others, reviews have the potential to influence purchase decisions either positively or negatively, depending on the review.
Photography & Video
15 Animated GIFs on Twitter, from Brands

March 2, 2015 • Sig Ueland

In “12 Free Animated GIF Creators,” my article last week, I addressed tools to create animated GIFs for your website, email, and social media campaigns. In this article, I am ...
Social Media
6 Compelling Twitter Lessons from Small Businesses

March 2, 2015 • Samantha Collier

There are plenty of ways that small businesses can grow a Twitter following without spending a lot of money. Here are six examples. Tyres 2 U: @tyres2u Twitter followers: 7,350 Tyres 2 U ...
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for March 2015

March 1, 2015 • Armando Roggio

The month of March has plenty of opportunities for content marketers to create topical and useful content that might ultimately attract new customers and additional sales. Content marketing is the act ...
Business > Merchant Voice
How to promote your ecommerce business

February 27, 2015 • Erica Tevis

During a recent discussion in a New Jersey wedding professionals networking group, a new member asked, “If you could promote your business through only one form of advertising, what would ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Using Rich Snippets to Increase Clicks

February 27, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

If you don’t win the click, you can’t make the sale. But if you don’t get noticed, you can’t win the click. Ecommerce sites need to take advantage of every option ...
Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce in Latin America: Challenges, Opportunities

February 26, 2015 • Marcia Kaplan

Latin America presents a paradox to ecommerce merchants. It contains a rapidly growing middle class eager for a larger selection of quality goods, but the region has unreliable shipping operations ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Launching my third website business in 15 years

February 25, 2015 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

The countdown has begun: I launch my Australian wedding decorations website, my third ecommerce venture in 15 years, in eight weeks. And like many online retailers who sell items with ...
Business
How to Combat a Shiny New Competitor

February 25, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Relative to leasing retail space, buying shelves, and investing in a store full of inventory, ecommerce offers a low barrier to entry. In fact, just about any entrepreneur with a ...
Influencers & Affiliates
Pinterest Bans Affiliate Marketing Links

February 25, 2015 • Carolyn Kmet

On February 12, 2015, Pinterest announced that it would “automatically remove all affiliate links, redirects and trackers on Pins.” This is important news because merchants with affiliate marketing programs could ...
Business
Using KPIs to Measure Ecommerce Performance

February 24, 2015 • Mac McSwain

I am a CPA who provides accounting services to ecommerce merchants. Many merchants often focus exclusively on sales, profits, and bank balances to determine if their business is successful. But,
Customer Service
Eliminate Dead Ends to Grow Ecommerce Conversions

February 24, 2015 • Pamela Hazelton

When analyzing your ecommerce site, make sure that all pages can act as both a destination and a gateway to what shoppers really want. Dead ends leave shoppers wondering what ...
Conversion
4 Customers an Ecommerce Retailer Must Serve

February 23, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Classifying a shopper’s personality and preferences may make it easier to provide good customer service and, ultimately, sell more. Retail ecommerce businesses serve a variety of customers with different needs, wants,
Design & Dev Tools
12 Tools to Create Animated GIFs

February 23, 2015 • Sig Ueland

The Graphic Interchange Format can turn a stack of images into a short looping video. Animated GIF images can be embedded into a website, email, or ad — giving viewers ...