Page 150 – Practical Ecommerce

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Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing Metrics, Part 1: The Basics

February 22, 2015 • Carolyn Nye

Email marketing is cost effective and typically has a high return on investment. But over the years, email marketing has changed. Measuring the performance of email and its impact on incremental revenue can be difficult. In this 2-part series,
Technical SEO
4 SEO Friends: Strategy, UX, Creative, Development

February 20, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

Effective search engine optimization requires cross-discipline collaboration. Make friends or forge strong working relationships with these key stakeholders to ensure that SEO needs are met at every stage of site ...
Business
Selling on Multiple Channels? Know Terms of Use

February 19, 2015 • Elizabeth Lewis

Any company that sells products online or markets online typically uses multiple channels — such as its own website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Etsy, and Amazon. However, most companies don’t understand the rights they are giving ...
Business > Merchant Voice
From Magento to WooCommerce, part 2

February 18, 2015 • Richard Stubbings

In “part 1” of this series, I addressed my desire to simplify our company’s ecommerce platform, to move away from Magento. I had decided to test WooCommerce, the WordPress plugin that is ...
Design & Dev Tools
11 Tools for Online Presentations, Videos, Animations

February 18, 2015 • Sig Ueland

Presentation tools can be helpful for creating content, such as product demonstrations to enhance a shopping experience. Oftentimes, slide presentations can be repurposed from your existing content. And, you can ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Drop Shipping: How to Manage Orders

February 17, 2015 • Jeremy Hanks

Drop shipping requires three major data integrations between the retailer and the supplier: product catalog, inventory, and orders. If you’re new to drop shipping, read my 4-part series on the ...
Email & Text Marketing
Without Email Marketing, You’re Probably Losing Sales

February 16, 2015 • Armando Roggio

When you send a well-done email-marketing message, it is like stepping on the gas pedal in a sports car. Things just start to go. In fact, of all of the ways ...
Marketing & Advertising
How to Create a Social Media Strategy

February 16, 2015 • Cathy Qori

Your organization needs a social media presence. One approach is to choose a platform such as Facebook or Twitter and start posting, but this probably won’t be very successful. To be effective, begin by creating a social media strategy. You don’t have to start from scratch. There are plenty of resources available online. Here are some of the most useful.
Platforms & Apps
20 Tools to Run a Small Business

February 16, 2015 • Sig Ueland

A small business owner assumes many functions — marketing, sales, human resources, information technology, and research and development. Fortunately, there are some terrific online tools to help you perform most ...
User Experience
SEO: How Google Decides If Consumers Can Trust You

February 15, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

Consumers base purchase decisions in part on trust. Google is working on ways to algorithmically determine trust, in an attempt to send searchers to the best sites. Think about how you ...
Payments
EMV Credit Cards, Part 2: Point-of-sale Devices, Alternatives

February 13, 2015 • Phil Hinke

This article is mostly for brick-and-mortar retailers, as the October 2015 rule changes, which I discussed in "Part 1," are specific to card-present merchants.
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics: Creating a Custom Dashboard, for Ecommerce

February 12, 2015 • Kunle Campbell

In “10 Essential Google Analytics Dashboards for Ecommerce,” I reviewed 10 existing, custom dashboards that can help ecommerce merchants. In this post, I will describe how to create your own ...
Marketing & Advertising
4 Content Lessons from Leading Blogs, for 2015

February 12, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing, which seeks to attract site visitors and, ultimately, customers, is one of the most popular trends in marketing. The key is producing interesting, useful, or entertaining articles, images,
Business
Lessons Learned: Baking Site Says No to Shark Tank

February 11, 2015 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Many of the most successful online retailers sell products that solve problems. Daniel Rensing, who grew up in Levittown, N.Y., created a clever product that attracted press attention within 10 days ...
Social Media
3 New Twitter Ad Features for Ecommerce Merchants

February 10, 2015 • Paul Chaney

Twitter recently launched three new features that extend the platform’s usefulness as a marketing tool for ecommerce merchants. The features are group direct messages, video, and quick promote advertising. Group Direct Messages Twitter now ...
Schools & Resources
8 Common Responsive Design Mistakes

February 10, 2015 • Gagan Mehra

A mobile-optimized website is a must-have for ecommerce merchants. To achieve this, many use responsive design, which makes a site render well across multiple devices. I addressed the basics of ...
Conversion
3 Common Problems with A/B Testing, for Ecommerce

February 9, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Testing is fundamental to proper conversion rate optimization. Done well, an A/B test can help ecommerce marketers identify the best landing page design, which form of navigation works best, or ...
Product Pages
Look to Other Industries for Ecommerce Inspiration

February 8, 2015 • Pamela Hazelton

When it comes to increasing the average time visitors spend at your online store, as well as the money they spend, look for non-related industries for ideas and inspiration. They ...
Business
When Ecommerce Warms Your Heart

February 6, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Young Leo Forrest’s story is both very sad and heartwarming. It is the sort of tale that moves you to want to help, to do what you can to make ...
Photography & Video
7 Powerful Apps for Product Photography

February 5, 2015 • Jason Lawrence

You might remember “Product Photography: DSLR Cameras vs. Smartphones,” my article about the trade-offs between using DSLR cameras and smartphone cameras for product photography. I noted that there is a ...
Social Media
10 Ways to Use Instagram for Ecommerce Marketing

February 5, 2015 • Paul Chaney

The photo-sharing site Instagram is in a transition phase between personal and business use. Unlike Facebook or Pinterest, for instance, the site offers no business-specific features. That has not stopped retailers ...
Business
Apple Pay Adoption Continues; Looming Concerns?

February 4, 2015 • Gagan Mehra

Apple recently announced record-breaking sales for its 2014 fiscal year. Among the numbers for iPhones and iPads, the company also offered thoughts about the growth of Apple Pay, the mobile ...
Business
To Start an Ecommerce Business, Solve Problems

February 4, 2015 • Armando Roggio

There is a mantra of sorts in entrepreneurial circles that says “don’t simply start a business, solve a problem.” If you solve someone’s problem and create a must-have product or ...
Google Ads
Pay-per-click Ads: Unlocking the AdWords Dimensions Tab

February 3, 2015 • Robert Brady

The AdWords interface is cluttered and hard to understand. A colleague of mine put it best when she said that AdWords is an enterprise tool. Unless you’re a regular user ...
B2B
How to Use SlideShare for B2B Ecommerce

February 3, 2015 • Paul Chaney

SlideShare, the presentation software platform, may be one of the most overlooked and underutilized tools for B2B ecommerce content marketing. There are several reasons to consider using SlideShare. The slideshow format ...
Social Media
18 Pinterest Tools for Businesses

February 2, 2015 • Sig Ueland

Pinterest is the social network for people to discover and share interesting pictures. It’s also a place for businesses to connect with consumers and influential brand advocates through dynamic product ...
Business > Merchant Voice
‘Thinking time’ improves an ecommerce business

February 1, 2015 • David Sasson

“Thinking time” is underrated by leaders and managers of ecommerce companies. We operate in a fast-changing environment — competing both in technology and commerce. In this post, I will address ...
Conversion
Google Analytics Adds Basic Cohort Analysis

February 1, 2015 • Armando Roggio

Google has added a basic cohort analysis report to its popular Analytics suite. The report, which is in beta release, may help marketers and analysts identify time-based trends like testing ...
Business > Merchant Voice
From Magento to WooCommerce, part 1

January 30, 2015 • Richard Stubbings

Every three years I conduct a major review of my ecommerce sites. This is typically more than my annual review; everything is under consideration. In previous major reviews I have ...
Technical SEO
SEO: Google Improves Crawling for Geotargeted Sites

January 30, 2015 • Jill Kocher Brown

Ecommerce sites that use geotargeting to serve different content to customers in different countries have faced challenges with organic search. On Wednesday, Google announced its efforts to overcome these challenges,