Page 163 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Business
Using the BCG Matrix for Ecommerce Marketing Decisions

May 14, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Designed to analyze product lines, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix or growth-share matrix can help ecommerce business owners and marketers decide which products or product categories will likely generate ...
Social Media
20 Corporate Facebook Covers to Inspire Local Businesses

May 13, 2014 • Kunle Campbell

Facebook cover designs are an opportunity to present an identity to the world. While some brands use the background of their website, others have provided some inspirational cover designs to give you some ideas. Building a Facebook cover page is an opportunity for all kinds of marketing calls, from including ad-like content to meshing with users’ experience of social media. We’ll see both approaches, and plenty more, in the examples below.
Social Media
Using Pinterest Group Boards for Ecommerce; 5 Tips

May 12, 2014 • Stacey Herbert

Pinterest group boards are a quick and effective way to help you grow your followers and audience and otherwise expose your products to a wide range of prospects. What Are Pinterest Group ...
Social Media
12 Contests on Pinterest

May 12, 2014 • Sig Ueland

Pinterest is a great place for a business to hold a contest. Contestants can interact with a brand as they pin inspirational images. And, because prize amounts are often modest,
SEO
SEO: Leverage Expert Authors for Ecommerce

May 9, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google is actively working on ways to decrease its reliance on links by its algorithms, including identifying and promoting content written by expert authors. While content sites are obvious beneficiaries of ...
Business
Selling customer service

May 8, 2014 • Jordan Lindberg

“Your personal core values define who you are, and a company’s core values ultimately define the company’s character and brand. For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.”
Conversion
How to Manage an Ecommerce Photo Shoot with Models

May 8, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Good photography is vital for online retailers. While some merchants can depend on vendor- or distributor-supplied imagery for a time, most growing retailers will eventually find the need to use ...
Business > Merchant Voice
How to win a price war

May 8, 2014 • Richard Stubbings

As the Internet continues to grow, and more consumers are becoming web savvy, ecommerce sales likewise increase. It is inevitable that many (indeed most) shoppers are driven by price. They ...
Social Media
Using Twitter’s New Website Card to Drive Traffic

May 7, 2014 • Paul Chaney

Twitter cards are a recent advertising product that facilitates attaching rich media experiences to tweets, to promote content. Of the nine cards available, two do not require a developer, and therefore ...
Payments
Should Ecommerce Merchants Accept Bitcoin?

May 7, 2014 • Marcia Kaplan

Bitcoin, the best known of several virtual payment currencies, has made inroads into mainstream commerce, including brick-and-mortar retailers. Some ecommerce sites are already accepting Bitcoin and if you are considering ...
Business > Merchant Voice
You’ll always lose a price war

May 6, 2014 • Jamie Salvatori

Competing on price is a stupid tactic because it’s easy. Any idiot can undercut his competitors. Making money with this tactic, however, is rare. Only a few companies can pull ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Digging for gold: supply chain made simple

May 6, 2014 • David Sasson

During the gold rush of the 1800s, prospectors chased each other to find gold nuggets in rivers and mines all over the west. They were all chasing gold and the ...
Email & Text Marketing
7 Must-have Email Marketing Features

May 6, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Email marketing solutions should help an ecommerce marketer automate common messages or campaigns, service shoppers using mobile devices, deal with list maintenance, and more. Every email service provider (ESP) offers a ...
B2B
Ecommerce Key for Manufacturers and Distributors

May 5, 2014 • Dale Traxler

Many B-to-B companies are still not aggressively pursuing ecommerce. Most have an online presence — in fact, an extensive one. They likely have a corporate site, an online product catalog,
Design & Dev Tools
11 Mobile Website Builders for Ecommerce Merchants

May 5, 2014 • Sig Ueland

There are a variety of solutions for merchants who are interested in establishing or improving their mobile presence. For small businesses just starting, there are affordable do-it-yourself options with basic ...
Social Media
Google+ Shake Up Doesn’t Kill SEO Benefit

May 2, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

With last week’s departure of Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social, rumors are swirling about the demise of Google+. What does this mean to search marketers who have ...
Conversion
Use Rule-based Chat to Improve Satisfaction, Sales

May 1, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Online stores can actively encourage live chat, sending relevant greetings to site visitors, improving customer satisfaction, and reducing shopping cart abandonment or lost sales. Proactive live chat, which is the practice ...
Social Media
Ecommerce Blogs: How to Grow Readership, Improve SEO

April 30, 2014 • Paul Chaney

If you maintain a blog with your ecommerce site, honing your copywriting skills can make it more popular and increase the possibility it will appear higher in search results. Online copywriting ...
Social Media
What Does Snapchat Mean for Ecommerce?

April 30, 2014 • Samantha Collier

Snapchat has been one of the biggest social media breakthroughs of the last year. With limited web presence, this mobile-only messaging app focuses on personal and time-limited content. Snapchat’s private ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
How to Choose an Ecommerce Shipping Provider

April 29, 2014 • Gagan Mehra

Many merchants struggle with the challenge of shipping goods in the fastest and cheapest manner. There are several variables that determine the best shipping provider for each order. These include ...
Business > Merchant Voice
12 tips to address declining ecommerce revenue

April 29, 2014 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

For many online retailers, business conditions are tough. What do you do when your sales are dropping and you can’t work out how to reverse the slide? Here are 12
Email & Text Marketing
7 Crucial KPIs for Email Marketing

April 29, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Online retailers use email marketing messages to engage customers and boost sales, but not every email message is equally effective. Fortunately, there are at least seven email marketing key performance indicators ...
Influencers & Affiliates
Affiliate Marketing: 5 Ways to Energize Affiliates

April 28, 2014 • Carolyn Kmet

Here’s the scenario. You’ve launched your affiliate program; it’s been live for about six months now, and you have about 200 affiliates. But no one is driving any traffic or ...
Keyword Research
Google Updates Keyword Planner with Dates, Devices

April 25, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

The depth of keyword data available to search marketers has varied widely over the last couple of years. This week, Google AdWords made several enhancements to its Keyword Planner tool ...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Exec on Authentication, DMARC

April 25, 2014 • Carolyn Nye

Webmail providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo use, essentially, two checks to determine whether to deliver an email to its intended recipients. One check is to review an email’s content ...
Platforms & Apps
7 Things that Make WooCommerce Compelling

April 24, 2014 • Armando Roggio

WooCommerce is, arguably, the most popular and important WordPress ecommerce plugin. Its ease of use, features, and flexibility make it a leading ecommerce platform, capable of rivaling even the best ...
Payments
How to Identify Dubious Credit Card Processing Fees, Part 2

April 23, 2014 • Phil Hinke

Editor’s Note: This is “Part 2” of a three-part series. “Part 1” we published last month. The purpose of this series is to identify dubious fees that are commonly charged ...
Platforms & Apps
3 Things to Know About WooCommerce

April 23, 2014 • Armando Roggio

WooCommerce is a popular WordPress plugin, designed to transform WordPress into a capable ecommerce platform. The plugin has many superb features and capabilities, but there are also at least three ...
Business
Lessons Learned: Buddhist Search Inspires Lotus Sculpture

April 22, 2014 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

In the novel Siddhartha, author Hermann Hesse describes the spiritual journey of a man who meets Gautama Buddha in ancient India. Six years after reading Siddhartha in seventh grade, Greenwich, Conn.-born ...
Social Media
Pinterest: Dos and Don’ts for Ecommerce Merchants

April 22, 2014 • Stacey Herbert

Do you want to use Pinterest as a marketing channel for your ecommerce business? This article will give you the essential dos and don’ts for the best chance of success. Pinterest ...