Page 166 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Business
How EBITDA affects valuation of ecommerce companies

March 12, 2014 • Manish Shah

I recently valued an Internet business that had a good looking website and all the desirable social media hooks with respectable follower and fan counts. The site has been in ...
Local Business
4 Reasons Small Brick-and-mortar Retailers Need an Online Store

March 12, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Small, brick-and-mortar retailers should also sell online to stay competitive and meet customer expectations. Ecommerce and physical-retail commerce are merging; businesses that exist in shopping centers and malls are expected to ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Anticipatory Shipping: Amazon’s Approach to Influencing Purchases

March 12, 2014 • Marcia Kaplan

One Amazon obsession is faster package delivery. When CEO Jeff Bezos shared his idea of delivery by drone with 60 Minutes, many ridiculed him. Now Amazon has a new idea ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Does Facebook’s WhatsApp purchase affect ecommerce?

March 11, 2014 • David Sasson

This post does not address whether Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp is a good one, though my opinion will be evident to the reader. There have been many articles written about ...
Business
10 Questions to Ask Ecommerce Payment Providers

March 11, 2014 • Gagan Mehra

Accepting credit card payments is critical for ecommerce merchants. A payment provider should support a merchant’s payment needs, charge low fees, and scale as the business grows. Even though these ...
Marketing & Advertising
B-to-B: 7 Reasons to Invest in Social Media

March 11, 2014 • Dale Traxler

Should manufacturers and distributors that sell primarily to other businesses invest in social media? Today most businesses utilize Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. But, many lack a strategy for ...
Marketing & Advertising
Understanding Ad Extensions in Google AdWords

March 10, 2014 • Melih Oztalay

Google allows the insertion of additional text beside a standard AdWords pay-per-click ad. This text, called "ad extensions," can communicate more information about your product, service, and business than the ad would otherwise permit.
Business
Staples Increases Online Efforts, not Brick-and-mortar

March 10, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Office supply retailer Staples announced March 6 that it would close 225 brick-and-mortar retail stores by 2015, in part, focusing investments and marketing on the online channel. The move may ...
Technical SEO
How SEO Integrates into Site Design

March 7, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization performs best when it’s integrated into website design and maintenance programs. That’s because so many of the decisions that impact SEO occur outside of the bounds of ...
Business
Lessons Learned: Serial Entrepreneur Heels a Pain

March 6, 2014 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Like many serial entrepreneurs who build something from nothing, Jason Schultz was blessed with insight and good timing. Born and raised in California, Schultz began experimenting with Tandy and Commodore 64
Business > Merchant Voice
Beware retargeting

March 5, 2014 • Jamie Salvatori

Advertising is a pain in the butt. It’s expensive. It requires constant maintenance, and it’s not always measurable. In our industry, though, we tend to think that we can determine ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Adapt or die

March 5, 2014 • Richard Stubbings

Once you have a successful ecommerce site and the orders are flowing, by all means congratulate yourself for achieving what many do not. But do not rest there. The most ...
Social Media
6 Social Media Analytics Tools for Merchants

March 5, 2014 • Paul Chaney

The rise of Big Data has prompted many merchants to utilize data analysis for informed marketing decisions. With its vast amount of data available, social media is an important channel ...
Marketing & Advertising
5 Ways to Use Vine for Ecommerce Marketing

March 4, 2014 • Armando Roggio

More than one in three retailers use the Vine micro-video publishing app as part of their content marketing campaigns. These short-video marketing pioneers use Vine to showcase products, entertain, build ...
Marketing & Advertising
How to Get Traffic to your Website (via Google)

March 4, 2014 • Andy Curry

Google is the most powerful search engine. Think of Google as a toll road. It controls the road and its tollbooth is on it. If you want to benefit using the road, you have to pay the toll. There are a few ways to pay the toll. The fastest way is to use AdWords, Google's pay-per-click advertising service.
Google Ads
AdWords: Understanding Flexible Conversion Tracking

March 4, 2014 • Matthew Umbro

Over the last month, Google AdWords has made a significant update to how conversions are tracked and attributed. Flexible conversion tracking represents Google’s ongoing effort to provide the most accurate ...
Business
12 Key Job Roles for B-to-B Ecommerce Success

March 3, 2014 • Dale Traxler

One of the biggest challenges that brand manufacturers and distributors face with their B-to-B ecommerce operations is hiring the right team. B-to-B companies need to identify required job roles, and ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
12 Apps and Resources for Shipping

March 3, 2014 • Sig Ueland

Product shipping is an essential task for most all ecommerce merchants. And efficient and reliable shipping is one of the best opportunities you have to make a positive impression on your ...
Design & Development
7 easy ways to improve your paid search performance

February 28, 2014 • Jordan Lindberg

“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.” – Ted Turner Over the years I’ve worked with dozens of small online retailers that manage their own Google AdWords ...
Business
February 2014 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

February 28, 2014 • PEC Staff

Each month we compile a list of the ten most popular articles we published that month, based on the number of page views. Here are our ten most popular articles ...
SEO Tools
SEO: Bing Webmaster Tools for the Other 20 Percent

February 28, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

Since Google is the largest search engine, its webmaster tools gets the lion’s share of attention. But depending on your industry and audience, Bing and Yahoo may drive around 20
Business
4 Mistakes to Avoid with Ecommerce Customer Data

February 27, 2014 • Jerry Jao

Collecting data about shoppers is essential for ecommerce businesses. Demographic, social, and behavioral data provides insights to merchants for marketing campaigns, product improvements, and to offer better customer service. However, when ...
Social Media
Social Media Scheduling for Ecommerce Merchants

February 26, 2014 • Samantha Collier

Using social media for ecommerce takes time. Running campaigns across several different networks is a challenge. And just when you seem to have it mastered, along comes a new network ...
Influencers & Affiliates
Working with Search Marketing Affiliates

February 26, 2014 • Carolyn Kmet

In affiliate marketing, affiliates often utilize the same marketing tools as their retailers. The challenge for retailers, then, is to ensure that affiliate efforts do not conflict with the retailers’
Social Media
Using Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences to Find Ecommerce Prospects

February 25, 2014 • Paul Chaney

Facebook offers two advanced advertising options to help merchants reach existing customers and identify new prospects. One option, Custom Audiences, consists of a list of existing customers that is uploaded to Facebook ...
SEO Tools
Local SEO: 15 Marketing Activities that Improve Citations

February 25, 2014 • Kunle Campbell

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Web Marketing Today. Practical Ecommerce acquired Web Marketing Today in 2012. In 2016, we merged the two sites, leaving Practical Ecommerce as ...
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics: Tracking Demographics of Ecommerce Visitors

February 25, 2014 • Feras Alhlou

Say you’re running a paid-search marketing campaign for your ecommerce site. To maximize performance, you’d like to know: Who is visiting your site; How they are getting there; What they are interested in; Demographics:
Conversion
Evaluating Site Search on Target, Walmart, and Amazon

February 24, 2014 • Dale Traxler

Today’s consumers usually start shopping in an online store by typing the desired item in the search tool. Shoppers have learned that most sites are too large to simply browse ...
Social Media
How to Use Facebook for Event Marketing

February 24, 2014 • Kunle Campbell

Local businesses thrive on in-store traffic. Higher foot traffic typically results in more sales. This is why retailers and local businesses often run in-store events. The challenge, however, for most local businesses is the promotion of these events. Fifty percent or more of local consumers likely have Facebook accounts. Setting up a Facebook event, therefore, would be a prudent step for gaining more foot traffic.
SEO
5 Excuses Why Ecommerce Merchants Avoid SEO

February 21, 2014 • Jill Kocher Brown

You’re presumably reading this because you want more: more traffic, more sales, more effective methods of reaching your marketing goals. Search engine optimization can help you reach those goals, but ...