Page 169 – Practical Ecommerce

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Marketing & Advertising
Getting Started with Twitter Ads

January 10, 2014 • Melissa Mackey

Businesses are increasingly turning to pay-per-click advertising on social media sites to reach customers and prospects. Twitter Ads are one way to do this. Many business executives wrongly assume that Twitter is just a place for people to tell others what they are having for lunch. But Twitter is useful for business news, information, and interaction.
Business
Utilizing ‘Voice of the Customer’ for Competitive Advantage

January 9, 2014 • Marcia Kaplan

In the extremely competitive retail environment, merchants are always looking for a competitive advantage. If you haven’t considered using “Voice of the Customer” (VoC) feedback, you may want to give ...
Business
6 Tips to Beat the Afternoon Slump

January 8, 2014 • Jerry Jao

Fatigue or lack of enthusiasm in the afternoon is a common problem for many office workers. Those of us running Internet businesses are especially susceptible because most of our activities ...
Social Media
Social Media Advertising Necessary in 2014?

January 8, 2014 • Paul Chaney

One of the trends likely to dominate social media marketing in 2014 is advertising. Facebook said that advertising would ensure posts are more visible in News Feed. Twitter continues to push ...
Content Marketing
Build an Ecommerce Content Marketing Strategy for 2014

January 7, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing provides customers with genuinely useful information that can solve problems, aid decision making, or simply answer questions — all in the hope that shoppers are more likely to ...
Business
Reviewing Ecommerce KPIs for the New Year

January 7, 2014 • Dale Traxler

The holidays are over. Your business is returning to normal. As you start a new year, review your business’s performance in 2013. Once you’ve completed your review, create a plan ...
Influencers & Affiliates
Conducting an Affiliate Marketing Annual Review

January 6, 2014 • Carolyn Kmet

The start of a new year presents an opportunity to review your marketing activities of the prior year. In this article, I’ll walk you through a basic annual review for ...
Local Business > Merchant Voice
Ecommerce expanding into brick-and-mortar

January 6, 2014 • Richard Stubbings

When I first started in ecommerce, it was as a way of expanding my brick-and-mortar business as a second sales channel. I was not the only one. It seemed to ...
Business
Ecommerce Marketplace Opportunities for 2014

January 3, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay allow Internet retailers to present products, market, and sell to potential customers that may have otherwise been difficult to acquire. In 2014, there many ...
Google Ads
3 Tactics to Reassess Paid Search in 2014

January 3, 2014 • Matthew Umbro

In many ways, 2013 was a transition year for paid search. We saw the launch of AdWords Enhanced Campaigns, to more precisely target searcher intent. We also saw the next ...
Business
Big Data’s Impact on 2013 Holiday Sales

January 2, 2014 • Gagan Mehra

The holiday season has ended and the analysis has begun to understand what worked and what did not for ecommerce merchants. Cyber Monday became the biggest online shopping day in ...
Business
5 Keys to Mobile Ecommerce Optimization in 2014

January 2, 2014 • Armando Roggio

Web traffic estimates from several trend analysis firms, including comScore, predict that mobile Internet traffic will outpace traffic from desktop or large laptop devices in 2014, further demonstrating just how ...
Social Media
For Ecommerce, 12 Social Media Essentials for 2014

January 1, 2014 • Paul Chaney

The onset of a new year is a good time to step back and analyze what worked and what didn’t with social media. Here are 12 practices that can start ...
Marketing & Advertising
6 Tips for Marketing to Millennials

December 31, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

Millennials are the roughly 65 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 34, a coveted demographic for brands and merchants. They spend a lot of money, even if they ...
Business
2013 Top 25: Our Most Popular Posts of the Year

December 27, 2013 • PEC Staff

As 2013 draws to a close, we’ve compiled a list of the 25 most popular Practical Ecommerce articles of the year, based on the number of page views. Popular subjects included ...
Conversion
6 Tools for Building Unique Landing Pages

December 26, 2013 • Jerry Jao

Sending all traffic to a generic landing page can be a mistake for ecommerce owners. Remember that shoppers who found your store via paid search are different from those who clicked ...
Marketing & Advertising
2014 Ecommerce Marketing Checklist

December 25, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce marketing is a continually evolving field wherein the marketing tactics that worked last year may not be effective in the coming year. What follows is a checklist of sorts. Look ...
Social Media
Social Media and the Zero Moment of Truth

December 24, 2013 • Paul Chaney

In 2011, Google introduced the term Zero Moment of Truth to describe how people shop. A ZMOT is someone’s subjective experience with a product that, when shared, influences another person’s purchase ...
Marketing & Advertising
12 Most-shared Video Ads of 2013

December 23, 2013 • Sig Ueland

2013 has been a big year for online video ads — from branded videos on Vine and Instagram to Facebook’s testing auto-play video ads in its news feeds. Here is a ...
SEO Tools
My Favorite SEO Tools

December 20, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search marketers’ toolboxes differ based on the type of optimization in which they specialize and how comfortable they are with raw data versus ready-to-use graphs. Many helpful tools aren’t specifically made ...
Payments
3 Examples of Misleading Credit Card Processing Charges

December 20, 2013 • Phil Hinke

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part series. The first installment, “Feds Eyeing Credit Card Processing Industry?,” we published last month. In “Feds Eyeing Credit Card Processing Industry?,” part ...
On-page SEO
SEO for 2014: Easy on-page optimization tips

December 19, 2013 • Jordan Lindberg

“What’s so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you’re constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that.” – Billy Crystal Search engine optimization is a never-ending ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
4 Tips for Better Ecommerce Returns and Exchanges

December 19, 2013 • Armando Roggio

More than 60 percent of online shoppers returned or exchanged at least one item in 2013, up from about 51 percent in 2012. Importantly, about 95 percent of customers will ...
Email & Text Marketing
Gmail to Download Images by Default; Effect on Ecommerce

December 19, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

Since Gmail’s new tabbed format launched a few months ago, the response has been both positive and negative — from users as well as email marketers. Last week, Gmail announced ...
Social Media
Using ‘Instagram Direct’ for Ecommerce Marketing

December 18, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Instagram, the photo sharing application owned by Facebook, just launched direct messaging. Called Instagram Direct, users who follow each other can now send private messages containing photos or 15-second videos in ...
Business
5 Ecommerce Challenges for 2014

December 18, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Many ecommerce merchants are enjoying a robust holiday selling season even as some brick-and-mortar stores are seeing relatively flat Christmas sales. To ensure continued growth and success, Internet retailers may ...
Platforms & Apps
7 Top WordPress Plugins of 2013

December 17, 2013 • Joe Robison

WordPress continues to be a dominant content management system. Nearly every WordPress site relies on plugins for added functionality. But with the overwhelming number of plugins, it’s difficult to know which ...
Business
5 Tips for Managing Freelance Contractors

December 17, 2013 • Jerry Jao

Outsourcing non-core or seasonal tasks can allow you to focus on essential duties. It can also be a wise financial decision because hiring freelancers doesn’t come with full-time expenses such ...
Payments
10 Bitcoin-like Cryptocurrencies

December 16, 2013 • Sig Ueland

A “cryptocurrency” is a peer-to-peer, decentralized, digital currency. In 2009, Bitcoin became the first cryptocurrency to trade on third-party markets. Since then, many cryptocurrencies have been developed and are actively ...
Marketing & Advertising
Ecommerce Merchants Should Not Ignore Older Shoppers

December 16, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

Conventional wisdom suggests that when seeking customers, ecommerce merchants should pursue teens and people in their twenties. These are the people who own the most electronic devices, are the most ...