Page 178 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Inventory
4 Tips for Finding your Ecommerce Niche

July 5, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Finding your ecommerce niche is an exercise in discovering passions, solving problems, networking, and testing for supply, sales, and competition viability. But once discovered, marketing and selling products to a niche can lead to online retail success. Nearly anything can be sold onl...
Influencers & Affiliates
Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Program, Part 3: Promotion

July 4, 2013 • Carolyn Kmet

There are four steps involved in launching an affiliate program. They are: (a) evaluating potential affiliate networks and tracking platforms, (b) implementing and testing the tracking code, (c) developing your creative inventory, and (d) promoting your newly-launched program.
Social Media
Podcasting: Getting Started

July 3, 2013 • Paul Chaney

One form of marketing communication that gets overlooked is podcasting. Podcasts offer several benefits, not the least of which is portability. You can listen to podcasts on the go via mobile devices and, unlike video, podcasts can run in the background while you participate in other a...
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Platforms: Design Control vs. Ease of Launching

July 3, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Online shoppers judge an Internet retailer’s trustworthiness and a product’s value based, at least in part, on how good a site or product detail page looks. Given its importance, one might think that design control would be an essential part of every available ecommerce platform. But ma...
Conversion
7 Post-purchase Survey Questions

July 1, 2013 • Dale Traxler

One frustrating aspect of being an online retailer is that you don’t often talk directly to your customers. In fact, most of the customer feedback comes from phone orders, online chat, problems, and returned orders. It’s difficult to gauge customer satisfaction without feedback. Many ...
Business
June 2013 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

June 28, 2013 • 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 for June 2013, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Selling on Marketplaces: 4 Common Mistakes

June 28, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Marketplaces like Ebay and Amazon can be a boon for the bottom line since they present your products to millions of interested shoppers. But a huge audience also means that mistakes can be glaring and costly. Amazon gets something like 21 million visitors a day and more than 100 millio...
Business
5 Ways Big Data Can Help Retail Supply Chains

June 27, 2013 • Gagan Mehra

The supply chain is a critical component of a retailer's business. This article identifies fives ways in which big data can enhance a retailer's supply chain processes. 1. Real-time Delivery Management Tracking delivery of shipped goods has improved over the years. Big data helps impr...
Social Media
8 Twitter Hashtag Tracking Tools

June 27, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Twitter hashtags are a way to organize tweets into topical groups. Tools are available that make it easy to follow hashtag-related conversations, start hashtag chats, and analyze data around their ...
Platforms & Apps
4 Comment Systems: Pros and Cons

June 27, 2013 • Drew Coffin

In “What to Look for in a Comment System,” I described features like comment moderation, analytics, social integration, and dashboard settings. In this post I will review four popular comment systems and discuss the highlights of each.
Conversion
Implementing Live Chat: Dos and Don’ts

June 26, 2013 • Jerry Jao

Many online merchants who use live chat on their stores have seen significant increases in sales. This includes Bloom Nation, an online florist. According its founder, Gregg Weisstein, shoppers are 11 times more likely to convert when engaged in live chat. Similarly, David Handmaker o...
Marketing & Advertising
3 Social Shopping Sites for Merchants to Consider

June 26, 2013 • Dale Traxler

The power of community and key influencers are changing the way we do business. The likelihood of purchasing a product that is recommended by a friend is much higher than a product without such a recommendation. Consumers are now more comfortable with recommendations from those with sim...
Email & Text Marketing
Cart-abandonment Email Best Practices

June 25, 2013 • Armando Roggio

An abandoned shopping cart is like a broken promise. For the merchant, there is a lost sale and unclaimed revenue. For the shopper, there is an unfulfilled need or want. Fortunately, a quick series of cart abandonment emails may renew that promise, helping both the customer and the reta...
Business
Lessons Learned: Finding the Recipe for a Successful Cake Decorating Website

June 25, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

There’s no one recipe to becoming a successful online retailer. Julie Degnan began with a love of numbers, mixed in an entrepreneurial father, and added a “pinch” of a job ...
Staffing
5 Considerations for Choosing a Developer or Designer

June 24, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Software developers and website designers can be an extension of your online store’s marketing and branding team since these professionals have a significant amount of influence over how your ecommerce site looks and functions. Choosing an individual freelancer or agency to do design o...
Platforms & Apps
Multichannel Case Study: Gap Inc.

June 21, 2013 • Dale Traxler

As a small online retailer, you may ignore the strategies of larger, multichannel brands. But if you investigate what these larger companies are doing to deliver a consistent multichannel experience, you will learn how to compete with them. If your operations are online only, you risk ...
Business
Teenage Online Shopping Trends

June 20, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

Teenagers spend a lot of money. The 35.6 million teens in the United States are accomplished multi-channel shoppers and notoriously fickle, so marketing to them is a challenge. Luckily, this age group is a favorite subject of consumer researchers and a good deal of recent data exists to...
Business > Merchant Voice
Credit Card Processing Sucks

June 20, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori

Credit cards are cool. They make online shopping possible. But credit card processing, the system by which money moves from a customer to a merchant, totally sucks. It sucks for three reasons: cost, liability, and security. Let’s outline each in their stunning absurdity. Credit card ...
Social Media
11 Twitter Pointers for Ecommerce Merchants

June 20, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Twitter is encouraging small businesses to use its service and has created a section on its website and a Twitter channel for that purpose. There are good reasons for ecommerce merchants to use Twitter. It's a place to share real-time information about the products you sell, engage wi...
Analytics & Data
2 Handy Google Analytics Features: Ecommerce Reports, Weighted Sorting

June 19, 2013 • Tim Wilson

Overall, Google Analytics has a clean and intuitive interface. But, somehow, useful capabilities sometimes get lost on the screen. Two such features are the "Ecommerce" metric group and "weighted sorting." The Ecommerce Metric Group Every standard report has one or more predefined “me...
Checkout Tactics
Reviewing the Checkout Process of 10 Leading Online Retailers

June 19, 2013 • Armando Roggio

The checkout process is the last step in completing an online transaction and making a sale. A well-planned checkout experience can significantly boost conversions. Leading online retailers have made their checkouts more adaptive, rewarding registered users, and giving site visitors ple...
SEO
SEO Tips for Local Contractors

June 19, 2013 • Chris Silver Smith

It's summertime and for many people this is a time for home improvement projects. For contractors this also means it's high season for business. For house painters, carpet and flooring installers, roofing companies, electricians, landscapers, swimming pool contractors, siding providers, and general building contractors, this is the time of year when ranking in the top of the search results can mean the difference between substantial revenues or mediocre profits.
Payments
Credit Card Processing: Be Wary of Savings Analyses

June 18, 2013 • Phil Hinke

If you have been reading my articles, you know I do not believe business owners should give their credit card merchant statements to competing providers. Merchant statements disclose the pricing that competitors need to win over the account at the highest possible profit to them. Th...
Conversion
Using A/B Testing to Optimize an Online Store

June 18, 2013 • Dale Traxler

Larger online retailers have big budgets to optimize their navigation and user interface to drive higher conversion rates. They do this by experimenting relentlessly to find the designs with the results they are targeting: drawing visitors to their stores, delivering the products they a...
Email & Text Marketing
Will Gmail’s New Tab Layout Affect Ecommerce Merchants?

June 17, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

Consumers have many options for email services. The top three providers are Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail, which recently changed to Outlook. Occasionally these services make changes that can impact ecommerce email programs. The changes are often dynamic — changing algorithms, rules, and ...
Schools & Resources
14 New Ecommerce Books for Summer 2013

June 17, 2013 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of new ecommerce and Internet-marketing books for summer 2013. There are new titles on digital marketing, A/B testing, search engine optimization, inbound content marketing, mobile commerce, email strategies, social influence, and drop shipping. I compiled the list usin...
Business
Are Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode Conversion Killers?

June 14, 2013 • Charles Nicholls

No merchant wants to add steps in the checkout process that reduce conversion. However, merchants often don’t have a choice about 3D Secure, the payment industry program behind "Verified by Visa," "MasterCard SecureCode," and "Amex SafeKey." These programs attempt to reduce card-not-p...
Local Business
How to Sell Online if You Already Have a Physical Store

June 14, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Small brick-and-mortar retailers can find new customers, experiment with new products, and generally grow their business when they start selling online. For established retailers, the first steps toward ecommerce often begin with product preparation, software selection and integration, ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Shipping: Understanding Time in Transit and Dimensional Weight

June 13, 2013 • Mike Sowa

In my 25 years of experience in fulfillment and operations, I've managed warehousing, order management, and shipping for large merchants, such as Wine.com. I currently am co-founder of ShipJunction, a carrier management platform for ecommerce companies. I've learned over the years that...
Business
Competing Against Multi-channel Brands and Retailers

June 13, 2013 • Dale Traxler

If you sell branded consumer products in your online store, your business is at a high risk because of the multi-channel strategies of manufacturers, marketplaces, and large specialty retailers. Let’s say you sell Under Armour products. One of your items is a "Men’s Coldblack® Player ...