Page 179 – Practical Ecommerce

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Social Media
How to Use Klout for Business

June 12, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Klout is a popular influence measurement platform that ranks people based on their prominence in social media. Klout defines influence as the ability to drive an action related to someone's comments, likes, tweets and retweets. People use Klout to understand how influential they are a...
Business
One-third of U.S. Adults Own Tablets

June 12, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Thirty four percent of American adults now own a tablet computer like the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus, or Amazon Kindle Fire, up from 18 percent last year. This doubling in U.S. tablet penetration will almost certainly impact ecommerce. Since 2010, the Pew Research Cen...
Marketing & Advertising
Implementing Google’s New Data Feed Specifications

June 11, 2013 • Mary Weinstein

Google updated its data feed specifications in early May, requiring online merchants who sell through AdWords or Product Listing Ads to include additional product attributes in the data they send Google. This article will address commonly asked questions on Google's new data feed requi...
Business
5 Advantages of Small Merchants over Industry Giants

June 11, 2013 • Jerry Jao

Large online retailers may have the technology, marketing budget, and resources to automatically generate personalized websites or to build sophisticated marketing campaigns, but smaller merchants also have strengths. One of those is the ability to create more personal encounters for cu...
Social Media
How to Set Up a LinkedIn Company Page

June 10, 2013 • Paul Chaney

A LinkedIn Company Page serves as a hub where members can learn more about your company and its products and services. This is the primary way for a company to have a presence in LinkedIn. Three basic steps are involved in setting up a Company Page: Create a company profile; Add a "...
Amazon & Marketplaces
13 Curated Shopping Sites

June 10, 2013 • Sig Ueland

Sometimes shoppers need a little help. Rather than searching through an endless supply of products, they may prefer a selection from the experts or tastemakers they follow. Here is a list of curated shopping sites. Some of the sites offer personalized product recommendations by expert ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Growing Pains

June 8, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

Being successful comes with its own problems. As your customer base grows and your orders come in higher volumes, you need to expand to carry on. Sooner or latter you need to recruit staff to help carry the workload. This is a massive step. No matter how much effort you put into selecti...
Shipping & Fulfillment
3 Tips for Starting a Drop-ship Online Store

June 7, 2013 • Armando Roggio

An ecommerce entrepreneur with passion and great supplier relationships can earn good profits without making large investments or holding lots of product inventory. Drop shipping allows retailers to sell products without holding actual inventory. When a customer places an online order ...
Conversion
Personalization: Letting Shoppers Decide

June 7, 2013 • Dale Traxler

In "Personalizing the Customer Experience," I addressed how that strategy can increase revenue and customer loyalty for ecommerce merchants. In this article, I'll take the concept further. It's time to move from the model of the merchant defining what the shopper wants to one where the...
Marketing & Advertising
The Internship: Google Film Review, for Marketers

June 7, 2013 • Chris Silver Smith

Thanks to a special sneak preview of The Internship last night — hosted by the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association — I was able to view the new film that was set at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley, a.k.a. the "Googleplex." I was particularly interested to see whether the film revealed anything new or noteworthy about Google from an Internet marketing perspective.
Google Ads
PPC: How to Calculate Maximum Bid per Click

June 6, 2013 • Scott Smigler

"Customer Lifetime Value" is a critical metric that enables you to optimize the long-term profitability of your pay-per-click advertising. CLV answers the simple yet powerful question, "How much is a new customer worth over the long-term?" It’s an important concept that almost every l...
Shipping & Fulfillment
The Perfect Return Merchandise Authorization System

June 6, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Sometimes the shoe just doesn’t fit. Or maybe it was the wrong color. Most every ecommerce business deals with product returns and exchanges, and the ecommerce platform processing those returns often dictates how smoothly the exchange or return goes. A return merchandise authorization ...
Social Media
Using Twitter Lists to Manage Followers

June 5, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Twitter recently lifted the limits on its lists feature. Users can now create up to 1,000 lists that each contains up to 5,000 accounts. Previously the cap was set at 20 with no more than 500 accounts in each list. Though it's unlikely that smaller ecommerce merchants would ever need ...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Still Effective Marketing Tool?

June 5, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

At a time when social media seems to be the only thing people talk about, email is still an effective ecommerce marketing tool. But merchants will have to alter how they use it if they wish to keep up with changes in how people access email messages. Are People Still Reading Email? Th...
Photography & Video
Behold the Animated GIF

June 4, 2013 • Jason Lawrence

Since its birth in 1987, Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, has proved to be one of the most durable image standards. GIFs are supported by nearly every modern web browser and almost every email client in the world. That’s a big deal. GIFs provide a way of embedding animated content ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Price Fixing Cartels

June 3, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

As the rise of the bedroom sellers continue, a new problem has arisen. Suppliers have gotten into the act. Now whilst some suppliers do not care who they sell to, nor how low retailer margins go, other suppliers are more and more concerned about maintaining the quality value of their pr...
Social Media
10 Reasons to Consider Tumblr for Ecommerce Blogging

June 3, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Tumblr is a fast growing social blogging platform suited to the creation of short form, multimedia content. It became so popular that Yahoo! just acquired the company for $1.1 billion. Tumblr started six years ago as a place for creators to showcase their work and it retains that eth...
Business
The Importance of an Exit Strategy

May 31, 2013 • Dale Traxler

You are an ecommerce business owner. Your revenue and profit are increasing. In "Ecommerce Trends Point to a Bright Future," we confirmed the industry is solid and growing. Why in the world would you consider an exit strategy? First, let’s define "exit strategy." In most cases, it mean...
Influencers & Affiliates
Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Program, Part 2: Developing Creative

May 30, 2013 • Carolyn Kmet

Editor's Note: This is "Part 2" of a three-part series on launching a new affiliate marketing program. "Part 1" we published previously. There are four steps involved in launching an affiliate program. They are: (a) evaluating potential affiliate networks and tracking platforms, (b) ...
Business
Pros, Cons of an Ecommerce Acquisition

May 29, 2013 • Dale Traxler

In "7 Strategies to Grow Ecommerce Revenue," my previous article, I explored basic, low risk strategies to grow ecommerce revenue. There is another strategy, however, if you are willing to assume more risk: an acquisition. Let’s face it, ecommerce is very competitive. In virtually eve...
Social Media
Pinterest Introduces ‘Rich Pins’ for Products

May 29, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Pinterest recently introduced a new feature called "Rich Pins" that should be especially helpful to merchants. It allows companies to include key information such as pricing, product availability, and where to buy to pinned items. The information can be updated daily. Rich Pins are also...
Design & Dev Tools
19 Free Design Tools for Your Website

May 29, 2013 • Sig Ueland

If you have a small business website, chances are you can use all the free design help you can get. Here is a list of tools and resources to help you with website design. There are font, icon and image tools, as well as audio and video applications. Also there are resources to give you ideas and generate your design inspiration. All of these tools are free.
Social Media
Facebook Promoted Post Generates Sales, Traffic

May 28, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Although recent studies demonstrate that social media sites like Facebook work best to augment other ecommerce marketing campaigns, anecdotal data from a small Facebook ad test demonstrated that the promotion could boost both direct traffic and sales. “In its most recent [Ecommerce Qua...
Design & Dev Tools
21 Free Tools to Open a WordPress Shop

May 27, 2013 • Sig Ueland

WordPress is a free content management system with an abundance of free plugins and themes to launch and manage an ecommerce shop. If you’re looking for an inexpensive and flexible solution to test the ecommerce waters, WordPress might be right for you. Here is a list of free tools to...
Analytics & Data
3 Key Google Analytics Reports for Ecommerce Merchants

May 24, 2013 • Feras Alhlou

Ecommerce merchants know it’s important to track sales, customer activities, and marketing campaigns. They can do this in Google Analytics. When it comes to finding actionable insights, however, in almost every case merchants need to be comfortable with the concept of segmentation. Ther...
Social Media
Don’t Focus on Social Media Traffic

May 24, 2013 • Armando Roggio

New data from a leading marketing optimization firm indicates that social media is not a significant traffic driver for online merchants, but traffic may not be the only indicator of success for social media marketing. Social media represented about 1.55 percent of traffic to ecommerce...
Business > Merchant Voice
How to increase conversions: two conversion specialists have very different ideas

May 24, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

How long do you let poor conversions hamper your sales? After the needle hadn't moved on my unit sales after the holiday period, and my conversion rate was sinking, I hired a conversion specialist from Odesk. (No, I didn't have much money to spend.) My conversion specialist 1, whom I'...
Conversion
What to Test on an Ecommerce Site

May 23, 2013 • Dale Traxler

In "19 Tools to Test your Site for Mobile Devices" and "23 Tools to Test your Ecommerce Site," we listed options to test an ecommerce site for mobile compatibility, usability, and performance. Ecommerce merchants should continually test their websites. Some merchants test in different...
Design & Development
3-part Mobile Commerce App Strategy

May 23, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Purchases from smartphones and tablets reached $5.9 billion in the U.S. for the first three months of this year. comScore and the U.S. Commerce Department each reported that mobile commerce sales, excluding things like groceries, airplane tickets, and automobiles, accounted for 11 perce...
Social Media
Google’s Purchase Path Tool Helps Merchants View All Marketing Channels

May 22, 2013 • Paul Chaney

The path customers take before making a purchase has become more complex due to social media. Very often, they perform extensive online research that includes reading ratings and reviews, seeking advice on social networks from friends, watching product videos, and looking at competing p...