Page 180 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Fraud Prevention
Using Big Data to Prevent Ecommerce Fraud

May 22, 2013 • Gagan Mehra

A recent report estimated the fraud cost for online retailers to be $3.5 billion or 0.9 percent of online revenue. To put it in different words, an online retailer loses, on average, $9,000 to fraud for every $1 million in revenue. This is a significant amount of fraud that, ideally, ...
Business
Job Description: ‘Startup Ecommerce Founder’

May 21, 2013 • Dale Traxler

I’ve been browsing the job listings for ecommerce positions at large retailers. They can afford to hire expertise in marketing, supply chain management, human resources, systems, web design, business intelligence, operations, and finance. Small business owners do not have those luxuries...
Business
Lessons Learned: Fall of Communism Leads to Cheap Sheds’ Success

May 21, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Citizens of Hungary were banned from owning and operating their own businesses from World War II until the communist regime fell in the early 1990s. With no exposure to entrepreneurialism for about 50 years, one Hungarian family, the Panczels, bravely opened a convenience store in Szol...
Email & Text Marketing
Good, Bad Email Design for Ecommerce Merchants

May 20, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

Email design has changed over the years. It has evolved from basic text, to beautiful design with great images, to hybrids that balance images and text. With the majority of shoppers previewing or reading emails on their smartphones, many ecommerce merchants wonder what the best practic...
Schools & Resources
11 Sites with Great Search

May 20, 2013 • Sig Ueland

Search is a big opportunity to provide a positive shopping experience. Helping customers find what they’re looking for is a proven way to generate sales. Here is a list of sites that offer compelling search. Some of these sites provide traditional site search with advanced search opti...
Conversion
11 Personal Gestures to Turn Casual Buyers into Lifelong Customers

May 17, 2013 • Jerry Jao

Developing loyal customers isn’t always expensive or difficult for businesses with small marketing budgets. It may sound cliché, but when it comes to boosting customer loyalty, it's the little things that count the most. Small yet thoughtful actions can have a big impact on how custom...
Cross-border Selling
Cross-border Ecommerce Can Reduce Closeouts, Clearance

May 17, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Seasonal or discontinued products sitting in inventory limit cash flow and may make it more difficult for merchants to invest in newer, faster-selling or higher-margin products. While many retailers discount or close out these products, there may be an opportunity to maintain higher mar...
Google Ads
How to Sell on Marketplaces without Harming your Store’s Brand

May 16, 2013 • Dale Traxler

In "Third-Party Marketplaces: What Merchants Should Know" and "Marketplaces: How to Sell More in 2013," we addressed tactics — pro and con — for using marketplaces. Some merchants avoid marketplaces, believing they compete with their stores' brands. Others enjoy the additional revenu...
Payments
Blaming Credit Card Associations for Rate Changes

May 16, 2013 • Phil Hinke

Visa, MasterCard, and Discover generally change rates and terms in April and October. However, they can make changes at other times during the year, as will happen this year. Unfortunately, over the years, some providers have taken advantage of these changes by increasing their rates an...
Social Media
Instagram’s ‘Photos of You’ New Sharing Feature

May 15, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Popular photo-sharing app Instagram recently introduced a new sharing feature called "Photos of You," which allows users to tag other user accounts in pictures they take. For example, if a user snaps a photo of a group of friends, he or she can tag each person in the image, similar to...
User Experience
Optimizing an Ecommerce Site for Mobile Shopping

May 14, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Improving how quickly a page loads and how easy it is to use that page once it has loaded might be one of the most important things online merchants can do to help tablet and smartphone shoppers and take part in the mobile commerce trend. Mobile commerce may have reached between $5.7 a...
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics: 5 Custom Ecommerce Events to Track

May 14, 2013 • Tim Wilson

A friend recently asked me about event tracking on his new ecommerce site. He wondered if I had a comprehensive list of events to track. Well, in answer to my friend, this article is my list of five favorite event tracking customizations, using Google Analytics, for ecommerce sites. C...
Business
Adding Alternative Payment Methods to your Online Store

May 13, 2013 • Dale Traxler

Many established merchants offer payment methods in addition to credit cards. The most popular alternative by far is PayPal, but there are other options, too. In my experience, adding a single alternative payment method that allows shoppers to avoid using a credit cards is a good idea. ...
Technical SEO
10 Free Website Speed Tests

May 13, 2013 • Sig Ueland

Before your customers enter your ecommerce store, they’re waiting for it to load. Page load time is the lapsed time between the moment a user requests a new page and when that page is fully rendered by the browser. Reducing page load times can reduce bounce rates and increase conversion...
Cross-border Selling
5 Quick Tips for Shipping Internationally

May 10, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Cross-border online sales may account for a significant portion of total ecommerce orders in just the next few years, according to some reports. But for many small online retailers the task of actually shipping a package internationally and understanding all of the associated rules, reg...
User Experience
Case Study: Shopping for Frisbee Golf Disks on an iPhone

May 9, 2013 • Dale Traxler

In "Mobile Commerce Grows 31 Percent in Q1," Contributing Editor Armando Roggio addressed the rapid growth of mobile commerce. Following from his article, I experimented with various ecommerce sites, to better understand the status of mobile shopping today. Since much of the growth is a...
Schools & Resources
Reading List: Vendio’s Mike Effle

May 9, 2013 • PEC Staff

In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with Mike ...
Social Media
Using Vine Videos for your Ecommerce Business

May 8, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Vine is a new iOS app that allows users to record six-second, looping videos — called "vines" — on their iPhones, iPod Touches, or iPads. The videos can then be shared with followers on Twitter and Facebook. Users can shoot very short clips, then edit them together to create stop-motion...
Business
Ecommerce Trends Point to Bright Future

May 8, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

Over the past five years, ecommerce has grown at a pace at least twice as fast as total retail sales and that trend will continue over the next five years, according to published reports. In 2012, ecommerce had a healthy 14.8 percent growth rate over 2011, easily eclipsing the total ret...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Third-party Marketplaces: What Merchants Should Know

May 7, 2013 • Scott Smigler

Many online merchants have embraced third-party marketplaces. They've been seduced by promises of easy revenue growth and enabled by software solutions that make it easy to sell their products on those sites. It’s true that marketplaces can pay dividends for merchants, at least for nea...
Design & Development
Mobile Commerce Grows 31 Percent in Q1

May 7, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Mobile ecommerce sales rose 31 percent in the first quarter of 2013 as tablet-fueled, couch commerce is rapidly becoming the most popular form of online shopping with the so-called multi-channel shopper. Data from the IBM Online Retail Index and the U.S. Department of Commerce suggeste...
Business
Implementing the Online Sales Tax Bill

May 6, 2013 • Dale Traxler

The possibility of Congress passing legislation that requires online retailers to collect sales taxes has been discussed for years. People use to asked me if I was worried about it. I would reply, "Not until legislation is in the final debate in Congress.” Well, that final debate is he...
Design & Dev Tools
15 Easy Mobile App Solutions

May 6, 2013 • Sig Ueland

Mobile apps can be easy to make. With the variety of mobile app builders to choose from, even non-coders can build their own mobile apps with ease — from basic catalogs to complex utilities. Here is a list of solutions to build your own mobile app. These tools are primarily for users w...
Amazon & Marketplaces > Merchant Voice
The dreaded Amazon A-Z claim

May 6, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

When you get an Amazon A-Z claim, you must not reply instantly. Your response must be carefully considered, to put your side in the best possible light. You only get one chance to reply. It is best if you do this after you fully investigate and you have calmed down.
Business
Lessons Learned: Trusting your Gut to Ecommerce Success

May 3, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Imagine being told that you’ll never have a job or children and you’ll be on disability for the rest of your life. That’s what doctors told Kenyan-born Jini Patel Thompson when they diagnosed her, at age 17, with Crohn’s Disease. But the now-married mother of three proved them wrong. S...
Marketing & Advertising
Ecommerce Search Marketing Evolves

May 3, 2013 • Dale Traxler

A few years ago, small ecommerce business owners invested a good part of their marketing budgets on search engine optimization. Their goal was typically to obtain the highest possible search rankings, to capture as much organic traffic as possible. Many businesses used that as their cor...
Marketing & Advertising
3 Google Product Feed Mistakes

May 2, 2013 • Mary Weinstein

Google Shopping has provided a good return on investment for many merchants. To achieve even better performance and higher sales, merchants should focus on their Google product feeds. I addressed that last month, in "Google Shopping Feed: 3 Things You Should Be Doing." Your feed com...
Social Media
Understanding YouTube’s Redesign of Channels

May 2, 2013 • Paul Chaney

YouTube recently announced major design changes to its channel interface. YouTube cited three reasons for the changes: Increase the number of channel subscribers; Ensure branding works across all devices — desktops, tablets, smartphones and television; Show more content to draw viewer...
Photography & Video
5 Simple Ways to Make Great Product Videos

May 1, 2013 • Jason Lawrence

In "Learning from Infomercials for Product Demonstration," my article last month, I discussed the importance of product demonstration and video in selling online. This month, I’ll explain how to make product videos that get results. Given the rise in well-produced online video, it can ...
Influencers & Affiliates
Managing the Google Affiliate Network Closure

May 1, 2013 • Carolyn Kmet

The most significant development in the affiliate industry recently is Google’s announcement that it will be shutting down its affiliate network. According to the notification from Google to all affiliates on April 18, 2013, all affiliate relationships will be severed on July 31, 2013....