Page 184 – Practical Ecommerce

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Business > Merchant Voice
Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

February 22, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori

This is going to be a short blog post and for that I will apologize up front. But, I intended for this to be more of a comment-driven exploration than a “this is how you do this” type of blog post. Recently, we switched affiliate network providers (to one of the most respected in the ...
Marketing & Advertising
Twitter for Ecommerce Merchants

February 21, 2013 • Dale Traxler

Many retailers have discovered that Twitter is an effective way to communicate with their customers and prospects. A recent study for Twitter by Compete reported that Twitter users are more likely to buy online, versus the general public. They are also 1.4 times more likely to make an ...
Schools & Resources
10 Creative Contact Pages

February 21, 2013 • Drew Coffin

Contact pages facilitate questions from visitors, and otherwise help prospects locate your business or connect via social media. A well-designed, creative page with easy-to-find information encourages interactions, which can lead to sales. Here are 10 creative contact pages. Lionway...
Inventory
Reducing Excess Inventory to Free-up Capital

February 20, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Reducing excess inventory, even at a loss, can free-up capital and help a small online retailer grow. Slow selling products sitting in a warehouse — or, for very small retailers, a garage — tie up cash and may make it hard to invest in marketing, new product lines, or site improvements...
Business
Lessons Learned: Discount Cleaning Products Really Cleans Up

February 20, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

New Jersey-born Mike Kawula once bought a franchise that helped him know how to buy a franchise, which led him to create Discount Cleaning Products. Kawula graduated from Ramapo College in ...
Business > Merchant Voice
7 simple website improvements that can make a big difference

February 20, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

You've probably noticed many ways a website could be improved as you shop online. Here's a handful of ones which I encountered recently on other people's websites, as well as my own, which are so easy to fix. Allow customers time to use coupons I Googled for double basin bathroom van...
Social Media
Facebook Power Editor: Time-saving Ad Management Tool

February 19, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Facebook’s Power Editor can help administrators manage multiple ad campaigns and Pages with greater efficiency. Facebook created it primarily for agencies with multiple client accounts. But Power Editor offers benefits ...
Analytics & Data
Locating 404s with Google Analytics

February 19, 2013 • Tim Wilson

404 error pages are bad. On the list of “Bad Things on Your Site,” 404s easily crack the top five. Yet site owners frequently have no idea how often 404s occur on their sites, much less monitor and address them. Can you answer the following questions? How many visitors to your site l...
Conversion
Law Firms Embrace Video for Online Marketing

February 19, 2013 • Micah Buchdahl

The use of videos as an Internet marketing tool continues to increase as law firms of all shapes and sizes are finding that there are significant benefits to “going Hollywood.” The reasons for using video are numerous — from both a search engine optimization and end-user perspective.
Conversion
4 Mistakes that Cost Online Stores

February 18, 2013 • Dale Traxler

The process of capturing customers to your online store involves multiple steps, typically. Getting shoppers to visit your store. Helping them find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. Showing them the information they want about the products they are looking for. P...
Schools & Resources
15 Helpful Guides for Ecommerce Merchants

February 18, 2013 • Sig Ueland

An ecommerce merchant frequently wears many hats -- entrepreneur, marketer, and content creator, to name a few. Fortunately there are free online guides to help with every task. Here is a list of online guides to assist merchants with their many needs. There are style guides to help wi...
Social Media
Search Result Domination with Social Media

February 15, 2013 • Jill Kocher Brown

Social media and organic search work hand in hand, but not in the way most people think. Building up a grand social media presence will not drive link authority back to your ecommerce site. The major social networks have long since stripped the link authority from their outbound links...
Marketing & Advertising
6 Ways to Measure Social Media

February 15, 2013 • Yasmin Bendror

Measuring social media effectiveness can seem daunting. It is less clear-cut and more complex than other, more traditional marketing channels. But measuring your social media efforts is possible, and it's crucial to your overall marketing strategy.
Social Media
10 Google Chrome Social Media Apps

February 14, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Google's Chrome Web Store offers many applications for that browser. These include apps for businesses — to help with accounting, invoicing, creating documents, setting appointments, logging phone calls, and performing other critical business functions. They also include sales and marke...
Business > Merchant Voice
Ecommerce in the shrinking world.

February 14, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

I heard on the news tonight that the EU and the USA have started talks on a free trade agreement. No doubt this will take many years to agree, but it is a sign that the world is shrinking and international trade is growing. Many Ecommerce sites are ahead of the game in international tra...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing: 5 Ways to Generate Immediate Sales

February 14, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

Email serves many functions for ecommerce businesses. It's a method of sending order confirmations and shipping notifications. It also delivers valuable content via newsletters. The goal of each function differs widely, depending on your site and the average sales cycle and order value....
Finance
Internet Sales Tax: States Take the Lead

February 13, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

The days of sales-tax-free online purchasing are coming to an end for many consumers. 2012 was a year of inaction on the federal level because the Marketplace Fairness Act that would have required sales tax collection by Internet merchants on a national level never came to a vote. Howev...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: The Cost of Not Auditing Statements

February 13, 2013 • Phil Hinke

I was a keynote speaker at a recent meeting of U.S. and Canadian merchants. Whenever I present, I invite merchants to bring their processing statements and their merchant contracts so I can audit them afterwards. Before starting, I always ask each merchant how often he audits his statem...
Social Media
Facebook ‘Nearby’ Increases Mobile Search Capability

February 12, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Facebook knows a lot about what its users like. Thanks to a recent upgrade of its mobile app, a feature called Nearby turns that information into meaningful search data that local businesses with a Facebook Page and physical location can turn to their advantage. Considering that more th...
Business
21 Key Performance Indicators for Ecommerce Businesses

February 8, 2013 • Dale Traxler

Key performance indicators are becoming common in large corporations as a way to measure and monitor the success of key activities. But they can also play an important role in any sized ecommerce business. A KPI — key performance indicator — is simply a measure of some process, event...
Social Media
Selling on Facebook Easier for Smaller Merchants

February 8, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

The merits of selling goods on Facebook are a topic of much debate. Several large retailers, including GameStop, Gap, jcpenney, and Nordstrom, experienced disappointing results and shut down their Facebook stores within months. But according to Sucharita Mulpuru, retail analyst at For...
Email & Text Marketing
Making Emails Responsive to Tablets, Smartphones

February 7, 2013 • PEC Staff

In "Optimizing Ecommerce for Tablets and Smartphones," my article last month, I addressed responsive design, the practice of coding a website to automatically adjust to the size of a user's Internet device. This month, I extend that discussion to include outbound emails, so that the ...
Social Media
6 Twitter Marketing Lessons from the Super Bowl Blackout

February 7, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Several large brands — including Oreo and Tide — took advantage of Super Bowl 47's blackout to quickly create Twitter ads. Oreo's ad reminded followers that "You can still dunk in the dark," while Tide declared "We can't get your blackout. But we can get your stains out." Other brands...
Marketing & Advertising
The 5 C’s of Integrated Marketing

February 6, 2013 • Shirley Tan

The idea of integrated marketing is to make sure that the internal and external messaging of a company is consistent across all communication and sales channels. A big part of this is to make sure that ecommerce is not merely a platform for sales, but an opportunity to reach existing ...
Email & Text Marketing
Using Sales Data to Automate Email Marketing

February 6, 2013 • Jaime Brugueras

Customers are the bloodline of any business. For ecommerce businesses, it’s particularly important to focus on creating recurring, loyal customers. This centers on understanding customer sales and shopping data, and using that information to develop profitable, automated email campaigns...
Design & Development
Color Psychology and Ecommerce

February 6, 2013 • Drew Coffin

Color affects our moods and states of mind. It can influence customer buying habits, making color psychology an important part of ecommerce. This article will address color psychology basics and ways you can use color psychology with your ecommerce efforts.
Marketing & Advertising
Influencing How Google Displays Your Page Description

February 5, 2013 • Chris Silver Smith

The brief preview text that appears below the links to your pages in Google's search results can be influenced by savvy marketers to improve site traffic through engineered meta descriptions. Read on for details.
Social Media
2 Ways to Create Facebook Ads

February 5, 2013 • Paul Chaney

A number of changes have taken place at Facebook with regard to how businesses use the platform. I will be reporting on these over the next few weeks. In this article, I discuss changes made to Facebook Ads. Recently, Facebook revised its advertising platform to make it easier for bu...
User Experience
Understanding User Experience vs. User Interface

February 4, 2013 • Dale Traxler

I’ve had many discussions this year with web designers and developers concerning user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) and what the differences are. For ecommerce merchants, it’s important to know the difference if you are planning any type of redesign of your online store. On...
Social Media
Can New Myspace Help Ecommerce Businesses?

February 2, 2013 • Paul Chaney

Myspace is one social network I thought I would never address again, especially in a business context. The site became the most popular social network in 2005 and surpassed Google as the most visited website in 2006. In later years, use of the site quickly declined due to the growing ...