Page 195 – Practical Ecommerce

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Business
Using Google Analytics to Measure Social Media Effectiveness

June 7, 2012 • Jaime Brugueras

Google Analytics has moved its social reports to new locations. And it has added new features to gather more in-depth social media data. Here’s a quick look for Google Analytics users, showing you where you can find your social metrics, and how they’ve been designed to better suit your...
SEO
SEO Report Card: MotoGP Store, Part 2

June 7, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

The MotoGP Store volunteered for an SEO Report Card. This is the second installment of my analysis of that site. In "Part 1," I reviewed the home page and category pages, internal navigation, HTML templates, title tags and keyword choices on, again, The MotoGP Store. Now I'll look at UR...
Link Building
17 Tools to Analyze Your Links

June 6, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Monitoring your inbound links is a great way to gauge the progress of your website. Inbound links, or backlinks, give you a picture of who is taking an interest in your site. Compare your inbound links to those of your competing websites, and discover new relationships to build. Here ...
Conversion
Understanding Comparison Shopping Engines

June 6, 2012 • Jody Isaksson Hartwig

Editor's note: We welcome Jody Hartwig as our newest contributor. She is a senior account manager at Acumium, an ecommerce consulting and technology firm. She is also a longtime advisor to ecommerce merchants. For us, Hartwig will address the pros and cons of marketplaces and comparison...
Social Media
Facebook Promoted Posts: Getting Started

June 5, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Facebook just launched a new advertising format called Promoted Posts, which allows Page administrators to turn any Timeline post into an ad that appears at the top of Fans' news feeds. Promoted Posts increase the chance that more Fans will see it, and that more of their friends will to...
Social Media
Ecommerce Marketing on Google+

June 5, 2012 • Armando Roggio

As Google rolls more features and functions into Google+, marketing on the new and fast growing social media network is increasingly important. Last week, Google announced the launch of Google+ Local, which provides users with recommendations and information about local businesses incl...
Social Media
Who is Using Twitter and Why?

June 4, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Mobile adoption may be driving a surge in Twitter use, according to a major research firm. A report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project released May 31, 2012 said, “Twitter usage is highly correlated with the use of mobile technologies, especially smartphones.” This find...
Business
Is Your Ecommerce Model Profitable and Sustainable?

June 4, 2012 • Dale Traxler

Are your profits better or worse than you projected 12 months ago? If you don't know — or if you didn't do a projection — you may be missing a key component of your business model: finance. This article continues my series on the managerial, operational, and financial aspects of runn...
SEO
SEO Report Card: MotoGP Store, Part 1

June 1, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Every now and then an ecommerce site raises its hand for an "SEO Report Card." It’s a great way for the site to get some free advice and a good link, and an interesting way to give Practical eCommerce some, well, practical tips on how we’d handle SEO challenges with real ecommerce sites...
Influencers & Affiliates
Affiliate Marketing: Optimize Creative Inventory

May 31, 2012 • Carolyn Kmet

Managing an affiliate marketing channel is more than just getting affiliates to join your program. It is also about optimizing ad placements on affiliate sites. Building Your Creative Inventory Different types of affiliates have different creative needs. Coupon and deal sites such...
Business
Limitations on the Crowdfunding Legislation

May 30, 2012 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm

Now that the Jumpstart Our Business Startups — "JOBS" — Act has passed, many people are jumping to get into the crowdfunding game. There are masses of start-ups and operating companies that are seeking to use crowdfunding as a way to access cash for their new ventures or to expand exis...
Business > Merchant Voice
Shared hosting is best for Magento

May 30, 2012 • Richard Stubbings

Yes, you read that right. I firmly believe that the best hosting for most Magento sites is shared hosting. All too often when you look around for a host for your Magento store, hosting companies say things like “you cannot run Magento in a shared environment”, “Magento is resource hungr...
Google Ads
Remarketing Renaissance Helps Ecommerce Merchants

May 30, 2012 • Scott Smigler

The idea of targeting ads to visitors who leave a site and continue surfing the web always made sense to me. Until recently, however, this "remarketing" was an afterthought. It just wasn’t producing enough traffic or sales to be valuable. That’s likely to change. When Google got into ...
Social Media
3 Ways to Integrate Tweets on Your Ecommerce Site

May 29, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Twitter offers several ways to integrate tweets into a retailer's website. Showing tweets increases the number of followers. It also keeps the website updated with new content. And it serves increase the community around the retailer's brand. With that in mind, here are three of the m...
Design & Dev Tools
RSS Plumbing with Yahoo! Pipes

May 29, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Yahoo! Pipes is a free content manipulation service that lets you mix and mash up web content using a visual editor that doesn’t require any code writing experience. The Pipes service has been around since February 7, 2007, and is the primarily the work of then Yahoo! Engineers Pasha S...
Design & Development
15 Personalized Shopping Cart Icons

May 28, 2012 • Drew Coffin

Custom icons can help a site design and personalize the online shopping experience. Shopping cart icons are some of the more popular icons to personalize. Here are 15 sites with ...
Business > Merchant Voice
One disastrous daily deal experience: What Not To Do

May 28, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

After experiencing one of the worst purchase experiences ever via a daily deal website which has broken nearly every retailing rule you can break, here is my What Not To Do post. On 19 January 2012, I saw a tempting offer from the daily deal website, Spreets to buy $100 worth of Elle M...
SEO
Why Does SEO Take So Long?

May 25, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search marketing’s two halves are so similar and yet so different. A new pay-per-click advertising campaign can be set up and pushed live, and data starts to roll in that same day. Within a week there may be enough data to analyze performance, tweak and iterate the optimization of the c...
Conversion
10 Ways to Evaluate Online Marketplaces

May 25, 2012 • Gagan Mehra

Online marketplaces have been around for a long time. The world’s largest online retailer, Amazon.com, is a marketplace. Many businesses sell their products on online marketplaces. Marketplaces, though, are not for everyone. This article lists ten reasons why they may — or may not — f...
Social Media
18 Tools to Develop Your Brand on Facebook

May 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland

If you’re look for a place to develop your brand, Facebook is the spot. With over 500 million daily active users, it’s a great platform on which to engage followers and promote yourself. It’s also an ideal environment to monitor how successful you are at engaging and promoting. Here is...
Business
Building the Right Ecommerce Team for Success

May 23, 2012 • Dale Traxler

Think you have a killer idea for an ecommerce business? Whether you are a product manufacturer or a reseller, it’s pretty difficult to come up with a truly unique business idea. In most cases, you’ll find someone who has done it, already doing it, or planning it. You will likely be able...
Platforms & Apps
Automating Social Media Posts with Dlvr.it

May 23, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Social media campaigns have become a mainstay of ecommerce marketing. Even the smallest of online retailers are likely to have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, and there are indications that social engagement may improve shopper relations and, possibly, sales. But the process of ...
Social Media
Using Facebook’s Insights Analytics to Expand Your Audience

May 22, 2012 • Paul Chaney

This article takes a closer look at ways merchants can utilize Facebook's administrative console and Insights analytics platform for marketing purposes. These newly revised sections contain information that can help merchants gain a deeper understanding into (a) who is visiting their ...
Business
Reduce Shipping Costs with Hybrid Services

May 22, 2012 • PEC Staff

Consumers increasingly expect free shipping for ecommerce purchases. But as fuel prices continue to fluctuate greatly and the economy is mired by uncertainty, shipping continues to be one of the toughest costs to for etailers to manage. Free shipping hurts profit margins. Moreover, th...
Analytics & Data
Integrating Google Analytics with Site Search to Drive Conversions

May 21, 2012 • Tim Wilson

There are two broad types of data you can collect about visits to your site. "Behavioral" data is about what visitors actually do on the site, while "attitudinal" data is about what visitors want to do. Both are valuable sources of information, and they complement each other in many way...
Technical SEO
SEO Site Migration Checklist

May 18, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Migrating a site to a new platform or domain, or implementing a major redesign, is one of the most stressful situations in search engine optimization. The potential for massively impacting organic search traffic and sales is higher during these launches than at any other time. But with ...
Business
7 Key Ecommerce Infrastructure Decisions

May 18, 2012 • Dale Traxler

Every business requires an infrastructure to support its customers and operations. This includes facilities, equipment, and processes to support all the functional areas of your business. Choosing the correct infrastructure to match your business strategies enables your operations to ru...
Social Media
How to Install Social Sharing Buttons from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest

May 17, 2012 • Paul Chaney

All major social networks provide merchants with the capability to incorporate social sharing buttons that allow visitors to share content. The process of embedding these buttons is simple, can be done in a matter of minutes, and requires only a basic understanding of HTML. Below are ...
Payments
Credit Card Providers Increasing Rates and Fees

May 17, 2012 • Phil Hinke

Editor's Note: Contributor Phil Hinke is a credit-card veteran who now consults with merchants on lowering their processing costs. Hinke believes the credit card processing industry is often unfair to merchants. He explains his views in his articles for us, including the one below. It’...
Marketing & Advertising
23 Tools to Research Your Competition

May 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Sometimes the best way to improve your own business is by taking a hard look at your competitors. By understanding their most and least effective strategies, you can fine-tune your own marketing efforts. Here is a list of competitive research tools. There are tools to research your com...