Page 197 – Practical Ecommerce

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Checkout Tactics
3 Tips for Managing Shopping Cart Abandonment

April 24, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Recent studies indicate that 7 out of 10 online shopping carts are exited before a sale is completed. This abandonment rate seems to be rising, as online shoppers become more comfortable comparing prices and other product or service attributes. SeeWhy, a website conversion service, rep...
Social Media
10 Marketing Examples of Facebook Photo Albums

April 23, 2012 • Paul Chaney

There are many ways for ecommerce merchants to use Facebook's photo gallery. My article last week — "Facebook Photo Albums: Maximize the Marketing Value" — outlined a number of them. Here are 10 examples of ecommerce merchants and small businesses that are taking advantage of Facebook...
Business
Dr. Ralph Wilson Announces Sale of Web Marketing Today

April 23, 2012 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, creator and long-time editor of industry-leading e-zine Web Marketing Today, today announced the sale of this historical website and newsletter, effective May 1, 2012, to e-commerce publishers Kerry and Joy Murdock of Practical eCommerce.
Business
Who Needs an Ecommerce Strategy, Anyway?

April 23, 2012 • Dale Traxler

Editor's Note: We welcome Dale Traxler as our newest contributing editor. He's a former owner of an ecommerce business — having purchased, grown and then sold Beaded Impressions, a family of jewelry-related sites. He's now an advisor and consultant to small businesses. Ten years ago...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Changes at the USPS

April 20, 2012 • PEC Staff

Editor's Note: We welcome John Haber as our newest contributor. A shipping and supply-chain authority, he is the founder and CEO of Spend Management Experts, a global shipping and supply-chain consulting firm. His first piece, below, addresses changes at the USPS and how those changes c...
Finance
Going Public? How to Decide Which Exchange to List On

April 20, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

Thinking about taking your company public? After you get through all the paperwork you will have to decide at which stock exchange you want to list your company. Each publicly traded company may trade shares on only one domestic stock exchange. Substantive differences exist among the ex...
Conversion
6 Ways to Increase Prices on Your Ecommerce Site

April 19, 2012 • Gagan Mehra

Pricing management is one of the most ignored processes for an ecommerce site. Most sites set the prices once and then largely forget about them. Though, the fact is that effective management of pricing can result in significant increase in profits. One way to do that is to increase pri...
Link Building
SEO: Avoid Link Building Shortcuts

April 19, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

There are no safe link building shortcuts. Instead I want to warn marketers about deceptive search marketers and the dangers of using “easy” link building tactics. In the latest instance, the search engine optimization community is abuzz with news that Home Depot’s SEO team has attempt...
Business
Lessons Learned: U.K. Online Ink Store Celebrates 10 Years

April 18, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

“Lessons Learned” is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences, good and bad. For this installment, we corresponded with John Sollars, founder of Stinkyink, a ...
Business
How to Manage Tracking Tags on an Ecommerce Site

April 18, 2012 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce sites track visitor behavior in a variety of ways. One of them is the use of "tags," small pieces of code from third-party websites, such as analytics programs and affiliate marketing partners. An active site can have many tags, and they sometimes conflict with each other. Mon...
Business > Merchant Voice
How we increased our international business 40%

April 18, 2012 • Jamie Salvatori

We increased our international business 40% recently. Our international packages, prior to this change, represented approximately 9.6% of all shipments. Since we made this change, they now account for 13.4% of all packages shipped. We accomplished this by lowering our shipping prices....
Inventory
3 Tips for Deciding What to Sell Online

April 17, 2012 • Armando Roggio

What a merchant sells online has a significant effect on that merchant’s success, including profitability and longevity. New ecommerce entrepreneurs should choose products wisely. According to estimates from Forrester, the research firm, U.S. online retail sales should reach about $278...
Social Media
Facebook Photo Albums: Maximize the Marketing Value

April 17, 2012 • Paul Chaney

In last week's article, "Using Facebook's New App Icons to Promote Your Business," I discussed how to modify Facebook Page app icons, which are located just beneath the cover image. The first icon that appears in the row of four is "Photos." It cannot be moved from this first position...
Business > Merchant Voice
Hotmail users unsubscribe most but most likely to convert

April 17, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Have you ever started signing up for a white paper, e-book or guide, entering your free web-based account in the email field, only to see they won’t accept anything other than a business address? So you reluctantly do so, most likely because if you’re anything like me, you rarely unsu...
Social Media
23 Twitter Chats for Small Businesses

April 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland

One of the best ways to harness Twitter is by participating in chats, scheduled hashtag discussions that focus on specific topics. Small businesses can utilize chats to develop a social media plan, discuss brand strategy, and take advantage of free legal advice. Here is a list of chats...
Email & Text Marketing
5 Unique and Effective Email Offers

April 16, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

The offer in an ecommerce email campaign is key. Coming up with offers that stand out from the competition and get your subscribers' attention, however, can be difficult. A straight dollar-off discount gets boring over time, and email recipients will eventually ignore the same types o...
Link Building
SEO: Build Relationships, Not Links

April 13, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

When the Internet was new, it was difficult to find interesting and relevant websites. Link building was easy in those days. It was often just a matter of letting webmasters know that your site existed and they could link to it. Things have changed in the last couple of decades. Webmas...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: Red Flags for Ecommerce Merchants, Part 3

April 12, 2012 • Phil Hinke

Editor's Note: Contributor Phil Hinke is a veteran of the credit card processing industry. He now consults with ecommerce merchants on ways to lower their processing costs. Hinke believes merchants frequently overpay for credit card processing. His piece below is the third installment o...
Business
Using YouTube Videos to Drive Ecommerce Sales

April 11, 2012 • PEC Staff

The use of video by ecommerce merchants can increase sales. We recently spoke with Ian Hackett, senior director of ecommerce and user experience at TRX Training, a retailer of exercise equipment, about the use of video for product sales. TRX Training has an extensive YouTube channel, ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
The Future of Regulated Mail, and Ecommerce Shipping

April 11, 2012 • James Hyde

People don’t write letters these days. They send emails. In the U.K., this has produced big changes in the state-owned Royal Mail. These changes have huge consequences for online retailers there. In the U.S., the Postal Service is starting to follow suit. In this article, I'll explain ...
Google Ads
Google AdWords Ad Extensions Basics

April 10, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Google AdWords extensions give potential shoppers more information about a merchant and more options to engage with that merchant before clicking a search ad. Although ad extensions have been around for a couple of years, Google recently added conversion tracking data to extensions, ma...
Finance
Equity Crowdfunding Is Now Legal in U.S.

April 10, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

Last week President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) that includes revisions to the 1930s era financial regulations that limited equity funding for start-up businesses. Equity crowdfunding is now legal in the U.S. The final bill is more restrictive than ...
Social Media
Using Facebook’s New App Icons to Promote Your Business

April 9, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Now that Facebook has transferred commercial Fan pages to the new Timeline format, links to custom tabs — now called "apps" — reside in a row below the cover image. These were previously located in the left-hand column, with small icons. No matter how many apps you have, only four appea...
Social Media
Pinterest: Choosing Cover Images, Tracking Pins

April 9, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Pinterest released a new feature last week, giving marketers significantly more control over how their companies' Pinterest boards are represented. This new feature allows users to choose the cover images for their pin boards, which serve as a sort of directory for a user's Pinterest p...
SEO > Merchant Voice
SEO and Selecting a Magento Theme

April 7, 2012 • Richard Stubbings

One of the best ways to implement any cart is to select a template that is close to what you want your site to look like, and then use a professional designer to tailor it to your unique needs. Magento has literally thousands of templates and it can be a little daunting finding one for ...
SEO
SEO and PPC: Synergistic or Cannibalistic?

April 6, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Many ecommerce managers wonder whether the paid search ads they place enhance or cannibalize the organic search results. They wonder, in other words, if they end up paying for clicks they could have had for free organically. A recent study by Google suggests that the relationship betwee...
On-page SEO
8 SEO Pointers for Ecommerce Product Pages

April 5, 2012 • Pablo Palatnik

Search engine optimization can be the difference between ecommerce businesses that thrive, and those that don't. Optimizing product pages for search engines is especially important. Below are eight pointers to make sure your product pages are properly optimized. 1. Place Keywords i...
Conversion
Analyzing Customer Review Platforms; Amazon’s Example

April 5, 2012 • Louis Camassa

A customer review system is one of the top features of an ecommerce website. It provides credibility through the word of others who have previously purchased the products or services. This singular feature differentiates the online shopping experience from brick-and-mortar stores more t...
Business
Tablets, Smartphones to Change Online Shopping?

April 4, 2012 • PEC Staff

The shift to tablet and smartphone computing will surely change how consumers shop online. We recently spoke with Brian Horakh, founder and CEO of Zoovy, the shopping cart platform, about how this shift will affect ecommerce merchants. Horakh is an ecommerce pioneer — having founded Zo...
Business > Merchant Voice
8 ways expos are similar to online marketing

April 4, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

1. Go against type If you’re trying to get known for an unusual niche, don’t book the obvious, traditional expo category (in my case, New Age expos for astrology reports), in the beginning. You’ll compete as an also-ran against others with bigger wallets, better branding, bigger sta...