Page 199 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Payments
Credit Card Processing: Red Flags for Ecommerce Merchants, Part 2

March 13, 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 second installment ...
Social Media
10 Commandments for Effective Online Social Networking

March 12, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Here is a ten-step game plan for effective social network engagement. These are ten practical guidelines that will make you a better member of the social networking communities in which you participate. 1. Pull, Don’t Push One of the first lessons you will learn very quickly when eng...
Conversion
How to Promote a New Product on Your Ecommerce Site

March 12, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Retailers frequently add new product lines, brands, or even seasonal items. When these fresh items are introduced, marketers call it a product launch. Product launches are important and frequent events in ecommerce marketing that may be managed with a promotional recipe, removing uncert...
Business > Merchant Voice
How you can help customers going through a hard time

March 11, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

If your customer isn’t going through a tough time, they definitely know someone who is. And I’m not saying this because I’m a doom’n’gloom kinda girl – if anything, I’m a bit of a Pollyanna. Of the 774 daily – OK, near-daily – blog posts I’ve written for the past three years, the most...
Design & Development
25 Great Corporate Logos

March 9, 2012 • Drew Coffin

A company logo is often the face of the business. While logos come in a variety of styles, a strong logo will adhere to certain basic principles. Strong logos are unique, balanced, easily identifiable, simple to understand, and easy to read — if they include text. Logos should also be ...
SEO
SEO for Mobile Apps and App Stores

March 9, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

The world of mobile applications is foreign territory to most Internet marketers. App development requires different skills than traditional website development. App planning and design forces marketers to understand the limitations of different platforms and devices. But once an app i...
Shipping & Fulfillment
How to Monitor and Manage Your Wholesale Suppliers

March 8, 2012 • James Hyde

In the beginning, you might be content that your inventory suppliers have simply delivered your goods on time. But as you grow and take on more lines, more staff, or outsource to a fulfillment company, you’ll quickly find that the arrival of poorly marked goods can waste time. In this ...
Conversion
Configuring an Ecommerce Site for International Orders; 8 Tips

March 8, 2012 • Louis Camassa

International orders are an often overlooked market for ecommerce merchants. Prior to accepting them, however, merchants should configure their sites to increase international profits and reduce potential losses. Here are eight tips to help. 1. Enable Fraud Protection Fraud is a hug...
Business
CyberSource Exec on Credit Card Fraud, Steps to Prevent

March 7, 2012 • PEC Staff

Most every ecommerce merchant has experienced credit card fraud. Credit card companies try to prevent payment fraud, of course, and one — CyberSource — publishes a report on the state of payment fraud each year. CyberSource's chief researcher for that report — called, this year, "2012 O...
Business > Merchant Voice
My Love/Hate Relationship with Product Reviews

March 7, 2012 • Jamie Salvatori

I don’t have product reviews on my website. I may add them at some point. However, I’m quite conflicted about it. My stance may seem odd since the big players in that space would cite years of research showing that adding product reviews to your website will increase your conversion r...
Social Media
Fancy Is a Pinterest-like Alternative for Ecommerce Merchants

March 7, 2012 • Paul Chaney

There is a lot of interest in Pinterest. It encourages content curation through user self-expression. With over 11 million users, the site has gained a large following in a short amount of time. However, to date, Pinterest has no model for businesses, certainly not one that actively fos...
Business > Merchant Voice
Put Retail back on the Agenda

March 6, 2012 • Richard Stubbings

The English have been called a nation of shopkeepers, and I guess that this is in part true. We still have a significant number of independent retailers surviving, even thriving, in spite of fierce competition from supermarkets and large national chains. We stay ahead of them because we...
Fraud Prevention
3 Tips for Managing a Store’s Online Reputation

March 6, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce marketers can monitor and maintain their stores' online reputation with regular searches and alerts, social media tracking software, and a commitment to good customer service. Reputation management, which is the practice of listening to and responding to what people say about...
Social Media
3 New Facebook Marketing Tools: Timeline, Reach Generator, Premium

March 6, 2012 • Sig Ueland

At last week’s Facebook Marketing Conference, the social media giant unveiled three new marketing solutions to drive business growth using social technology: Timeline, Reach Generator and Premium. Here is a list of Facebook’s new marketing products. Access the conference videos to lear...
Schools & Resources
Managing a Design Project When You’re Not a Graphic Artist

March 5, 2012 • Drew Coffin

Ecommerce merchants wear many hats. One of them is designing graphics for their websites. In my experience as a freelance graphic artist, I've adopted steps to help me become efficient and productive for each graphic project. I've listed those steps, below, hoping they can help non-pr...
Social Media
How to Shorten Google+ URLs

March 5, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Google+ business page URLs can be long and unwieldy. But there are a couple of easy ways you can create a short alias addresses that shoppers can remember. At the present, a typical Google+ business page URL looks something like this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103654589540801342565...
Business
Checklist for Qualifying Internet Business Buyers

March 4, 2012 • Manish Shah

So, you are thinking of selling your internet business. You understand the importance of exit strategy planning. You are excited to learn that good internet businesses can be sold quickly.. You have carefully analyzed your financial statements and calculated a fair market value for your...
Conversion > Merchant Voice
How to reduce customer returns, refunds and resentment

March 4, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

If you can reduce returns and refunds, you make more money! Here are my tips from my business and personal consumer experience. 1. 100% money-back guarantee When you shop online, you probably don’t buy products from unfamiliar companies, without a 100% money-back guarantee. You might ...
Product Pages
10 Most Important Features of Ecommerce Product Pages

March 2, 2012 • Pablo Palatnik

Editor's Note: We welcome Pablo Palatnik as our newest contributor. He is director of search marketing and search engine optimization for Fortune3, a shopping cart company. Palatnik's articles will address strategies for improving ecommerce product pages. His first piece is below. In...
Schools & Resources
Reading List: Luke van de Paverd of eCommerce Economy

March 2, 2012 • PEC Staff

In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...
Technical SEO
SEO Benefits of Responsive Web Design

March 1, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Site owners have many competing needs when developing mobile sites. Different devices, different capabilities, different screen sizes and resolutions, all have an impact on designing and developing mobile sites today. According to Mongoose Metrics, a tracking and analysis firm, only 9...
Social Media
Facebook Implements Timeline for Business Pages

March 1, 2012 • Paul Chaney

At its first-ever marketing conference on February 29, Facebook announced sweeping changes to its platform that have direct bearing on businesses. One of the most important was the introduction of Timeline for business pages. Late last year, Facebook introduced Timeline to individual ...
Google Ads
How to Optimize a Pay-per-click Landing Page

February 29, 2012 • Armando Roggio

A pay-per-click landing page should be a sales conversion engine, tuned to help consummate an order. Landing pages “are one of the strongest tools you have to convert visitors to customers,” wrote Brandon Eley and Shayne Tilley in their book, Online Marketing Inside Out. “Much of your ...
Influencers & Affiliates
Affiliate Marketing: Segmenting Your Affiliates, Part 2

February 29, 2012 • Carolyn Kmet

Running an affiliate program often requires managing relationships with thousands of different advertising partners. This can be challenging, as different types of affiliates have different marketing needs. Last month, in "Segmenting Your Affiliates," I addressed two of the most commo...
Google Ads
3 New Google AdWords’ Features Worth Trying

February 28, 2012 • Scott Smigler

Google continues adding new features to AdWords. "Enhanced Ad Sitelinks," "Offer Extensions," and "TrueView" video ads are three examples. I have tested each of these, and recommend them to merchants. Online retailers who use them first can start profiting before their competitors. The...
Social Media
Using Amateur Videos for Marketing Success; 2 Examples

February 27, 2012 • Paul Chaney

In the past, if you wanted to make a video for your business, you had to hire a production company or ad agency, spend tens of thousands of dollars and, as often as not, end up with a product much different than you expected. Edits and retakes were costly, so you just left well enough a...
Content Marketing
Using Content Marketing for Your Ecommerce Business

February 27, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Content marketing seeks to publish high-quality content to engage prospects, earn business, and create repeat customers. In the Internet age, anyone — private or commercial — can publish articles, essays, white papers, newsletters, audio podcasts, games, or videos that have the potenti...
Business > Merchant Voice
My Seven Big Mistakes

February 26, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

When people ask me what was the biggest mistake I have made with my luxury astrology report website business, I have to joke, “Which one?!” I have made so many... Big Mistake 1 My website Itsinthestarsonline.com was launched on 19 December 2006 after I interviewed seven website develop...
SEO
BloomReach to Change SEO Technology?

February 24, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization, boiled down, is the process of making sure a web page ends up highly ranked on search results, for searches relevant to that page. A merchant selling "Columbia Traverse Men's Hiking Shoes," for example, will want to optimize its product page so that searches ...
Schools & Resources
Reading List: Jaime Brugueras of Mineful

February 24, 2012 • PEC Staff

In “Reading List,” we ask ecommerce professionals to name some of their favorite recent books and blogs and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we corresponded with ...