Page 200 – Practical Ecommerce

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Business
10 Low-Budget Ways to Sell Internationally

February 23, 2012 • Gagan Mehra

In “10 Ideas to Grow Ecommerce Profits in 2012,” my previous article, I suggested that merchants expand into foreign markets to grow profits. In this article, I'll address how to do that without spending a lot of money. 1. Sell on Current Website, Ship from U.S. Your international cu...
Finance
15 Top Crowdfunding Projects on Kickstarter

February 23, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site to fund entrepreneurial projects in technology, design, film, art, and other creative fields. The video game project Double Fine Adventure has raised two million dollars from over sixty thousand backers, and the funding still has 19 days to go. Within ...
Business
Crowdfunding Legislation Still Pending

February 22, 2012 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm

If you want to raise money for your business venture, you generally have a few traditional options. You can (a) ask your family to back your venture, (b) apply for bank financing, or (c) seek investors to participate in your business. Lack of Bank Financing Since 2009, bank financi...
Business
How to Compete on Price Against Large Companies

February 22, 2012 • PEC Staff

Conventional wisdom is that smaller ecommerce merchants cannot compete against larger ones in terms of the prices of their respective products. That may not be necessarily true. We recently spoke with Rodrigo Carvalho, founder and CEO of BlackLocus, a pricing-intelligence service. He ...
User Experience
10 Innovative Ecommerce Sites

February 21, 2012 • Armando Roggio

What follows is my view of ten excellent ecommerce sites, each offering innovative ideas in navigation, images, and content marketing. The sites all use the Magento open-source platform, but the ...
Conversion
The Pros and Cons of Drop Shipping

February 21, 2012 • Rob Snell

When I spoke at a conference a couple of years ago, and I made the mistake of referring to two types of online retailers: "real retailers" (like me) who stock what they sell and then those other folks that drop ship. Whoops! I have never gotten so much hate mail.
Product Pages
Identifying Conversion Problems from the Product Page

February 21, 2012 • Pamela Hazelton

When vying to increase conversion rates, many storeowners mistakenly put primary focus on the checkout process. While a simplified checkout with ideal options — i.e. various payment and non-inflated shipping choices — will definitely help increase the percentage of visitors who complete...
Customer Retention
3 Ecommerce Personalization Strategies

February 20, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Personalized product recommendations may help shoppers discover products or services more quickly and boost ecommerce sales conversions. There are, perhaps, a few possible definitions of personalization. For some, “personalization is about engaging customers using technology in ways th...
Social Media
Ecommerce Comes to Twitter

February 20, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Twitter has served as a marketing and customer service channel by small businesses for years. Now merchants can use it to promote ecommerce, thanks to a third-party platform called Chirpify and Twitter's own efforts to open its advertising platform to small companies. Chirpify, the Tw...
Email & Text Marketing
5 Steps to Effective Email Calls to Action

February 17, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

In email marketing, subject lines get recipients to open the email. The "from" line gives credibility and builds brand awareness. The creative message invokes the desire to know more, buy a product, or sign up for a webinar. But one of the most important and overlooked elements to email...
On-page SEO
SEO: Optimizing Ratings, Reviews and Comments

February 17, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Content that consumers leave on an ecommerce site can improve the site’s search engine optimization, if the platforms and underlying code are set up optimally. Ratings, reviews and comments each play a part in SEO, utilizing the words and opinions that real shoppers voice to strengthen ...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: Red Flags for Ecommerce Merchants, Part 1

February 17, 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 first installment o...
Payments
6 New Mobile Payment Developments

February 16, 2012 • Sig Ueland

According to investment bank Barclays Capital, purchases made on smartphones and tablets hit $5.3 billion in the U.S. in 2011, up 83 percent from 2010. While mobile purchases are dramatically growing, how mobile consumers actually pay for those items is dramatically changing. Here is ...
Business
What’s an Inappropriate Product Review?

February 15, 2012 • PEC Staff

A recent New York Times story profiled a merchant that sold leather Kindle cases on Amazon. The merchant, according to The Times, then sent letters to its customers offering a free case if the customers posted a review on Amazon. The story created a firestorm of angst concerning reviews...
Social Media
5 Free Facebook Welcome Tab Apps; Pros and Cons

February 15, 2012 • Paul Chaney

A number of companies offer free apps that give merchants the ability to add custom content, such as a Welcome tab, to Facebook fan pages. In this article I review five of these apps, and discuss the pros and cons of each. 1. Woobox Custom Facebook Page Tab Facebook app provider Woobo...
Customer Retention
4 Ways to Improve Ecommerce Conversions with Better Landing Pages

February 14, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Better landing page content and design may boost ecommerce conversions. A small difference in an online merchant's conversion rate can make a huge difference in that merchant's profit. Consider an online retailer with about 20,000 monthly visits and an average order value — sometimes c...
Marketing & Advertising
How to Optimize Your Site for Google in Foreign Countries

February 14, 2012 • Anne Kennedy

As with SEO in your own language, attention to the basics pays off. Just as you would do when working in your own country, when working outside your home country and language be sure to build your site with algorithm-friendly architecture, load it with relevant content, and attract inbound links from authoritative sites.
Schools & Resources
Reading List: Stefan Schmidt of Hybris

February 14, 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 ...
Conversion
Ask an Expert: Better to Sell Retail or Wholesale?

February 13, 2012 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about the pros and cons of selling products on a retail basis, versus wholesale. The question comes from Jan Hansen, co-owner of Jewels by...
Customer Retention
3 Tips for Getting Started with Subscriptions

February 13, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Product and service subscriptions give ecommerce businesses a reliable flow of revenue, predictable inventory requirements, and the opportunity to cut costs. Transitioning from a traditional retail model to a subscription service can be done in small measured steps. What follows are th...
Design & Development
Optimizing Images to Reduce Load Times

February 10, 2012 • Drew Coffin

Not is only a site's load time factored into its search-engine rankings, the longer it takes to load the more likely it will lose visitors. A large percentage of bandwidth usage — especially for ecommerce sites — comes from images. As such, image size is an important component of a site...
Social Media
How Does Facebook Make Money?

February 10, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

Facebook has finally filed its long anticipated SEC S-1 registration to take the company public. The filing is straightforward, lacking any surprises or innovative accounting techniques that other recent registration statements have offered. Nevertheless, the investment community and th...
Business > Merchant Voice
There is no magic bullet for success.

February 9, 2012 • Jamie Salvatori

Soap box time! I feel like ranting a bit today. I really bristle when I read articles claiming “The 7 Tips to SEO dominance” or “10 ways to effectively market your business” or “Top 5 Mistakes That Will Kill Your Business”. It’s as if there are magic potions to running an online busines...
Shipping & Fulfillment
How to Pack and Protect an Ecommerce Shipment

February 9, 2012 • James Hyde

There are three main aspects to packaging for ecommerce shipments. Protection. Helps prevent damage to the items during transit. Presentation. Gives perceived value to the customer. Cost. Often a limiting factor. In this article, I will address "protection" matters: How to...
Business
How to Source Products from China, and Sell There Too

February 8, 2012 • PEC Staff

There's no bigger name in the ecommerce industry than Alibaba. It was launched in 1999 in China, but it now services millions of businesses and consumers, offering wholesale and retail products worldwide. We recently spoke with its vice president of global sales and service, Brian Wong,...
Social Media
14 Brands on Pinterest

February 8, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Business is booming on Pinterest. According to data from Monetate, a testing and personalization firm, from September to December 2011 estimated unique visitors to Pinterest.com increased by 429 percent. Total same-store referral traffic from Pinterest to five specialty apparel retailer...
Social Media
10 Useful WordPress Plugins

February 7, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Many ecommerce merchants publish blogs to connect with their audiences and enhance their search engine optimization efforts. WordPress is a robust blogging platform. Part of its appeal is the thousands of plugins that enhance its functionality. Here are ten popular plugins that I consid...
User Experience
4 Ways Tablets Could Affect Ecommerce Design, Marketing

February 7, 2012 • Armando Roggio

The meteoric rise in tablet computer sales could affect how online retailers market in 2012, including driving changes in site design, site features, content, and advertising. Global tablet computer shipments leapt to 26.8 million units in the fourth quarter of last year, setting new s...
Social Media
Google+ Scrapbook: Creative Examples from Top Companies

February 6, 2012 • Paul Chaney

Google's new social network, Google+, is woefully lacking in customization options. One feature, however, the Scrapbook photo album — the row of five images across the top of the business page — is something merchants can utilize to showcase products and build brand identity. This art...
Social Media
You Can’t Buy Real Followers and Fans

February 6, 2012 • Armando Roggio

You cannot buy real Fans and followers. The practice of purchasing Twitter followers and Facebook Fans is called "cherry blossoming." It will not improve an online store's business and could destroy a merchant's reputation. Social media marketing has become a requirement for many retai...