Page 203 – Practical Ecommerce

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Shipping & Fulfillment
Notable Views: Fulfillment Outsourcing, Pros and Cons

December 23, 2011 • John Lindberg

Editor’s Note:”Notable Views” is a series where we ask leading experts to address critical, ecommerce-related topics. For this installment, we corresponded with John Lindberg, president of eFulfillment Service, a Michigan-based ...
Design & Development
Understanding Color Theory

December 22, 2011 • Drew Coffin

Last month, I wrote about color psychology and its effect on emotions, in "Color Psychology and Online Marketing" and "Color Psychology Showcase." In this article, I am going to discuss color theory, including the terms that describe color. Understanding color theory is useful whether y...
Platforms & Apps
13 Timekeeping Apps for Small Businesses

December 21, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Time is a precious commodity, particularly for entrepreneurial small-business owners that have to manage it themselves. Whether for billing or keeping yourself accountable, there are a number of mobile apps to measure your time. Here is a list of mobile apps to manage time. There are t...
Business > Merchant Voice
How we achieved 99% accuracy in order fulfillment

December 21, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

No matter how much time, effort, and money you put into promoting your business and converting visitors into buyers, you’ll never create repeat customers if you screw up fulfillment. This is partly why I hate out-sourced fulfillment and drop-shipping. Once you lose control over this mo...
Social Media
Understanding YouTube’s New Redesign

December 21, 2011 • Paul Chaney

The major social networks are all in redesign mode. Facebook is rolling out "Timelines," a more picturesque version of user Profiles. Twitter has completed a major redesign, which I covered last week in "Understanding Twitter's New Redesign." And now YouTube is changing its appearance a...
Email & Text Marketing
4 Mobile Email-Marketing Tips

December 20, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

There are many mobile devices that consumers can choose from: basic feature phones, smartphones, tablets, e-readers and more. Consumers have their own preferences as to what combination of devices to use and whether to use them on cellular connections, Wi-Fi networks, or both. For ecomm...
Google Ads
Formatting a Product Spreadsheet for Google Merchant Center

December 20, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google has created a service that helps online retailers list and submit products to Google's Product Search, Product Ads, and Commerce Search offerings. This service, called "Google Merchant Center," can accept a data feed of product information. In this article, you'll find a descrip...
Finance
6 Internet Stock Offerings in 2011; Recap

December 19, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Although 2011 is not yet over, it appears it will be a dismal year for the IPO — initial public stock offering — market. As of September, according to statistics compiled by market tracker Dealogic and reported in The Wall Street Journal, 63 percent of all 76 IPOs were trading below the...
Platforms & Apps
10 Great Licensed Shopping Carts

December 19, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Licensed ecommerce platforms are often the most flexible and powerful "shopping carts" available to online retailers, but they can demand more in terms of expenses and development time. Licensed shopping carts — or, perhaps more accurately, ecommerce platforms — are hosted on a merchan...
SEO
How to Benefit from Googlebot-Mobile’s New Smarts

December 16, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google’s mobile crawler Googlebot-Mobile has traditionally focused on content designed for feature phones and their extremely limited browsers. Google recently announced, however, a new version of Googlebot-Mobile that crawls using an iPhone user agent, enabling it to discover content d...
Shipping & Fulfillment
38 Fees and Surcharges from FedEx and UPS

December 16, 2011 • Sig Ueland

When comparing shipping rates from FedEx and UPS, don’t forget to include fees and surcharges. Each shipper has an extensive list of additional costs. So rather than just comparing ‘standard rates,’ determine your shipping needs and then calculate the fees. Here is a list of 2012 fees...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: ‘Interchange-Plus’ Pricing Not Necessarily Fair, Part 3

December 15, 2011 • 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 ...
Customer Retention
3 Remarketing Email Campaigns to Grow Repeat Customers

December 15, 2011 • Charles Nicholls

Getting a first purchase from a customer is always satisfying. New data shows, however, just how hard it is to build repeat customers, those that buy over and over again. I’ve just completed one of the most extensive studies ever conducted into the purchasing behavior of website visito...
Social Media
Understanding Twitter’s New Redesign

December 14, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Twitter has just launched several enhancements that include a major redesign of its layout, the introduction of Facebook-style brand pages, embeddable tweets and a redesign of its mobile and Tweetdeck apps. Dubbed “Let’s Fly” — Twitter describes it in a blog post — the goal of the rede...
Social Media
21 Twitter ‘Brand Pages’

December 14, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Twitter has launched "brand pages" as part of its recent redesign. Brand pages feature large customizable header images and highlight a top tweet with an embedded photo or video. Twitter is launching brand pages with 21 marketers: American Express, Best Buy, Bing, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola,...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing: 3 Tips for Recovering from Content Mistakes

December 13, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The email send button and the content of the message it represents are powerful marketing tools that launch a message directly to thousands of potential customers at once. But when there is a mistake in the email message — a broken link, misspelled word, an incorrect date — an emergenc...
SEO
Managing SEO and Social Media Together

December 13, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

How etailers manage their social media marketing channel has a growing impact on organic search results. Google and Bing have both incorporated social data into their algorithms to signal content freshness and quality. While the datasets each engine has access to differ, the fact remain...
Social Media
5 New Social-Shopping Sites and Apps

December 12, 2011 • Paul Chaney

When it comes to making product purchase decisions, customers are increasingly relying on each other for information and advice. That is not a new behavior, as people have always relied on the influence of friends. It's just that social media technology has given it wings. Consumers ar...
Conversion
Behavioral Differences Between Men and Women Influence Shopping

December 9, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Retail is the dominion of women; they shop to purchase both essential and discretionary goods, to relax, and to socialize. So it's not surprising that women account for over 80 percent of consumer spending, or about $5 trillion dollars annually, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Men,...
Platforms & Apps
8 Great SaaS Shopping Carts

December 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecommerce solutions allow small online retailers to open functional online stores with a minimum in capital expense. While there are many good SaaS shopping carts on the market in the end of 2011, here are eight carts that are among my personal favor...
Google Ads
The 20 Most Expensive Keywords

December 8, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Google makes a lot of money from online advertising. In the twelve months ended June 30, 2011, Google made $33.3 billion in revenues. Of that, 97 percent ($32.2 billion) was from advertising. WordStream, a provider of software for keywords and pay-per-click marketing campaigns, has don...
Social Media
Add the Twitter Tweet and Follow Buttons without Hiring a Developer

December 8, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Twitter is an important site for ecommerce marketers that want to encourage shoppers to share products and pages. Fortunately, the service is easy to integrate into a retail site without even hiring a developer. In this article, you'll learn how to add both the Twitter Tweet and the Tw...
Business
How to Secure a Domain Name in Different Countries

December 7, 2011 • PEC Staff

The notion of expanding an ecommerce business into additional countries is enticing for many merchants. Most every country, however, has its own top-level domain name. There's "co.uk" for the U.K., ".cn" for China, and ".fr" for France, as examples. Should merchants interested in t...
Conversion
Can Spelling Mistakes Impact Ecommerce Conversion?

December 7, 2011 • Charles Nicholls

There’s little research on the impact of spelling and grammar mistakes on conversion. But Charles Duncombe, CEO of JustSayPlease, a U.K.-based ecommerce and travel company, is a stickler for getting it right. He knows firsthand the impact of spelling mistakes on an ecommerce site. He sa...
Fraud Prevention
Beware of DDoS Attacks on Ecommerce Sites

December 6, 2011 • Armando Roggio

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, some Internet security experts are worried that ecommerce sites may be especially vulnerable to distributed denial of service attacks from hackers, thieves, or even unscrupulous competitors. A distributed denial of service — DDoS — attac...
Conversion
Using Google Website Optimizer for A/B Testing

December 6, 2011 • Michael Stearns

Give yourself a pat on the back if you have developed an ecommerce business with a steady flow of orders. Perhaps you have had success with search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and social media. When you are ready to accelerate your business, however, A/B and multivari...
Schools & Resources
15 Schools for Ecommerce Degrees

December 5, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Online entrepreneurs typically learn their trade by trial and error. They also acquire skills through online courses — such as those at Practical eCommerce. But there are also bachelor and master degree programs that concentrate on ecommerce. Here is a list of degree programs that fo...
Social Media
Using LinkedIn for Your Ecommerce Business: Pros and Cons

December 5, 2011 • Paul Chaney

LinkedIn appeals primarily to business professionals. It does not have as many consumer users as Facebook. But its social media strengths can still help your ecommerce business. This article will outline the benefits and limiations of using LinkedIn as a social commerce marketing platf...
Conversion
Analyzing Cyber Monday Sales

December 2, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Black Friday and Cyber Monday were greatly anticipated by merchants and consumers and the results did not disappoint. Online sales on Cyber Monday reached $1.25 billion according to Internet tracking firm comScore, making it the biggest online spending day in history. Revenues increase...
Influencers & Affiliates
Affiliate Marketing Metrics: A Primer

December 1, 2011 • Carolyn Kmet

One of the benefits of online marketing is all the data we have access to. Unlike brick-and-mortar establishments, an online retailer can determine product interest and then forecast sales based on how many people viewed a product. Take it a step further, and the online retailer can a...