Page 204 – Practical Ecommerce

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Social Media
3 Ways Social Media Affects Brands

December 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The continued growth of social networking and blog sites is having an effect on brands and how those brands are marketed. According to an October study from The Nielsen Company and its social media affiliate, NM Incite, “60 percent of consumers researching products though multiple onli...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing: How to Prevent, Manage Dormant Lists

November 30, 2011 • PEC Staff

Email marketing remains critical for many ecommerce merchants. But for those merchants with established ecommerce sites — and older email lists — maintaining healthy email open rates and click-through rates can be a challenge. We spoke recently with an email-marketing expert on how, ex...
Marketing & Advertising
Ask an Expert: For SEO, Better to Host Videos On-site?

November 30, 2011 • 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 hosting videos for search engine optimization purposes.
SEO Tools
5 Conversion Tools for SEO and Beyond

November 29, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

The quickest path to earning more from an ecommerce site's organic search traffic is to convert more consumers who already go there. I addressed that topic previously, at "SEO: Convert More Before Driving More." Many SEO strategies focus on driving more visitors. But what use is driv...
Design & Development
Color Psychology Showcase

November 29, 2011 • Drew Coffin

In “Color Psychology and Online Marketing,” I addressed how different colors and color combinations send different messages. In this article, I’ll list some sites that illustrate this principle. Red Collision Labs Collision Labs ...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Advertising Becoming More Important?

November 28, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Ten years ago a business could thrive by focusing on organic search engine optimization. My rule of thumb then was that organic rankings garnered roughly 80 percent of the clicks on search result pages while paid listings garnered less than 20 percent. A smart SEO strategy seemed to out...
Social Media
5 Content Curation Tools for Social Sharing

November 28, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Many of us use popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Yet there are hundreds of others, most of which you likely have never heard of. Some of these lesser known digital outposts are worth discussing, however. Over the past few weeks I have reported on three: Stum...
Social Media
20 Top Brands on Google+

November 25, 2011 • Sig Ueland

A new study by social management company BrightEdge found that 61 of the top 100 global brands had a Google+ page the week after Google let companies create brand pages.
Business
Become a Google Chrome Power User

November 25, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google Chrome is rapidly becoming one of the most popular web browsers for Internet professionals — thanks to an impressive set of features and short cuts. Learning and using just a few of these time saving tidbits could boost productivity and avoid problems. Here are some tips and tri...
Finance
Crowdfunding: 5 Things You Should Know

November 24, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

New crowdfunding sites are springing up every month and more and more entrepreneurs are looking to these sites for money. Despite all the hoopla, crowdfunding is not currently a good alternative for most start-up or small businesses. Here are five things you should know about crowdfundi...
Technical SEO
SEO: Letting Customers Generate Long Tail Search Terms

November 23, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization typically focuses on the trophy terms, the high-volume keyword phrases, because marketers need to drive the highest value with the lowest effort. Unfortunately, those juicy trophy terms are great for brand recognition and customers' initial awareness, but they...
Business
Email Deliverability: Blacklists, ISP Blocks, Spam Triggers

November 23, 2011 • PEC Staff

Email marketing is critically important to many ecommerce merchants. But what happens if a merchant's email is blocked by an Internet service provider? Or, worse yet, what happens if the merchant's name or IP address lands on a so-called "blacklist"? Email deliverability was the topic...
Schools & Resources
12 Tech Review Sites for Small Businesses

November 22, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Technology product review sites can be a valuable resource for small businesses that need to make purchasing decisions. Sites offer expert and consumer opinions, as well as how-to information, competitive pricing locations, and the latest news on technology trends. Here is a list of t...
Customer Retention
‘Retargeting’ Can Boost Conversions; A Primer

November 22, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Using behavioral retargeting to aim online display and pay-per-click advertisements at shoppers already familiar with a brand or some particular products could significantly boost sales conversions, with some estimates suggesting that retargeted consumers are 70 percent more likely to m...
Design & Development
Selling on Multiple Devices: 7 Key Ecommerce Functions

November 21, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

This is the age of the always-connected customer. Having only an ecommerce website — accessible by a desktop or laptop computer — is not sufficient to maximize your sales. Today’s consumers use a variety of devices to research and purchase your products. A successful online business n...
Shipping & Fulfillment
5 Reasons to Consider Drop Shipping

November 21, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Drop shipping is an order fulfillment strategy where the retailer does not keep products in inventory, but relies on wholesalers or manufacturers to actually ship orders to customers. This arrangement has several advantages that make it attractive to online merchants. When a customer p...
Content Marketing
Syndicating Content for SEO Benefit

November 18, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

When ecommerce companies think about content syndication, they typically consider acquiring content that others have written to beef up their own sites. Depending on the goal, placing content from other sites onto your own can be beneficial from a branding, partnership, or reference poi...
Influencers & Affiliates
Celebrity Curators Help Personalize Ecommerce

November 18, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

How do you stand out in a crowded market with a sizeable number of players competing mostly on low prices and free shipping? By differentiating yourself. Several ecommerce websites are melding social media with personalization to create a more inviting and collaborative shopping experie...
Platforms & Apps
15 Mobile Apps for Holiday Shopping

November 17, 2011 • Sig Ueland

There are many mobile apps to assist consumers with holiday shopping. There are deals and rewards apps, price comparison apps, and to-do and shopping assistant apps. Here's a list of 15 mobile apps that assist consumers. Review these apps to see the mobile-shopping options your cus...
Business
New Custom, Top-Level Domains Coming; From ‘Widget.com’ to ‘.Widget’

November 17, 2011 • PEC Staff

The range of possible domain names is about to greatly increase. That's because ICANN, the authoritative body over Internet domain names, is about to add new custom top-level domains — the portion to the right of the period — that could include brand names and other customized names. ...
Checkout Tactics
10 Quick, Easy and (Almost) Free Ways to Close Sales During the Holiday Shopping Season

November 16, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

The highly anticipated holiday shopping season is already upon us. Active online stores are seeing more traffic, and price comparison sites have been feeding more data than in previous months. The big boost in traffic starts around November 19, and then skyrockets right after Thanksgivi...
Social Media
How to Create a Google+ Business Page

November 16, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Google announced last week that it has launched Pages for business in its Google+ social network. I addressed this topic in my "Social Retailer" blog last week and listed what I suggested are three possible benefits. Direct connection to search. Through the use of the "+1" button, ...
Schools & Resources
12 New QR Code Campaigns

November 15, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Quick Response (QR) codes continue to gain momentum in mobile commerce. As the holidays approach, a number of companies have launched QR code campaigns to boost sales, as well as promote worthy causes. Here is a list of new QR code campaigns. In addition to promoting mobile commerce, t...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Case Study: Toys“R”Us Gears Up for Cyber Monday

November 15, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

For online retailers, the days before and after Thanksgiving can determine a successful holiday season. Toys“R”Us, the large U.S.-based toy retailer, uses email marketing extensively during the holidays. I'll analyze Toys“R”Us's email strategies in this article — to help other merchants...
Fraud Prevention
3 Types of ‘Return Fraud’ to Monitor this Holiday Season

November 14, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Return fraud, which is expected to cost brick-and-mortar retailers $3.48 billion this holiday season, could also snag online merchants — significantly increasing costs and chargebacks. Return fraud takes several forms but three stand out as real concerns for ecommerce. They are: (1) wa...
Design & Development
Color Psychology and Online Marketing

November 14, 2011 • Drew Coffin

Colors and color combinations send different messages. Oftentimes for websites, colors intuitively create a mood or atmosphere. Color psychology takes this intuition and identifies common themes among certain colors. These color signals can be used to send stronger messages online. Col...
Platforms & Apps
7 Worthy Magento Extensions

November 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce merchants often add features and functions to their sites to increase sales and performance. In this article, you'll find seven worthy extensions for Magento — the ecommerce platform — that address common ecommerce-related tasks. Some of these work best with the free Magento ...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: ‘Interchange-Plus’ Pricing Not Necessarily Fair, Part 2

November 11, 2011 • Phil Hinke

I am a strong advocate of interchange-plus pricing. To date, I have allowed only merchant account providers that offer interchange-plus pricing to bid for my clients' business. However, I am also concerned about how some providers and salespeople appear to be pitching interchange-plus pricing as a panacea for ensuring merchants are being priced fairly.
Finance
Venture Capital Firms Bullish on Ecommerce

November 10, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

In "Ecommerce Companies Snag Venture Capital," I discussed several ecommerce firms that recently received venture capital funding. Most of them were ecommerce infrastructure providers. I was curious to find out if VCs prefer business-to-business infrastructure companies to consumer-ori...
Schools & Resources
13 Sites to Answer Technology Questions

November 10, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Making a technology buying decision is difficult when you don’t understand the technology itself. You know that cloud computing has little to do with the weather, but beyond that you’re stumped. Where do you turn for answers? Here is a list of resources to get answers to your technolog...