Page 205 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Conversion
How to Test Multiple Variables on an Ecommerce Site

November 9, 2011 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce merchants strive to increase the number of visitors to their sites that actually purchase products. Increasing those conversions frequently requires experimenting with new approaches. Merchants can test which of these experiments increase sales, and which do not. The testing c...
Social Media
8 Businesses on Tumblr

November 9, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Of a Kind, the first store built on blogging platform Tumblr, is one year old. The site, which sells fashion items commissioned from emerging designers, is a mash-up of blog and ecommerce, providing personal content on its designers and their goods. While Of a Kind is still unique as ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Comparing UPS, FedEx, and USPS: Which is Best Now?

November 8, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Shipping costs are an ongoing challenge for ecommerce merchants, who compete head-to-head over free shipping and seek to avoid shopping cart abandonment. Given this competitive environment, knowing which carrier is best can be a huge advantage. In March, L.L. Bean announced that it wou...
Social Media
Using the New Delicious.com; 5 Advantages for Businesses

November 7, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Delicious is a longtime social bookmarking service for storing, discovering and sharing links to online resources. The site was founded in 2003, sold to Yahoo! in 2008, and sold again in 2011 to AVOS Systems, a company owned by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the founders of YouTube. Soci...
Platforms & Apps
An Overview of Magento Go

November 7, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Magento Go is the software-as-a-service ecommerce platform from Magento, a leading open-source ecommerce solution. Magento Go may be an attractive choice for some online merchants. SaaS or hosted ecommerce platforms generally offer a few advantages for merchants. First, many of the he...
Business > Merchant Voice
No Video is (far) better than a bad video

November 6, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

I know a few things about video. While my formal schooling taught me computer science, my father is a professional cinematographer. He taught me how to take photographs and eventually how to shoot and create video. Before I got involved in e-commerce, my business (for about 7 years) wa...
Finance
Banks React to Durbin Amendment

November 4, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

When the Durbin Amendment regulating interchange fees on debit card transactions took effect October 1, it appeared that merchants could accrue some cost savings on debit card transactions and perhaps leverage their savings by encouraging customers to use debit cards in lieu of credit c...
Shipping & Fulfillment
5 Reasons to Consider Fulfillment Services

November 4, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Accounting, purchasing, marketing, and operations are all areas that online and multi-channel merchants must manage. Fortunately there is a growing class of service companies that allows sellers to outsource product receiving, inventorying, packing, and shipping. Fulfillment services a...
User Experience
Does SEO Conflict with User-Friendly Websites?

November 3, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google's so-called "Farmer/Panda" algorithm update rewards original, high-quality site content. Aggregators suffer under Panda, as do ecommerce merchants who rely on generic product descriptions that are not unique to their sites, or who offer poor content generally. We've addressed t...
Social Media
13 Crowdfunding Sites for Social-Cause Entrepreneurs

November 2, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Crowdfunding websites help entrepreneurs fund small businesses with financing from the community. For social-cause entrepreneurs, who venture to create a positive change in the world, crowdfunding sites can also provide financing and resources. Here is a list of crowdfunding sites that...
Business
SEOmoz CEO on Raising Venture Capital

November 2, 2011 • PEC Staff

The founder of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin, is notable for his transparency. This was surely the case with his recent blog post describing his aborted attempt to raise venture capital financing.
Business
What does it mean to sell your business when hundreds of internet businesses are for sale?

November 2, 2011 • Manish Shah

Business for sale marketplace is receiving hundreds of new listings every day and setting your business apart from the competition is becoming harder and harder. There are usually few hundred internet businesses on sale at any given time and in the recent months this number has surged s...
Business
October 2011 Top Ten: Our Most Popular Posts

November 1, 2011 • David Maier

Each month, we compile a list of the ten most popular articles we published that month, based on the number of page views. Here are our ten most popular articles for October 2011, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later one...
Marketing & Advertising
8 Steps to Developing Ad Revenue from Your Website

November 1, 2011 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

There are three primary ways to monetize (that is, generate revenue from) a website. Ecommerce . Receive profits from direct sales of products or services.Affiliate marketing. Receive referral fees from merchants when a product or service you linked to results in a sale as a result of your link.
Social Media
StumbleUpon: Social Bookmarking Traffic Generator

November 1, 2011 • Paul Chaney

StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to share a website with others in their network. People use the tool to "stumble upon" web pages recommended by others that are matched to their personal preferences. How Does it Work? StumbleUpon uses a "thumbs up, thumbs do...
Marketing & Advertising
5 Pointers for Using Facebook for Your Ecommerce Business

October 31, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

Many small retailers struggle with using Facebook to grow their business. Some have created Facebook pages, but are not seeing results. However, Facebook can work effectively for your business if it's used properly. Here are five pointers. 1. Make Sure Your Customers Use Facebook If...
Conversion
Website Showcase: Designing With the Fold

October 31, 2011 • Drew Coffin

In “Designing ‘Above the Fold’ Necessary?,” I offered my thoughts as to how the 600-pixel top "fold" should be viewed today. I also highlighted the importance of site hierarchy — regardless of whether you are designing with the fold. In this article, I will showcase ecommerce sites that...
Technical SEO
Navigation: Your Biggest On-Site SEO Asset

October 28, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

A site's navigational links can help its search engine optimization. Links pass "link popularity," little votes of value, from the linking page to the destination page. In addition, the link's anchor text — the visible text portion of the link — passes a relevance signal. Relevance and...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Ads: 5 Tips for Higher Clicks this Holiday Season

October 28, 2011 • Scott Smigler

Google’s paid-click revenue grew by an astounding 28 percent last quarter, thanks in part to a 5 percent rise in click prices. It’s likely that Google will set ad revenue records this fourth quarter also, due to the increase in holiday ad spending. To online retailers, Google’s surge i...
Customer Retention
Engage Online Customers with SoLoMo

October 27, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Borrowing a strategy and a catch phrase from mobile applications, marketers can use social, local, and mobile (SoLoMo) promotions together to better engage customers. The term "SoLoMo" used to refer to a mobile smartphone application that combined social networking with some form of lo...
Influencers & Affiliates
Understanding Affiliate Marketing

October 27, 2011 • Carolyn Kmet

Editor's Note: We welcome as our newest contributor. She is director of affiliate marketing for Groupon, the deal-of-the day site, and the recent recipient of Affiliate Summit's "Affiliate Manager of the Year" award. Kmet's first piece — an overview of affiliate marketing — is below. ...
Platforms & Apps
10 App Marketplaces for Open Source Shopping Carts

October 26, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Many open source shopping carts can be customized with extensions or modules, created by an active developer community. Here is a list of app-extension marketplaces and libraries for open source shopping cart platforms. Most of the platforms are free. The extensions are both free and ...
Business
Entrepreneur Describes Selling an Ecommerce Business

October 26, 2011 • Kerry Murdock

Many merchants dream of building a successful ecommerce business and then selling it. Shirley Tan, the founder of AmericanBridal.com, did just that. She launched the business, built annual revenue to $6.5 million, and then sold it. We spoke with her ...
Finance
Ecommerce Companies Snag Venture Capital

October 25, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

While venture capital funding has generally been in the doldrums this year, a few ecommerce software companies — and even some online sellers — have managed to attract equity investors.
Conversion
Admiring Apple’s ‘Questions & Answers’ Feature

October 25, 2011 • Louis Camassa

Editor's Note: Each month contributor Louis Camassa — a seasoned ecommerce developer, and the author of our "Tips for Newcomers, Mostly" blog — will identify a feature from an existing ecommerce site that is well executed, and applicable to other merchants. For the first installment, be...
Social Media
9 Tools for Mobile Blogging

October 24, 2011 • Paul Chaney

The world is moving toward an increasingly mobile lifestyle, and blogging is no different. No longer do you have to be constrained to a desktop or laptop to create posts.
Design & Dev Tools
Designing Web Forms for Better Conversions; 5 Tips

October 24, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Web forms are the final hurdle shoppers and site visitors must traverse before registering for a newsletter or making a purchase. Even small improvements in the form can make a ...
Business
14 Online Resources to Help Start a Small Business

October 21, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

If you are a discouraged job hunter or someone who has always wanted to be an entrepreneur, you will be pleased to know that the Internet offers an array of resources to help you find the right path to being your own boss. Following are 14 online resources that offer assistance to bud...
Product Pages
5 Simple Ways to Promote Multi-Item Orders

October 21, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

Thanksgiving has nearly disappeared at many retail outlets, as companies push customers into holiday shopping even before Halloween candy has had a chance to be cleared from the shelves. Shoppers are quickly reminded that Christmas is less than 10 weeks away, and they’ll be combing on...
Product Pages
SEO: Convert More Before Driving More

October 20, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Many organic search marketers focus on increasing rankings and traffic to a site. What happens to that traffic once it hits the site, they assume, is someone else's problem. This is a wrong approach. Search marketing's ultimate goal isn't usually to drive more traffic; it's to convert m...