Page 209 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Schools & Resources
20 Government Sites to Help Small Businesses

August 12, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Do-it-yourself small businesses don’t normally look to the government for help. But maybe they should start. The federal government is desperate for small businesses to succeed. In the midst of record unemployment, a new Kauffman Foundation-funded U.S. Census Bureau study reports that...
Finance
How to Find Venture Capital Investors For Your Company

August 12, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

If you have a great idea for a start-up — or if you have an existing business that needs money to grow — the main options are to borrow from friends and family, borrow from a bank, or seek equity funding from a venture capital firm. Banks are skittish about lending to small businesses i...
Payments
Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 4: The Merchant Statement – Per Item Fees

August 11, 2011 • Phil Hinke

This article is "Part 4" in a series where I help you understand your debit and credit card fees. In last month’s installment — "Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 3: Punitive Interchange Rates" — I explained how to decode your merchant statement to distinguish the actual interchange...
Google Ads
Google Study Finds PPC Traffic ‘Incremental’ to Organic

August 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A new Google study reports that pay-per-click ads tend to generate new site visitors and do not simply divert traffic from organic search result links, as some marketers have feared. PPC ...
Business
PCI Council Exec on Criticisms of Security Standards

August 10, 2011 • PEC Staff

The major credit card brands of Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover have adopted standards to protect consumers' credit card data. The standards are self-regulation — not government law — by those companies, which have also created an organization to administer it all. Tha...
Checkout Tactics
Wait List Notifications: ‘Old School’ Feature Still Drives Conversions

August 9, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

The "wait list" was first popular in the late 1990s — before comparison shopping and social media sites. — to allow shoppers to sign up for notifications about specific products. The concept is simple. When an item is on backorder, the shopper can enter his or her name and email addres...
Email & Text Marketing
How Email Marketing Can Help SEO

August 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Creating valid HTML email newsletters and announcements with a canonical link element may help marketers boost search engine optimization. The canonical link element, which is often referred to as rel="canonical," (pronounced rel canonical, no "equals") is a way of describing the pref...
Social Media
12 Useful Ecommerce Blogs

August 8, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Finding marketing information specific to smaller ecommerce merchants can be time consuming. A Google search on the term "ecommerce marketing" returned 1,700,000 results at the time of this writing. Merchants can fine useful information on the following list of 12 marketing-related bl...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Case Study: Analyzing J.C. Penney’s Frequency, Subject Lines

August 8, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Online retailers often face decisions regarding their email programs. These include issues like determining ideal frequencies and crafting compelling subject lines. To help address these questions, I’ll be writing a ...
Social Media
50 Leading Google+ Users

August 5, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Google+ is one month old. So who’s using it? Many of the popular Google+ users are the founders and content-creators from others parts of web — even Facebook. Here is a list of the popular users on Google+. First are the top 20 users with the most followers. Then there are the users w...
Finance
Does the SEC Fail Small Internet Businesses?

August 5, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

As retailing migrates online, an increasing number of ecommerce and Internet business will seek to raise public capital. Many of them will be smaller companies. But a growing number of observers believe the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is failing smaller businesses and In...
Business
Innovators: 3 Unusual Ecommerce Models

August 4, 2011 • PEC Staff

In the ecommerce business, there are innovators and trendsetters, those companies and individuals who think ahead and produce changes. We've asked an expert ecommerce observer to help us identify some of these companies and individuals. The observer is Harley Finkelstein, chief platform...
Email & Text Marketing
How to Reduce Email Unsubscribes; 3 Tips

August 4, 2011 • Armando Roggio

When one considers that 93 percent of American online shoppers receive at least one permission-based email each day, it is little wonder that email marketing is a mainstay of Internet promotion and an excellent source of traffic and sales for ecommerce businesses. Sometimes, however, t...
Conversion
Integrating Educational Content into Your Ecommerce Site; 10 Pointers

August 3, 2011 • Michael Stearns

The ecommerce landscape continues to get more competitive. It is becoming increasingly difficult to base your success simply on having a site with great products and no other content. You ...
Design & Dev Tools
10 Editors for Ecommerce Audio

August 3, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Adding audio to your ecommerce site is a great way to engage customers. With audio features — such as podcasts or audio product descriptions — you create a rich experience as you inform and captivate your shoppers. And audio is a manageable and cost-efficient alternative to video. ...
Conversion
How U.S. Merchants Can Target U.K. Consumers

August 2, 2011 • PEC Staff

The United Kingdom offers expansion opportunities for United States-based ecommerce merchants. But to do it correctly requires much thought and planning. There are domain name issues, search-engine-optimization strategies, localization considerations,
Business
Selling on Amazon: Pros and Cons

August 2, 2011 • Charles Nicholls

The Harry Potter franchise of ebooks will not be depending on Amazon. Author J.K. Rowling has teamed up with Sony to launch a direct outlet, called Pottermore. If you’re in the ecommerce business, and have ambition, then perhaps like J.K. Rowling, you shouldn’t rely on Amazon. But if...
Design & Development
13 Social Shopping Sites for Ecommerce Merchants

August 1, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Social shopping combines product sales with consumer recommendations in a social network environment. The concept centers around communities of people who share similar interests and who rely on the opinions of fellow members to influence purchase decisions. Some sites are completely ...
Design & Development
Can a Chromebook Do Real Work?

August 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google Chromebooks are fast-loading netbooks running the new Google Chrome OS. Chromebooks depend on web applications for everything from word processing to spreadsheets. These browser-only devices are supposed to provide a better user experience for common tasks like reading email or s...
Social Media
Google+: The Beginning of a Revolution?

July 29, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

The pieces are rapidly falling into place for Google’s increasing integration of “social signals” into its search algorithms. With the oddly isolated “+1” button launch at the end of March ...
Finance
Need Funding for Your Company? Look Online

July 29, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

It used to be that if you wanted capital for your business, whether a loan or equity investment, you had to prepare lots of Excel spreadsheets, put on a suit and tie or a dress, and spend an uncomfortable amount of time being grilled by potential funders. Today all that is unnecessary t...
Conversion
5 Ways to Segment Your Customer Base

July 28, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

Ecommerce businesses need to understand their customers. But it takes time and money to attend to each customer individually. The best strategy is to segregate the customer base into common attributes — called "segments." You can then target each segment with specific marketing campaign...
Design & Development
Low-Price Acer Chromebook: What a Computer Should Be?

July 28, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The Acer AC700 Chromebook is an excellent, lightweight, and fast booting computer that just might have users thinking about computers in a complete new way. This Acer computer is the least ...
Google Ads
For Google AdWords, It Pays to be on Top

July 27, 2011 • Scott Smigler

The new “Top vs. Side” segmentation report announced by Google has led my firm to valuable new AdWords’ insights. We confirmed just how important it is to ensure your ads ...
Schools & Resources
Reading List: Josh Colter of Elias Interactive

July 27, 2011 • 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 ...
Social Media
How to Create Facebook Ads, Part 2: Campaign Management, Overall Best Practices

July 26, 2011 • Paul Chaney

In "Part 1" of this series on creating Facebook ads, I showed you how to set up a campaign, design an ad, and target the precise audience. In this "Part 2" installment, I'll explain how to manage your ad campaign, offering 10 best practices. Ads Manager Each Facebook ad has to be tie...
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics Adds Social Data

July 25, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google Analytics has added social-media-related data to its reports. Google +1 button data is available by default. Facebook "Like" and Twitter "Tweet" sharing statistics can be added with some setup and additional tracking code. The new Google Analytics "Social" report tracks what Goo...
Photography & Video
Using Video to Convert Shoppers; 8 Pointers

July 22, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

Video is an effective way to attract more customers and close sales. Big business relies on video to further establish their brand of products. Small business ecommerce sites can benefit from the practice, provided streaming visuals are implemented properly. Zappos uses video to enhanc...
Platforms & Apps
Goodsie Helpful for Beginning Entrepreneurs

July 21, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A new ecommerce platform helps novice ecommerce entrepreneurs get up and running quickly, but it limits choices and, perhaps, creates some marketing challenges. Goodsie — which costs $15 per month — uses a simple web interface and a well-defined set of options to help would-be merchant...
Finance
California Joins the Internet Sales Tax Fray; Federal Legislation Coming?

July 21, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

The Internet sales tax issue continues to roil, with California the most recent state to enact a bill mandating that out-of-state online retailers with affiliates in the state collect state sales tax. Amazon and Overstock immediately responded by cutting off their affiliates in Californ...