Page 210 – Practical Ecommerce

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Schools & Resources
Reading List: Steve Castro-Miller of Bold Software

July 20, 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 ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Mistakes I Wish I Had Never Made

July 20, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

We all know the saying, “If I knew then what I know now, I’d be much better off”. I was thinking about that the other day and decided to put together a list of mistakes I’ve made during my e-commerce life. I had to shorten the list to just 6 items because there’s only so much room on th...
Email & Text Marketing
Using Surveys to Grow Sales; 4 Tips

July 19, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Ecommerce merchants frequently reach out to new and existing customers. Whether they use methods such as email, paid search, search engine optimization or banner ads, the goal is always the same: to drive qualified traffic back to their sites. Unlike brick and mortar stores, however, th...
Business
Miva Merchant President Discusses eBay, Facebook

July 19, 2011 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce executives manage their own companies. But they are also experienced observers of online retailing in general. It's in the latter capacity that we recently spoke with Rick Wilson. He's president of Miva Merchant, the hosted shopping cart. He's also a 12-year veteran of ecomme...
Analytics & Data
Understanding ‘Traffic Sources’ in Google Analytics

July 18, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The Google Analytics "Traffic Sources" section can help ecommerce marketers understand how well campaigns are working and how better to invest in site content, advertising, or other forms of engagement. Google Analytics is a free service that uses cookies — which we explain in "Cookies...
Social Media
How to Create Facebook Ads, Part 1: Setup, Design, Targeting

July 18, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Facebook advertising is becoming more popular. In this article — “Part 1” of a two-part series — I will describe how to set up a Facebook ad using the self-service ...
Business
Opportunity vs. Potential while valuing your ecommerce company

July 17, 2011 • Manish Shah

It is interesting to see the wide range of value various buyers will attribute to a same online business. One buyer may find a business as worthless while other is willing to pay hundreds of thousands. Valuation of your ecommerce company is in direct proportion to the amount of opportun...
Design & Dev Tools
10 Handy Web Templates from Google Sites

July 15, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Google Sites is a portal for creating websites. It offers a gallery of templates, including business and collaboration designs, where you can make a site public or just open to ...
Finance
Groupon Files for IPO: Rapid Growth, No Profits

July 15, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Founded in Chicago in November 2008, Groupon filed to go public last month after reportedly rejecting a $6 billion takeover offer from Google last December. As with other recent filings by ecommerce firms, a few surprises emerged. Groupon is a pioneering marketing company that has achie...
Design & Development
5 Gmail Techniques to Boost Productivity

July 14, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Gmail is full of time saving features and capabilities that can make you more productive. In this article, I'll review five Gmail techniques that will help you master your inbox. It is important to note, before exposing you to these productivity-boosting wonders, that Google actual...
Payments
Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 3: Punitive Interchange Rates

July 14, 2011 • Phil Hinke

This is the third installment in a series where I help you understand your credit and debit card fees. In last month’s article, "Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 2: Merchant Account Fees and Charges," I discussed the various monthly and annual fees charged by merchant account provid...
Content Marketing
18 Writing Tools for Grammar, Style, Content

July 13, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Content is king. If you run a blog, most of your content is language. For an ecommerce site, you write promotional copy, product descriptions, policies, procedures, and more. You need ...
Conversion
How Small Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Succeed Online; 4 Keys

July 13, 2011 • PEC Staff

Editor's Note: We welcome Bret Williams as a new contributor. He is founder and president of Novusweb, an ecommerce development firm. He is also a former online merchant. His contributions for us will focus on the issues faced by small, brick-and-mortar retailers when they migrate onli...
Social Media
How to Measure Social Media Marketing; 3 Steps

July 12, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Social media marketing, like other forms of online marketing, needs to produce a return on investment. Otherwise, its usefulness is marginal and the time spent on it is wasted. But social media's effect on the bottom line is not always easy to measure. In social media's case, ROI does...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing for Mobile Devices: 5 Insights

July 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Between 12 and 19 percent of email marketing messages are now read on mobile, Internet-enabled devices like smartphones or tablets. To continue to get good results from email, marketers should consider mobile user behavior and device capabilities. Last year, eROI, a digital agency, con...
Conversion
Using Amazon to Grow Your Ecommerce Business; 6 Tools

July 11, 2011 • Michael Stearns

Amazon.com is no longer a brazen ecommerce start-up. It has grown into the leading online retailer. And it evolved its platform to provide tools and technologies for other businesses to use. There are so many of these tools, in fact, it's hard to keep them straight. But I'll review six ...
Finance
Zynga Opens the Kimono; We See Facebook

July 8, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

If you have ever played FarmVille, CityVille or Zynga Poker you're in good company — 148 million other people in 166 countries play Zynga's games monthly. And because people usually play more than one game each month, they account for 232 million monthly visits. All of this is disclosed...
Business
Understanding the New ‘Durbin’ Debit Card Rates; Exec Explains

July 8, 2011 • PEC Staff

The Durbin Amendment to the U.S. Dodd-Frank legislative package affects ecommerce merchants. That's because the Amendment greatly lowers the rate — called interchange — that Visa and MasterCard charge for the processing of debit cards. The final rate, as determined by the U.S. Federal ...
Design & Development
6 Google Templates to Mobilize Your Business

July 7, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Mobilize your business. Google has introduced six mobile templates for Google Sites, Google’s portal to assist with the creation of websites. Businesses can now create mobile websites or landing pages ...
Conversion
Notable Views: Improve Your Conversion Rate with a Manufacturing Approach

July 7, 2011 • David Sasson

Editor's Note: "Notable Views” is a series where we ask experts to address critical ecommerce topics. For this installment, we corresponded with David Sasson, the founder of OverstockArt.com, an online retailer of original art reproductions. The company is based in Wichita, Kansas, bu...
Content Marketing
Write Better Blog Posts, Pyramid Style

July 6, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Use a classic writing technique popularized in the newspaper industry's heyday to improve blog content and communicate with precision. The inverted pyramid is a writing structure that places a summary of the most important information about an article in the first paragraph and support...
Email & Text Marketing
4 Tips for Encouraging Email Subscriptions

July 5, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Email marketing is one of the most potent promotional tactics available to online retailers when, in fact, those merchants have customers to send emails to. Email can boost site traffic, drive conversions, and help build strong relationships with shoppers. The hard part is getting thos...
Social Media
Google+: Overview, Ecommerce Use

July 5, 2011 • Paul Chaney

On the day news broke about the sale of MySpace for a mere $35 million, Google announced the launch of its new social network, Google+. The search giant is rolling out ...
Schools & Resources
25 Top-Selling Ecommerce Books

July 4, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Assembling your reading list for a summer getaway? Don’t forget to pack the ecommerce books. Here is a list of top-selling ecommerce books. There are general books on ecommerce and social media for businesses. And there are books on specific ecommerce subjects, such as search engine op...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for July 2011

July 1, 2011 • Kate Monteith

Practical eCommerce asks industry insiders each month to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce company. Here’s what ten of them had to say for the July ...
Conversion
How to Get Consumers Talking about Your Company

July 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio

The Internet is now the leading source of information for brand-related, word-of-mouth conversations, according to a new study of 3,000 American adults. This finding may indicate that online merchants and other ecommerce businesses can use well-planned content to spark product or bran...
Finance
Our List of Publicly-Traded Ecommerce Companies

June 30, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

The rise of online retailing has fostered many companies in that industry to become publicly owned, selling shares on major stock exchanges. We've been tracking publicly-traded ecommerce companies, and we've prepared a list of them, together with publicly traded, pure-play Internet com...
Business
Sen. Durbin to Introduce Federal Sales Tax Legislation, Says Affiliate Marketing Exec

June 30, 2011 • PEC Staff

Many states in the U.S. are contemplating — or enacting — changes to their sales tax laws to include online affiliates as establishing a physical nexus. New York, California, Illinois, Texas and other states have passed laws that require Amazon and other online merchants that have affi...
Payments
Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 2: Merchant Account Fees and Charges

June 29, 2011 • Phil Hinke

In “Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 1: The Basics,” I outlined the information you need to know to receive the best rates from your merchant account provider. This article is "Part 2" of that series where I help you understand your credit card fees. In this installment, I address...
Social Media
5 Influence Measurement Tools

June 28, 2011 • Paul Chaney

Prior to the Internet, if consumers were dissatisfied with a company, its products or services, they would tell a few friends who might also tell a few others. Maybe the consumer would write a letter to the company or call the customer service department to complain. For the most part, ...