Page 211 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Design & Development
The Four P’s of Mobile Commerce

June 28, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

Mobile commerce is growing. And consumers' use of mobile devices is growing. But mobile commerce is not for all ecommerce merchants. This article will help answer the question, "Is mobile commerce important for my site?" Merchants can analyze the applicability of mobile commerce to the...
SEO
How to Check Your Website’s SEO Health

June 27, 2011 • Stephan Spencer

There’s no reason, really, why ecommerce merchants cannot improve the search engine visibility of their websites. That’s because there are many free tools to gauge the search-engine-optimization health of those sites, and suggest SEO corrections to them. In this screencast below, I’ll...
Analytics & Data
Looking at Location in Google Analytics

June 27, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Understanding your customers — including their preferences and opinions — is an important part of ecommerce marketing. One helpful indicator of customer behavior is location, because where one lives can ...
Payments
Increase Conversions with Alternate Payment Methods

June 24, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

Ten years ago, PayPal was the ideal solution for small businesses that couldn’t justify the high costs of a merchant account. In its infancy, the growth of PayPal user accounts came from smaller merchants. PayPal later became the norm for eBay and large etailers because it allowed peo...
Platforms & Apps
15 Mobile Retail Apps that Enhance Customer Experiences

June 24, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Retail businesses are building mobile apps that do much more than just display products for sale. Mobile apps can shape the in-store experience, empower the purchasing process, and create interesting and dynamic ways to interact with the customer. Here is a list of mobile apps created ...
Finance
How LinkedIn Makes Money; Behind the IPO Numbers

June 23, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

In May, LinkedIn went public. To much fanfare, the business-oriented social networking site sold common shares at $45 each, for a total offering of $352.8 million and an overall valuation — public and private shares — of $4.3 billion. It was the biggest Internet initial public offering ...
Design & Development
OverstockArt.com Goes Mobile; CEO Explains

June 23, 2011 • PEC Staff

Most every ecommerce merchant is at least contemplating a mobile strategy, whether a specialized mobile app or a mobile optimized site. Mobile development is the topic we discussed recently with David Sasson. He is the president of OverstockArt.com, an online retailer of original paint...
Platforms & Apps
34 Ecommerce Themes for WordPress

June 22, 2011 • Sig Ueland

A WordPress ecommerce theme can take a regular blog and transform it into a dazzling online storefront. Find the theme that’s right for you, then customize it to create your unique store. This is a list of ecommerce themes for WordPress. There are free themes, if you’re just getting st...
Conversion
5 Suggestions for Naming Your Store

June 22, 2011 • Armando Roggio

An online store’s name is one of its most important assets and a potent part of its brand. In some sense the business name can define its identity. Since business naming is so important, you don’t want to simply draw a name out of a hat or let your eight-year-old choose. Rather what fo...
Payments
Durbin Amendment May Foster Deceptive Credit, Debit Processing Fees

June 21, 2011 • Phil Hinke

The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act takes effect on July 21, 2011. One of the key points in the Amendment requires large financial institutions to cap their debit card interchange fees. Currently, the scheduled cap is 12 cents per transaction. However, that ...
Social Media
5 New Social Media Management Platforms

June 21, 2011 • Paul Chaney

A new class of social media management platforms for small businesses makes social media marketing — such as posting to Facebook and Twitter — much easier. In this article, I review five of these platforms: Postling, Breeze Social, Roost, Sendible and Social Guides. My review will add...
Design & Development
Staples.com Exec on Lessons from Mobile Website

June 20, 2011 • PEC Staff

Staples, the office supply retailer, recently launched a new mobile-optimized ecommerce site. The company designed the site to drive product sales across multiple channels, as well as to offer shopping tools to its small business customers. It's the second mobile site from Staples; the...
Email & Text Marketing
7 Steps to Improve Your Email Marketing

June 20, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A successful ecommerce marketing strategy is an ever-changing blend of techniques and tactics aimed at achieving specific, predetermined goals. If executed well, email marketing is often one of the most ...
Conversion
Innovators: 3 Sites that Benefit from Seasonal Events

June 17, 2011 • PEC Staff

In the ecommerce business, there are innovators and trendsetters, those companies and individuals who think ahead and anticipate changes. We’ve asked an expert ecommerce observer to help us identify some ...
Platforms & Apps
20 QR Code Tools and Uses

June 16, 2011 • Sig Ueland

With quick response codes, businesses and organizations are finding new ways to deliver information and interact with consumers. When you scan a QR code with your smartphone application, you can receive product information. But QR codes can also link to web content, video, social medi...
Business
Durbin Amendment to Lower Debit Card Processing Rates

June 16, 2011 • PEC Staff

Debit card processing rates are soon to be dramatically lower for all U.S. merchants. That’s because of the “Durbin Amendment” to the massive Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, enacted last year.
Finance
13 Crowdfunding Websites to Fund Your Business

June 15, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Who needs banks? Crowdfunding websites can help you find a community of small investors to fund your business, without the risks of traditional financing. Here is a list of crowdfunding sites. Some sites focus on funding creative projects, others sites focus on meeting specific needs ...
Platforms & Apps
25 Great Magento Themes

June 15, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Magento is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms with thousands of live shops, including major retailers. The platform, which eBay recently purchased, also has a vibrant developer community that creates easy-to-integrate themes and modules. In this article, you find a list of 25 ...
User Experience
Google Says Smartphone Sites Aren’t Mobile

June 14, 2011 • Jill Kocher Brown

Perhaps you’ve noticed the lack of mobile sites in your mobile search results. Most likely you’re using a smartphone. The two are closely related, and bode poorly for ecommerce companies focusing search-engine-optimization resources on their smartphone sites. In a recent question-and-an...
Email & Text Marketing
4 Ways of Capturing More Email Addresses and Increasing Conversion

June 14, 2011 • Charles Nicholls

There is a very strong link between website conversions and email. A recent study by my firm showed that once traffic has gotten as far as the shopping cart email was the largest source of ecommerce conversions, ranking above a direct entry and search. This is a useful reminder that the...
Social Media
One Merchant’s Experience with LivingSocial and Groupon

June 13, 2011 • Paul Chaney

APARTStyle.com is a retailer that is focused on selling affordable fashion clothing to working women. The company — founded in September 2009 and headquartered in New York — sells ...
Photography & Video
4 Ways Video Can Drive Traffic and Conversions

June 13, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Video is one of the fastest-growing content types on the Internet. More than 172 million individual Americans watched an average of 14.9 hours of web video in April, the most ...
Platforms & Apps
35 Android Apps to Run Your Business

June 10, 2011 • Sig Ueland

In this mobile world, iPhone gets all the love. There are over 400,000 different apps for Apple’s iOS, compared to approximately 200,000 apps for Google’s Android OS. However, according to a recent study by mobile analytics group Distimo, there are now more free apps available for Andro...
Business > Merchant Voice
Top 7 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Outsource Fulfillment

June 10, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

The allure of outsourced fulfillment (such as Amazon’s FBA program) is strong. But, don’t get sucked in by the hype! In any business, you never outsource anything that you can do better or more efficiently yourself. If you don’t think you can make your fulfillment operation more effic...
Conversion
Cisco Exec on Growth of Worldwide Ecommerce, Cultural Differences

June 10, 2011 • PEC Staff

Industrialized countries like the United States and the United Kingdom lead the world in the development of online retailing. But many other countries are gaining ground, with their own cultural ...
Email & Text Marketing
4 Tips for Improving Your Email Conversion Rate

June 9, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Sending timely and relevant communications to your email file is a necessity in driving qualified traffic to your site. Simply increasing your traffic numbers may be the first step, but ...
Social Media
5 Good Reasons to Use Tumblr

June 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Tumblr is a social blogging platform that allows users to upload multimedia posts, follow other users, and engage in communities without some of the constraints found on Twitter or Facebook. As a platform, Tumblr has been growing rapidly, and some retailers are now using the service as...
Analytics & Data
11 Mobile Apps to Measure Your Online Success

June 8, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Tracking your business's online performance is a necessity. But doing so chained to your desktop computer is not. Whether you’re out on a meeting or away on a summer vacation, with mobile apps you have the ability to check online statistics on the go. Here is a list of mobile apps for ...
Analytics & Data
Transitioning to the New Google Analytics

June 8, 2011 • Michael Stearns

In May 2011, Google launched a new version of Analytics. This new version 5 is good news for power users, as it makes many of the advanced features Google has been developing over the past few years more accessible. If you still feel a bit overwhelmed with the range of options that Goog...
Google Ads
How to Hire a Pay-Per-Click Manager; 10 Common Mistakes

June 7, 2011 • Scott Smigler

My firm is in the pay-per-click advertising business. We've managed PPC accounts for hundreds of companies for roughly a decade, and we've developed strong opinions as to what makes for a good PPC manager, and what does not. To be sure, there are many terrific PPC management firms othe...