Page 221 – Practical Ecommerce

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Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Wufoo Online Form Builder

November 15, 2010 • Armando Roggio

In the Internet age, consumers encounter web forms with regularity. There are registration forms, login forms, contact forms, customer service forms, survey forms, content submission forms, package tracking forms, or checkout forms on just about every website. Web forms are, as such, o...
Conversion
Remarketing 101, Part 1: Targeted Banner Ads

November 12, 2010 • PEC Staff

Remarketing is way for merchants to advertise to consumers that have visited the merchants' stores previously. When a consumer visits a site and a merchant is running one of the available remarketing tools, the merchant can subsequently advertise to that consumer. This advertising is cu...
Conversion
Ecommerce News Around the Web for November 12, 2010

November 12, 2010 • Kate Monteith

"Ecommerce News Around the Web" is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. Ecommerce Videos Go Mobile - Invodo Two Internet companies are teaming up to implement product videos that are optimized for viewing on smartphon...
Business
Mobile Bandwidth: An Expert Explains 3G, 4G, WiFi

November 11, 2010 • PEC Staff

The usability of a mobile website frequently depends on the speed of the wireless connection. A mobile user with a 3G cellular connection, for example, would likely be frustrated with the relative slow response to a WiFi-optimized mobile site. But what, exactly, is the difference betwe...
Conversion
SLI Systems CEO on Mobile Commerce, Mobile Search, and the iPad

November 11, 2010 • PEC Staff

Merchants contemplating mobile optimized sites may also consider specialized mobile site search. SLI Systems is a provider of ecommerce site search solutions and that company has just launched a mobile search option. Shaun Ryan is the company's CEO, and he recently discussed mobile co...
Design & Development
6 Reasons to Use URL Redirects

November 10, 2010 • Michael Stearns

A URL redirect is a mapping from one web page address to another. You can set it up on your web server or even in the source of a web page that you have created. You don't need to be at technical whiz to run a successful ecommerce business, but redirects are one of those small technical...
Conversion
Conversion Tip: Send Customers a Catalog

November 10, 2010 • Charles Nicholls

Editor's Note: Printed catalogs remain stubbornly effective for many online retailers. This week's "Conversion Tip" addresses that reality. The author is Charles Nicholls, founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy.com, a conversion and cart-abandonment recovery firm. The problem wit...
Business
Lessons Learned: Moonpig.com Prints, Mails Personalized Greeting Cards

November 9, 2010 • Kate Monteith

“Lessons Learned” is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences. For this installment we visited with Nick Jenkins, the chairman and founder of Moonpig.com, a ...
Social Media
8 Steps to Social Media Success

November 9, 2010 • Paul Chaney

"How do I get started?" is a question I often hear regarding social media marketing. In this article, I provide eight steps to help. Think of it as a checklist of must-do items that will put you in the best position to integrate social media into your overall marketing mix and take adva...
Design & Development
Merchant Shares Experiences with Mobile-Optimized Site

November 8, 2010 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce retailers who contemplate mobile commerce must ask several questions. One is whether to develop a mobile-optimized site or a mobile app. Another is whether to include special mobile search. And there are other questions, too. One ecommerce firm that developed its own mobile-op...
Design & Dev Tools
The PEC Review: Google Docs

November 8, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Managing a small-to-midsized retail business often includes tracking, updating, and storing a lot of information. Spreadsheets filled with vendor pricing, co-op advertising submission forms, project documents, wireframes for a website redevelopment,
Keyword Research
Supercharge Your Opera, Firefox Web Searches with Search-Preference Keywords

November 5, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Every major web browser allows users to conduct a web search directly from its address bar. But Opera and Firefox take this convenient shortcut a step further, allowing folks to search several different sites or engines directly from a single spot. For professionals who work on the Int...
Design & Development
Conversion Tip: Persistent Carts Help ‘Wish List’ Shoppers

November 4, 2010 • Charles Nicholls

Editor's Note: This week's "Conversion Tip" addresses the reality of shoppers that abandon carts, and then return to them later to purchase. The author is Charles Nicholls, founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy, a conversion and abandonment-recovery firm. Research published by U...
Conversion
Serial Entrepreneur Explains Venture Capital Process

November 4, 2010 • PEC Staff

The lack of capital can prevent an ecommerce business from growing. But many merchants are unsure as to how to obtain capital, or how the funding process works. RatePoint, the platform for offering ratings and reviews, recently announced that it has raised $7 million in funding, and we ...
Design & Development
Optimizing an Ecommerce Site for Mobile Devices, Part 1: Getting Started

November 3, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

In September we published "Volunteer for a Free Mobile-Optimized Ecommerce Site," an offer for one merchant to volunteer for a mobile optimization case study in which we follow the process of creating a mobile site step-by-step. Dozens of merchants submitted their sites, and after a rev...
Email & Text Marketing
Optimizing Your Email Frequency: A 5-Step Plan

November 3, 2010 • Carolyn Nye

Frequency is always an important topic for email marketing. As marketers, we are afraid to overload our customers. We often forget that email is a channel that requires consumers' permission before communicating with them. As consumers, we don’t opt in to viewing Staples television com...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: 12 Tips to Boost Holiday Performance

November 2, 2010 • Scott Smigler

A well optimized pay-per-click advertising campaign can lead to gigantic increases in both revenue and profits. Conversely, a campaign that is neglected can lead to missed opportunities or significant financial losses. To help you prepare for this holiday season, here are 12 tips that ...
Platforms & Apps
Become an Opera Power User in 3 Steps

November 2, 2010 • Armando Roggio

The Opera browser offers one of the most innovative user experiences available. Clearly the browser is a trendsetter. It was the first to introduce tabs, the first to maximize the page-viewing area and minimize controls, and it continues to include new features and new ways for users t...
Social Media
7 Blog Platforms for 3 Methods of Blogging

November 1, 2010 • Paul Chaney

The last time I compared blog platforms on Practical Ecommerce was in 2005. In "Blog Platforms: Choose One that Fits Your Need," I reviewed four of the most used at that time: Blogger, TypePad, MovableType, and WordPress. While those are still popular, others have since appeared. Over...
Photography & Video
The PEC Review: Wondershare Video Converter

November 1, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Video is one of the most potent ways to market and sell products online. In fact, some merchants have reported increases in conversions rates of 20 percent or more when they ...
Business > Merchant Voice
You Gotta Have Something to Sell

October 31, 2010 • Ken Kikkawa

Happy Halloween! Before the ghosts & goblins and droves of trick-or-treaters descend upon our neighborhood, I've managed to find some quiet time to write. I recently returned from the 2010 iHobby Expo in Chicago, which is the largest trade show in the radio control and model hobby...
Business
Top Ten Posts for October 2010

October 29, 2010 • Kate Monteith

Each month, we compile a list of the ten most popular articles we published at Practical eCommerce that month, based on the number of page views. Here are our ten most popular articles for October 2010. Top 10 Converting Websites: The 3 Common Strategies In this third article in our s...
Link Building
Bing Social Search: Are ‘Likes’ the New Links?

October 28, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

Organic search revolves increasingly around personalization, delivering relevance not just to a searcher’s literal query, but also to the implied intent, geographic location, and historical preferences. Earlier this month Bing took another step toward integrating Facebook’s social dat...
Design & Development
Switch to Cloud Hosting Pays Off for SoundsTrue.com

October 28, 2010 • PEC Staff

Every ecommerce site has a web host. Some are hosted by shopping cart providers; others are hosted by third-party companies. And increasingly, many are hosted by cloud providers, where bandwidth and usage can adjust with the seasonal needs of a site. One ecommerce company that has recen...
Social Media
Tips for an Effective Twitter Profile

October 27, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Twitter can help ecommerce merchants. It provides a conduit to connect with their customers and communicate with prospects. Merchants should be careful, however, when using Twitter to market their products, and I addressed that in "4 Rules for Marketing on Twitter." And seemingly mino...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for November 2010

October 27, 2010 • 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 November 2010 installment of "Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas." Is Flash Killing Your Conversion Rate? “Test replacing the...
Social Media
4 Rules for Marketing on Twitter

October 26, 2010 • Paul Chaney

In last week's "5 Timesaving Social Networking Tools," I discussed efficient ways to manage your social media engagement efforts. However, social media is not merely a "tool set" to be used any way we see fit. It is also a mindset. For merchants wanting to use Twitter to market their ...
Design & Development
ThePopcornFactory.com VP Touts New Mobile Version

October 26, 2010 • PEC Staff

Many merchants, large and small, are contemplating their mobile commerce strategies, and one merchant that has just launched a mobile version of its ecommerce site is The Popcorn Factory. The person responsible for marketing that company and that site is Tom Russell. He's senior vice pr...
Conversion
Conversion Tip: Dealing with Invalid Coupon Codes

October 25, 2010 • Charles Nicholls

Editor’s Note: We continue our “Conversion Tip” series with Charles Nicholls, founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy.com, a conversion and cart-abandonment recovery firm. For this installment, Nicholls addresses the ...
Platforms & Apps
The PEC Review: Use Jira for Bug Tracking, Project Management

October 25, 2010 • Armando Roggio

As ecommerce businesses grow from entrepreneurial startups to mid-sized retailers, they can become much more complex to manage. As a startup, the operation was likely managed by one or two people. Fixing website glitches was pretty straightforward. You saw something wrong. You fixed it...