Page 224 – Practical Ecommerce

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Business
Financial Management Key to Small Businesses, Says NetSuite Exec

September 9, 2010 • PEC Staff

Financial management is critical to ecommerce companies. But the tools to manage financial matters vary, and many of them don't automatically integrate with a merchant's ecommerce site, making the financial tracking and reporting process even more burdensome. To help us understand finan...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing: 3 ‘Best Practices’ to Ignore

September 8, 2010 • Carolyn Nye

I am the email marketing manager for S&S Worldwide, a large retailer of crafts and school supplies. Over the years, I have encountered many "email best practices." But like Snap Bracelets, Cabbage Patch Kids and Atari, trends change. And email best practices, I've learned, do not ap...
Analytics & Data
Performance Metrics for Ecommerce, Part One

September 8, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Performance metrics can help ecommerce businesses measure progress and assess financial and marketing health. But with so much data available from tools like Google Analytics, it can be hard to know what to measure or even what those measurements mean. With this in mind, I put together...
Conversion
August 2010 Survey Results: Conversion Rates

September 7, 2010 • Kate Monteith

The August 2010 Practical eCommerce survey polled readers about conversion. We wondered how many of our readers regularly track conversion rates on their sites, what percentage of visitors are converting into buyers, and what might be preventing visitors from making a purchase. Our con...
Conversion
Ten Must-Do Items This Holiday Season

September 7, 2010 • PEC Staff

It’s September and the holiday season has already begun for merchants and shoppers. In a recent Practical eCommerce webinar entitled “Ten Ecommerce Strategies for Holiday Success,” Make-a-Store Chief Marketing Officer Derek Stringfellow offered 10 tips merchants can apply now for more s...
Social Media
Social Media Improves Online Trust: 4 Tips

September 7, 2010 • Paul Chaney

"Trust" is likely the most defining factor when it comes to selling products online. Consumers will not purchase products from a merchant that they mistrust. Social media can help overcome a consumer's reluctance to purchase products due to lack of trust. It can foster interaction bet...
Design & Development
Volunteer for a Free Mobile-Optimized Ecommerce Site

September 6, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Editor's Note: We published the following article seeking a merchant for our forthcoming mobile optimization series. Many merchants replied, and we selected DecalGirl.com, a seller of mobile device "skins," or coverings. You can follow our series on mobile optimizing DecalGirls' ecommer...
Social Media
The PEC Review: Wildfire Interactive for Online Contests

September 6, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Contest marketing is an excellent way to engage customers, build brand, and get leads for newsletters and other promotions. And in the age of social media marketing, an online contest can garner thousands of entries. Unfortunately some popular social media sites, like Facebook, prohib...
Technical SEO
SEO: Unique Content Good for Search Engines, Good for Consumers

September 3, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

Unique, valuable content is a critical part of a successful SEO strategy. That is especially the case for ecommerce sites that utilize non-unique stock product descriptions from the manufacturer’s database. But, I’m often asked if there’s a faster, cheaper, free way to generate content....
Product Pages
Conversion Tip: Put Facebook ‘Like’ on Product Detail Pages

September 2, 2010 • Charles Nicholls

Editor's Note: Charles Nicholls is an ecommerce conversion expert and the founder and chief technical officer of SeeWhy, a conversion and abandonment-recovery firm. The "Conversion Tip" below continues our series from Nicholls on his ideas to convert more ecommerce visitors to buyers. ...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for September 2010

September 2, 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 September ...
Marketing & Advertising
Social Media to Change Ecommerce?

September 1, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Social commerce" is the merging of ecommerce with social media sites, such as Facebook. It could change the way consumers buy, and retailers sell. In an upcoming webinar entitled "500 Million People and Growing: The Facebook Conversation Turns to Commerce," we will help merchants unde...
Marketing & Advertising
Ask an Expert: Does the Magento Platform Create SEO Obstacles?

September 1, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, Andrew Casey of 877MyJuicer.com asks about search engine optimization and the Magento platform. For the answer, we turn to our own senior contributing editor, ...
Business
August 2010 Top Ten: Our Most Popular Posts

September 1, 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 ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Back on the Front Line

August 31, 2010 • Ken Kikkawa

As a business owner, there are many times when you have to do it all: hire, fire, answer phones, solve UPS problems, pick & pack orders...you name it! Some of the most challenging parts of my job is not the business aspect of running the company but instead the people aspect of it....
Social Media
Four Apps to Create Facebook ‘Welcome’ Pages

August 31, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Thousands of ecommerce businesses have Facebook Fan pages. But making those pages stand out from competitors' pages is a challenge. One of the ways to distinguish yours is through the use of a custom landing page, also known as a Welcome tab. In the past, to create a landing page you ...
Business
Overseas Expansion: Tips from a Global Exec

August 31, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Once merchants are successful in domestic markets, many of them weigh the benefits of expanding their operations abroad. The many challenges accompanying overseas expansion, including language optimization, SEO, taxation and credit card processing, can seem daunting. We asked Jim McGee...
Google Ads
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Six Metrics that Drive Performance

August 30, 2010 • Scott Smigler

Editor's Note: We welcome Scott Smigler as our new pay-per-click advertising contributor. Smigler is a pay-per-click expert, and he's the president of Exclusive Concepts, a prominent pay-per-click, search-engine-optimization and ecommerce-conversion consultancy. If you are committed to...
Typography & Fonts
The PEC Review: Fontspring, the Typographical Fountain

August 30, 2010 • Armando Roggio

The very letters and words on a web page can help build a brand and engage customers. Thanks to better browser support and several new services, the Internet is being filled with rich and diverse fonts even now. For years, so-called web safe fonts—meaning the most common fonts supporte...
Conversion
Ecommerce News Around the Web for August 27, 2010

August 27, 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. Keep Them Coming Back - Michael Gray Graywolf's SEO Blog Once a shopper has made a purchase from your website, how do you keep that customer co...
Conversion
Holiday Tips for 2010, Part 5

August 27, 2010 • PEC Staff

The 2010 holiday season is nearly here. With that in mind, we are publishing a few good holiday-selling tips, from experienced ecommerce professionals, each week. Our fifth, and final, installment is below. Anticipate Microsoft, Yahoo! PPC Integration "Build out and optimize your Mi...
Business
New Firefox Release: Faster, Better Video, Different Look

August 26, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Last week, the Mozilla Foundation released a new version of its Firefox 4 web browser. The new version offers better performance, improved tab management, more HTML5 video support, synchronization, and ...
Business
Lessons Learned: Candle Retailer Regrets Custom Shopping Cart

August 26, 2010 • PEC Staff

“Lessons Learned” is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences. For this installment, we visited with Logan Suttman, CEO of Black & Light Co., which ...
Checkout Tactics
Conversion Tip: Reduce Abandonment by Publishing Voucher Codes

August 25, 2010 • Charles Nicholls

The widespread nature of discount voucher and coupon sites is encouraging visitors to abandon purchases to look for voucher codes. In response, Macy’s, for example, now publishes its own "special offer" site that lists Macy’s own voucher and coupon codes.
Business
Comparison Shopping Engines: Strategies for Smaller Merchants

August 25, 2010 • PEC Staff

Comparison shopping engines can drive traffic to an ecommerce site. But there are over 120 such engines, and how to decide which of them to use and whether to use them at all are questions many merchants have. We spoke with Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, a leading ecommerce software...
Design & Development
APIs: What Online Merchants Need to Know

August 25, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Editor's Note: In our "Need to Know" series, we explain complex web topics on an executive-level, "need to know" basis. For this installment, Contributing Editor Armando Roggio explains application programming interfaces. The "Need to Know" Series Five Web Design Concepts Ecommerce M...
Social Media
Facebook ‘Places’ Helps Local Businesses

August 24, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Facebook recently rolled out "Places," a location-based sharing application popularized by such startups as Foursquare and Gowalla. Much has been written about Places, but in this article I'll review the possible business uses for it. When a user arrives at a given location–a physical ...
Conversion
Language Translation: Test Product Names before Entering New Countries

August 24, 2010 • Christian Arno

A product’s name, for all intents and purposes, is the product. It’s what consumers grow to trust and identify with. The name is vital in building a brand’s identity over time. But with international markets, there is an added complexity, as the message represented by words and symbols ...
Checkout Tactics
Conversion: Pros and Cons of Four Checkout Methods

August 23, 2010 • Pamela Hazelton

There are hundreds of studies on the subject of shopping cart abandonment. Companies offering recovery-type services often rely on these statistics to tell us how their products can help. What ...
Design & Dev Tools
The PEC Review: Feedingo Organizes Feeds, Keeps Me Informed

August 23, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Informed ecommerce entrepreneurs must stay on top of industry news, web trends, and best practices. To achieve this, some wander around the web from one blog or site to another, or they absorb dozens of email newsletters. It would be better if all of the best blog posts, articles, and...