Page 230 – Practical Ecommerce

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Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for May 2010

May 3, 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 May 2010 installment of "Great Ecommerce Ideas." Study Your Competitors’ SEO “Study and learn why your direct compet...
Business
The PeC Review: AVG LinkScanner Identifies Malicious Code

May 3, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Seventy-one percent of websites that contain malicious code or malware are actually legitimate sites that have been compromised, according to web and data security firm, Websense. What's more, 61 percent of the top 100 sites on the Internet were infected at some point in 2009. Malware ...
Design & Development
Need a Five-Pound Gummy Bear? Try Vat19.com

April 30, 2010 • Kerry Murdock

An ecommerce merchant in St. Louis launched his business in 2006 after having written the programming code for his own shopping cart. That business, called Vat19, sells offbeat gifts (such ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: AAcart

April 30, 2010 • Kate Monteith

There are more than 500 online shopping carts. And each week we feature one, interviewing both the cart's developer and a customer. "Cart of the Week" is not a review or an evaluation, but rather an opportunity to learn about a shopping cart from the people who build it and use it. Thi...
Email & Text Marketing
Five Steps to Improve Email Deliverability

April 29, 2010 • Ankush Agarwal

According to a study by Return Path, 20 percent of email in the United States and Canada is still not making it to the inbox. That may seem like a small percentage, but it is actually a huge number that can adversely affect your campaign if you are among the email marketers whose messag...
Design & Development
Mobile Strategy: Use Same Content, But Optimize Its Appearance

April 29, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Merchants have options when it comes to mobile optimization. Although W3C has released a list of best practices for the mobile web, there are many different ways to implement them. Experts sometimes recommend developing a separate mobile-optimized site with different content and servi...
Business
Miva Merchant President Explains New Upgrades, Future of Hosting Business

April 28, 2010 • PEC Staff

Rick Wilson is the president of Miva Merchant, the pioneering ecommerce platform. Like many ecommerce firms, Miva Merchant is evolving. It now offers its own hosted shopping cart, and Wilson joined us to discuss recent upgrades to that cart, as well as cloud computing and the future of ...
Design & Development
How to Identify Most-Used Browsers, Operating Systems, Screen Resolutions

April 28, 2010 • Louis Camassa

In "Website Compatibility Testing Made Simple," published last week here at Practical eCommerce, I explained the process for site operators, such as ecommerce merchants, to continually ensure their websites render properly across all common browsers, operating systems and screen resolut...
Business
Guitar Retailer Offers Inventory on Facebook

April 27, 2010 • PEC Staff

A growing percentage of Internet consumers use Facebook. By some accounts, it is the second largest website and ecommerce merchants are now finding ways to tap into that traffic. One of them is Guitar Syndicate, a newly launched retailer of musical instruments and accessories that uploa...
Link Building
Combine Search Engines and Social Media for Link Building

April 27, 2010 • Bill Hartzer

I recently spoke at an Internet marketing conference about that state of search engine optimization in 2010. One of the points that I made during the presentation is that search engines and social media networks are converging. In 2010, if you want to rank well in the search engines, yo...
Marketing & Advertising
Facebook App Embeds Product Offers in News Feeds

April 26, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Most users who currently shop on Facebook do it using applications, Facebook Marketplace, or by using Flash-based applets on Fan pages. But Facebook and Twitter have both demonstrated that the live feed of links, photos, videos, comments and replies is what they’re really interested in....
Email & Text Marketing
The PEC Review: GetResponse’s Email-to-Speech Service

April 26, 2010 • Armando Roggio

In 2009, there were approximately 90 trillion emails sent, or about 13,200 emails for every one of the world's 6.8 billion residents. This is according to data from web monitoring firm Pingdom and the U.S. Census Bureau. Narrowed to likely email recipients, this staggering data indica...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: osCMax

April 23, 2010 • Kate Monteith

This week, we'll hear from Michael Sasek, founder and lead developer of osCMax shopping cart software. The company’s main offices are in Phoenix, Ariz., with development teams in both the U.S. and the U.K. Sasek estimates that osCMax software currently has 10,000 to 12,000 users, as well as many more privately labeled carts that use osCMax as a base. We'll also hear from an osCMax customer, Mark Fleeson, technical director
Payments
Visa to Acquire CyberSource, Authorize.Net

April 22, 2010 • Kerry Murdock

The proposed acquisition by Visa of Authorize.Net’s parent company is the latest evolution for the storied payment gateway. Visa announced on April 21 its agreement to purchase CyberSource, Authorize.Net’s parent, for $26 per common share, or roughly $2 billion in cash. The deal is exp...
Conversion
Ask an Expert: Optimizing Google Product Search

April 22, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about Google Product Search from Kara English, co-founder of Candlesandsuch.com, a Colorado-based retailer of life-event gifts and accesso...
On-page SEO
Search Engine Optimization in 2010: What You Need to Know Now

April 21, 2010 • Bill Hartzer

Editor’s Note: is a contributor to Practical eCommerce and the owner of BillHartzer.com, a Dallas-based online marketing firm. Hartzer wrote the article, below, which first appeared in that company’s blog. If you want to use search engine optimization best practices, or want to get u...
Design & Development
Website Compatibility Testing Made Simple

April 21, 2010 • Louis Camassa

A frequently overlooked aspect of managing an ecommerce website is testing the appearance of that site across different browsers and screen resolutions. For example, your website might render beautifully in Internet Explorer 7, but what does it look like in Safari on the Mac? What about Firefox, or in 1024 x 768 resolution?
Conversion
Spam, Spam Bots, and Double Opt-in E-mail Lists

April 21, 2010 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

It's hard to grow an e-mail list these days. People, wary of getting tons of unwanted e-mail, just don't subscribe as freely as they did in days of yore. And then there are evil spam-bots.
Social Media
Facebook Limits Fan Pages and Introduces Community Pages

April 20, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Facebook Fan pages are changing. This is due to the Facebook's desire to ensure that only individuals and organizations with official permission to do so create such pages. To replace those Fan pages created by, well, fans, Facebook has now introduced what it is referring to as Communit...
Business
Legal: Domain Names, Trade Names, and Trademarks

April 20, 2010 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm

Editor’s Note: We welcome Jeffrey Jacobson, an attorney, as our newest contributor. Jacobson is an expert in Internet and ecommerce law with Parmenter O’Toole, a Michigan-based law firm. He will contribute monthly on legal topics important to ecommerce merchants. His first piece, "Legal...
Technical SEO
SEO: Google Ranks Site Speed, Too

April 19, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

In its continuing quest to provide searchers with the best possible search experience, Google announced last week that site speed is now a signal in its search ranking algorithms. Along with the hundreds of other signals, like link popularity and keyword relevance, Google is now factori...
Social Media
The PeC Review: Firefox TwitterBar Add-on

April 19, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Social media is one of the most cost effective ways that an online merchant can attract new customers and build relationships with existing ones. In social media, the aim is to become generally interested in your customers, including what they do and how they feel about the world. That...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: GravityMarket

April 16, 2010 • Kate Monteith

This week, we'll hear from Jody K. Hartwig, director of e-business for Acumium LLC. The company is based in Madison, Wis., and it produces GravityMarket, an ecommerce platform. According to Hartwig, more than 100 websites have been built on GravityMarket since the cart was first developed. We'll also hear from a GravityMarket customer, Michael Feiman
Marketing & Advertising
Social Media: Selling on Facebook

April 15, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Facebook is set to allow developers to create shopping apps directly on merchants’ fan pages. This means that fan pages, which were once mainly marketing channels, can now be used as a point of sale, if merchants are willing to pay a developer to implement the apps. The first step in ...
Photography & Video
Image Formats: What’s a JPG, GIF, PNG, SVG?

April 15, 2010 • Drew Coffin

Online merchants frequently use images to convey information. This article will help merchants understand the importance of image types and when to use them.
Design & Development
Payment Provider Seeks Simplification

April 14, 2010 • PEC Staff

The process of collecting and processing online payments is confusing. There are many parties involved and the fees can be difficult to decipher. Adyen is one company that hopes to clear up the process and to simplify payments from international customers, too. Peter Caparso is presiden...
Business
Quick Query: Work-at-home Mom Runs CandlesAndSuch.com

April 13, 2010 • PEC Staff

The American Dream, for many would-be merchants, is to work at home, own a business, watch after their kids, and enjoy it all. Kara English does all of that. She is the co-founder of Candlesandsuch.com, a site that sells candles and accessories for "life events," such as weddings, brida...
Payments
Five Nifty Mobile-Banking Apps

April 13, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

As mobile apps become more sophisticated, mobile banking is becoming a more convenient alternative to online banking. Some mobile banking apps simply replicate the tools available on their website, but others go further and offer functionality possible because of the device itself. Merc...
Conversion
Three Ways to Optimize Video Performance

April 12, 2010 • Justin Foster

With all the buzz surrounding ecommerce video, you might think web merchants were maximizing their video revenue opportunities. But they are not. Make no mistake, while more merchants than ever are experimenting with online video merchandising, retailers large and small would like to...
Photography & Video
The PEC Review: TinEye Reverse Image Search Locates Competitors, Protects Copyright

April 12, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Product photography is an essential part of ecommerce merchandising. Customers like to see what they're buying, after all. Many manufacturers and distributors supply stock product imagery for merchants to use, and other retailers will invest in professional and unique product photograp...