Page 233 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Business
Quick Query: PowerReviews CEO on Strategies for Product Reviews

February 15, 2010 • PEC Staff

An increasing number of ecommerce merchants are using product reviews. Many of these merchants find the reviews assist consumers in purchasing products that best fit their needs, making for a more satisfying shopping experience. But there are strategies for employing customer reviews, a...
Marketing & Advertising
The PeC Review: Google Buzz a No-brainer

February 15, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Google recently announced a new social media tool that is integrated into the company’s popular Gmail service. Google Buzz seeks to make it easier to start and follow social media-like conversations ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: PDG Commerce

February 12, 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...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Juggle.com “Not a Traditional eCommerce Site”

February 11, 2010 • Stephan Spencer

I'm proud to say that this is my first report card as a vice president of Covario. The company I founded in 1995, Netconcepts, was acquired last month by Covario, a search-engine-marketing and search-engine-optimization software and services company for large online retailers. This mon...
Business
Quick Query: Credit-card Fraud Stabilizing, Says Cybersource Exec

February 10, 2010 • PEC Staff

Most every ecommerce merchant has experienced credit card fraud. But fraud-prevention efforts can vary greatly from merchant to merchant. Cybersource, the payment gateway company, tracks online credit card fraud activity, and for 11 years it has assembled a free, downloadable report cal...
Fraud Prevention
The Technical Side of PCI DSS

February 9, 2010 • Armando Roggio

What merchants don't know about the technical side of protecting customer data can be costly. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) describes 12 system and procedural requirements for securing customer credit card data that is transmitted, processed, or stored by a...
Google Ads
Google’s AdWords Tool Helps with Both Pay-per-click and SEO

February 9, 2010 • Jeff Muendel

Keyword research is one of the pillars of both natural and paid search campaigns. By following the keyword choices used by consumers in the search engines, websites can focus on those terms to capture traffic. This tenet of online marketing and search engine optimization is fairly well ...
Keyword Research
Ask an Expert: How to Get Better Search Rankings for Major Keywords

February 8, 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 ranking on search engines for major keywords. It comes from Jeramie Westbay, owner operator for Crazy Ed's Roadkill, an online store...
Photography & Video
The PeC Review: Shotfarm Streamlines Use of Manufacturers’ Photography

February 8, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Compelling product photography is a must for online merchants. Without a good visual representation of the products a store is selling, customers probably won't buy. Generally speaking, online stores have two basic ways to get product images: (1) take the photos, or (2) use the stock i...
Social Media
Ecommerce News Around the Web for February 5, 2010

February 5, 2010 • Paul Chaney

"Ecommerce News Around the Web" is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. 11 Outstanding Online Resources for Web Developers - Mashable A web developer's job is almost never done. You are always looking for ways to impr...
Business > Merchant Voice
Why Free Shipping Works

February 5, 2010 • Ken Kikkawa

There has been alot written on Practical eCommerce and elsewhere regarding free shipping and whether or not it makes sense for merchants to offer. I'd like to share my experience with it and tell you why it makes sense for eHobbies. For years, we rarely offered free shipping promotions...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Dextel Ecommerce Manager

February 5, 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...
User Experience
Mobile Commerce: Better to Create an App or a Mobile-optimized Site?

February 4, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

As an increasing number of mobile users access the web, merchants may be unsure exactly how to react. Should they build a mobile optimized site, design and submit an app to be approved by the Apple App Store or Android Market, or something else? Mobile users have different web needs th...
Conversion
Google Analytics: Use Profile Filters, Advanced Segmentation to Understand Your Visitors

February 4, 2010 • Michael Stearns

The first stage of using Google Analytics effectively is to regularly check your core numbers, such as visits, the bounce rate, referrers, and sources. For small business owners, consistent monitoring can provide a reasonably clear idea of what is happening on your site. But when maximi...
Business
Quick Query: Used Bookseller Makes a Tidy Income

February 3, 2010 • PEC Staff

Used books are big business. Adam Bertram is a part-time seller of used books, under the name of Books by Bertram. The business sold around 3,400 titles in 2009, grossing around $57,000, all without a website of its own. Bertram tells us about it in this "Quick Query." PeC: How did you...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Truck-freight Shipping: How to Lower Your Costs

February 3, 2010 • John Lindberg

If you use truck freight to receive merchandise from your suppliers or to ship to your customers, and you suspect you are paying too much, this how-to guide is for you. There Are Some Basics You Need To Know Truck-freight pricing is based on negotiation, and the starting point is prov...
Business
The PeC Review: eStore-Opoly Game for Family Businesses

February 1, 2010 • Armando Roggio

The smallest ecommerce businesses are often family operations. An entrepreneurial family member starts selling online. Before long a spouse is helping to manage the accounting and teen-aged children are processing orders. Sharing the work becomes an outgrowth of sharing a life under on...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for February 2010

February 1, 2010 • Ankush Agarwal

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 February 2010 installment of "Great Ecommerce Ideas." Help Men Find Valentine’s Gifts "With Valentine’s Day on the m...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Whirlwind eCommerce

January 29, 2010 • Kate Monteith

This week, we'll hear from Mark Wexler, a partner in Whirlwind eCommerce, a Bethesda, Maryland software development company, and the makers of the Whirlwind eCommerce shopping cart. According to Wexler, "About four dozen websites use the engine. Of those, about three dozen are ecommerce sites. It has a great content management system, which attracts a lot of publishing, hospitality and other non-ecommerce clients." We'll also hear from a Whirlwind eCommerce customer
Payments
Mobile Payment Systems Are Adapting, Developing

January 28, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Mobile payment processing can help merchants take advantage of the one item people rarely leave home without: a cell phone or mobile device. Accepting payments by text verification has been in practice since 2006 when companies like PayPal began offering a mobile option that allows us...
User Experience
Four Strategies to Improve Shopper Experience

January 28, 2010 • Armando Roggio

How we shop is going to change. Digital interactivity at brick-and-mortar stores, mobile commerce, and rich Internet applications are going to have a significant effect on shopper experience in the next few years. But most of the changes to the shopper experience will not come overnigh...
Business
Lessons Learned: 5.11 Tactical Grows to $10 Million in Six Years

January 27, 2010 • PEC Staff

5.11 Tactical is a company that sells specialized clothing and gear to law enforcement and fire protection professionals. Its business model largely relies on a dealer network, but even so, its ecommerce site grosses roughly $10 million per year. That's not bad for a small portion of th...
Design & Development
Are PCI Standards Helpful? Take the Survey and Tell Us Your Views

January 26, 2010 • PEC Staff

Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards represent the credit card industry’s attempt to self-regulate and protect consumers’ credit card data. The PCI Security Standards Council, which five major issuers (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB) formed in 2006, organizes and ...
Business
Quick Query: Volusion COO on Platform Upgrades, Tips to Merchants

January 26, 2010 • PEC Staff

Volusion is an early-day hosted shopping cart platform that has grown to represent 18,000 online stores. The company has recently upgraded its platform and to explain those upgrades, among other ecommerce topics, we spoke with Volusion's chief operating officer, Clay Olivier. PeC: ...
Email & Text Marketing
Email Provider Looks Back on 2009

January 26, 2010 • Kate Monteith

Spammers were exploiting social networking sites and phishing was one of the top crimes around the globe in 2009, according to a study released by email service provider, ReturnPath. In a retrospective list of the top ten email trends for 2009, ReturnPath puts the proliferation of unwan...
Marketing & Advertising
Pay-per-click Advertising: Five New Year’s Resolutions

January 25, 2010 • Greg Laptevsky

The beginning of a new year is good time to review your pay-per-click advertising campaigns and implement steps to improve their effectiveness. Here are five New Year's pay-per-click resolutions that I recommend. Resolution 1: Improve performance tracking Attached is a spreadsheet ca...
Design & Development
The PeC Review: Google’s Translator Toolkit

January 25, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce makes the world smaller. Or, so it might seem. Shoppers in Budapest can by products from the U.S., while an American teen could be downloading folk music from a site in Nepal. What's more, expanding your customer bases to include potential shoppers from around the world can s...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Ecwid

January 22, 2010 • Kate Monteith

In this "Cart of the Week" installment, we feature Ecwid, an ecommerce platform that can be installed on any website by inserting three lines of HTML into the source code.
Technical SEO
Ask An Expert: How to Redirect URLs Without Losing Link Juice

January 21, 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 redirecting users from old URLs to new ones. It comes from Brian Rogers, web merchandising manager for 511 Tactical, an online (and ...
Social Media
Accessibility and Social Media

January 21, 2010 • Joseph C. Dolson

Social media can be a terrific way to share information with your customers, provide them with crucial support, and otherwise communicate with them. But almost all social media sites have accessibility problems. Though they are fairly accessible as a group, they do have a variety of i...