Page 238 – Practical Ecommerce

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Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: ClearCart

October 16, 2009 • Kate Monteith

There are more than 350 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...
Technical SEO
SEO: There Is No Duplicate Content Penalty

October 15, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown

There is a long held belief that search engines – namely Google – penalize websites that duplicate content or produce material that is largely the same as other sites on the Internet. But, I’m here to tell you, The Duplicate Content Penalty is a myth. Think about it this way. If a page...
Marketing & Advertising
Search Engine Rankings: Google Continues Dominance

October 15, 2009 • PEC Staff

Google continued to dominate the U.S. search market in September, according to comScore, the Internet tracking firm. Google sites accounted for 64.9 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! sites (18.8 percent), and Microsoft sites (9.4 percent). The analysis focused on t...
Platforms & Apps
ProStores, Magento Add Features to Existing Platforms

October 14, 2009 • PEC Staff

ProStores, the eBay-owned hosted shopping cart, and Magento, the open-source ecommerce platform, have both announced new upgrades to their existing products. ProStores Adds Feeds, Other Features ProStores has added five primary enhancements to its cart. They are: Feeds to theFind.c...
Schools & Resources
Booklist: NearbyNow.com Founder Scott Dunlap

October 14, 2009 • PEC Staff

Booklist is an occasional feature in which we ask ecommerce personalities about the books they read, and why. For this list, we asked Scott Dunlap, founder of ecommerce technology developer ...
Business
Paid Reviews Subject to Fines Under New FTC Rule

October 13, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen

The recently announced changes to the Federal Trade Commission’s "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising" are prompting ecommerce merchants to take a closer look at how they advertise and interact with bloggers and reviewers. The changes address endor...
Email & Text Marketing
Quick Query: Constant Contact Author on Effectiveness of Email

October 12, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen

An online merchant’s customer email list is typically a crucial part of his or her marketing plan. And Constant Contact is a leader in the email marketing field. Eric Groves is the senior vice president, global market development for Constant Contact. He’s written a new book entitled Th...
Business
DHGate.com Sources China-made Products

October 12, 2009 • PEC Staff

DHGate.com is an online marketplace of wholesale products from China. The company is located in Beijing and Diane Wang is its founder and CEO. Prior to launching DHGate, she ...
Analytics & Data
The PeC Review: ClearSaleing Ties Profit to Marketing Tactics

October 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce marketers want to generate the greatest possible revenue from every promotional dollar invested. But tracking or measuring exactly how each ad, each promotion, or each press release affects shoppers can be allusive. ClearSaleing provides a platform that helps companies accura...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: ShopFactory

October 9, 2009 • Kate Monteith

There are more than 350 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...
Conversion
Survey Results: Consideration of Ethnicity Is Not Racist

October 8, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen

An overwhelming number of respondents to a September 2009 Practical eCommerce survey indicated that online merchants should consider a potential customer’s ethnicity when developing a marketing campaign. The survey went a step further, asking merchants to give compelling reasons to mark...
Business
Newegg.com: Common Stock Filing Reveals Fast Growing, Profitable Firm

October 8, 2009 • Kerry Murdock

Newegg.com, the electronics retailer, intends to raise some $175 million through the initial public sale of its common stock. The company filed registration documents with the U. S.
Conversion
Be Your Own Social Media Director

October 7, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen

Ecommerce merchants have witnessed an evolution among consumers: Consumers are no longer passive. They share information about products and services via email, blogging, and now Facebook and Twitter, among other social networking sites. Companies--particularly ad agencies--are increa...
Social Media
Ecommerce Know-How: Consider YouTube Promoted Video

October 7, 2009 • Armando Roggio

YouTube Promoted Video lets ecommerce merchants combine the power of television commercials with pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. Internet video is one of the fastest growing media forms in the world. From June to August 2009, American Internet video consumption grew from 19.4 billion to...
Business > Merchant Voice
Goal Setting with our Teams

October 7, 2009 • Ken Kikkawa

As merchants, entrepreneurs and business drivers we all wear various hats during the course of the day, week or month that sometimes are not part of any job description. One of my principle responsibilities is to set the overall direction and strategy for our company, both long term an...
Conversion
Holiday Sales: Three Tips to Turn Browsers into Buyers

October 6, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

The holiday shopping season is upon us. Based on a 2008 study of more than 1.5 million people who used the Internet for holiday shopping, we found that the first week of October marks the start of the shopping season. That means it’s time to make your keyword list for both organic searc...
Customer Retention
The PeC Review: SeeWhy.com Helps Capture Exiting Shoppers

October 6, 2009 • Armando Roggio

A six year-old, real-time analytics firm seeks to help online merchants boost conversions by enabling stores to follow up with potential customers after those shoppers leave the site or abandon the shopping cart. According to SeeWhy, sending shoppers a customer-service-oriented email a...
Conversion
Six Pointers for Generating Traffic from YouTube

October 5, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

YouTube ranks only behind Google in the number of searches on its site. This is according to comScore, the Internet measurement and analysis firm. That means there are more searches on YouTube than on Yahoo! search, or Bing, or Ask.com. However, the searches are not general searches lik...
Analytics & Data
Ecommerce Know-How: Avoid The Last Click Effect

October 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

As ecommerce marketers strive to get the best return for every dollar they invest, there is a danger that they will fall prey to the last click effect, attributing all of a campaign's success to just the last interaction a customer has before arriving on site or making a purchase. The ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Auctiva Commerce

October 2, 2009 • Kate Monteith

There are more than 350 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
Accessibility Review: PetsContained.com

October 1, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

Disabled consumers often face great challenges when browsing and making purchases online. Perhaps as many as ten percent of online shoppers have a disability, such as low-or-no vision or an inability to use a keyboard, that can make it difficult to understand content and navigate websit...
Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: BadCustomer.com Makes Good Business

October 1, 2009 • Armando Roggio

A free service protects merchants from bad customers—both malicious and foolish—saving time, frustration, and money. Ecommerce merchants love customers and love providing good customer service. It is at the industry's heart. But some customers are not so loveable and knowing who they ar...
Conversion
Six Success Factors for Small Ecommerce Businesses

September 30, 2009 • Michael Stearns

Many small ecommerce businesses are one-to-five person shops whose income is derived solely from their websites. As the ecommerce world evolves and becomes more sophisticated, however, success for these smaller merchants has become more challenging. Through the past year, certainly a ...
User Experience
The Shopping Experience: ChristianBook.com Needs Breadcrumbs

September 30, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Christian Book Distributors (CBD) and its website, ChristianBook.com, has become largest catalog and online seller of Christian books and products in the world. Two teenaged brothers, Ray and Steve Hendrickson, founded it in 1978, in Massachusetts. The brothers launched the company, ac...
Business
Lessons Learned: Allstate Sign Plaque Owner Relies on SEO

September 29, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

“Lessons Learned” is an occasional series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we asked Mark Fick, owner of Allstate Sign ...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for October 2009

September 29, 2009 • 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 October 2009 installment. The Power of Product Reviews "Use the power of product reviews and motivate your team to d...
Conversion
Shop.org 2009 Summit Round Up

September 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Exhibitors, attendees, and speakers at last week's Shop.org Annual Summit were encouraged and excited about the future of ecommerce, both in terms of growth and technology. In fact, walking around the convention center at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas seemed to make everyone fee...
Conversion
Yahoo! May Sell Small Business Unit, Focus on Core Business

September 25, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Yahoo! small business services unit, which includes the hosted ecommerce platform used by thousands of online merchants, may soon be sold, clearing the way for Yahoo! to focus on its core businesses, according to published reports. News that Yahoo! had garnered some interest for th...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: CartGenie

September 25, 2009 • Kate Monteith

There are more than 350 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...
Business
Profile: Michigan-based Entrepreneur Reinvents for the eCommerce Age

September 24, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

John Lindberg, president of eFulfillment Service, is no stranger to change. In 1969, Lindberg founded LPI Corporation in western Michigan, specializing in powder coating of metals used in cars ...