Page 239 – Practical Ecommerce

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Checkout Tactics
Seven Ways to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

September 23, 2009 • Jan Riley

Shopping cart abandonment affects most every ecommerce merchant. A whitepaper by McAfee, an ecommerce security company, called Digital Window Shopping: The Long Journey to Buy, cites a survey conducted by comScore, in which comScore attempted to determine why shoppers abandon their cart...
Design & Dev Tools
The PeC Review: StoreSync Lets You Manage Your Ecommerce Business On Your iPhone

September 23, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce can be a 24 hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week business. For many small-to-medium sized merchants, providing great customer service means paying close attention to their businesses, even after normal business hours. A new iPhone application assists with monitoring orders, inventory,...
Business
Quick Query: Faculte.com CEO on Self-serve Video Tools

September 22, 2009 • PEC Staff

Online shoppers are increasingly looking for video to demonstrate a product or explain its use. But for many ecommerce merchants, producing, embedding, and playing video is a complicated, confusing process. There is a company called Faculte (pronounced fak-uhl-tee) that provides all of ...
SEO Tools
Ecommerce Know-How: Optimizing Your Site for Microsoft Bing

September 22, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Microsoft, Yahoo! search deal announced in July still faces legal hurdles, but as more details have become available, it is clear that the companies' combined search share has—for the first time in perhaps a decade—created some real competition for Google. Depending on which poll o...
Conversion
Integrating Yahoo! Search and Microsoft Bing with Google Analytics

September 21, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

Many ecommerce merchants use Google Analytics to track their pay-per-click advertising campaigns. Key pay-per-click statistics that can be tracked include revenue per keyword, number of conversions per keyword, average order size per keyword, bounce rates per keyword, and much more. B...
Payments
Cross-Border Affiliate Payments: Banks, PayPal and Payoneer

September 18, 2009 • Michael E. Shatz

Affiliate marketing is one of the pillars of modern ecommerce. Hundreds of independent networks, such as buy.at, MediaWhiz, Convert2Media and Media Shakers, connect affiliates with merchants, which drives traffic to the merchant sites and earns referral fees for the affiliates. But, act...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Shop Maker

September 18, 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...
Payments
The PeC Review: Braintree Payment Solutions Protects Merchants and Customers

September 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Without a safe, reliable means of processing payments, there would be no ecommerce. So it is not a surprise that managing payments and securing credit card and customer information is a major concern for online retailers. Braintree Payment Solutions offers merchants a complete electron...
Business
Lessons Learned: Atamaii.com Founder Finds Success Selling Anime Toys

September 17, 2009 • John W. Dawe

Two tours as a Navy officer in Japan introduced Stu Carter to website development and the anime toy market. In 1999, he took his combined experiences and launched the online toy store Atamaii.com. In 2008, the company's revenue peaked at $350,000, and 2009 revenue is expected to be arou...
Business
Quick Query: comScore Official on Tracking Internet Activity

September 16, 2009 • PEC Staff

In the field of tracking and reporting on Internet activity, there's no more prominent name than comScore. It was founded in 1999 to track and report on ecommerce activity and, now, comScore has diversified to track online advertising, socializing, searching, and much more. It's also a ...
SEO
SEO: Search Engine Rankings Vary Among Searchers

September 16, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown

Rankings have long been a valued metric in search marketing. After all, it's easy to monitor and seems like a really important measure. However, if you really want to measure the effectiveness of your SEO campaign, stop obsessing about rankings. Proactively changing the focus of your c...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know How: Public Relations 101

September 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Public relations is the art of managing your business' public reputation through media engagement, and it is an important and often overlooked part of successful ecommerce marketing communications. In public relations (PR) the aim is to build relationships with media outlets and blogge...
Business
Quick Query: eHobbies CEO Kikkawa Offers Holiday-selling Ideas

September 14, 2009 • PEC Staff

There’s no more innovative ecommerce company than eHobbies.com. Founded in 1999, it has grown to become a leader, if not the leader, in its field of hobby and toy retailing. Ken Kikkawa is the CEO of eHobbies.com. He also writes "The (eCommerce) Corner Office" blog at Practical eCommerc...
SEO
SEO Report Card: PhotoWeights.com

September 11, 2009 • Stephan Spencer

This month’s site up for review is PhotoWeights.com. Owned by Susan Eaton, PhotoWeights.com sells personalized, do-it-yourself paperweight kits from family photos and other artwork. Eaton requested this "SEO Report Card" review. Home Page First things first, the home page has some maj...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: NitroSell

September 11, 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
Ecommerce Know-How: Branding Helps Connect With Consumers

September 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Building an emotional and social connection with shoppers can create lasting relationships that produce both pleasing shopping experiences and increased profit. This is most commonly referred to as "branding" and it can be one of the most important keys to ecommerce success. In July 20...
Social Media
Book Excerpt: Social Media Helps Overcome Consumer Skepticism

September 10, 2009 • Paul Chaney

Editor's Note: Paul Chaney is a longtime contributor to Practical eCommerce. He's an expert in social media marketing and he's written extensively on how ecommerce firms can best utilize social media to grow sales. Chaney is also the author of a new book on social media called The Digi...
Business
Lessons Learned: William Villiers of Select Wallpaper

September 9, 2009 • John W. Dawe

Lessons Learned is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment we interviewed William Villiers of Select Wallpaper, an online ...
Cross-border Selling
The PeC Review: i-BEAK Offers First Rate Translation and Cultural Services

September 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

One of the great promises of the Internet is that it brings together buyers and sellers from around the world. But, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone can communicate. Ecommerce marketers who want to sell their products or services worldwide should therefore consider translati...
Conversion
Social Media: Frequently Asked Questions from Small Business Owners

September 8, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

I recently toured our state (Michigan) with members of my staff. We met with small business owners to offer them actionable marketing and sales advice that they could take back to the office that day. Much of that advice revolved around social media marketing. While no two businesses ...
Code
Web Design Tips: Combining jQuery Effects and Plugins For A Great Marketing Effect

September 8, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The lightweight (small file size) and concise jQuery library makes it relatively easy to add interactive effects and merchandising to just about any ecommerce website. In this edition of “Web Design ...
User Experience
Accessibility Review: LorisWigsite.com

September 6, 2009 • Joseph C. Dolson

Disabled Internet users 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 w...
Business
Quick Query: What, Exactly, Is An IP Address?

September 4, 2009 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce merchants can now track where their visitors live. Digital Element is a firm that provides this geo-tracking service and it allows merchants to change their home page and other landing pages based, for example, on whether a visitor lives in Alaska or Florida. The technology ...
Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: PowerReviews

September 3, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The term "Web 2.0" has come to describe web design and architecture that facilitates user interaction. And on ecommerce sites, that interaction often takes the form of customer-generated product or service reviews. PowerReviews and PowerReviews Express offer online retailers—from multi...
Business
Lessons Learned: Patricia Brown of LordsArt.com

September 3, 2009 • John W. Dawe

Lessons Learned is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Patricia Brown of LordsArt.com. Based in Ozone Park, N.Y., the site sells Christian art and gifts. A school teacher by day and ecommer...
Conversion
Use LinkedIn To Promote Your Online Store

September 2, 2009 • Sarah Worsham

Many people think of LinkedIn as a business community, but it can also be helpful for promoting your online store. It can help build your network, conduct research, demonstrate your expertise, and market your products. LinkedIn For Your Online Resume One of the best uses of LinkedIn i...
Marketing & Advertising
Search-engine Success: Don’t Forget Description Tags

September 2, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

The description tags in search engine snippets have improved in recent years. Years ago, many search results would include snippets in the top results that were just plain nonsense. However, search today usually returns more quality snippets even in deeper results. Part of this may be d...
Conversion
New Google AdSense Network Partners Could Make Top Sites More Expensive

September 1, 2009 • PEC Staff

Google AdSense network partners can now bid on display advertising positions at top AdSense publisher sites, potentially making top-performing sites more expensive. Most ecommerce marketers are familiar with Google AdWords, the pay-per-click advertising platform that lets merchants pos...
Design & Development
Ecommerce Know-How: Making Use of Use Cases

September 1, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Developing clear and concise use cases when you design or redesign your ecommerce website, can improve user experience and satisfaction, potentially leading to more sales and more profits. Use cases have their beginnings in software engineering, where they were used to visually or text...
Business > Merchant Voice
Prioritizing for the Holidays

September 1, 2009 • Ken Kikkawa

I'm a merchant at heart. I love merchandise. It probably goes back to over 20 years ago when I was an assistant buyer for May Company department stores. Part of our responsibility was to work out in the stores during sale periods in November and December. It gave me a chance to get ...