Page 241 – Practical Ecommerce

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Business
Lessons Learned: Brides’ Village Owner Achieves Success On Own Terms

August 6, 2009 • John W. Dawe

"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we visited with Cathy Ward, owner of Brides' Village, a Pennsylvania-based retailer of wedding accessories. When Ward’s son was born in 1998, she sold her b...
Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: Silkfair Is An Easy and Flexible eCommerce Platform

August 5, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Silkfair marketplace and ecommerce platform gives small ecommerce entrepreneurs an easy to use and flexible solution. It could have some online merchants selling in less than an hour without a single dime in out of pocket costs. Silkfair's market shops, which are somewhat analogo...
Conversion
Paid Search Advertising: Four Steps for Success

August 5, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

Paid search advertising has proven to be effective for many online businesses. In fact, paid search campaigns account for nearly 45 percent of the global online advertising expenditures, and for good reason. Not only does pay-per-click advertising allow advertisers to spend as much or a...
Conversion
comScore Revenue Hits $31.4 Million in Second Quarter 2009

August 4, 2009 • PEC Staff

Reston, Va.-based comScore, Inc. reported second quarter revenues of $31.4 million, representing a nine percent increase over the same 2008 quarter. Net income for the quarter declined from the same quarter in 2008, however, due largely to non-cash expenses related to prior acquisitions...
Marketing & Advertising
Social Media Sites Are Also Search Engines

August 4, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

Blended search results by the major search engines sometimes include postings to social media sites in search engine results. But some of the major social media services are themselves becoming search tools, which increases the need for ecommerce sites to get involved with social media....
Staffing
Ecommerce Know-how: Selecting a Search Engine Optimizer

August 3, 2009 • Armando Roggio

A steady flow of organic search engine traffic can be the difference between a successful ecommerce business and a failed one. Thus choosing a professional to help optimize your online store is a critical business decision. But how will you decide which SEO professional to hire? But how will you decide wh...
User Experience
The Shopping Experience: Gap.com

July 31, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Gap.com provides a positive online shopping experience that emanates professionalism, trustworthiness, and quality. But it is an experience that even small ecommerce businesses can emulate. In 1996, the actress Sharon Stone wore a black Gap turtleneck to Hollywood's grandest gala, ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Modular Merchant

July 31, 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
CurrySimple Founder Tastes Success with Specialty Sauces

July 30, 2009 • John W. Dawe

Michael Moran was working in a Thai restaurant when he realized that customers frequently complained about the difficulty of preparing Thai food at home. This was in 2004, in Atlanta. He went to work developing the concept of ready-to-heat Thai sauces that became, by 2006, CurrySimple, ...
Code
Web Design Tips: jQuery UI Accordion Widget

July 30, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Adding an interactive accordion widget to your ecommerce site can provide a great design feature that conveys professionalism and makes your content more readable. There are plenty of instances in website design when we would like to have a lot of content on a page, but, unless you are...
Conversion
Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for August 2009

July 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 August 2009 installment. Google Alerts Provide an Extra Set of Eyes and Ears "Set up Google Alerts on your company’s...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Shipping: Dimensional Weight Errors Can Cost Big Bucks

July 29, 2009 • John Lindberg

There are mistakes that can cost you when calculating shipping and handling fees. A big one is missing a UPS, FedEx or U.S. Postal Service DIM (dimensional) or oversize rule for large or lightweight packages. The term “DIM” refers to package shipping density, meaning the weight of th...
Email & Text Marketing
The PeC Review: GetResponse Is A Capable Email Campaign Tool

July 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio

GetResponse 6.0 is an easy-to-use email campaign management tool that makes customizing HTML newsletters and email promotions relatively simple. It will also automatically update a blog or Twitter account with newsletter content. GetResponse has an impressive design and a number of fe...
Business
Lessons Learned: Holland-based Retailer Targets Cutting Edge of Fashion

July 28, 2009 • PEC Staff

"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed fashion entrepreneur Peter Landa who founded the online clothing store Black Sheep Road in early 2009. Based in Amsterdam, Holland, Black Shee...
Technical SEO
Ecommerce Know-How: Adobe Flash vs. Search Engine Optimization

July 27, 2009 • Armando Roggio

New technology, user demand, and search-engine-optimized design are making it possible for search engines to index, rank and display sites developed completely with the Adobe Flash platform. To be sure, rich Internet applications (RIAs), like those created with Flash and Flex, are a ch...
Business
Lessons Learned: CuddleWorks Stresses Social Media, Satisfied Customers

July 24, 2009 • John W. Dawe

"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Jim Richardson and Dave McCormick who launched CuddleWorks.com in Tigard, Ore. in 2007 with a combined 20 years of web design and ecommerce ex...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: KonaKart

July 24, 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 built it and use it. Thi...
SEO
SEO Report Card: OnlyHangers.com Has a Good Home Page, Bad Product Pages

July 23, 2009 • Stephan Spencer

This month fortune smiles on OnlyHangers.com for a free site review. We received the request from the company's owner, Ron Maier. In a way, OnlyHangers.com is in an enviable position because it is in such a niche market; so the known universe of relevant search terms is relatively small...
Design & Dev Tools
The PeC Review: Use 99 Designs for Crowd-sourced Graphics

July 23, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The appearance of your online store matters. Customers use a store's logo and website design to judge its trustworthiness and professionalism. But ecommerce storeowners and managers are businesspeople, not necessarily graphic or web designers. So their expertise is in merchandising, bu...
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Know-How: Should You Host Your Own Website?

July 22, 2009 • Armando Roggio

For some ecommerce businesses, operating an in-house HTTP server and the associated server software can improve website performance, increase data security, and lower overall costs. But hosting your site yourself is not for everyone. Ecommerce businesses rely on the Internet. It is the...
Analytics & Data
Measuring SEO Success: Challenging, but Necessary

July 21, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown

Measuring the increased traffic and sales from a search-engine-optimization initiative is among the most challenging issues site owners face. Frequently, when I’m starting a new SEO program with a client, the seemingly simple question of “What’s your goal?” is met with a pause. It’s not...
Business
Merchant Profile: Home Decor Retailer Relies on Outsourcing

July 21, 2009 • John W. Dawe

Vance Selin founded Countrytradedays.com in 2003 to sell a variety of unique home decor items. The site was modeled after The McKinney (Texas) Third Monday Trade Days, a monthly fair hosting more than 300 vendors. Since its inception, Selin’s website has experienced steady growth, with ...
Technical SEO
PeC Traffic Report: Searches for “Saving” Words Slowing in 2009

July 20, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Google search queries for "saving" words like "coupon" and "discount" were relatively flat in the first half of 2009. This is in spite of a U.S. national unemployment rate that has risen 69.6 percent in a year and the remaining effects of widespread recession. Relative data from Google...
Google Ads
Survey Results: Online Merchants Likely to Use Bing Pay-per-click Advertising

July 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Two thirds of respondents to a June 2009 Practical eCommerce survey said they were either using or would use Microsoft's Bing search engine for pay-per-click advertising, and an additional 25.3 percent said they would consider Bing. Altogether, some 92 percent of survey respondents sai...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Squirrelcart

July 17, 2009 • Kate Monteith

There are more than 350 online shopping carts. And each week we feature one, interviewing both the cart's developer or management 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 an...
Schools & Resources
The PeC Review: “The Unofficial Magento User Guide” Helpful for Novices

July 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Magento Commerce, the open source ecommerce platform, has a massive following and an engaged development community. So it is no surprise that one of its devotees has released an unofficial users' guide designed to help do-it-yourselfers implement this powerful platform. James D. Ballo...
Conversion
Tagging URLs for Better Tracking in Google Analytics

July 16, 2009 • Michael Stearns

If you use Google Analytics, you have likely experienced its value in understanding your shoppers and how they interact with your site. But there are deeper levels of understanding to attain. If you start tuning the data you feed to Google Analytics by "tagging" your URLs, you can gener...
Design & Development
Thirteen Great Flash-based Ecommerce Sites

July 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Adobe Flash platform is bringing stunning new examples of rich media to ecommerce sites. New site design techniques make Flash, Flex, and ActionScript, all from Adobe, very viable choices for adding video, audio, or just plain aesthetic awesomeness to any website's design. In this ...
Business
Lessons Learned: AllThingsJeep.com Owner Stresses Innnovation

July 15, 2009 • John W. Dawe

"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Jean Wnuk, co-owner of AllThingsJeep.com, headquartered in Shirley, Mass. AllThingsJeep.com sells unique gift items for the Jeep enthusiast, ...
Customer Retention
Ecommerce Know-How: Turn Customers Into Members

July 14, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Focusing a portion of marketing efforts on reselling existing customers or acquiring frequent shoppers could help boost sales for many online merchants. Often online retail marketing focuses on increasing site traffic and converting visitors. This strategy is really the heart of sellin...