Page 243 – Practical Ecommerce

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Conversion
Microsoft’s Bing to Win Market Share?

June 19, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

Microsoft recently rolled out a new search engine called Bing. This launch appears to be another attempt by Microsoft to win over search market share from its main search rivals, Google and Yahoo! Microsoft is reportedly planning to spend over $100 million on promoting the engine. Bin...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Flying Cart

June 19, 2009 • Kate Monteith

At Practical eCommerce, we are aware of 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 f...
Business
Bloglist: MarketingSherpa’s Stefan Tornquist

June 18, 2009 • PEC Staff

In Bloglist, we ask ecommerce professionals to share some of their favorite blogs and tell us why they read them. For this bloglist, we talked to Stefan Tornquist, research director for MarketingSherpa, a marketing research firm that specializes in tracking all aspects of marketing, wit...
Business
Lessons Learned: WineChateau CEO Offers Spirited Advice

June 18, 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 Saurabh Abrol, president and CEO of WineChateau.com. Driven, competitive, focused, innovative, tight-fisted, and as sweet as the dess...
Typography & Fonts
Web Design Tips: Cufón is a Fast Font Replacement Solution

June 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio

An easy-to-implement JavaScript called Cufón allows web designers to quickly embed visually interesting fonts on their web pages, opening up new opportunities for typographical design elements. Every medium has constraints. For print, there are things like size, ink density, and paper ...
SEO Tools
SEO: Where Is Blended Search for Ecommerce Queries?

June 17, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown

When the concept of blended search was introduced, the search engine optimization (SEO) industry and ecommerce retailers got very excited. By optimizing the images and video content that many sites already produce, search engines were adding visually appealing content to the standard 10...
Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: KompoZer is a Capable, Free Web Authoring System

June 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio

KompoZer is a complete, open-source, and free web authoring system that combines web file management, coding hints, and a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) page editor that is easy for non-technical site owners or designers to grasp. The KompoZer editor has an interesting history...
Conversion
Survey Results: Big Brands to Dominate, Video Ubiquitous

June 16, 2009 • PEC Staff

As more retail heavyweights focus on ecommerce, and online leaders expand their offerings, smaller stores will be forced into more specialized niches, according to a recent Practical eCommerce survey. When asked what was likely to happen to ecommerce in the next five years, 68.7 percent...
Fraud Prevention
Ecommerce Know-How: Be Ready to Go Beyond PCI DSS Compliance

June 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Although ecommerce fraud incidents as related to sales are at historically low rates, online retailers (particularly small ones) should be concerned about credit card information theft and transaction fraud even beyond the familiar Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Shopster

June 12, 2009 • PEC Staff

At Practical eCommerce, we are aware of more than 350 online shopping carts. And each week, we feature one, interviewing both the cart's developer or management and a customer. "The Cart of the Week" is not a review or an evaluation, but rather an opportunity to learn about a shopping c...
Conversion
Four Sure-Fire Ways to Capture More Consumers

June 11, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

It is critical to capture, retain and prevent your current and future consumers from slipping through the cracks—especially now. Competition is fierce, and it’s crucial that your business is being seen and heard above your competitors. The use of social media, email marketing and bann...
Customer Retention
PeC Traffic Report: Four Good Web Tools to Identify Traffic-Building Trends

June 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Participating in trends that matter to your customers can attract significant website traffic, but knowing what trends to follow (or even how to interact with those trends) is a difficult task. In January of this year, Practical eCommerce published a column about developing customer-ce...
Business
Profile: Danny Flamberg is the “Manhattan Marketing Maven”

June 10, 2009 • John W. Dawe

Danny Flamberg is known as the "Manhattan Marketing Maven," and he has more than 25 years experience as online marketing strategist. He has helped start-ups become important players in their markets and helped leading global brands extend their reach, market share and relationships with...
Amazon & Marketplaces
The PeC Review: Shopster Is a Brilliant Idea That Needs a Little Polish

June 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Shopster is a unique combination of a hosted ecommerce cart and a relatively easy supply-chain solution that promises to help many small merchants get up and running with a functional and fully-stocked online retail business. The Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based company provides its cust...
Conversion
Webinar: 7 Key Strategies For Improving Online Merchandising

June 10, 2009 • PEC Staff

First broadcast on June 9, 2009, "Key Strategies For Improving Online Merchandising" featured Jay Shaffer, Vice President of Marketing for Infopia, as he shared methods for proven online merchandising success. Specifically, Shaffer explained seven key strategies for improving online me...
Conversion
Ping.fm Makes Social Media Strategy Easy

June 9, 2009 • Sarah Worsham

Once you’ve figured out exactly what you want to do as far as social media, it can seem like a chore to implement a plan. You may have several different social media networks you want to update at once and you’re not always near a computer. Ping.fm provides a service where you can updat...
Social Media
Ecommerce Know-How: Use Twitter to Build a Community of Loyal Customers

June 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Microblogging site Twitter has the potential to be a powerful marketing and brand-building tool for ecommerce businesses interested in engaging their customers and being part of a community. But successful marketing on Twitter, or any microblogging site, requires more than just posting ...
Design & Development
Alternative Payment Methods Part II: How To Evaluate

June 8, 2009 • Michael E. Shatz

Editor's Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series on alternative online payment methods. The author is Michael E. Shatz, a consultant and an expert on online payments. Part 1, "Alternative Payment Methods Part 1: What Are They, How Do They Work", defines alternative payment methods and...
Conversion
Pay-per-click Report Card: BuyAndWalk.com Has Opportunity for Growth

June 8, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

BuyAndWalk.com sells footwear for men, women and children. The owner contacted Practical eCommerce with a request to review his pay-per-click advertising campaigns. He spends about $1,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising, with 99 percent of those monies invested into Google AdWord...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Merchant Metrix

June 5, 2009 • PEC Staff

There are over 350 online shopping carts by Practical eCommerce's count. We feature one of them each week, by interviewing both the cart's developer and a customer of the cart. This feature is not a review or an evaluation. This week we profile Oklahoma-based Merchant Metrix. The compa...
User Experience
Web Design Tips: The Laws of Ecommerce Navigation Design

June 4, 2009 • Armando Roggio

CSS, Flash, jQuery, and an arsenal of other powerful web techniques and technologies have unbound website design, creating the opportunity to develop either exceptional user interfaces or really frustrating ones. Furthermore, the growth of "cookie-cutter" ecommerce templates (i.e., “i...
Business
Quick Query: Two eCommerce Merchants on Operating in a Recession

June 4, 2009 • PEC Staff

Many large retailers report slow sales in the face of the current recession, but we wonder how the recession is affecting smaller ecommerce businesses. We posed that question to two online merchants. Kristen Taylor is founder and president of Juvieshop.com, a retailer of clothes and gif...
Conversion
Increase Conversion Rates by Identifying Funnels and Goals

June 3, 2009 • Michael Stearns

Let's assume you have an ecommerce website and you have been successful in getting traffic to it. A next logical step is to focus on your conversion rate and determine what you can do to improve it. To do this, glean clues about user behavior by analyzing the conversion and abandonment ...
Business
Profile: BlairCandy.com Stresses Pay-per-click Advertising, Social Media

June 3, 2009 • John W. Dawe

When Pam Macharola wanted to take her family’s business online in 2000, her brothers were skeptical. Founded by their grandfather in 1938 as a newsstand, Blair Candy Company had grown to a successful full-service wholesale candy, tobacco, paper supply, and small games distributor -- all...
Design & Development
The PeC Review: Magento User Guide eBook

June 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Magento Commerce is becoming one of the most popular and, perhaps, most exciting ecommerce platforms available. But with all of its online retailing prowess comes some level of complexity that at least a few merchants find daunting. A new ebook seeks to make using this powerful ecommerc...
Conversion
Building Your Brand. Part 2: How to Write a Brand Positioning Statement

June 2, 2009 • Dan Wilson

Every time customers experience your brand, you want them to remember what you do, why it is important to them, and why it is unique to you. By developing a clear expression of what is important to your customers and unique to you
Payments
Alternative Payment Methods Part 1: What Are They, How Do They Work

June 2, 2009 • Michael E. Shatz

Editor's Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series on alternative online payment methods. The author is Michael E. Shatz, a consultant and an expert on online payments. Part 1, below, defines alternative payment methods and explains the two major types. Part 2 will evaluate the claims m...
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Know-How: Cloud Computing in the Ecommerce Forecast

June 1, 2009 • Armando Roggio

If meteorologists predicted ecommerce and computing trends, the forecast would be at least partly cloudy as more computational and transactional applications join the cloud computing front. But are the wispy clouds on the near horizon the harbinger of a gentle, growth-encouraging rain o...
Marketing & Advertising
Wolfram|Alpha: A Search Engine Not Ready for eCommerce Merchants

May 29, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

Wolfram|Alpha is a search engine that aims to deliver answers to factual queries. Many search-engine-optimization blogs have referred to Wolfram|Alpha, and one colleague of mine – a sharp SEOer, and evidently a total SEO geek – even professed on Facebook to having “Wolfram|Alpha Fever.”...
Conversion
Ten Great New Ecommerce Ideas for June 2009

May 29, 2009 • Ankush Agarwal

Each month, Practical eCommerce asks industry insiders to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce company. Here’s what ten of them had to say for the June 2009 installment. Set Yourself Apart with Visual Security "Making your commitment to security known by your cu...