Page 247 – Practical Ecommerce

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Customer Service
The Shopping Experience: SportsRCool Offers Exceptional Customer Service

March 19, 2009 • Armando Roggio

If you visit the "About Us" section on the SportsRCool website, you'll find a simple promise to offer the best possible products and customer service at the lowest available prices. And the company certainly delivers where customer service is concerned. Each month, Practical eCommerc...
Conversion
Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Bid Management Strategies

March 19, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

In a pay-per-click world where your Quality Score seems to be controlling the performance of your campaigns, there is one proven method to improve performance. It’s called ongoing bid management. Regardless of whether you’re using enterprise level bid management tools, such as Marin S...
Inventory
Ecommerce Know-How: Alternative Sources to Acquire Inventory

March 18, 2009 • Armando Roggio

While many ecommerce businesses trade only in new merchandise, there is a booming market for used, refurbished, and surplus items. Savvy ecommerce merchants can identify niche markets and use public auctions, websites, and classified ads to source valuable inventory for resale. In thi...
SEO Tools
Measuring SEO Performance

March 17, 2009 • Jill Kocher Brown

Measuring success in search engine optimization can typically be done in four ways. “Indexation” measurements will determine if a search engine has properly identified all of your site’s pages. “Backlink” measurements will show the number of internal and external links that point to you...
Social Media
The PeC Review: Elgg Lets Any Business Create an Online Community

March 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Elgg is an open source platform to power any kind of social media community, and it is a tool that online merchants can use to help develop a loyal flow of site traffic. Social media communities similar to Facebook and MySpace are extremely popular. For example, eMarketer, a marketin...
Design & Development
Calling All Carts

March 16, 2009 • PEC Staff

Practical eCommerce is soon to publish our first annual “Shopping Cart Roundup” guide. The purpose of this PDF guide is to help ecommerce merchants locate the right cart for their businesses. We’ll explain the shopping cart features that we believe are important to look for, as well as ...
Conversion
Social Media: 4 Quick Tips for Getting Started

March 16, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

Any marketer that chooses not to embrace the changes encompassing digital media would be foolish. The truth of the matter is, search engine marketing and social media marketing have become one. People are likely talking about your brand online, or searching for your blog, and Google is ...
Cross-border Selling
The PeC Traffic Report: Asian Survey Provides Insight Into Search Habits

March 13, 2009 • Armando Roggio

From time to time it is useful to take a look at other industries to see how they are doing business and to glean tips for boosting web traffic to your own ecommerce site. In this edition of The PeC Traffic Report we'll take a look at an interesting new survey of electrical engineers i...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Cartweaver

March 13, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing "Cart of the Week" feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart's owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses. Here we profile Cartweaver, a licensed cart system based in Washington sta...
Business
Lessons Learned: Husband and Wife Team Run Alwaysstationery.com

March 12, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Tom and Fran Harrington, owners of Alwaysstationery.com. Based in Naperville, IL, the husband and wife team have been running the onl...
Conversion
Ten New Great Ecommerce Ideas

March 12, 2009 • Ankush Agarwal

Practical eCommerce recently asked 50 industry insiders to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce firm. Here’s what ten of them had to say. Check Your Impression Share “Take a long, hard look at the Impression Share of your paid search campaigns. It’s possible tha...
Conversion
Ecommerce Widgets Tap Into Blogs, Social Media

March 11, 2009 • PEC Staff

Widgets can help ecommerce merchants display their products on blogs and social networking sites. Many merchants are doing this already, and at least one shopping cart vendor offers a pre-built widget to assist its merchant customers with this opportunity. ProductCart is a California...
Business
Ecommerce Know-How: Seven Steps to Starting Your eBusiness in a Recession

March 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The United States and much of the world is experiencing a large and deep recession that many economists believe is far from hitting bottom. But in spite of economic uncertainty, some entrepreneurs will find the current recession an opportune time to start their own ecommerce business. ...
Conversion
Twitter Can Help Your Online Business

March 10, 2009 • Sarah Worsham

Most people shop online for convenience rather than customer service. And while inroads have been made into providing better customer service online, the personal aspect is often still missing. Enter Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging tool that allows you to send 140 chara...
Business
Quick Query: UPS VP on Shipping Service Upgrades

March 9, 2009 • PEC Staff

The shipping of products is a crucial function for most every ecommerce merchant and there's no company more prominent in the shipping business than UPS. UPS has recently upgraded its "UPS Ready" program and we invited Jordan Colletta, vice president of customer technology marketing, to...
Platforms & Apps
Web Design Tips: Compatibility with Older Browsers

March 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

As web technology advances and development standards evolve some web browsers are falling behind. Many lack the ability to support new technologies and file types or even provide the best available user experience. These lagging browsers put ecommerce businesses in something of a quanda...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: AmeriCommerce

March 6, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing "Cart of the Week" feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart's owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses. Here we profile AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Software, a hosted cart soluti...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Gosatellite.com

March 5, 2009 • Stephan Spencer

I took a long hiatus from "SEO Report Card" when my capable colleague Jeff Muendel filled-in for me. But now I'm happy to report, “I'm baaaack.” Our lucky contestant this month is Gosatellite.com. Steven Hutt, echannels director with that company, requested this site grade. Home Pa...
Platforms & Apps
Shopping Carts: Survey of Merchants Confirms Fractured Market

March 5, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Respondents to a February 2009 Practical eCommerce survey collectively use more than 30 different shopping carts, an indication that there is no clear and decisive leader in the ecommerce shopping cart segment. 14.1 percent of respondents to the survey said that they use Go Daddy's Qu...
Conversion
PPC Report Card: ACORN Sales Company

March 4, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

ACORN Sales Company, Inc. requested that Practical eCommerce review its pay-per-click advertising efforts. ACORN sells various notary public supplies, rubber stamps and embossers. Each month, ACORN spends about $1,600 for pay-per-click advertising across Google, Yahoo! and MSN, paying $...
Conversion
Conversion Improvements: A Primer for Getting Started

March 3, 2009 • Michael Stearns

The ecommerce business is partly a numbers game. And the object of the game is to increase your sales and profitability. You need to understand how your site's visitors are converted to buying customers. Not that you need to immerse yourself in the minutiae of data that many web statist...
Influencers & Affiliates
The PeC Review: Google Affiliate Network is an Effective Marketing Tool

March 3, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Affiliate network marketing offers online retailers an effective, performance-based advertising channel with good conversion rates and a propensity to boosts sales. Like many affiliate programs, the Google Affiliate Network connects merchants with a network of website publishers. Aff...
Design & Development
Facebook Dickers with Terms-of-Service Language

March 2, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

Practical eCommerce readers may have heard the online rumblings regarding some intrusive changes Facebook tried to make to its terms of service agreement. The new terms declared that Facebook would retain full license to any and all user content on the site, even when it had been remove...
Customer Retention
PeC Traffic Report: The Direct Mail Solution

March 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Direct mail marketing is one of the oldest forms of modern promotion, but don't let its age deceive. Mailing coupons or even catalogs to potential customers can significantly improve site traffic and sales conversions. While the exact origins of direct mail marketing are in question, t...
Business
Questionable PCI Compliance Fees?

February 27, 2009 • PEC Staff

Merchant account providers will often automatically assess payment card industry (PCI) compliance fees to all of their ecommerce-merchant customers. However, many merchants don't qualify for full PCI compliance, and we wondered if some of them are being charged unfairly. We recently ask...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: OXID eShop

February 27, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing "Cart of the Week" feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart's owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses. Here we profile OXID eShop by OXID eSales, a firm that offers open source ...
Business
Cybersource CEO: “Secular Trends Favor Ecommerce Businesses”

February 26, 2009 • Kerry Murdock

Bill McKiernan founded a credit card payment gateway company back in 1994 when the concept of an online “buy” button was new. Fast-forward to 2009 and his company, Cybersource, is a publicly-traded (NASDAQ: CYBS) credit-card-processing colossus. It acts as the payment gateway for such c...
Business
Lessons Learned: Yoursleepstore.com’s Jonathan Juriga

February 26, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Jonathan Juriga, the president and owner of J&J Furniture, Inc., Yoursleepstore.com and Yourmedicalsupplystore.com based in Ft. L...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Ecommerce Know-How: Amazon Can Sell Your Products and Advertise Them, Too

February 26, 2009 • Armando Roggio

"Selling on Amazon" and "Product Ads on Amazon" are two services that many retail ecommerce businesses can use, taking advantage of Amazon's brand and web traffic to improve sales.
Conversion
Holiday Marketing: What About “Talk Like a Pirate” Day?

February 25, 2009 • Michael Stearns

If you think holiday marketing begins on Halloween and ends on New Year’s Day, think again. The prime holiday marketing season actually begins on January 1st, and doesn’t stop. For a retailer, gift-giving occasions throughout the year shouldn’t be overlooked. There’s Easter, St. Patrick...