Page 249 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Google Ads
How to Expand Your PPC Keyword Portfolio

February 3, 2009 • Greg Laptevsky

Paid search is all about keywords. The more targeted keywords you have in your accounts, the more sales you are likely to realize from pay-per-click advertising. Invest just 10-20 minutes per day reviewing new keyword ideas – it will pay off big time in the long run. Below is a list of...
Design & Development
Add Social Media to Your Site with Google Friend Connect

February 3, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

People want to be social on the web, whether it is to share things about themselves through a personal profile or to discover other people with similar interests. It’s also a great way to attract traffic that is focused on a specific topic or set of topics. What’s been difficult for man...
Photography & Video
The PeC Review: Canon’s Rebel XSi DSLR for Taking Product Images

February 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Canon's Rebel XSi is a 12.2 megapixel DSLR camera that is both inexpensive and powerful. It features relatively large pixels, a very functional auto focus, and several excellent presets that together make it a very good choice for capturing do-it-yourself product photos. There is no ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: ShopVisible

January 30, 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 ShopVisible, an Atlanta-based hosted cart solution that s...
Business
Lessons Learned: Lars Hundley of Clean Air Gardening

January 30, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce merchants to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Lars Hundley, president of Clean Air Gardening, an online store based in Dallas, Texas that sells environmentally friendly lawn and garden...
Email & Text Marketing
The PeC Review: MailChimp is a Full-Featured Email Campaign Manager

January 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio

MailChimp offers a complete email marketing solution that is simple and inexpensive enough for small businesses but powerful enough for fairly large Internet merchants with sales of $5 million per year or more. According to its staff, MailChimp has over 60,000 users. It manages lists...
Schools & Resources
Booklist: Zappos CEO on Books That Inspire

January 27, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

In Booklist, we ask ecommerce professionals to name books they believe are useful resources for ecommerce merchants. For this list, we asked Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com,, an online retailer of shoes, bags and other accessories. Made to Stick Whether you're trying to get a message...
Content Marketing
Ecommerce Know-How: Customer-Centric Content as Link Bait

January 26, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Online shopkeepers can use good customer-oriented content to improve PageRank and increase sales. In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), link baiting is the practice of creating web content that is virtually irresistible to bloggers, Diggers, or other members of the linkerat...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: X-Cart

January 23, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In this ongoing "Cart of the Week" feature we profile—but not evaluate—a specific shopping cart, asking about its strengths and weaknesses. We profile X-Cart, a Cyprus-based licensed cart, in this installment. We as...
Conversion
Monitor “Bounce Rates” to Improve Conversion Ratios

January 22, 2009 • Michael Stearns

An effective web page draws visitors in and keeps them there. When the Internet was new, people would surf from site to site just for the fun of discovery. Today’s Internet users are much more sophisticated. They know what they are looking for and want to find it quickly. If they don’t ...
Conversion
Quick Query: Volusion CEO on Factors that Create Ecommerce Success

January 22, 2009 • PEC Staff

Certain ecommerce businesses succeed, while others do not. To help understand why this is, we spoke with Kevin Sproles, the founder and CEO of Volusion, a hosted shopping cart with more than 10,000 clients, including notable sites such as Disney and Crutchfield. PeC: Tell us why y...
Design & Development
Video Usage: Simple Steps to Getting Started

January 21, 2009 • Michael Stearns

The time is right to start using video to assist with marketing and to better demonstrate your products. Improvement in connection speeds and web video streaming technologies, as well as a growing demand from users to get richer product data, all combine to make this a big year for web ...
Business
Credit-Card Processing from an iPhone

January 21, 2009 • PEC Staff

Many ecommerce merchants carry a mobile device, such as an iPhone or a Blackberry. An increasing number of third-party software applications run on these devices. Many of these applications can benefit ecommerce merchants and one example is "Credit Card Terminal," an iPhone app that all...
Marketing & Advertising
Ecommerce Know-How: Start a Buzz with Word-of-Mouth Marketing

January 20, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Consumers talk. There is nothing you or anyone can do about it. The shoppers who visit your store and purchase your wares will tell their friends and acquaintances about it if they are given a chance. This phenomenon is nothing new. But marketers are starting to understand how to use th...
Design & Dev Tools
The PeC Review: Firebug Is a Developer’s Tool Worth the Buzz

January 19, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Firebug is a free Mozilla Firefox add on that gives developers a powerful tool to inspect and edit HTML, perfect CSS, or even admire the beautiful code from other websites. For many, the add-on has become an indispensable part of website design, development, and maintenance. "This is ...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: LiveCart

January 16, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In this ongoing "Cart of the Week" feature we profile—but not evaluate—a specific shopping cart, asking about its strengths and weaknesses. For this installment, we asked Rinalds Uzkalns, owner of Lithuania-based UA...
Marketing & Advertising
PeC Traffic Report: Advertising in the Post-Interruption World

January 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Advertising has changed. Companies can no longer simply interrupt consumers with advertising messages and expect them to march off and buy something like little credit-card wielding lemmings. But ad tactics that reach out to customers when they're already interested or that tell authent...
Business
Lessons Learned: Two Blue Peas’ Sarah Brown

January 15, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

"Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask ecommerce merchants at varying stages in their business development about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we asked Sarah Brown, Co-founder of Twobluepeas.com to share her thoughts. The Nashville-based baby boutiq...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Ecommerce Know-How: The Free Shipping Equation

January 13, 2009 • Armando Roggio

In 2009, every major carrier in the United States will be raising shipping rates. Profit conscience online shopkeepers, therefore, should take pause and reevaluate whether or not offering "free shipping" is really a good idea. There is, of course, really no such thing as free shipping...
Conversion
Top 6 Online Marketing Lessons Learned in 2008

January 12, 2009 • Lisa Wehr

We've all heard the old adage: Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What recent 2008 history has taught marketers is the value of online marketing in tough economic times. Consumer purse strings presumably won't loosen much in 2009, which means marketers have to ...
Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: Magento Is the Open Source Powerhouse

January 12, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Magento is an open source ecommerce platform designed to empower online merchants in business process and flow. The platform has been downloaded more than 600,000 times. With a fu...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Shopcreator

January 9, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In this ongoing "Cart of the Week" feature we profile—but not evaluate—a specific shopping cart, asking about its strengths and weaknesses. For this installment, we asked Alex Stephens, marketing director at U.K.-ba...
User Experience
The Shopping Experience: Really Old Records

January 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Since 1998 Really Old Records of Natick, Mass. has been offering a selection of "unusual and collectible recordings," taking full advantage of the Long Tail concept. But the store was slow to ship and did not communicate at all with me after I made a purchase online. On December 22, 20...
Code
Web Design Tips: Rounded Borders in CSS

January 8, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Consumers often judge online stores by visual aesthetics alone, so Internet shopkeepers are wise to use large appealing images, handsome fonts, and occasionally an eye-pleasing curve. When that curve is added someplace unexpected, say in a border around a text box or an image, it can b...
SEO
Ecommerce Know-How: Information Architecture to Improve SEO and Usability

January 7, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Taking lessons from two marketing disciplines, online retailers and their web designers can build a well structured Internet store organized into themes or categories that will make it easy for shoppers and search engines alike to find important information and product pages. In this ...
Checkout Tactics
PeC Traffic Report: Will 2009 Be the Year of the Coupon?

January 6, 2009 • Armando Roggio

2009 begins in the shadow of global economic recession. The Consumer Confidence Index hovers at 38, a new low in United States, and those consumers that are shopping want deals. So could 2009 be the year of the ecommerce coupon? According to a Dec. 10, 2008 comScore report, coupon use ...
Business
Lessons Learned: Stacks and Stacks’ Cathy McManus

January 6, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons

"Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask seasoned ecommerce merchants about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we asked Cathy McManus, Marketing Director for Stacksandstacks.com, to share her thoughts. Stacks and Stacks was formed in 1984 and ten years ago...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: SolsticeSupply.com

January 5, 2009 • Jeff Muendel

This month’s report card is SolsticeSupply.com, an ecommerce site dedicated to closeout winter goods ranging from skis and snowboards to winter apparel. The site is very pleasant to the eye with large, expansive photos of wintry scenes and skiing action. But how does it do in terms of S...
Customer Retention
Survey: 2008 Holiday Sales Slipped for Many Internet Merchants

January 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

For the first time in years, holiday ecommerce sales fell in 2008 as online shoppers, apparently worried about the global economy and their personal finances, cut seasonal spending 3 percent, according to an established Internet tracking firm. But 47.7 percent of Internet store keepers ...
Customer Service
The PeC Review: Boldchat is An Easy-to-Use Live Chat Solution That May Improve Sales

January 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

BoldChat provides online communication software that allows Internet retailers to actively engage customers and potentially increase both conversions and profits. The BoldChat software (I tested version 5.20.3240.27126) was a responsive and powerful solution for live chat on any ecomme...