Page 250 – Practical Ecommerce

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Design & Dev Tools
Product Video: Easy Distribution Tools

December 31, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

Editor's Note: This is part four in our special report on “Video for Ecommerce,” where we describe real stories of online merchants creatively using video to drive sales and grow their brands. Previous installments are linked in below. What’s next once you’ve added product videos to yo...
Technical SEO
Ecommerce Know-How: Bot Herding, A SEO Internal Linking Tactic

December 30, 2008 • Armando Roggio

A relatively simple SEO linking strategy can improve how well and how often your store's product pages are indexed and displayed in organic search engine results. This linking technique goes by several names. Bruce Clay Inc., an Internet business consultancy, refers to it as "siloing."...
Marketing & Advertising
Voice Recognition Software: Just "Talk It Out"

December 29, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

Having good content on a website is always important because it is that content upon which both search engines and customers make decisions about your website. The better it is – with regards to focused keywords, information, and style – the more likely a website is to draw search users...
Keyword Research
PeC Traffic Report: Use Blog Titles that Reflect Keywords and Content

December 26, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Blog titles play an important role in how search engines index blog posts. Bloggers that want to get the most web traffic possible seed post titles with important keywords and make interesting promises about the content. Many online retailers use blogs to both communicate with consumer...
Design & Dev Tools
Video in a Snap: Easy Video Creation Techniques

December 24, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

Editor's Note: This is part three in our special report on “Video for Ecommerce,” where we describe real stories of online merchants creatively using video to drive sales and grow their brands. Previous installments are linked in the "Related articles" section, below. Practical eCommer...
Shipping & Fulfillment
The PeC Review: Stamps.com is A Helpful Tool for Many Merchants

December 22, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Stamps.com provides online retailers with a simple-to-use, software-based service that calculates official U. S. Postal Service postage from any PC, formatting printing labels and any required shipping documents. The Stamps.com software, which was developed in conjunction with the Pos...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: SearchFit

December 19, 2008 • PEC Staff

There are over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In our 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’ve profiled SearchFit, a hosted cart with offices in Carlsbad, Cali...
Technical SEO
PageRank: What Is It? And How Do You Calculate It?

December 19, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Google’s PageRank technology plays an important role in how online stores show up in search results. Understanding how this ranking system works will help ecommerce merchants improve their search engine optimization and potentially increase website traffic. PageRank is a proprie...
Business
Pay-per-click Expert on Advertising in a Recession

December 18, 2008 • Kerry Murdock

News reports indicate that revenue growth for Google and other search engines is slowing. Bids on keywords and keyword phrases, some say, are softening. Could all of this be ...
Google Ads
My Favorite Pay-per-click Blogs

December 18, 2008 • Bill Hartzer

It seems as though there are a million blogs. In fact, last time I checked, Technorati was reporting that over 120,000 new blogs are created every single day. That's about 1.4 new blogs every second. With so many blogs out there, which pay-per-click blogs are the most helpful? To help...
Platforms & Apps
NetSuite Aims to Increase eCommerce Efficiencies

December 17, 2008 • Michael A. Cox

Ten years ago, Evan Goldberg was grousing at Oracle Chief Larry Ellison about the lack of an ecommerce business management software bundle. Ellison challenged Goldberg to do something about it, and the result is NetSuite.
Design & Dev Tools
Ecommerce Know-How: Create a Google Gadget to Promote a Weekly Feature

December 17, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Creating and publishing promotional web gadgets is a great way to spread the word about the products or services you sell and increase traffic to your website. Think about a web gadget as a form of social media. Your customers and potential customers can add the gadget to their iGoog...
Business
Lessons Learned: Retailer of Paper Products Stresses Cost Control

December 16, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons

"Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask seasoned ecommerce merchants about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we asked Leslie West, owner of Bluedotpapershop.com, an online paper and design store that offers specialty papers, cardstock and design tools. W...
Conversion
SMS Marketing Helps eCommerce Firms, Expert Says

December 16, 2008 • PEC Staff

Text marketing to mobile phone users can help ecommerce merchants. mobileStorm is a marketing company that focuses on such text, or SMS, marketing services. mobileStorm’s CEO is Jared Reitzen, and we spoke with him about what, exactly, SMS marketing is and how it can assist ecommerce ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
The PeC Review: Shopzilla Is a Good Site That Could Use Better Instructions

December 15, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Shopzilla.com is one of the Internet’s leading price comparison engines. The site can expose an online retailer’s products to more than 30 million price-conscience shoppers every month, making it a powerful marketing vehicle. But uploading products—particularly for smaller merchants—c...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Yahoo!

December 12, 2008 • 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 Paul Boisvert, Product Manager at Yahoo! ...
Design & Dev Tools
Web Design Tips: Add An Image Flip for More Sales

December 12, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Consumers will judge your website mainly by the size, quality, and interactivity of the images you use. Adding a simple interactive feature—like a JavaScript image flip—may lend your store credibility and improve your conversion rates. Consumers rely on an ecommerce site's aesthetic...
Business
Profile: eCommerce Owner on Benefits of Niche Retailing

December 11, 2008 • PEC Staff

Many ecommerce merchants occupy niches within a general industry. Spotlight Retail is one of those merchants, but in Spotlight's case, it occupies 20 separate niches around one corporate umbrella. The entrepreneur behind Spotlight Retail is John Montague, the company's owner and day-t...
Platforms & Apps
NetSuite CEO on the Rise of Hosted Software

December 10, 2008 • Kerry Murdock

Many experts predict that hosted software solutions will continue to grow. Software-as-a-service is another term for these hosted solutions, and examples of larger ones are NetSuite.com, Salesforce.com and Google Apps.
Fraud Prevention
Ecommerce Know-How: Avoiding Chargebacks and Improving Business

December 9, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Chargebacks are frustrating and expensive assaults on a retailer's bottom line. But practical and smart merchants can learn from some chargebacks, improving their stores' performance, customer satisfaction, and operational excellence. When a consumer asks his or her credit card company...
Conversion
Innovative Video Use Increases Conversions for Merchants

December 8, 2008 • Jennifer D. Meacham

Editor's Note: This is part two in our special report on “Video for Ecommerce,” where we describe real stories of online merchants creatively using video to drive sales and grow their brands. Visitors to RMTracking.com are greeted by a video host, positioned unobtrusively in the lower ...
Marketing & Advertising
SEO Report Card: Pkging.com

December 5, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

Packaging becomes particularly important at this time of year when many of us are shipping gifts for the holidays. I’ve lived in several parts of the country and I don’t much do cards. I’m the type to either ship a gift package or send an email greeting. With that in mind, the website f...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Volusion

December 5, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In this, our "Cart of the Week" feature, we’ll profile—but not evaluate—a specific shopping cart and ask its management about strengths and weaknesses. We’ll then ask a customer about the cart, too. This week, we ...
Product Pages
Product Pages: 6 Tips to Transform Them Into Sales Magnets

December 4, 2008 • Michael Stearns

Oftentimes a site owner will pour his heart into a home page. And this is rightly so. If a shopper isn't hooked on your home page, he or she will likely exit before taking a look at what you have to offer. But if you are an ecommerce site owner, save a little mojo for your product pag...
Conversion
Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman: Marketing in a Down Economy

December 3, 2008 • PEC Staff

Many ecommerce merchants rely on email marketing to communicate with their customers. Constant Contact is, perhaps, the largest self-service email marketing firm and Practical eCommerce recently spoke with Constant Contact’s CEO, Gail Goodman, about the slow economy, email marketing, an...
Google Ads
Advertising in Recession Leads to Competitive Advantage

December 3, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Economic anxiety and a lack of insight have prompted some online retailers to slash their advertising budgets. However, when fewer of your competitors are investing in advertising, you can step up and command a market, improving sales now and in the long term. In a notable study that i...
Link Building
SEO: Buying Links is Risky Business

December 2, 2008 • Jeff Muendel

Garnering inbound links from websites with good PageRank is a mainstay of search engine optimization. Links are like votes for a given website in the eyes of search engines, and their number and quality have much to do with determining the outcome of search engine results. That’s why ...
Conversion
6 Quick Tips to Capture Those Holiday Sales Now

December 1, 2008 • Lisa Wehr

Holiday shopping is well underway this year, which means many consumers have already begun looking for those special gifts. And many consumers worried about economic conditions save time and money by purchasing their gifts online, rather than traveling to a traditional brick and morta...
Platforms & Apps
Cart of the Week: Mountain Commerce Emphasizes Search Engine Friendliness

November 28, 2008 • 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 Taunia Kipp, Chief Operating Officer and ...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Exec on Outsourcing Fulfillment

November 26, 2008 • Kerry Murdock

Every ecommerce merchant must address, at least in some capacity, the issues of fulfillment. One merchant who does this in a big way is Amazon.com. Amazon now offers its fulfillment and warehousing expertise to any ecommerce merchant via its “Fulfillment by Amazon” service.