Page 267 – Practical Ecommerce

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Customer Service
Treat Customers as Next-door Neighbors

February 19, 2007 • Pamela Hazelton

People often ask me where I learned so much about ecommerce and business in general. I didn't attend business school, nor do my college degrees reflect what I do today. Besides being book smart and having been raised "old school," I accumulated the majority of my knowledge from experien...
SEO
Jonathan Hochman: Wikipedia and SEO

February 15, 2007 • Stephan Spencer

Stephan Spencer, senior contributor for Practical eCommerce and author of the popular SEO Report Card for the magazine, talks with SEO specialist Jonathan Hochman about the value of Wikipedia, using ...
Conversion
Google Is Keeping Score Of Your Keywords

February 14, 2007 • PEC Staff

It's one of the topics that floats to the top in the search marketing world and generates intense discussion — even though no one knows exactly what it means: "Quality Score." In the usual, Google AdWords sense, Quality Score is the measurement of several variables, such as keyword clic...
Conversion
Are 1-800 Numbers And Live Chat Important?

February 14, 2007 • PEC Staff

As online shopping matures, merchants must avoid the tendency to be complacent in their merchandising efforts. Here are five ways merchants can truly innovate in the coming year. In the end, there is one point all five recommendations have in common and that is "listening to the custome...
SEO
SEO: Can Wikipedia Help Your Business?

February 12, 2007 • Stephan Spencer

In Google, Wikipedia is everywhere. Pretty much anything you type into Google seems to result in a Wikipedia entry being returned as a top-10 result. Wikipedia's status in the search engines as an "authority site" is undisputed. Those lucky, well-connected, skillful or famous enough to ...
Conversion
Conversion: Define Your Audience

February 12, 2007 • Mat Greenfield

Regular readers won't be surprised to find that this month's column describes one of the key elements of effective conversion. In fact, this element is so critical, I consider it to be the cement that binds all the other areas of effective conversion together. Before I reveal what it is...
Marketing & Advertising
Tutorial: Gaining Control of Search Engine Spiders

February 12, 2007 • Brian Getting

Introduction Most of us are familiar with the term “search engine spider” and at least understand that they have something to do with how search engines index websites. The purpose of this article is to help you make your web pages more accessible to spiders. After all, spiders are our...
Design & Development
Does A Proxy Server Keep Me Anonymous On The Internet?

February 7, 2007 • Brian Getting

Does a proxy server keep me anonymous on the Internet? No. And that is that. Unless you are a very talented hacker, there is no such thing as anonymity on the Internet. A common misconception about anonymous is that they allow you to surf the Internet and do whatever you want without ...
Fraud Prevention
Three Basic Steps Can Curb Credit Card Fraud

February 7, 2007 • PEC Staff

A loss of $15,000 in diamonds during the height of the Christmas-buying frenzy would be enough to make most people sing the holiday blues. Not Pat Coughlin. Coughlin has owned and operated American Diamond Importers, an independent brick-and-mortar jewelry store in St. Clair, Mich., fo...
Business
Beware Of Online Legal Advice

February 7, 2007 • John W. Dozier, Jr.

I get a report every day of many of the important judicial decisions relating to Internet and ecommerce law. I have to review a court’s decision in detail before I begin to understand the ruling, the facts and the law as applied. Judges are oftentimes only as good as the briefs submit...
Design & Development
How Is An Atom Feed Different From An RSS Feed?

February 7, 2007 • Brian Getting

An Atom feed is very similar to an RSS feed in that it is a lightweight XML format allowing for easy syndication of web content. In fact, most RSS readers and news aggregators will be able to read Atom feeds just fine, as it is becoming a widely-used alternative to RSS feeds. What's a ...
Business
Peapod.com’s Thomas Parkinson (part 1)

February 5, 2007 • PEC Staff

It takes a special type of visionary to create an entirely new marketplace. Thomas Parkinson and his brother Andrew launched online grocer Peapod in the late 1980s. As pioneers in ...
Business
Peapod.com’s Thomas Parkinson (part 2)

February 5, 2007 • PEC Staff

It takes a special type of visionary to create an entirely new marketplace. Thomas Parkinson and his brother Andrew launched online grocer Peapod in the late 1980s. As pioneers in ...
Design & Development
Google Analytics’ Security Warnings

February 5, 2007 • Brian Getting

The subject of security warnings with Google Analytics is one that has been frequently brought up by our readers, and was something that I ran into when I launched an earlier Practical eCommerce website. The issue is that occasionally someone will install Google Analytics on their site ...
Design & Development
What Can Digg.com Do For My Online Business?

February 5, 2007 • Brian Getting

Digg.com is probably best called a social networking news site. The idea behind Digg.com, and other sites like it, is that users submit web pages they have bookmarked or "dugg." After a certain number of people "digg" the same web page, it is moved to the top of the index, which is on D...
Business
The Struggle To Create A Successful eBusiness

February 5, 2007 • Michael A. Cox

It's a good thing Mother Parkinson, a librarian, told her boys that people would never buy books from somebody on the Internet. Otherwise, we might not have Peapod, the quintessential online supermarket serving about 260,000 customers from Boston to Milwaukee and from Washington, D.C., ...
Business
High Performer Series: Organize.com

January 31, 2007 • PEC Staff

Organize.com began in 1998 in Riverside, Calif., as Organize Everything — one convenient place to shop for storage and organization solutions. For those who have a garage or closet in need of some serious organizational help, Organize.com features a full slate of organizational products...
Fraud Prevention
Don’t Let Selling Internationally Scare You

January 31, 2007 • PEC Staff

Matt Alper launched Copshoes.com three years ago from his living room in San Antonio, Texas. His idea was to sell specialized shoes and boots to police, firemen and security personnel. Now, three years later, he’s moved into his own warehouse, he has 11 employees and 10 percent of his t...
Conversion
Usability Report Card: Quelobjet.com

January 30, 2007 • PEC Staff

For this month's edition of the Usability Report Card we have chosen Quel Objet, a site specializing in French products for the home. Quel Objet means "What a thing!" according to the site's "about us" page, and the site's design shares the same funky vibe as its name. Quel Objet doesn...
Business
High Performer Series: Doversaddlery.com

January 29, 2007 • PEC Staff

Former Olympians and United States Equestrian team members Jim and David Powers established Dover Saddlery because they felt riders in New England would appreciate a saddlery shop dedicated to providing a broad selection of the best tack available. Three decades later, it's clear to see...
Business
Site Owners Describe Changes for 2007

January 29, 2007 • PEC Staff

Dan Wickwares, Buyer/Webmaster WEBSITE: Wickswares.com SELLS: Candle, bath, body and soap-making supplies ANSWER: Our growth for the last four years has been by word-of-mouth. We will be implementing a monthly newsletter using oemPro software and following up on all web hits with a per...
Business
Video Tutorial: Eliminating Dynamic URLs with Mod_Rewrite

January 28, 2007 • Brian Getting

Get started using Mod_Rewrite to clean up your website's dynamic URLs with this video tutorial presented by Practical eCommerce's online director Brian Getting. We'll look at using simple Mod_Rewrite commands in an .htaccess file to get rid of those ugly dynamic URLs that look like th...
Business
High Performer Series: Beautiesltd.com

January 24, 2007 • PEC Staff

It was supposed to be a quiet, part-time business to give a couple of prospective retirees something to do. Fifteen years later, Bill Kenerson and Deb Venman have created a beehive of activity creating bow ties, ascots, cummerbunds, scarves and pocket squares. What started as a mailing...
Business
SEO and Email Launch New Product

January 24, 2007 • PEC Staff

As with many great products in the marketplace, the diaper caddy was conceived out of necessity. Melissa Bramlage, a mother of two, needed a product that could hold all the essential baby care items in one convenient location. It seemed that every time she needed to change her child's d...
Business
High Performer Series: Appliancepartspros.com

January 22, 2007 • PEC Staff

Roman Kagan has built a successful niche business selling hard-to-find appliance parts to do-it-yourself types around the country. The site, Appliancepartspros.com was launched in 1999 featuring about 300 products and in seven years has grown to showcase more than 1 million parts for 17...
Business
Can VoIP Help My Business?

January 22, 2007 • PEC Staff

Major telecommunication companies and start-ups alike are trying to establish themselves in the rapidly expanding VoIP marketplace. That hasn't escaped the notice of many people within the Internet telephone business, who anticipate 2007 could be a banner year for the technology. VoIP ...
Business
Zimini.com’s Robert Carlton

January 19, 2007 • PEC Staff

Zimini offers a digital couponing and promotion platform to provide merchants and marketers with a robust set of geographic, demographic, and interest-based targeting tools. If you’re an online or brick-and-mortar ...
Business
High Performer Series: Drsfosterandsmith.com

January 17, 2007 • PEC Staff

A Foster & Smith catalog is a familiar sight at the home of a pet owner. Whether a household includes dogs, cats, birds, reptiles or other animals as pets, Foster & Smith has been a resource for more than two decades for pet owners to purchase supplies and products. Three veter...
Fraud Prevention
What You Didn’t Know About Payment Systems

January 17, 2007 • PEC Staff

What you don't know can truly hurt your online business. This has never been more true than when you set out to choose an Internet payment systems. It's not so much that making a wrong decision can harm your business irreparably (although, it can); it's that there is so much information...
Conversion
Why the Fishing Lure Won’t Reel in Much Online Profit

January 16, 2007 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

"I invented and patented a fishing lure (the "Bottom Banger") about five years ago. I have tried to sell it online, but every time I try I fail. I have a video showing the lure in action and I do sell them in the local bait shops for $1.99. Can you steer me in a direction that will make this take off?" -- Greg Amsler