Page 271 – Practical Ecommerce

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Fraud Prevention
Is Your Data Vulnerable?

October 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

Having just returned from the MIVA Conference, I’m sure my editor is quite antsy. I’m late with this column— not due to procrastination. I’ve always got something to say, but after I instructed a session on security for online store administrators, I realized that a great percentage of ...
Design & Development
AuctionCheckout.com’s John Waldron and Sloane Bouchever

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

PeC: What makes AuctionCheckout different from PayPal? In the PayPal environment today, if you're selling, the funds from your transactions are going into your PayPal account. PayPal is not a financial institution. They can freeze those funds. AuctionCheckout “Blue” is an auction-chec...
Conversion
Use “Human Optimization” for Search Engines

October 1, 2006 • Mat Greenfield

I read with interest this month that Google has filed a patent to allow it to add a human-review element to their search results. This represents the next step in a series of interesting developments that I have watched closely for the past few years. But in order to explain, let me bac...
Conversion
Should You Add SEO To Your Marketing Efforts?

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Pay-per-click advertising is, no doubt, one of the most effective ways of getting new leads and prospects to come to your website. Within a period of 24 hours, any business—large or small—can appear at the top positions for any keyword that’s applicable to their business. However, it d...
Business
Getting a Patent is Pricey

October 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.

Small businesses are interesting beasts. An entrepreneur comes up with an idea and one of the first thoughts is protecting the new business from competition. Big business often protects novel “inventions” through patent registration. Small businesses quickly find out that obtaining a qu...
Conversion
Tradeshows The Right Way

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

For online retailers, tradeshows are an incredible opportunity to source goods, connect with wholesalers and manufacturers, and expand their product lines. There is a right way and a wrong way to attend tradeshows. To get the most out of your experience, you need to prepare. Your first...
Conversion
Tuning Up Your Checkout Process

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

One of the most important factors to optimizing conversion is fine tuning the shopping cart and checkout process. Sales are won or lost within this crucial component of your site, and it is critical to examine the data that will unlock the mysteries of visitor behavior within this proce...
Conversion
Usability Report Card: Headsets.com

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Earlier this year, Headsets.com was calling the checkout button "save to cart." We commented on this horrid usability, and the company let us know it made a change when they redesigned the site. Headsets.com is selling mostly to small to medium businesses, so the site must appeal more t...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Shopwildplanet.com

October 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

This month’s recipient of an SEO critique is Shopwildplanet.com. Since my SEO how-to column this month is on RSS feeds, I thought it would be only fitting that the website that I critique have an RSS feed. Brian Almashie of 3D Joe Corporation, the firm that built the site for Wild Pla...
Business
Thralow.net’s Daniel Thralow

October 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

In December of 1996, Daniel Thralow (pronounced Trah-low) sold one pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses on the Internet. Thralow: A local guy said to me, “I’m starting this little group of websites. Give me a hundred dollars and I’ll build you a web page.” So we built this little web page—it ha...
SEO
SEO: RSS Feeds Increase Visibility

October 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a great way to deliver content into the hands of potential website visitors. It is also a channel for syndicating your content onto others’ websites. And, of course, with that comes links—deep links into your latest products, best sellers, articles, bu...
Business
Satellite Radio Superstore Finds Success

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Three years after launching Satellite Radio Superstore, Matt and Aimee Moffett’s online business is pushing $3 million in sales and their company was recently named one of the top 10 independent retailers by XM Radio. Satellite Radio Superstore is an authorized XM satellite radio deale...
Business
Striking Gold With Diamonds

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Patrick Coughlin knows that brick-and-mortar businesses need to think outside the box if they want to improve their bottom lines. Coughlin has owned and operated American Diamond Importers, an independent jewelry store in St. Clair, Mich., for almost 15 years. St. Clair is a small, idy...
Conversion
Email as a Mini-sale

October 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

Sales professionals have a notion of “mini-sales.” A mini-sale occurs when a prospect agrees to learn more about you or your product, but has not yet agreed to a purchase. Say, for example, that you sell cleaning supplies to restaurants. You may call a restaurant owner and ask him to p...
Conversion
Forums Offer Interactivity

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

If you're looking for an easy way to make your business’ website more interactive, consider adding a bulletin board or a forum. They’re different names for the same thing, an application you can add to your site allowing visitors to leave messages and interact with each other. You can e...
Design & Development
Using RSS To Expand Your Online Exposure

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Rarely in the last 10 years has there been a technology with so much potential to explode your business’s online exposure for such little cost. Real Simple Syndication (RSS) makes it easy for non-techies to automatically display targeted third-party content on their websites and blogs w...
Design & Development
Product Images Matter

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

One distinct advantage to a brick-and-mortar store has over a business in the virtual world is that customers can touch the products on the racks and shelves at the local mall. Local retailers know that if they can get you to touch a product, you are more likely to leap from shopper to ...
Design & Development
Podcasting Can Increase Brand Awareness

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

It seems like it was just yesterday that entrepreneurs were advised to start blogging for the purpose of marketing their businesses. Now, there’s a whole new technology out there that’s a growing, but viable, option for cultivating your brand online: podcasting. What is "podcasting?" ...
Conversion
Gaining Insight Into Live Chat

October 1, 2006 • Kevin Gold

The irony of “live chat” is that there most likely isn't any “chat” at all. Live chat is usually a text-based communication that happens online between a customer and a merchant. It's akin to the instant messaging youmight do with a friend through Apple's iChat or AOL's InstantMessenger...
Business
MyEmma.com’s Clint Smith

September 25, 2006 • PEC Staff

Clint Smith, co-founder of Emma, discusses several important tips to improve email campaigns and addresses that age-old question of whether an email should use images or not. This podcast ...
Design & Development
Free Alternative to Microsoft Office

September 25, 2006 • PEC Staff

Anyone who ever priced the Microsoft Office Suite knows it represents a significant investment. A quick check of the Compusa.com website shows Microsoft Office Standard costs $399 and Microsoft Office Professional will set you back $449. Now, this doesn't discount the value of the softw...
Business
Four Things You Should Know Before Starting an eBiz

September 25, 2006 • PEC Staff

Renowned ebiz author Sydney Johnson created the now-famous Auction Genius courses to aid people wanting to create their own ebusinesses. She shares some important tips for anyone looking to learn the online retail industry: Tip 1—Start Small Many of Johnson’s students are eager to div...
Conversion
Ten Ways to Grow Your Online Store Sales, Part 3

September 18, 2006 • PEC Staff

We covered the importance of keywords and content in our first installment and we covered customer testimonials, offering multiple payment options, diversifying sales channels and conducting pay-per-click campaigns in our last installment. In this, our final installment, we'll look at a...
Business
KEMP’s CEO Kevin Mahon

September 18, 2006 • PEC Staff

Kevin Mahon, founder and CEO of KEMP, and Peter Melerud, the company’s marketing and business development officer, talked with Practical eCommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about what a load balancer ...
Design & Development
Have You Ever Wondered How a Website Works?

September 18, 2006 • Brian Getting

In the most basic terms, a website is a collection of files on the hard drive of a server that can be accessed by the public. Since this is not a very satisfying explanation ...
Business
Delightful Deliveries’ Eric Lituchy

September 11, 2006 • PEC Staff

Eric Lituchy is the founder and CEO of Delightfuldeliveries.com, a leading site for gift baskets and unique gift items, such as gourmet food items and desserts. Given how important product ...
Conversion
Ten Ways to Grow Your Online Store Sales, Part 2

September 11, 2006 • PEC Staff

We covered the importance of keywords and content in last week's installment. Today, let's take a look at four more important ways to grow your online sales: customer testimonials, offering multiple payment options, diversifying sales channels and conducting pay-per-click campaigns. Cu...
Marketing & Advertising
The Truth About Optimization

September 11, 2006 • PEC Staff

Gaining good positioning with the search engines is one channel for increasing your online business — but it’s not an end in itself. Your ultimate goal isn’t to increase traffic, but to increase sales, and thereby, profit margins. Will Reynolds of SEO consulting firm Thinkseer.com, shed...
Technical SEO
SEO: Breadcrumb Trail Boosts Rankings

September 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Breadcrumbs are text-based navigation showing visitors where they are in a website's navigation. While helpful for humans, breadcrumbs also greatly help with search engine optimization.
Business
ChristmasNightInc.com Brings Light to the Holidays

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

If you are an admirer of nativity sets on the lawns of homes and churches during the Christmas season, chances are you seen a product from Christmasnightinc.com. Claire Henderson launched the business about seven years ago and has carved out a unique niche selling life-size scenes of t...