Page 272 – Practical Ecommerce

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Platforms & Apps
Shopping Cart Checklist

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

We’ve assembled a checklist to help you narrow your shopping cart requirements. The checklist is divided into six areas: function, shipping issues, payment processing, support, technical considerations and report generation. Function Is there a limit to the number of categories or pr...
Design & Development
The Future of Ecommerce Solutions

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

PeC: Given the trends in the marketplace, what do you see on the horizon for ecommerce solutions? Chowdhary: "This is such a dynamic field. Every day is a new day in the world of ecommerce. We see a lot of things, and looking in the near future, there are many different things that I...
Platforms & Apps
Hosted Shopping Cart Solutions

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

PeC: How would you describe the merits of a hosted solution compared to various software solutions that are in the marketplace? Krakovsky: I think it starts with the fundamental premise that people start businesses to sell products and services to customers, not necessarily deal wit...
Platforms & Apps
Getting to the Heart of the Cart

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

If you came to this article hoping we’d tell you exactly which shopping cart you should choose for your business, you will be disappointed. We don’t know. However, thanks to the expertise of a pair of industry veterans, the process of choosing a shopping cart is about to get easier for...
Platforms & Apps
Shopping Cart Software Solutions

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

PeC: What are some distinctive characteristics of shopping carts that you might share with a new ecommerce business? Randolph: I’d say everything has a place. Yahoo! Stores has over 150,000 merchants now so, without a doubt, the hosted solution has a place in the marketplace. There a...
Design & Development
Separate Content from Functionality and Design

September 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

A website can be broken down into three main development parts: content, design and functionality. To optimize a website for search engines, it’s important for developers to separate content, which is of interest to search engines, from design and functionality, which are not. Content ...
Business
Tech Support: September 2006

September 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

PeC: I keep reading about the Web 2.0. What is that? Brian Getting: Web 2.0 is a term that has come to represent a new way of thinking with regards to developing websites. While there is an origin to the name, that is less important than what people mean when they speak of “Web 2.0 m...
Customer Service
Who Runs Your Business?

September 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

I love to cook. It’s something my husband knows well, and new friends learn quickly. Those visiting my home think I’m going out of my way, but to cook a savory meal, regardless of the time it takes, is how I relax. I’ve been known to make specialty pies I don’t even eat only to call the...
Business
Quick Query: Jellyfish CEO Mark McGuire

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

PeC: What is Jellyfish.com? McGuire: _Jellyfish offers merchants a risk-free channel to sell products. By listing on Jellyfish.com, merchants control the price of the product and the amount of profit they desire. The merchant decides on the commission it will pay Jellyfish, and that ...
Conversion
A One-Second Review

September 1, 2006 • Mat Greenfield

I was recently reading a study published earlier this year by Carleton University in Ottawa. They suggest that web visitors make an instant assessment of the overall “quality” of a website in less than a second. This contradicts conventional wisdom that suggests you have 6-8 seconds to ...
Design & Development
Does Google Checkout Affect Your Business?

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

On June 30, 2006 Google launched a service called Google Checkout. This is a new application allowing businesses to process online orders through Google. It serves as an alternative to PayPal or regular credit-card processing. It’s interesting to look at the launch of this service from...
Business
Legal: Copyright Registration

September 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.

Copyright registration is a great concept. In order to put the world on notice of your ownership of certain creative works, the government allows you to send a copy of your work to the U.S. Copyright Office, and it will maintain the records for you. For a small registration filing cost,...
Conversion
Customer Conversion: Testing Brings Science To Marketing

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

There are two things every ecommerce business should strive to achieve. The first is increasing conversion, turning a higher percentage of browsers into buyers. The second is optimizing marketing spend, driving higher rates of return from existing advertising dollars being spent. The m...
Conversion
Email Marketing: Open-Rates and Click-Throughs

September 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

The "FROM:" line in an email is the most important factor to getting it opened. “Email marketers should use a consistent ‘From:’ address, and it must be recognizable to their customers,” says Gail Goodman, chief executive officer of Constant Contact, a self-service email-marketing firm...
Conversion
Usability Report Card: FugitiveToys.com

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Josh Pigford was confident enough to put his site, Fugitivetoys.com up for the inaugural “Usability Report Card.” While a lot of attention is paid to search engine optimization and online advertising, usability is sometimes given the cold shoulder by small ecommerce businesses. However,...
Business
Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson on ‘The Long Tail’

September 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, calls the phenomenon “The Long Tail,” which happens to be the title of his bestseller. Anderson, a physicist, turned economist, turned editor and author, wasn’t talking about the long tail wagging the dog, although that is exactly what has happened in a marketplace turned upside-down by something he learned studying statistics.
SEO
SEO Report Card: Yarnware.com

September 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

For this SEO Report Card, I’m responding to the Yarnware’s heartfelt plea for a site grade. Meredith Bright of Yarnware writes: “I used to have much better organic search rankings, but they have been dropping recently. I can’t figure out what is wrong.” It wasn’t hard to see why. The si...
Business
Product Sourcing: Six Questions

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

If you’ve got a question about your ebusiness, someone else has probably already asked it. Matt Hedges, customer support manager of Worldwidebrands.com, answers the six most common productsourcing questions he gets from customers wanting to start an online endeavor: Will suppliers car...
Design & Development
GoECart’s Manish Chowdhary

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Manish Chowdhary of GoECart outlines in great detail his vision of the future of online shopping carts as well as discussed some of the differences between software solutions and hosted ...
Design & Development
Create Your Own Online TV Station

August 28, 2006 • PEC Staff

It will happen! TV and the Internet will eventually merge into one giant multi-media "melting pot" that includes everything from live footage and old reruns to garage videos posted by your next door neighbor's kid. Just like cable TV fractured network TV, the Internet will enable everyo...
Conversion
Ten Ways to Grow Your Online Store Sales, Part 1

August 28, 2006 • PEC Staff

These days, setting up an online storefront is easier, less expensive and more valuable than ever as more and more people get comfortable shopping online. Setting up an online storefront is a great way to start a business or grow sales by extending the reach of your current business. Wh...
Business
Authorize.Net’s Corey Koenig

August 21, 2006 • PEC Staff

Corey Koenig, channel sales manager for Authorize.Net, provides an interesting insight into the landscape of shopping carts and what a payment gateway like Authorize.Net is concerned about. Koenig also discusses ...
Social Media
Nine Things to Consider Before You Blog

August 20, 2006 • Paul Chaney

You’ve heard a lot about web logs or blogs. That’s because during the past six years blogs have evolved from a highly personal form of communication on the Internet to a powerful new medium for business. Not since Procter & Gamble invented branding back in 1931 has there been so muc...
Conversion
Growing Your Sales Using eBay Sales Data

August 20, 2006 • PEC Staff

Understanding product markets can help you determine what you should sell online and how you should sell it. The right product at the wrong time or sold the wrong way can be an eBay seller’s downfall. There are many resources for gauging what methods will work best for you. You can use ...
Business
What Should I Sell Online?

August 15, 2006 • PEC Staff

Everyone who starts an ebiz faces the question: What do I sell? And most everyone seems to make two classic mistakes in the beginning: They try to sell what everyone else is selling: DVDs, electronics and designer clothing. The problem they encounter is that the market is already s...
Business
The Price is Right!

August 4, 2006 • PEC Staff

Avoiding Common Mistakes A trap many eBiz owners fall into is trying to set their prices by simply adding a percentage or flat amount to an item's cost– they buy a watch for $20, slap another $20 on the price tag, and pass it along to their customers. The problem with this type of pric...
Design & Development
Stay Safe with Your Wireless Network

August 4, 2006 • PEC Staff

A wireless network can bring tremendous flexibility to your office, freeing employees to use laptops, tablet PCs and other devices at any desk-side meeting or conference-room presentation anywhere in the office suite. It can also eliminate the costs and restrictions involved with numero...
Business
Quick Query: RedRoller.com’s Bill Van Wyck

August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

What Travelocity does for travel, RedRoller does for shipping packages. The site is built to look and feel like an etravel site. Shipping for small businesses is a day-to-day occurrence. The typical ecommerce business spends close to $1,000 per month and ships 120-150 packages every month.
Analytics & Data
Email: Confidentiality Required

August 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

I get thousands of emails each day. A good majority are spam, and I use Cloudmark (the best system I’ve found) for filtering them. Being in business, however, I still have to take the time to scan them all, making sure I’m not missing an initial request for work from someone who may hav...
Business
Tech Support: August 2006

August 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Question: My web host has different bandwidth levels depending on the price. How can I compute what my ecommerce site's bandwidth needs are? Brian Getting: Bandwidth can be a tough one to understand for most people. I like to use the analogy of a water pipe where the speed of your In...