Page 276 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Conversion
Seals Help Boost Customer Confidence

April 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Have you ever been shopping on a website and noticed a seal at the bottom that proudly boasts their security level, or maybe how customer service friendly they are? Did you feel better about buying from that site once you saw that? Perhaps you did, and you would be one of many people th...
Conversion
Paid Search Advertising

March 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

How big is paid search advertising? For 2005, Google, whose business is based on paid search advertising, reported total sales of $6.1 billion and operating cash flow of $2.624 billion. That’s for a company that didn’t exist ten years ago. “Paid search is a great advertising method tha...
Design & Development
Analytics Software Improves Paid Search Campaigns

March 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

John Marshall wants to know what happens after the click. Marshall is CEO and founder of Click Tracks, a company that provides software to analyze the online behavior of website visitors. “It’s not enough to purchase keywords on a search engine merely to attract visitors to a website,” ...
Social Media
Bullish on Blogging

March 1, 2006 • Paul Chaney

A few years ago the investment firm Merrill Lynch coined the term “We’re Bullish.” It became the company’s corporate mantra of sorts. In stock trade terminology, being bullish represents a rise in value. I’m bullish on blogging, and for a number of reasons. I think it is a technology to...
Business
MIVA CEO Craig Pisaris-Henderson

March 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

The concept is as old as sales itself. Somebody delivers qualified customer leads to you and you pay them for each lead. It is up to you to convert that lead into a sale. It’s not too hard to comprehend.
Link Building
SEO: Weaving a Web of Links

March 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Links are the currency of the web. Not only do their drive traffic in their own right, but they also are essential to high search engine rankings. Without good inbound links to your web site, your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts won't get off the ground. Link building isn't ab...
Business
Recoverysuperstore.com Offers a Web of Support

March 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. So was Anthony Baggett. Elvis reached the pinnacle of success and then died of drug abuse in 1977. Anthony was a success and an addict, but his story is different—it’s one of hope. Anthony Baggett was, by all measure, a successful advertis...
Conversion
Attracting Local Customers Using Pay-Per-Click

March 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Many business owners have a perception that just because they cater to a local market, they can’t use the power of online advertising to attract new customers. The reality is quite different. Recent developments in the pay-per-click industry allow even the localized business to get in ...
Customer Retention
Seek Quality Visitors

March 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

I’m no Search Engine Optimization expert. Never have been, and most likely never will be. I’ve found that SEO is such a niche market that anyone offering these services shouldn’t have time to do anything but. I do, however, work with store owners everyday and am often asked what can be...
Conversion
Helpful Websites That Sell

March 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

It’s easy to publish an inventory of merchandise on a web page, but we’ve discovered a few sites that get a leg up on the competition by adding relevant content to aid in their sales. After all, when you’re operating in a medium that’s always been associated with the free distribution o...
Conversion
Effective Landing Pages

March 1, 2006 • Mat Greenfield

This month we discuss landing pages, what they are, and how they can be used to increase your conversion rate. What are Landing Pages Your site has landing pages whether or not you think it does. Even if you didn’t specifically design landing pages – you have them, because the definit...
Business
Quick Query – Scott Peterson

March 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

The Streamline Sales Tax Governing Board is the new, multi-state agency charged with simplifying the collection of state and local sales taxes. Since this will impact ecommerce businesses, we’ve asked its Executive Director, Scott Peterson, a few questions. Tell us, once more, what the...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Stayleaner.com

March 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Each month it gets harder to select an ecommerce site to assess, as the requests from readers keep coming in increasing volume. This month I've chosen Stayleaner.com, the ecommerce site for J & J Health Foods, which sells vitamins, herbs and supplements for sports nutrition and body...
Business
Affiliate Marketers

March 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.

Over half of our law firm’s practice involves affiliate marketing. If we are not setting up an affiliate marketing program, we are involved in claims relating to affiliate misconduct. On the one hand, the riches to be realized by your merchant site through a successful and well managed ...
Conversion
Respond to Your Customer. Now.

March 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

One of the most frequent complaints from ecommerce customers is the inability to receive timely answers from a website. I’m always shocked at the number of websites that provide only a “contact us” form, with no phone number or other contact information. In my view, those sites deserve ...
Conversion
Affiliate Marketing

February 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock

Andy Newlin works for Sierratradingpost.com, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Sierra Trading Post is an ecommerce merchant that sells outdoor gear and clothing, and Newlin is its Online Marketing Manager. He oversees the affiliate marketing efforts of the site. “Most any online merchant can utili...
Design & Development
Fulfillment Companies Offer Benefits

February 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Imagine having a state-of-the-art fulfillment department. This fulfillment department would have the most up-to-date order management software, computer hardware and warehousing functions. The employees of the fulfillment department would be experienced and professionally trained. Shipm...
Social Media
Blogs and Affiliate Marketing

February 1, 2006 • Paul Chaney

Blogs have typically not been thought of as direct response sales tools. In their brief history, blogs have morphed from being “personal online journals and diaries” to vital tools for business, but the focus has been more on using them for relational marketing or purely informational p...
Technical SEO
Optimize Your HTML For Search Engines

February 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

SEO can be broken into two distinct areas – "onpage" factors and "off-page" factors. On-page factors include anything that you can affect on the page itself, such as the title tag, body copy, H1 heading tags, image “alt” attributes, etc. Off-page factors encompass things that influence...
SEO
SEO Report Card: Discountflies.com

February 1, 2006 • Stephan Spencer

Welcome back to another installment of “SEO Report Card.” Each month I assess the search engine optimization effectiveness of an ecommerce site. This month's brave volunteer is DiscountFlies.com, an online retailer who sells flies for fly fishing and uses the MIVA Merchant platform. Di...
Business
Baron Bob: Wonderfully Wacky, Marvelously Successful

February 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

Bob Brooks got a business education at the prestigious Johnson Wales University in Rhode Island. Now he runs a $1-million-a-year ecommerce company on the Internet. It all makes perfect sense and all seems to be as it should. But to borrow a phrase from broadcast legend Paul Harvey, “now...
Design & Development
Macromedia Exec Sees “Dreamy” Future

February 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

It is generally agreed among non-programmers that Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Flash, more than almost any other software products, brought the production of quality, functional websites within reach of non-programmers and changed the way the Internet looked, felt, and sounded....
Conversion
Seeing Stars on the Web

February 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

As awards show season gets under way, celebrity fashion will be receiving a tremendous amount of global press, even more so than your typical Hollywood-obsessed news day. Outside of Los Angeles and New York, capitalizing on this high product visibility has never really been an option fo...
Business
Your eCommerce Activities Could be Criminal

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

The online world is an interesting place today for many reasons. Remember the old western movies when the cowboys came into town for several days of mischief? After weeks on the range, they would often decide on their own what laws to follow with predictable results leading to mayhem an...
Conversion
Minimize Customer Complaints

February 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Step Two: Send a follow-up email within a week of the customer receiving their product or service. Keep the email short, and encourage the customer to click on a link to take them to the form you created. Be sure to explain in your email that the form is very brief and will only take a ...
Conversion
The Home Page: Putting Your Best Foot Forward

February 1, 2006 • Mat Greenfield

You never get a second chance at a first impression. Or so the saying goes. Perhaps that’s the reason that website home pages are the most focused on by designers and marketers. In this case, I’m quite happy to agree with conventional wisdom. Having an effective home page is critical to...
Marketing & Advertising
Pay-per-click Tools Maximize Your Time

February 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

As a business owner and entrepreneur, you know that there are two things you can always use more of - money and time. While you are likely to increase the first item by reading this column, you can also free up more time by automating the management of your search marketing campaigns. ...
Customer Service
Email Etiquette is Good Customer Service

February 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

I had an interesting e-conversation a few weeks ago. It turned into a one-sided blast fest, with me at the brunt of it. The source? A business professional looking for work. I let it all roll off my shoulder, but something about it seemed all too familiar. I searched back through thousa...
Code
Optimizing HTML Code for Maximum SEO

February 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Overview Search engine optimization has come to the forefront in recent years as competition for search engine rankings increases. Online business owners often times rely heavily on search engines to generate traffic to their websites, which in turn increases the chances of those visit...
Code
Combining CSS and JavaScript to Save Page Space

February 1, 2006 • Brian Getting

Overview Real estate on a website has become a valuable commodity. Website owners and designers are faced with the challenge of providing enough content to satisfy their visitors, while also maintaining the visual appeal and usability of the website. On one end of the spectrum is a web...