Page 279 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

Platforms & Apps
How to Choose a Shopping Cart

September 1, 2005 • Michael A. Cox

Mark Baartse has identified 137 different shopping carts. Baartse tries to identify which are the best for the myriad applications required in the ecommerce industry.
Design & Development
Web Graphics: Why Are We So Limited?

September 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

As a Web designer and developer, I have worked with graphics in a variety of formats. Anybody who uses Adobe Photoshop – the standard for design production in the interactive business – has learned his or her way around JPG, GIF, TIF, EPS, PSD, PCX and BMP files. Those types of files s...
Business
Star Crossed Productions Finds Niche

September 1, 2005 • Michael A. Cox

Kathy Smith is 46 years old. She started out as a high school teacher. “Some days it was like walking into a battle zone.” Then she was in the printing business. “Pressure cooker every day.” Then, in November 2002, she launched Star Crossed Productions at scp-inc.biz. “Rocket ride.” W...
Conversion
Autoresponders: Follow-up for Success

September 1, 2005 • Mat Greenfield

Something that I often suggest is that companies give something away on their website. I believe that this is essential even for websites that are primarily ecommerce in nature. The reason is to provide a low-commitment next step, for potential customers that aren’t quite ready to buy. ...
Checkout Tactics
Navigation is Key

September 1, 2005 • Pamela Hazelton

Online shoppers need guidance about finding what they need, and information about the pages they are viewing. We get so used to all our friends and family being online, we take for granted that each and every day, thousands of people use the Internet for the very first time. This leads ...
Social Media
Blogging: Your Kids Do It, and Your Business Should Too

August 1, 2005 • Paul Chaney

Doubtless, you have heard the term "blog." Can these "personal online journals and diaries" really be used as a marketing tool for your ecommerce business?
Conversion
Back-to-School Season Provides Lesson for eCommerce Sites

August 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

If you thought the back-to-school season meant little more than pencils and paper, backpacks and new school clothes, you'd be highly mistaken. In the ecommerce community, it provides us a subtle reminder as to the power of teaching our customers about our products and services. That's ...
Conversion
Attracting Hispanic Customers Online Not As Easy As Uno, Dos, Tres

August 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

As online business owners and marketers, you've heard the staggering statistics regarding Internet usage among Hispanics in the United States. Almost 16 million Hispanics will be online by 2007, and their collective buying power is already nearing $600 billion. Why is it that only one-...
Business
No Click To Pick

August 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

You’ve got nothing to show for it - your online advertising campaign that is. Hundreds if not thousands of dollars out the window after those creative, catchy ads didn’t reel in the customers you hoped they would. Could be that the copy wasn’t quite as striking as you thought. That’s c...
Business
SignSupplyStore.com Keeps It Simple

August 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

During the course of building an online business, many eommerce webmasters find that they morph into proverbial interactive jacks of all trades. In the heart of Kentucky’s Bluegrass region, 34 year-old Lance Coffman is one such renaissance man. The webmaster for SSK Sign Supply, Coffma...
Conversion
Parting the Fog of Visitors

August 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

Imagine this. You're the publisher of a metropolitan newspaper, tasked with gathering statistics on how many people read your publication on a weekly basis. Of course you count your subscriber base and your newsstand copies sold, but do you include those folks who only glanced at the ne...
Business
The Online Business Cyber-Attack: Defamation

August 1, 2005 • John W. Dozier, Jr.

It is said that the worst lies are told behind your back. That may be true. Until recently, rumors about businesses have generally been oral, fleeting in nature, and (hopefully) not given much credence. Unfortunately, the dynamics of the rumor mill are changing. Just about everything on...
Business
A Tangled Web We Weave

August 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

The choice between having nothing nice to say and saying nothing at all, at least on the web, is becoming increasingly easier by the day. Say nothing at all. When the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) was struck down to allow indecent, as opposed to obscene speech, the effect – uni...
Conversion
Know Your Enemy (err, Target)

August 1, 2005 • Mat Greenfield

An oft-repeated military slogan is “know your enemy.” I’m not too sure if it was first espoused by Sun Tzu, Clausewitz or Machiavelli, but I’m on board with the theory. If Sun Tzu (or whoever) were alive today, he’d probably be a web marketer, and his mantra would be “know your target.”...
Shipping & Fulfillment
A Primer in Shipping Calculations

August 1, 2005 • Pamela Hazelton

Set aside all the cool features you’d love your MIVA Merchant store to have, and those you aren’t sure how to accomplish. The most difficult yet necessary task is tackling the proper means of calculating shipping. It sounds so simple – after all, we can hit UPS.com, USPS.com, FedEx.com...
Business
Scope, Don’t Hope

August 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

Among the many perks of running your own business is the freedom to work on your own schedule, at your own pace, where you want and how you choose. However, ask any online entrepreneur, and he or she will likely never get back to you. No time. Too busy. Even if your business is confin...
Cross-border Selling
Overseas Customers: Just Clicks Away

July 1, 2005 • Massimo Arrigoni

Your web store is a few clicks away, regardless of where those clicks geographically occur. International customers can help increase your online sales.
Conversion
Customer Conversion: Overcome Buyer Resistance

July 1, 2005 • Mat Greenfield

The web has been spoiled by scams, fraud, identity theft, phishing, email address harvesting, and spam-mail. At this point, we are all very wary of disclosing our (somewhat disposable) email address, let alone our physical address and credit card information. We’ll call this buying resi...
Business
SPAM: Your Affiliates Can Put You Out of Business

July 1, 2005 • John W. Dozier, Jr.

A funny thing happened on the way to enactment of the new federal spam law known as “CAN-SPAM.” While for the first time it established nationwide rules to follow in using commercial email, it actually did much more. Somewhere along the legislative process the ISPs decided they wanted n...
Design & Dev Tools
Preventative Maintenance

July 1, 2005 • Pamela Hazelton

I spend just as much time troubleshooting Miva Merchant issues as I do customizing storefronts. I've found that no matter how much you foolproof something, someone out there can, and will, find a way to break its functionality. Fortunately, users of Miva Merchant often need only follow ...
Business
MistralSoap.com Doubles Online Sales

July 1, 2005 • PEC Staff

In 1993, Matthew Tilker, Mistral Soap’s founder, was studying in Provence, France. There he met a 70-year-old master soap maker. In a family factory, the man crafted soaps according to a 300-year old traditional triplemilling process, always using the finest natural ingredients. The soa...
Platforms & Apps
How Does Shopping Cart Software Work?

January 15, 2004 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

A "shopping cart" has come to mean either an online ordering system or a store-building system. An online ordering system will do fine for a few products, but a store builder is essential for 50 or 1,000 or 100,000.
Email & Text Marketing
Words and Phrases that Trigger Some Spam Filters

December 3, 2002 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

I built this list of some 250 words and phrases from two spam filter lists. It is not complete. I have left out porn trigger words. Most spam filters work on a point system, so that the occurrence of just one "spam phrase" probably won't trigger rejection -- except some which the filter considers notorious.
Code
HTML E-Mail: Text Font Readability Study

March 1, 2001 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

In February 2001 my Doctor Ebiz readers patiently answered survey after survey to help me determine what they considered the most readable fonts and sizes for HTML e-mail. While this may come as no surprise to you, it is causing me to change my standards.
Local Business
Crucial Differences between Retailing and E-Tailing

December 15, 2000 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

The retail business model that is practiced in thousands of shops and strip malls in cities all over the world is widely understood. However, many fail to understand that the Internet e-tail business model is substantially different. Some of these differences are obvious, while others only become clear later.
Conversion
How to Purchase Banner Ad Space

July 1, 2000 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

Just how do you go about purchasing banner advertising space? Here are your alternatives.
Marketing & Advertising
The Eight Essential Types of Internet Promotion

June 12, 2000 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

Sometimes your head can be so abuzz with all these Internet marketing details that you feel overwhelmed. You don't know where to start. You can't see the forest for the trees. While there is a lot of depth to be understood, I think that Internet promotion can be distilled down to eight essential types.
Conversion
Distribution Decisions: Drop-Shipping vs. Inventory vs. Fulfillment House

June 3, 2000 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

"Internet product sales are easy," said Bob Simple, when he first set up Bob Simple's Online Shoes. Now he's not so sure. He had found three quality shoe manufacturers who agreed to ship shoes to his customers as soon as he faxed them the order."
Conversion
How Retail Differs from Wholesale and B2C Differs from B2B

June 3, 2000 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

When it comes to e-commerce, sometimes our normal terms become inadequate. Here are some definitions: retail, wholesale, business-to-business, and business-to-consumer.
Conversion
P4: Pricing Strategy as Part of Your Internet Marketing Plan

May 9, 2000 • Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

When you go down to your local grocery store, you'll probably find Jif® peanut butter, and maybe Planter's®, and then perhaps a store brand, and possibly a generic brand (though generics are pretty well gone).