Page 63 – Practical Ecommerce

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Business
Gym Owner Shifts to Online Weight Training (and Thrives)

December 11, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

Perhaps no industry has been more disrupted by the internet than education. Online training is booming — from 1-hour courses to college degrees. Take Barbell Logic, for example. It provides one-on-one strength and conditioning training, entirely web-based.
Conversion
Clienteling Personalizes In-store, Online Shopping

December 10, 2020 • Gagan Mehra

"Clienteling" enables shoppers and personnel in physical stores to interact with online channels, such as web, mobile, and social. Saks Fifth Avenue, for example, has used clienteling for over five years. With clienteling, in-store associates to access an application that provides info about a shopper. The result is merchants can better serve customers and drive higher average value orders.
Payments
Visa Wants to Buy Plaid. U.S. Sues

December 10, 2020 • Mike Eckler

In January 2020, Visa announced it was acquiring Plaid for $5.3 billion. Before long, the U.S. Department of Justice began scrutinizing the transaction, resulting in the filing of an antitrust lawsuit to stop it. In this article, I will describe Plaid and explain why the Department of Justice is attempting to block the deal.
Payments
The Long-term Effect of Buy Now, Pay Later

December 9, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Point-of-sale financing services such as Klarna and Affirm make it easy for online shoppers to buy now and pay later. These financial tech companies have the ability to reduce checkout friction and please customers, but they may affect ecommerce in other, perhaps unexpected, ways.
Schools & Resources
Our Favorite Books of 2020

December 8, 2020 • PEC Staff

We asked our contributors to tell us the best book they've read this year. Here are their responses.
Analytics & Data
How to Name Product Categories

December 8, 2020 • Anna Kayfitz

Category names on an ecommerce site have a huge impact on organic search rankings and on-site conversions. To determine the right names: Start by listing all categories on competitors' sites and marketplaces. Next, add additional category names that may apply to your products. Then determine the search volume for each term.
Design & Dev Tools
20 Free Web Design Tools from Fall 2020

December 7, 2020 • Sig Ueland

Free resources from the design community can add value to an ecommerce site. Here is a list of new web tools and design elements from fall 2020. There are designer and developer apps, coding resources, graphic tools, fonts, and more. All of these tools are free, though some also offer premium versions.
Checkout Tactics
My Top 6 Conversion Tactics for 2021

December 6, 2020 • Pamela Hazelton

Despite the unprecedented changes in 2020, the standard ecommerce usability requirements remain constant: simplify navigation, ensure mobile-friendliness, and streamline the checkout process. But there are plenty more conversion tactics merchants should deploy heading into 2021. Here are my top six below.
Business
Agency CEO: Adopt an ‘Abundance Mentality’

December 4, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

Online selling is increasingly competitive, forcing merchants to selfish and shortsighted decisions. That's according to Corey Blake, CEO of MWI, a digital marketing agency. "When we have a scarcity outlook with short-sightedness," he told me, "We're scraping and clawing to keep it all. A better approach is an abundance mentality."
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2021

December 3, 2020 • Armando Roggio

January 2021 can represent a beginning for content marketers to build communities, stream live videos, write about national holidays, report industry news, or visually expose interesting industry data. Content marketing is the act of curating or creating content such as articles, podcasts, videos, and graphics.
Google Ads
When to Apply Google Ads Recommendations (or Not)

December 3, 2020 • Matthew Umbro

The work of a pay-per-click ad specialist is seemingly never complete — more optimizations are always possible. Google Ads provides a recommendations tab to help. These include changes to core account components.
Business
Sales Report: 2020 Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday

December 2, 2020 • Marcia Kaplan

The challenges of this unique holiday shopping season have made omnichannel commerce a necessity. With several states closing non-essential brick-and-mortar stores and others severely limiting the number of shoppers allowed inside, consumers embraced online shopping with gusto during Cyber Week — Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday — with a big surge in mobile ordering.
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Product Releases: December 1, 2020

December 1, 2020 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of product releases and updates for late-November from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on artificial intelligence, membership monetization, brand protection, international payments, and online returns.
Business
November 2020 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

December 1, 2020 • PEC Staff

Our mission since 2005 is to publish independent content to help ecommerce merchants. What follows are the 10 most popular articles that we published in November 2020. Articles from early ...
Business > Merchant Voice
‘Shop local’ applies to ecommerce businesses, too

November 30, 2020 • Richard Stubbings

The pandemic has altered the behavior of consumers, moving from in-person shopping to online. We have experienced it here in the U.K. Online ordering has increased significantly.
Social Media
Is Longer Copy Better for Social Media Ads?

November 29, 2020 • Kaleena Stroud

I’ve addressed the importance of copywriting for Facebook and Instagram ads. Many marketers default to short copy — a few sentences, max — thinking that their audience will not read more. But that is not accurate, in my experience.
Business
Kuru, a DTC Shoe Brand, Solves a Pain

November 27, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

Selling shoes online is notoriously competitive. Zappos, Amazon, big-box retailers — all are vying for a share of the consumer footwear market. Nonetheless, Sean McGinnis's employer, Kuru, an independent shoe company, is thriving.
Conversion
Covid and the Long Tail

November 25, 2020 • Armando Roggio

An interesting development is happening on the way to retail recovery during the covid pandemic: Brands and retailers are cutting back on the breadth of products they make and sell. In August 2020, for example, Todd Kahn, president and interim CEO of Coach, announced during an earnings conference call that the brand would slash the number of products it offered this holiday season.
Business
Managing Projects with Gantt Charts

November 24, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Gantt charts have been around for more than 100 years, but these visual project management tools are still among the best ways to manage deadlines, keeping them on time and on budget.
Checkout Tactics
6 Tweaks to Streamline the Checkout Process

November 24, 2020 • Pamela Hazelton

Ecommerce should see significant spikes this holiday season. However, merchants must consider the need for speedy, no-hassle checkout processes to lower abandons, especially from shoppers on mobile devices. What follows are six tweaks to streamline an ecommerce checkout.
B2B
5 B2B Ecommerce Trends for 2021

November 23, 2020 • Armando Roggio

B2B ecommerce was already growing rapidly when the global pandemic struck in early 2020, accelerating the wholesale industry's digital transformation. And while it would be possible to list many industry shifts for the coming year, five trends could be especially disruptive.
Photography & Video
15 Photoshop Tutorials for Product Photography

November 23, 2020 • Sig Ueland

Taking the photographs is just the start of compelling product images. Adobe Photoshop’s image editing suite provides plenty of tools to perfect and highlight product images against the right background.
SEO
A Day in the Life of an SEO

November 22, 2020 • Bill Sebald

Search engine optimizers are like black sheep in a family. Our work is often misunderstood. Colleagues wonder what we are doing or how we make money for the company. Why do we read blog posts all day, they sometimes ask? Success in organic search can be elusive.
Business
Beardbrand’s Technology Stack: Platforms, Apps, Services

November 20, 2020 • Eric Bandholz

An ecommerce company is a collection of platforms, apps, and service providers. That's certainly the case with Beardbrand, the company I launched in 2012. James Wilson is Beardbrand's growth marketing manager. I asked James to describe our technology stack, hoping that the decisions we've made (good and bad) can help other merchants.
Business
During Covid, Ecommerce Founders Can Invigorate Their Companies

November 19, 2020 • Armando Roggio

Entrepreneur-lead businesses can become unwieldy as they grow. To survive, founders often must embrace a management system and delegate responsibilities. "An entrepreneur slips and falls off the edge of a cliff. On his way down, he manages to grab onto the end of a vine," wrote Gino Wickman, in his book, "Traction."
B2B
B2B Merchants: Harness Data to Pivot, Adapt

November 19, 2020 • Lori McDonald

I'm hearing the word "pivot" from B2B merchants. Manufacturers and distributors are pivoting to keep up with the pace of change. The pandemic-induced change is especially challenging because of the unknown afterward, post-Covid.
Content Marketing
Last-minute Holiday Social Media Checkup for Ecommerce

November 18, 2020 • Armando Roggio

A quick checkup can ensure that holiday social media posts achieve a company's objectives. Think of it as a tune-up for an important journey. What follows is a holiday social media checklist. It will likely take a few minutes to complete and offer a measure of certainty about holiday social campaigns.
Email & Text Marketing
Analyzing Unsubscribes Can Save an Email Marketing Program

November 17, 2020 • Carolyn Nye

Email marketers do not typically monitor why recipients unsubscribe. But the more we understand the reasons, the better we can reduce the number. In this post, I'll explore how to analyze unsubscribes to improve email performance.
Social Media
15 Social Media Plugins for WordPress

November 17, 2020 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of social media plugins for WordPress. There are plugins to display icons from hundreds of social media networks, schedule and automate publication, track engagement, and more. Some of these plugins are standalone, while others are bundled with larger sets of WordPress tools.
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Product Releases: November 16, 2020

November 16, 2020 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of product releases and updates for mid-November from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on product videos, social commerce, holiday promotions, live-streaming, logistics, shipping, and wearable payments.