Page 79 – Practical Ecommerce

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Business
October 2019 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

October 31, 2019 • PEC Staff

Since 2005 we've published articles, seminars, and podcasts to help ecommerce merchants. What follows are the 10 most popular articles that we published in October 2019. Articles published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones.
Business
How to Find a Manufacturer for DTC Ecommerce Products

October 29, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Entrepreneurs and established retailers are developing their own private label, direct-to-consumer products for ecommerce. But most of these DTC sellers don't plan to manufacture those items in their own facilities with their own workforce, tools, and materials. Rather these businesses need a manufacturing partner.
Link Building
SEO Link-building for Ecommerce

October 29, 2019 • Bill Sebald

Link-building is tough. It's especially tough for ecommerce sites. Long gone are the days when consumers linked to products. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be seeking links. It may be even more necessary.
Business
3 Tips for an Ecommerce Marketing SWOT Analysis

October 28, 2019 • Armando Roggio

A SWOT analysis — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats — can help an ecommerce business improve its marketing, find new ways to promote its brand, and avoid competitive threats.
Fraud Prevention
19 Free Security Plugins for WordPress

October 28, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of security plugins for WordPress. There are plugins for firewalls, spam protection, two-factor authentication, and more. All of these plugins are free, though several offer premium features.
On-page SEO
SEO: Google’s BERT Update Helps Ecommerce Product Pages

October 27, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Google’s BERT algorithm, released last week, is the company’s latest effort to understand the intent of search queries. For ecommerce sites, the unique details on product pages could now drive more organic search traffic with high purchase intent.
Google Ads
Using Audiences in Google Search Campaigns

October 25, 2019 • Matthew Umbro

Google Ads announced this month two new enhancements for search campaigns: affinity audiences and in-market audiences for seasonal events. The release follows Google’s push for advertisers to layer audiences on their search campaigns.
Amazon & Marketplaces
4 Ways to Protect Your Brand’s Reputation on Amazon

October 24, 2019 • Mike Begg

Protecting a brand's reputation on Amazon requires diligence. Shady resellers and arbitragers could sell a brand's products. And inferior products and poor service can lead to negative product and seller reviews. In this post, I'll address how to protect your brand’s reputation on Amazon.
Business
Apparel from Plastic Waste Driving DTC Fashion Brands

October 24, 2019 • Marcia Kaplan

A lot of plastic waste is either going into landfills or sitting around in stockpiles. An unlikely savior, the fashion industry, is now buying a lot of that plastic. Here are five direct-to-consumer brands that are successfully making products out of recycled plastic and other recycled material.
Marketing & Advertising
Fundamentals of Ecommerce Marketing for 2020

October 23, 2019 • Armando Roggio

New technologies and evolving consumer behaviors are impacting ecommerce marketing at its core. Some of the changes affect established tactics, such as search engine optimization. Others, such as developing and managing chatbots, are new. All require ecommerce marketers to master important new skills.
Product Pages
The Perfect Mobile Product Page

October 22, 2019 • David Shreni

Mobile visitors benefit from small optimizations that make outsized improvements in add-to-cart and conversion metrics. In this post, I'll review tactics to improve sales from mobile product pages.
Email & Text Marketing
Email Marketing: How to Stand Out on Black Friday, Cyber Monday

October 22, 2019 • Carolyn Nye

The upcoming Black Friday to Cyber Monday weekend will likely generate record amounts of revenue for ecommerce retailers. It will also produce a record number of marketing emails. In this post, I'll offer tips to help your holiday emails stand out from the crowd to drive meaningful revenue.
User Experience
Minimalist Design Can Increase Ecommerce Sales

October 21, 2019 • Pamela Hazelton

Minimalism can present products in a refreshing way and focus on key selling points. The result is more engagement and conversions. When considering a minimalist design, keep the following conversion pointers in mind.
Schools & Resources
12 Sites for Free Stock Video

October 21, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Adding video to your website design, particularly your home page, can engage visitors. But producing original videos can be difficult and expensive. Here is a list of websites to find free stock videos for commercial use.
SEO
SEO: Expertise in 1 Area Can Lead to Weakness in Others

October 20, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Excelling in one area of search engine optimization can lead to weaknesses in others. I've seen it many times. If your organic search channel isn’t growing despite the effort you’re pouring into it, assess whether you are blind to the real issue. Here are three examples.
Amazon & Marketplaces
Will Amazon’s Appstore Attract Indian Sellers?

October 18, 2019 • Jaydip Parikh

Amazon announced in August that its Marketplace Appstore has expanded to India, Europe, Japan, and Australia. The aim, Amazon stated, is to help sellers “identify trusted third-party applications that complement ...
B2B
The Full Cost of a Direct-to-consumer Product

October 17, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Deciding if your direct-to-consumer product would be profitable is more than subtracting the product's unit cost from the planned selling price. It requires estimating the full cost of bringing the product to market, selling it, and delivering it.
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics: Introduction to Cross-device Reporting

October 15, 2019 • Morgan Jones

There has been a seismic shift in website traffic in the past several years, from desktop to mobile. Google Analytics has rolled out the beta version of cross-device reporting to inform merchants of how their shoppers are interacting via multiple devices.
Social Media
Top 15 Brand Channels on YouTube

October 15, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Interested in using video to promote your business or product? Try looking at what’s working for other companies. Here is a list of the top 15 YouTube brand channels in the U.S. by total views.
Marketing & Advertising
Try a Dwindling Discount for Black Friday Ecommerce Sales

October 14, 2019 • Armando Roggio

A dwindling discount that starts high and diminishes every few hours from Thanksgiving through Black Friday can create urgency and drive ecommerce sales.
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Product Releases: October 14, 2019

October 14, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of product releases and updates for mid-October from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on product testing, shipping, email marketing, mobile commerce, augmented reality, and website design.
Technical SEO
7 SEO ‘Rules’ to Ignore for Ecommerce

October 13, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization tools have evolved into measuring hundreds of variables. But not all of them impact ecommerce performance in my experience. What follows are seven common SEO metrics to ignore, or relegate to a quick glance.
Analytics & Data
16 Business Intelligence Tools for Ecommerce

October 11, 2019 • Anna Kayfitz

A business intelligence tool can provide helpful data to make critical, daily decisions. There are many such tools to choose from. In this post, I'll list popular business intelligence tools that I'm familiar with and offer my perspective on each.
Design & Development
Add a Web App Manifest for an Ecommerce PWA

October 10, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Creating and loading a web app manifest file is among the first steps toward transforming an ecommerce website into a progressive web app — PWA — that can be installed on a mobile device, similar to a native app, with an icon on the home screen.
Cross-border Selling
U.S., China Trade War Is Impacting Ecommerce

October 10, 2019 • Marcia Kaplan

The trade war between the United States and China has been going on for over a year. A new round of U.S. tariffs on additional Chinese goods is looming. What follows is my analysis of the effects on ecommerce in both countries and possible future consequences.
Conversion
Want More Ecommerce Conversions? Improve Your Product Search

October 9, 2019 • Dale Traxler

Retailers have greatly improved their online stores in the past few years. User flows are streamlined. Designs are better tuned to tell the brand's story. But for many online stores, site search is weak.
Amazon & Marketplaces
Using Amazon Ad Attribution to Track Offsite Campaigns

October 8, 2019 • Phil Masiello

Sellers who run Amazon advertising on other platforms such as Facebook and Google have been unable to track performance easily. But no more. Amazon has just released a beta for advertising Attribution for marketplace sellers.
Google Ads
Learning from Google’s Responsive Ad Units

October 8, 2019 • Robert Brady

Google's responsive ads are among the easiest ways to leverage machine learning to improve performance. So let’s look at what we can learn from the machines.
Design & Dev Tools
11 Photoshop Alternatives for Image Editing

October 7, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Impactful photos are an essential aspect of any merchant’s online store. While Adobe Photoshop has long been the industry standard for editing images, there are a variety of free or inexpensive applications with comparable tools. Here is a list of alternatives to Photoshop.
Technical SEO
Chrome’s ‘Mixed Content’ Updates Could Impact Ecommerce Sites

October 7, 2019 • Hamlet Batista

Google Chrome just announced important changes that could impact ecommerce. The changes address "mixed content" — sites with HTTP and HTTPS resources. In this post, I'll review steps to ensure the changes do not affect your ecommerce site come January.