Page 88 – Practical Ecommerce

Category

B2B
Essential Guide to Ecommerce Punchout

March 22, 2019 • Shawn Arnold

B2B ecommerce merchants that facilitate punchout make the purchasing process easier for their customers. In this article, I will share my experience with punchout, including what it is, how it works, and how B2B merchants can deploy it for success.
Conversion
The Many Benefits of Live Chat for Ecommerce

March 21, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Live chat may be one of the best ways to answer questions, overcome the barriers to an online sale, and even discover where your website needs improvement. And these are just some of the benefits.
Product Pages
6 Selling Tips from Auto Manufacturers

March 21, 2019 • Pamela Hazelton

Ecommerce merchants can learn a great deal from auto manufacturers, who spend millions to understand how people shop and the choices they’re likely to make. This is evident both in showrooms and on the internet. Studying their marketing and websites can tell us a great deal about consumers.
Email & Text Marketing
6 Ways to Track Revenue from Email Marketing

March 20, 2019 • Carolyn Nye

Ecommerce merchants know the value of email marketing. It typically provides the highest return on investment of any marketing channel. In a 2016 Econsultancy survey, 76 percent of companies reported that email offers either "excellent" or "good" ROI.
Code
How to Stop Sniply and Similar Services from Framing Your Content

March 19, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Social sharing tools such as Sniply, Backly, and similar put other companies' ads right on top of your popular and well-prepared content. But you don't have to let it happen. There are ways to stop these services from "framing" your content.
Marketing & Advertising > Merchant Voice
How I advertise my ecommerce site

March 19, 2019 • Richard Stubbings

Last week whilst I was walking my dogs I noticed an advert on the back of a bus. It was promoting adverts on the back of buses. It suggested that ...
Analytics & Data
Using Google Data Studio to Report Gross Profit by SKU

March 18, 2019 • Morgan Jones

In "Using Google Analytics to Track Profitability by Product," I explained how to import product cost into Google Analytics to calculate gross profit for each item sold. It was a tricky exercise. I received feedback and questions. In this post. I'll break the process down by using Google Data Studio and data blending.
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Product Releases: March 18, 2019

March 18, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of product releases and updates for mid-March from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on shoppable ads, fintech, B2B, shipping, multichannel fulfillment, and personalization.
SEO
SEO: Google Launches Algorithm Update to Little Notice

March 17, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Once or twice a year Google releases a broad core algorithm update. The March 12 update, called Florida 2, was typical: unannounced. Google acknowledged it only after industry leaders reached out with questions about performance changes they were seeing across a broad number of sites.
Design & Dev Tools
20 Free Web Design Tools from Winter 2019

March 15, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Add value to your website by utilizing free resources from the design community. Here is a list of new web tools and design elements from winter 2019. There are designer and developer apps, coding resources, color tools, fonts, and more. All of these are free.
Google Ads
Boost Google Ads’ Quality Score for PPC Success

March 14, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Google Ads' quality score is a bid multiplier that can make purchasing ads on the popular pay-per-click advertising platform less expensive. A high quality score is also a strong indicator of PPC success, so boosting an ad's quality score could lead to more interactions and sales.
Business
Online Marijuana Sales a Burgeoning Market in North America

March 13, 2019 • Marcia Kaplan

The North American ecommerce market for marijuana products is gaining momentum as Canada legalized the sale of recreational marijuana across the country in October 2018 and more states in the U.S. legalize the sale of both medical and recreational marijuana.
Google Ads
Google Shopping Campaigns Could See 10 Percent More Impressions

March 12, 2019 • Robert Brady

A recent change by Google Ads could increase impressions by 3 to 10 percent for advertisers that use Shopping campaigns but opt out of the Search Partners network. Here’s what you need to know.
Google Ads
How to Structure Google Ads Text Campaigns for Ecommerce

March 11, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Text-based, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a fundamental part of promoting an ecommerce business. These seemingly simple ads can appear higher on a search results page than organic listings and they can target potential customers actively seeking the products your business sells.
Schools & Resources
13 Instagram Accounts for UX, UI Design

March 11, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Instagram is a good place to find inspiration and insight on web design. The visual platform is full of user experience and user interface designers sharing their work. Here is a list of UX and UI feeds to follow on Instagram. The feeds are from freelance designers, in-house designers, agencies and, resource sites.
B2B
Common B2B Mistakes, Part 1: Catalog Management, Pricing

March 10, 2019 • Gagan Mehra

This post is the first in a series in which I address common mistakes of B2B ecommerce merchants. For this installment, I'll review errors related to catalog management, pricing, and user experience.
SEO
8 Ways to Revitalize Your SEO Program

March 8, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Over time, your search engine optimization program grows weary and slows down. It may lose momentum so gradually you don't notice it’s happening. The good news is there are ways to revitalize a stalled SEO program. In this post, I will discuss eight of them.
SEO
SEO: Tell Google Which Pages Not to Crawl

March 7, 2019 • Armando Roggio

The typical goal of search engine optimization is to have your site's pages show up on a Google results page in answer to a query. But there are pages that should not be included in search results. Removing them from Google's index might actually increase search engine traffic.
B2B
Amazon Business Is Winning. Here’s Why

March 7, 2019 • Lori McDonald

After only four years, Amazon Business hit $10 billion in sales in 2018. If you sell to companies, Amazon Business should get your attention. In this article, I will address what B2B sellers can learn from Amazon Business — and how Amazon Business impacts them.
Marketing & Advertising
How Fashion Wholesalers Benefit from Social Media

March 6, 2019 • Viktoria Kanevsky

Social media marketing can be unclear and confusing for smaller B2B companies. Fashion and lifestyle companies, in particular, often don’t understand why they need social media or the best way to use it.
Product Pages
Building Landing Pages That Convert

March 5, 2019 • Pamela Hazelton

Online stores need a healthy balance of landing pages, especially for anchor products and product categories. Landing pages have a specific goal, such as getting people to sign up for email newsletters or purchase a product.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for April 2019

March 5, 2019 • Armando Roggio

In April 2019, content marketers could pitch spring gift ideas, write about important political issues, play a prank or two, offer tax help, and recognize China's contributions.
Content Marketing
9 Free Copywriting Podcasts for Ecommerce Merchants

March 4, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Copywriting podcasts can provide practical tips and techniques to ecommerce merchants who generate their own content. Here is a list of free copywriting podcasts. There are shows that explore content marketing,
Technical SEO
7 Ways to Integrate SEO with IT

March 4, 2019 • Jill Kocher Brown

Search engine optimization relies heavily on support from information technology personnel. Improving relationships and processes between the SEO and IT teams greases the skids so that support is in place before a critical need arises.
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Product Releases: March 3, 2019

March 3, 2019 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of product releases and updates for late February from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on small business grants, eliminating counterfeit products, curated marketplaces, video distribution, and a Pinterest IPO.
Schools & Resources > Merchant Voice
2018: My year in books

March 1, 2019 • Peter Keller

It’s shocking to me how valuable books can be. There are books that have stood the test of time — “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” the Bible, and more — and a never-ending stream of new titles. You can pick up a book for less than $20, and read it in a few hours.
Business
February 2019 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

February 28, 2019 • PEC Staff

Since 2005, our mission at Practical Ecommerce has been to publish independent content — articles, seminars, podcasts — that helps online merchants. What follows are the most popular articles that we published in February 2019 ...
Keyword Research
How to Find Seed Keywords and Explore Topic Clusters

February 28, 2019 • Armando Roggio

Creating a short list of seed keywords is fundamental to search engine optimization, content marketing, and pay-per-click advertising. But for some marketers, the task of identifying seed keywords isn't clear.
Finance
Shopify Excelled in 2018, Attracted More Merchants

February 27, 2019 • Marcia Kaplan

Operating in the shadow of online marketplaces and located in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify does not get as much attention as it should. A $41 billion market-cap business, Shopify is the choice of approximately 820,000 online merchants in 175 countries, growing from 600,000 in 2017.
Google Ads
Say Goodbye to ‘Average Position’ Metric in Google Ads

February 27, 2019 • Robert Brady

Last year Google Ads finally transitioned all advertisers to its new interface. There were many changes. One was that "Average Position" no longer appeared in a column by default. And now Google has made it official.