Page 92 – Practical Ecommerce

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Business
Building an Ecommerce Business, Part 8: Customer Service

December 12, 2018 • Eric Bandholz

Startups and seasoned merchants alike can run into hiccups with managing customer service. Is it better to do it in-house or to outsource? Should you hire someone from the start? This is episode eight in my series on building an ecommerce business from the ground up.
Analytics & Data
To Analyze Data, First Form an Objective

December 11, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz

The most important part of analyzing data is to define an objective. This is often overlooked. Analysts tend to drill down for insights without really knowing what they are looking ...
Conversion
Shopper’s Journey: Lessons from a Gift Search

December 11, 2018 • Marcia Yudkin

Is your ecommerce site set up for consumers who know very little about your products? I recently shopped for a bicycle safety light for a relative who commutes to work by ...
Social Media
10 New Social Networks for 2019

December 10, 2018 • Sig Ueland

New social networks help merchants reach customers and team members. Here is a list of new social networks — building on our comprehensive list from 2017, "105 Leading Social Networks Worldwide." Several new networks are from established social media companies, while others offer independent, open-source, and ad-free alternatives.
Technical SEO
6 SEO Myths about Alt Tags

December 10, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

Alt tags are a frequent to-do item for search engine optimization. But there's much confusion surrounding the importance of optimizing alt tags. So it’s time for some myth-busting around this oft-misunderstood topic.
Technical SEO
Use HTML Caching to Increase Page Speed

December 9, 2018 • Hamlet Batista

Heavy traffic to a website can result in performance problems, slower page speed, and fewer conversions. In this article, I'll share a simple process to speed up page loads. The idea is to cache not just images and scripts, but also the HTML content.
Checkout Tactics
7 Conversion Snafus That Kill Ecommerce Sales

December 7, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

There are many reasons for high ecommerce exit rates and abandoned carts. Most are logical. Take the new year to address problems that may be decreasing sales conversions. Here are seven often-overlooked sales killers.
Google Ads
Google Ads: ‘Exact Match’ Keeps Getting Less Exact

December 6, 2018 • Robert Brady

Google recently announced another change in “exact match” keywords to include close variations with the same meaning as the keyword. I was not a fan when Google first altered the “exact match” policy in 2017. And I’m not a fan of the latest change because keywords are no longer an “exact match.”
Inventory
16 Inventory Sources for Fashion Retailers

December 5, 2018 • Viktoria Kanevsky

Merchants who prefer touching and feeling during the buying process should consider trade shows. Wholesale, online marketplaces are another good way of finding fashion merchandise. You can shop dozens of vendors at the same time without leaving your office.
Content Marketing
5 Content Marketing Ideas for January 2019

December 5, 2018 • Armando Roggio

This list of content marketing ideas for January 2019 is built around the theme of "national days." In each case, try to come up with a creative way to connect a particular national day to the products your business sells and the keywords you target.
Marketing & Advertising > Merchant Voice
What to do now for 2019 holiday sales

December 4, 2018 • Richard Stubbings

Most ecommerce retailers are now fulfilling the holiday order rush. The vast majority of merchants depend on sales in November and December. It can be the difference between a good year ...
Shipping & Fulfillment > Merchant Voice
Why we changed our returns policy

December 4, 2018 • Peter Keller

How should an ecommerce store handle returns? Draconian merchants charge for shipping (both ways) and a hefty re-stock fee — 15 to 25 percent. I’ve never seen a company entirely deny returns.
Conversion
3 Ways to Narrow the Mobile Commerce Gap

December 3, 2018 • Charles Nicholls

A study in 2017 revealed a massive "conversion gap" on mobile. Responsive design relies on concepts from a different era, when most shoppers navigated a website with a mouse. What follows are three ways to prompt more mobile conversions.
Design & Dev Tools
21 Free Web Design Tools from Fall 2018

December 3, 2018 • 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 fall 2018. There are designer and developer apps, coding resources, color tools, fonts, and more. All of these are free.
Platforms & Apps
Ecommerce Product Releases: December 2, 2018

December 2, 2018 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of new products and services for late November from companies that cater to online merchants. There are releases on landing pages, shipping, payment options, social commerce, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Business
November 2018 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

November 30, 2018 • PEC Staff

What follows are the most popular articles that we published in November 2018, recognizing that articles published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones.
Content Marketing
Creating a Content Marketing Strategy for Ecommerce

November 29, 2018 • Armando Roggio

A clear content marketing strategy defines its purpose, who it serves, and its format. For small and mid-sized ecommerce businesses, a content marketing strategy may be the documented and thoughtful answers to several questions or thought exercises.
Finance
Sales Report: 2018 Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday

November 28, 2018 • Marcia Kaplan

Consumers embraced 2018 online holiday shopping with gusto starting on Thanksgiving Day and culminating on Cyber Monday, which became the highest U.S. ecommerce sales day in history with $7.9 billion in revenue. Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday all exhibited healthy year-over-year sales growth.
Business
Building an Ecommerce Business, Part 7: Shipping and Fulfillment

November 28, 2018 • Eric Bandholz

A merchant who sells physical products has to figure out how to efficiently get those items into the hands of customers. It can become complicated as the business scales and receives international orders. This is episode seven in my series on building an ecommerce business from the ground up.
Marketing & Advertising
Success with Google Shopping, Part 4: Tracking Sales

November 27, 2018 • David Rothwell

Google Shopping ads appear in search results above or beside text-based ads and organic listings. Setting up sales tracking for Google Shopping campaigns is vital — before you launch. This is the fourth article in my “Success with Google Shopping” series.
Customer Retention
10 Holiday-selling Tips to Boost January Revenue

November 26, 2018 • Pamela Hazelton

While you are busy handling lots of holiday orders, take a few minutes to analyze your online store to increase the chance of getting post-holiday sales. Here are 10 tips to enter 2019 stronger than ever.
User Experience
14 Usability Tools to Optimize Your Website

November 26, 2018 • Sig Ueland

Here is a list of usability tools to test and optimize your site. There are tools to track the actions of your users, as well as tools to gather feedback and insight. There are also tools to measure your site's performance.
Google Ads > Merchant Voice
I should have used Google Shopping ads sooner

November 25, 2018 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

If you’re a nationwide retailer — or even statewide — you may advertise on Google Shopping, if not Google Ads, or both. As a small online-only retailer, I wish I had ...
Business
A Year-round Cash Strategy for Ecommerce Sellers

November 25, 2018 • Cyndi Thomason

Let’s be clear about why a cash strategy is important. The fourth quarter is when ecommerce merchants hope to have more cash than normal. In this post, I'll outline a five-step process to calculate your year-long cash needs, manage incoming cash, and reward yourself.
B2B
6 Ways to Improve Ecommerce Site Search

November 23, 2018 • Shawn Arnold

Site search is arguably the most important area when it comes to user experience. Buyers don’t have time to hunt for products. In this post, I'll offer a few practical action steps for improving site search on your ecommerce site — B2B and B2C.
SEO
SEO: Topic Clusters Improve Rankings, Traffic

November 21, 2018 • Armando Roggio

Topic clusters are a search engine optimization strategy meant to improve site architecture, help search engines discover important pages, and improve rankings. Topic clusters work like this.
Analytics & Data
Google Analytics: Use Up-to-date Tags for Optimal Reporting

November 20, 2018 • Morgan Jones

Google Analytics periodically rolls out new tracking code. The updates present a challenge to ensure the latest tags are installed. They also present an opportunity: getting robust data and reports that help drive your business.
Technical SEO
SEO: Why Is Metadata Important?

November 19, 2018 • Jill Kocher Brown

This article will describe at a high level the types of metadata most commonly used in SEO. Pay careful attention to the terminology. Meta tags are metadata, but not all metadata are meta tags. Some elements commonly called “tags” are actually attributes of a tag.
Social Media
20 New Tools from Social Media Platforms

November 19, 2018 • Sig Ueland

By following the launches and updates of social media platforms, merchants can discover new ways to reach customers and prospects. Here is a list of recent updates from social media platforms. There are tools for interactive video, customer service, analytics, artificial intelligence, visual search, and shoppable images.
Email & Text Marketing
Top 10 Email Marketing Metrics for Ecommerce

November 18, 2018 • Carolyn Nye

Key email metrics have changed over the years. Many subscribers now receive and respond to email on their smartphones. It has altered multiple aspects of email marketing — content, subject lines, pre-headers, and more. In this post, I'll rank the top 10 metrics to evaluate email performance.