Business
An ecommerce site is a business. Our Management & Finance category addresses online payments, funding needs, employee issues, merchant profiles, key metrics, multichannel and omnichannel strategies, cross-border analyses, inventory management, accounting topics, sales taxes, and much more.
Amazon & Marketplaces | B2B | Cross-border Selling | Finance | Fraud Prevention | Inventory | Local Business | Payments | Shipping & Fulfillment | Staffing-
Business
August 2017 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts
August 31, 2017 • PEC Staff
What follows are our 10 most popular articles for August 2017, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. 21
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Local Business
5 Ways Brick-and-mortar Retailers Can Get Started in Ecommerce
August 31, 2017 • Armando Roggio
In spite of what you may have heard, not every retailer is selling online, not every physical store is closing, and some successful brick-and-mortar shops have real concerns about getting ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
New subcategories increase sales and signups
August 30, 2017 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
Ecommerce sites typically launch with a modest product range and, potentially, category names that will become redundant as the business grows. I launched My Wedding Décor over two years ago with ...
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Business
Why Isn’t Bitcoin More Popular with Shoppers?
August 25, 2017 • Armando Roggio
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies cost nothing to process, are almost immune to fraud, and keep customers’ financial information safe. So why aren’t more online shoppers using them? And why aren’t ...
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Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce in the Middle East: Small but Promising Market
August 24, 2017 • Marcia Kaplan
The Middle East, long a laggard when it comes to online shopping, caught the attention of the industry earlier this year when Amazon purchased Souq, a local online marketplace. New ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
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Merchant Voice
For success on Amazon and eBay, don’t follow others
August 22, 2017 • Richard Stubbings
For many ecommerce merchants, it is essential to list stock on the likes of eBay and Amazon. The potential sales volume from these sites is too large to ignore. However,
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Business
21 Tools to Launch a Product or Business
August 21, 2017 • Sig Ueland
If you’re launching a new product or business, get help from free and inexpensive online tools at every stage of the process — from designing and developing your product to ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
3 new Amazon tools for brands
August 13, 2017 • Phil Masiello
Amazon continues to improve the experience of brands selling on the marketplace. There are a few new tools that are worth noting, for Fulfillment-by-Amazon sellers in Brand Registry. One tool,
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Ecommerce Briefs: Amazon’s Earnings; Walmart’s In-store Pickup
August 10, 2017 • Marcia Kaplan
“Ecommerce Briefs” is my occasional series on news and developments from online merchants. In this installment, I’ll decipher Amazon’s Q2 2017 financial results and its recently-announced returns policy for certain marketplace ...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
The Unforeseen Impact of Drop-shipping Fees
August 9, 2017 • Jeremy Hanks
An efficient drop-shipping program requires a seamless integration between a retailer and its drop-ship suppliers. Inventory levels, prices, fulfillment details, and order and payment info are types of data that should ...
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Staffing
How to Hire for Ecommerce SEO
August 6, 2017 • Jill Kocher Brown
One of the hardest parts of search engine optimization is finding the right professional to manage it. Since there are no universal SEO accreditations, hiring comes down to a resumé
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Business
Legal: Removing Bad Reviews Not So Easy
August 3, 2017 • John Di Giacomo
I recently had a terrible customer service experience when purchasing from a well-known ecommerce company. The experience was so bad that it compelled me to write not just one poor ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
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Merchant Voice
Independent retailers, repeat buyers, and Amazon
August 3, 2017 • Richard Stubbings
It is getting harder to gain and keep customers. Traditionally, independent retailers have earned their business by providing a better service or product to consumers — a unique selling point ...
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B2B
3 Ways to Simplify B2B Ecommerce
August 3, 2017 • Lori McDonald
Business-to-business ecommerce can be complex. There are often restrictions on who can purchase products. Frequently buyers need assistance in finding the right item. But a key to success in B2B ecommerce ...
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Business
Algopix C.E.O. on Marketplaces, Brands, and Resellers
August 2, 2017 • Kerry Murdock
Given the ease with which brands and manufacturers can sell their products directly to consumers, many observers believe the future of resellers is limited. Ori Greenburg, an ecommerce veteran and ...
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Business
July 2017 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts
July 31, 2017 • PEC Staff
What follows are our 10 most popular articles for July 2017, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. 9
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Pros and cons of running 2 businesses
July 30, 2017 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
I launched My Event Décor in January 2017 to sell products to corporate event designers and marketing managers. My Wedding Décor, which I started in April 2015, targets couples, wedding planners, and stylists. I ...
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Business
10 Alexa Skills for Shopping (and Selling)
July 26, 2017 • Gagan Mehra
In “The Growing Adoption of Voice Commerce,” my previous post, I addressed how Amazon’s Alexa is the leading voice-based assistant. I mentioned in the post that Amazon now offers Alexa Voice ...
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Business
Saudi Entrepreneur on Ecommerce in the Middle East
July 25, 2017 • Kerry Murdock
In the United States, ecommerce is mature and sophisticated. That is not the case in Saudi Arabia, where it’s new and challenging. Hamza el Bayed is co-founder of a Jeddah,
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Business
To Build a Remote Workforce, Think Differently
July 25, 2017 • Armando Roggio
Remote employees can supercharge a company. Remote workers are often happier, more loyal, and more productive than their office-bound counterparts. But a business needs to manage remote employees differently and ...
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Business
Lessons from ‘Retail Apocalypse’: Invest in Technology, People
July 20, 2017 • Armando Roggio
Perhaps as many as 4,000 brick-and-mortar stores have closed in the United States since last year, creating what some are calling a “retail apocalypse.” This would-be industry-wide meltdown can teach ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Prime Day 2017 Smashes Sales Record
July 18, 2017 • Marcia Kaplan
Amazon held its third annual Prime Day on July 11. The event actually began the evening of July 10 and offered 30 hours of deals instead of the 24 offered ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Viral Launch C.E.O. on Amazon Selling Tactics
July 14, 2017 • Armando Roggio
The Amazon marketplace contains nearly 500 million products, from about 2 million sellers. That’s a lot of competition for businesses that sell items there. In fact, being competitive on Amazon is exactly what ...
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Cross-border Selling
The Explosive Growth of Cross-border Ecommerce
July 12, 2017 • Marcia Kaplan
While domestic online sales in the United States and the European Union will continue to increase — taking sales away from brick-and-mortar stores — growth rates will flatten out over ...
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Payments
4 Ways to Reduce Credit Card Chargebacks
July 12, 2017 • Patricia Carlin
Credit card chargebacks — wherein shoppers purchase products with a credit card and then contest the charge from the credit card issuer — are an always-present threat to ecommerce merchants. In ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
2 new marketing options for FBA sellers on Amazon’s Brand Registry
July 9, 2017 • Phil Masiello
There have been many articles and discussions over the past few weeks about Amazon’s Brand Registry. We’ve addressed it here, at “Will Amazon’s Brand Registry restrict marketplace sellers?” and “Why ...
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Business
How to Audit Your Ecommerce Content, and Why
July 7, 2017 • Armando Roggio
An ecommerce content audit may help a retail businesses identify valuable assets, discover new content or product ideas, improve site design or navigation, generate more site traffic, and even earn ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Why Use Amazon’s Brand Registry?
June 29, 2017 • John Di Giacomo
Protecting against knockoffs on Amazon can be a problem for ecommerce merchants. Thankfully, Amazon recently instituted its Brand Registry program, which is intended to protect the brands of marketplace sellers ...
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Business
Book Excerpt: ‘Think and Engage and Thrive’
June 27, 2017 • Phil Masiello
In this chapter I’ll briefly go over what it means to THINK, ENGAGE, and THRIVE. Before I talk about what those terms mean separately, I want to make it clear that these are not distinct phases you’ve got to work through one at a time. They’re part of a continuous, repeating cycle.
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Will Amazon’s Brand Registry restrict marketplace sellers?
June 26, 2017 • Phil Masiello
There are two types of Amazon sellers. Both can be successful. The first type is a reseller of other brands. This is a highly competitive type of selling with very small profit ...