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.

Business > Merchant Voice
To grow an ecommerce business, step away

May 11, 2016 • Eric Bandholz

I recently returned from a trip to Amsterdam. It wasn’t a holiday, but a strategy meeting. The three owners of Beardbrand spent a week in the city to focus on ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Dollars per visitor more important than conversion rate

May 10, 2016 • David Sasson

Conversion optimization has been discussed in ecommerce circles since, well, the dawn of ecommerce. Improving conversions can have a major impact on revenue. Making small tweaks to your website — such ...
Local Business
Should Ecommerce Merchants Claim Local Business Listings?

May 9, 2016 • Bill Hartzer

If you are an ecommerce retailer or a servicer provider with nationwide clients, you may not want to claim your online local business listings. In fact, there are situations where ...
Business > Merchant Voice
How I measure ecommerce success

May 5, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Most merchants measure ecommerce success by revenue. Shopify’s dashboard notes tell me my website is in the top five percent of those launched in the last 12 months. But I don’t ...
B2B
11 Critical Features for B2B Ecommerce Sites

May 4, 2016 • Lori McDonald

An important part of redesigning or launching a business-to-business ecommerce site is to identify the required features. They can be available out of the box in your ecommerce platform, or ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Why FringeSport uses Shopify

May 3, 2016 • Peter Keller

FringeSport has used Shopify for six years. I started on the platform after reading an early Tim Ferriss blog post, where he pimped the brand. We’ve never looked back. I get ...
Business
April 2016 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

April 28, 2016 • PEC Staff

Here are our 10 most popular articles for April 2016, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. 19 Free Website ...
Business
Electronically-signed Contracts Enforceable?

April 15, 2016 • John Di Giacomo

When Shakespeare wrote “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” he was not writing about electronic signatures. But, thankfully, the law has mostly evolved to no longer ...
Business
6 Principles for Small Business Automation

April 14, 2016 • Armando Roggio

Entrepreneurs and small business managers are hands-on folks. They are often involved in nearly every aspect of the business — from marketing to fulfillment to accounting to website design. At ...
Finance
6 Alternative Funding Resources for Ecommerce Businesses

April 13, 2016 • Marcia Kaplan

Small businesses often struggle to find affordable funds to keep their businesses running. Online lending solutions offer an alternative to conventional bank loans with the advantages of a much shorter ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Are your passwords secure?

April 12, 2016 • Richard Stubbings

As an online merchant, I have to review my company’s security procedures to retain PCI compliance. Whilst I am not sure of the merits of PCI compliance — I cynically ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Does your company have a soul?

April 9, 2016 • Eric Bandholz

When they hit a plateau on the growth of their business, entrepreneurs often look at ways to initiate a spark. One of the biggest things that companies overlook is the ...
Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce in Australia: Cross-border Shopping Common

April 7, 2016 • Gagan Mehra

According to National Australia Bank, online retail spending in Australia increased by 10 percent, to $17.6 billion, in 2015. This compares to roughly $562 billion for China, the country with ...
Payments
Credit-card-processing Negotiating Mistakes, Part 2: Understanding the Offer

April 5, 2016 • Phil Hinke

This is the second installment of a 2-part series on common mistakes I see from merchants, when they negotiate the rates and fees of credit-card-processing providers. In “Part 1: Terminology,
Business > Merchant Voice
Lessons from a corner shop closing down

April 4, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

You’ve likely seen a few brick-and-mortar shops go out of business in recent times. I recently saw hastily-printed sheets at local ice cream store — called Lick Me — thanking ...
B2B
7 Mistakes That Will Kill Your B2B Ecommerce Launch

March 23, 2016 • Lori McDonald

I’ve worked in the B2B ecommerce industry for 18 years. I’ve seen it all — good and bad. Here are seven mistakes that often cause failures in B2B ecommerce launches. 1.
Business
Sales Tax: How to Collect, Process for Your Online Store

March 21, 2016 • Armando Roggio

Sales tax is relatively straightforward for brick-and-mortar retail stores. A shopper goes into a store, buys something, and pays the sales tax for the state, county, and city where the store ...
Business > Merchant Voice
The evolution of FringeSport’s KPIs

March 16, 2016 • Peter Keller

How do you run your business? What numbers are meaningful, and on what intervals do you review them? When FringeSport was a side project, I mainly looked at revenue and gross ...
Business
Search-marketing Insights from Connect Search Engine Watch Conference

March 15, 2016 • Richard Sexton

I recently attended the Connect Search Engine Watch Conference in Miami. The conference covered two tracks — “Engage with Organic” and “Innovate with Paid” — over two days. I spent ...
Business
How to select a new ecommerce platform

March 10, 2016 • Kenny Kane

In “Why change ecommerce platforms?,” my post last month, I discussed my decision to switch ecommerce platforms — from Volusion to Bigcommerce — in the fall of 2013. I made ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Pop-ups bad for the web, bad for business

March 9, 2016 • Eric Bandholz

Our company is approached frequently by app makers that are selling pop-ups, or modals, for our ecommerce site. The pitch is usually the same: Use our pop-up to get more ...
Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce in South Korea: Aggressive Discounting, Rewards

March 9, 2016 • Gagan Mehra

South Korea is the seventh largest retail ecommerce market in the world and the third largest in Asia Pacific, after China and Japan. It boasts the fastest Internet speeds in ...
Business > Merchant Voice
A tale of two suppliers

March 9, 2016 • Richard Stubbings

The attitude of some suppliers amazes me. Recently, we have been going to trade shows to find new products. We have been looking for quality, niche suppliers that have higher-value ...
Inventory
5 Ecommerce Inventory Spring-cleaning Tips

March 2, 2016 • Armando Roggio

As spring arrives, many online retailers find that they need to change products or product lines — winter coats won’t sell as well in April or May. Last season’s fashions, innovations,
Business > Merchant Voice
Entrepreneur, founder, C.E.O.?

February 24, 2016 • Peter Keller

What is a C.E.O.? If you founded and are running a start-up, when should you really take C.E.O. as a title? These are questions I’ve struggled with over the last year.
Business > Merchant Voice
For PPC ads, filter by demographic data

February 23, 2016 • David Sasson

Driving traffic is at the heart of building a successful ecommerce business. There are so many retailers and so many options for consumers that you must continually find new ways to ...
Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce in Japan: Marketplaces Dominate

February 23, 2016 • Gagan Mehra

Amazon is no longer the world’s largest ecommerce site in terms of number of visitors. That position now belongs to Taobao, the online marketplace, from China. Ecommerce is growing quickly ...
Local Business
10 Local Business Customer Rating and Review Platforms

February 22, 2016 • Paul Chaney

Want to get more customer reviews? There are plenty of reasons to do so. They help build brand awareness, increase credibility, and improve search rankings. Plus, they let you know the customer's mindset about your business, and its products or services.
Business > Merchant Voice
Could a new slogan increase sales?

February 19, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

My Wedding Decor has gradually evolved in the 10 months since I launched the site. Four weeks ago I made two simple changes that may have been responsible for increasing my ...
B2B
Using Product Feeds for B2B Ecommerce

February 18, 2016 • Lori McDonald

A data feed is a structured file that provides information to another system. Typical formats are XML, CSV, and TXT files. Think of it like a data export from your ...