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.

Shipping & Fulfillment
7 Ways to Improve a Customer’s Shipping Experience

April 30, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Shipping can be one of the most stressful parts of an online transaction. The customer has already paid for a product, but does not actually have it in hand. And the retailer — devoted to excellent customer service — has no control over the carrier. In spite of this, there are some co...
Business
April 2013 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

April 30, 2013 • PEC Staff

Each month we compile a list of the ten most popular articles we published that month, based on the number of page views. Here are our ten most popular articles for April 2013, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Internet Sales Tax Isn’t About Fairness

April 26, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori

If you listened to the politicians tell it, the story of main street retailers needing online stores to charge and collect sales tax is all about fairness. To again quote McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!” Here’s the “argument” presented by stupid politicians as proxy for the main stree...
Business
How to Monitor, Prevent Fulfillment Errors

April 26, 2013 • Dale Traxler

Ecommerce companies typically focus on acquiring traffic and selling a wide range of products that shoppers will actually buy. Many ecommerce firms track key performance indicators like new visitors, conversion rates, and average order values. But for many ecommerce companies, especia...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Marketplaces: How to Sell More in 2013

April 23, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Online marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, and Amazon offer retailers profitable, high-volume sales channels that can significantly improve the bottom line. But as more businesses discover and use these marketplaces, competition increases, meaning businesses need to market well in these chann...
Payments
Bitcoins: 3 Things Online Merchants Must Know

April 18, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Bitcoin is a mostly anonymous, peer-to-peer electronic payment system that could allow online retailers to accept cash-like payments from anyone, potentially, opening up new market segments and reaching new customers. But bitcoin is not without risks. Earlier this month, a single bitco...
Business
The Importance of Ecommerce Strategy

April 15, 2013 • Dale Traxler

One thing I learned running my ecommerce jewelry business for 10 years was that I was never done. There was seemingly always something new I should be working on. I suspect many other merchants feel similarly. But it's important to ask if you are working on the right things. Are you i...
Business > Merchant Voice
10 ways that launching a website is like planning a wedding

April 12, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

I'm getting married this year and one of the things I've noticed is how many parallels there are between the process of planning a wedding and planning a website launch as I've just relaunched my own website. Just like a wedding, it doesn't matter if it's your first, second or third (w...
Payments
Merchants Using Interchange-Plus Pricing Continue to Overpay

April 11, 2013 • Phil Hinke

Editor's Note: Contributor Phil Hinke is a veteran of the credit card processing industry. He now consults with merchants to help lower their processing costs, believing the credit card industry is often unfair to them. His latest article, below, addresses misconceptions with interchang...
Amazon & Marketplaces
How to Start Selling on the Amazon Marketplace

April 10, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Amazon allows other retailers to sell products on its marketplace, where millions of interested shoppers visit daily. This creates an opportunity for sellers — large and small. It is possible to start selling on the Amazon Marketplace in a matter of hours; the barrier to entry is very l...
Finance
5 Reasons for an Ecommerce Business Plan

April 10, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

Does an ecommerce company need a business plan? Yes, almost any business can benefit from developing a business plan. While many companies prepare a plan solely to secure outside funding, a business plan can also help you focus on what you want your business to be in the future and pro...
Business
Ecommerce Priorities Depend on Lifecycle

April 5, 2013 • Dale Traxler

Knowing your business's lifecycle is important. Before you invest in a new ecommerce platform, or make decisions based on the latest ecommerce trends, be sure you know where you are in the lifecycle of your business. Why is the business lifecycle important? There are many reasons. ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Never Forget The Customer

April 5, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

Ecommerce is a service industry. We should never forget that customers come first. We should always consider what a customer actually wants from us. With Ecommerce we build a site, we build admin systems and procedures, and we try to make everything efficient so we can send out the goo...
Finance
SWOT Analysis for Ecommerce Companies

April 3, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

A SWOT analysis — Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats — is something many MBA students learn. Unfortunately, businesses frequently treat SWOT like geometry: one of those things you learn but never use again.
Business
March 2013 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

March 29, 2013 • PEC Staff

Each month we compile a list of the ten most popular articles we published that month, based on the number of page views. Here are our ten most popular articles for March 2013, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones. ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Why we abandoned Amazon and eBay

March 26, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori

In business, you must always be on the lookout for so-called Black Swan events. This may seem a bit illogical, but the point is that everything you rely upon in business has the potential to completely upend or destroy your business. Many years ago, my business sold a driver’s educatio...
Business
Ask an Expert: Necessary to Pay Sales Commissions for Online Orders?

March 22, 2013 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about paying commissions to a sales staff for online orders. It comes from George Sajonian, owner of Viva Performance, a seller of automot...
Amazon & Marketplaces
5 Tips for Increasing Amazon Sales by 50 Percent

March 20, 2013 • Armando Roggio

The Amazon marketplace gives online retailers big and small the opportunity to sell to millions of potential customers, significantly increase sales, and acquire loyal shoppers. Competition on Amazon can be fierce. By some estimates, Amazon receives nearly 90 million unique visitors ea...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Google’s ‘Merchant Quality Score’ Could Make Marketplaces More Attractive

March 14, 2013 • Armando Roggio

A possible change to the way Google ranks merchants on its results pages might make multi-channel selling on marketplaces or comparison shopping engines important. During a recent panel discussion at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference and Festival, Matt Cutts, who is the head of ...
Business
Lessons Learned: Making Online Bed Shopping a Dream

March 13, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

When Sara Shikhman was 10 years old, she left communist Ukraine with her parents on a one-way ticket across the Atlantic Ocean, and $5,000 hidden in a set of screwdrivers,
Payments
Credit Card Processing: How to React to a Rate Increase

March 13, 2013 • Phil Hinke

Editor's Note: Contributor Phil Hinke is a veteran of the credit card processing industry. He now consults with merchants to help lower their processing costs, believing the credit card industry is often unfair to them. His latest article, below, addresses how merchants should react to ...
Business > Merchant Voice
The Dreaded Bedroom seller and how to beat them

March 8, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

. With the rise and rise of Ebay and Amazon, comes the “bedroom” seller. It may be more accurate to call them hobby sellers. All Ecommerce retailers know them. They are the sellers who undercut you and sell at cost or less. They appear, hang around for a few months, and then vanish. In...
Business
Personalizing the Online Shopping Experience

March 7, 2013 • PEC Staff

Retailers increasingly use data to personalize an online shopping experience. Geo location, shopping and browsing history, weather — all can impact how products are presented to online shoppers. Among the leaders in personalization technology is Monetate. Its co-founder and CEO, David...
Business > Merchant Voice
Book review: The Insider’s Guide to Ecommerce: 440 Business Insights For The Ambitious Online Retailer

March 6, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

When was the last time you had a pencil and pad at the ready, stopping to take notes as you read a business-related book? When was the last time you kept interrupting yourself: thinking out-loud, researching the points raised, and logging in to check your statstics? When was the last ...
Business
How to Research your Ecommerce Competitors

March 5, 2013 • Dale Traxler

Many ecommerce business owners have told me that they pay little attention to their competitors. Most said that they did not have time, or that their competitors’ tactics did not matter to them. But you should regularly monitor your competitors' businesses, for the following reasons. ...
Business
Feb. 2013 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts

February 28, 2013 • PEC Staff

Each month we compile a list of the ten most popular articles we published that month, based on the number of page views. Here are our ten most popular articles for February 2013, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later one...
Business > Merchant Voice
Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

February 22, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori

This is going to be a short blog post and for that I will apologize up front. But, I intended for this to be more of a comment-driven exploration than a “this is how you do this” type of blog post. Recently, we switched affiliate network providers (to one of the most respected in the ...
Inventory
Reducing Excess Inventory to Free-up Capital

February 20, 2013 • Armando Roggio

Reducing excess inventory, even at a loss, can free-up capital and help a small online retailer grow. Slow selling products sitting in a warehouse — or, for very small retailers, a garage — tie up cash and may make it hard to invest in marketing, new product lines, or site improvements...
Business
Lessons Learned: Discount Cleaning Products Really Cleans Up

February 20, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

New Jersey-born Mike Kawula once bought a franchise that helped him know how to buy a franchise, which led him to create Discount Cleaning Products. Kawula graduated from Ramapo College in ...
Business > Merchant Voice
7 simple website improvements that can make a big difference

February 20, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

You've probably noticed many ways a website could be improved as you shop online. Here's a handful of ones which I encountered recently on other people's websites, as well as my own, which are so easy to fix. Allow customers time to use coupons I Googled for double basin bathroom van...