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
Ecommerce in the shrinking world.

February 14, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

I heard on the news tonight that the EU and the USA have started talks on a free trade agreement. No doubt this will take many years to agree, but it is a sign that the world is shrinking and international trade is growing. Many Ecommerce sites are ahead of the game in international tra...
Finance
Internet Sales Tax: States Take the Lead

February 13, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

The days of sales-tax-free online purchasing are coming to an end for many consumers. 2012 was a year of inaction on the federal level because the Marketplace Fairness Act that would have required sales tax collection by Internet merchants on a national level never came to a vote. Howev...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: The Cost of Not Auditing Statements

February 13, 2013 • Phil Hinke

I was a keynote speaker at a recent meeting of U.S. and Canadian merchants. Whenever I present, I invite merchants to bring their processing statements and their merchant contracts so I can audit them afterwards. Before starting, I always ask each merchant how often he audits his statem...
Business
21 Key Performance Indicators for Ecommerce Businesses

February 8, 2013 • Dale Traxler

Key performance indicators are becoming common in large corporations as a way to measure and monitor the success of key activities. But they can also play an important role in any sized ecommerce business. A KPI — key performance indicator — is simply a measure of some process, event...
Payments
U.S. Merchants Can Now Charge for Credit Card Transactions

January 31, 2013 • Phil Hinke

In November 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York preliminarily approved a proposed settlement agreement with Visa and MasterCard. As part of the settlement, Visa and MasterCard were required to allow merchants to charge for certain credit card transactions ...
Business
Secrets of getting top valuation for your eCommerce Business

January 27, 2013 • Manish Shah

Ecommerce businesses that sell at the top valuation in marketplace are not the ones where owner invested the last year or two of their time preparing the business and it’s systems for sale. In reality, they are the businesses where the owner has planned, created and perfected the auto-p...
Finance
Equity Crowdfunding Stalls

January 25, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

When President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act in April 2012, the clock started ticking on a 270-day period for the Securities and Exchange Commission to write the regulations that would govern crowdfunding. That 270 period is over and no regulations exist. SEC Chai...
Business > Merchant Voice
How 100 retailers responded to a mystery shopper’s Contact Us query

January 23, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

How do you respond to the customer enquiries through your Contact Us page? Do you take them seriously? You may be leaving your customer's money and their goodwill on the table. A friend of mine has just launched a baby t-shirt product so out of curiosity and solidarity, we arranged th...
Business > Merchant Voice
How to negotiate successfully

January 20, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori

In business, almost everything is negotiable. The key to successful negotiating, however, is figuring out when to spend time and energy negotiating and how to maximize your negotiations. In the business of e-commerce, your biggest expense is typically COGS (cost of goods sold). And as ...
Business
Lessons Learned: From Police Officer to Wedding-products Retailer

January 16, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

If Erica Tevis had passed her firearms test as a rookie New York police officer 12 years ago, it’s highly unlikely the New Jersey girl would have become a wedding products online retailer. Tevis, who has a bachelor’s and master’s in criminal justice from St. John’s University and Iona ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Learn from your Christmas Experience

January 5, 2013 • Richard Stubbings

Its January. The Christmas rush is over. The Christmas money has been spent, and the website sales are slowly dying. The number of orders have dropped off the proverbial cliff, as expected. Now is the time to review the web site. Taking into account the previous year's business and how...
Business
25 Top Articles for 2012

December 28, 2012 • PEC Staff

As 2012 draws to a close, we've compiled a list of the 25 most popular Practical eCommerce articles of the year, based on the number of page views. Pinterest was a trending subject among readers in 2012, taking 4 of the 25 spots. Other subjects of interest included search engine optimi...
Shipping & Fulfillment
10 Drop Shipping Resources

December 24, 2012 • Sig Ueland

Drop shipping is an order fulfillment technique in which merchandise is shipped to the customer directly from the warehouse or supplier, rather than from the retailer. The merchant can offer a greater selection of products and test new markets, without the cost and risk of excessive inv...
Business
Reviewing your Ecommerce Business at Year End

December 19, 2012 • Dale Traxler

Many ecommerce businesses owners will soon perform a year-end count of their product inventory. For many merchants, this process will determine cost of goods sold — and profit — for the year. Beyond your products, however, I recommend you critique your entire business. As you close you...
Shipping & Fulfillment
30 Shipping Resources for Small Businesses

December 17, 2012 • Sig Ueland

The major shipping organizations in the U.S. — UPS, DHL, FedEx and U.S. Postal Service — provide many easy-to-use online tools and resources to help small businesses meet their shipping needs. In addition to shipping-management tools, the carriers also provide educational resources, and...
Payments
How to Lower Credit Card Processing Costs and Obtain Better Terms: Follow-up

December 13, 2012 • Phil Hinke

Editor's Note: This is a follow-up article to the just completed four-part series on how to lower your debit and credit card costs and obtain more favorable terms and conditions. "Part 1: The Basics," "Part 2: Attitude," "Part 3: Preparation," and "Part 4: Negotiations" we published pre...
Business > Merchant Voice
Three small business customer service fails and one that works

December 13, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

In the lead-up to Christmas I realised how disproportionately annoyed customers can get with some of the businesses that are out there by experiencing unprofessional service first-hand - especially after comparing it to a first-rate one. Company A We're about to renovate our house so ...
Business
Lessons Learned: Licensing a Language Platform Is Ecommerce Success

December 11, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Dan Roitman founded his education-focused ecommerce company, Stroll, while he was a student at the University of Maryland, studying international business and German, in 2000. He financed his fledgling business on his credit card, leveraging $70,000 to take the company to profitability...
Finance
Analyzing Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Overall Retail Sales

December 3, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

Cyber Monday online sales reached $1.47 billion, up 17 percent over last year, representing the heaviest online spending day in history, according to digital tracking firm comScore, which also reported that Black Friday sales reached $1.04 billion, besting last year's amount by 28 perce...
Business > Merchant Voice
Minimising “lost” Deliveries over Christmas

December 1, 2012 • Richard Stubbings

One of the often forgotten costs of Ecommerce is theft. Either in transit, or “never arrived”. In the current recession too many chancers try to fund their Christmas from the retailer's pocket. Obviously we do everything we reasonably can to minimise this, but no matter what we do, ther...
Shipping & Fulfillment
3 Tips for Holiday Returns and Exchanges

November 28, 2012 • Armando Roggio

When the giddy days of holiday sales end, online retailers frequently need to deal with the inevitable returns and exchanges barrage. But when customer contacts are seen as opportunities, even returns can be a tool to improve an ecommerce business. Online returns and exchanges are a po...
Business > Merchant Voice
Building traffic the right (aka hard) way

November 16, 2012 • Jamie Salvatori

Building an online business starts with traffic. Without traffic, you have no purpose. So, how does one do this? It will take a long time, a lot of hard work, and probably a bit of luck. But you can do it. My website currently receives nearly 50% of its visitors via direct traffic. Thi...
Finance
Third-Quarter Ecommerce Results Bode Well for the 2012 Holiday Season

November 15, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

The growth in online purchasing continues. In a survey of 1,989 online consumers conducted during the last week of October, digital-tracking firm comScore found that In Q3 2012, online sales grew 15 percent over the same period last year, compared with a two percent year-over-year growt...
Business > Merchant Voice
Why free content can give you excellent SEO but poor subscriber growth

November 15, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Getting customers to sign up to your newsletter – and to keep them – is a challenge most of us face. Those who’ve bought from you once are more likely to buy from you again (especially following an email), and those who are newsletter members are more likely to convert into purchasing ...
Payments
How to Lower Credit Card Processing Costs and Obtain Better Terms, Part 4: Negotiations

November 13, 2012 • Phil Hinke

Editor's Note: This is "Part 4" in a four-part series on how to lower your debit and credit card costs and obtain more favorable terms and conditions. "Part 1: The Basics," "Part 2: Attitude," and “Part 3: Preparation” we published previously. Before starting any negotiations, make s...
Business
Strategies for Free Shipping

November 8, 2012 • Dale Traxler

With the holidays quickly approaching, it's a good time to review your shipping strategies. Free shipping is ubiquitous as ever, even though shipping costs are increasing. If you choose to charge for shipping, even a nominal fixed amount, like $4.99, you risk a shopper abandoning your c...
Business > Merchant Voice
Magento and multi channel selling

November 3, 2012 • Richard Stubbings

These days it is not enough to have a single web site. The E-commerce market keeps evolving and you have to move with it to keep up. When I first started 15 years ago, it was relatively new. It was an extension to your B&M store that brought in extra income. So you have two sales c...
Business > Merchant Voice
7 marketing avenues that have been a waste of time and money, and 4 that haven’t

October 29, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

I’ve made plenty of mistakes in running my website business, and spending money on certain marketing vehicles is one of them. 1. People ignore banner ads online When was the last time you clicked on a banner ad online? And bought anything from it? I certainly haven’t and I know fro...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Getting Started with eBay

October 23, 2012 • Armando Roggio

eBay is a global marketplace and an opportunity for online sellers, including businesses as small as garage-based, family operations — or as large as major ecommerce merchants. In the second quarter of 2012, eBay's marketplace helped to sell approximately $3.1 billion in clothing, shoe...
Business
Lessons Learned: T-shirt Retailer Launches in Dorm Room

October 18, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

You’d think running a fledgling beer t-shirt business as a finance and marketing student would get you extra points with your New York University lecturers. But instead, in 2004, it ...