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.

Local Business
SEO: Can Local Searchers Find Your Stores?

August 3, 2012 • Jill Kocher Brown

Online location pages of physical stores should provide much more information than just the physical address of a store close to the individual user. Many consumers already know where a store is, based on their everyday routines. What they don’t know and are seeking are the hours, holid...
Business > Merchant Voice
If You Build It They Will Come – Not Unless You Work On It

August 3, 2012 • Richard Stubbings

I often see posts on forums from optimists who want to set up a web site and make money. They seem to have that great optimism that any Ecommerce web site will be a success and save their business, or make them lots and lots of money. The sad fact is that the vast majority of new web ...
Business
Will U.S. Online Sales Tax Mandate Hurt Small Business?

August 1, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Struggling states and some brick-and-mortar retailers have reinvigorated an effort to mandate that online merchants collect sales taxes for all U.S. jurisdictions, whether or not those retailers actually have operations there. The most recent legislation is the so-called Marketplace Fa...
Business > Merchant Voice
5 ways to expand your product range for free or little cost

July 30, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

If you're a small online retailer, you may not want to tie up much – or if things are starting to bite financially, any more - money in purchasing products for your online store. But how can you expand your product selection easily without affecting your bottom line? Here's five possib...
Business
Lessons Learned: Personalized Gift Site a Family Affair

July 26, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

It wasn’t until her youngest daughter attended pre-school that Melissa Perlman Chelist could help manage the small gift website her husband Barry and his business partner David had created ...
Business
Analyzing a Startup, and Pivoting

July 26, 2012 • Dale Traxler

Editor's Note: Contributing Editor Dale Traxler is a former ecommerce owner who now consults with other businesses on financial and strategy matters. His piece below describes his work for a startup manufacturer and retailer. I mentioned in previous articles that I’m involved in two s...
Local Business
Showrooming Challenges Brick-and-Mortar Retailers

July 25, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

Last December, at the height of the Christmas shopping season, Amazon aggressively promoted its price-checking mobile phone application by giving shoppers five percent off items on Amazon that they scanned while in brick-and-mortar stores. The application, which compares store prices wi...
Business
To Maintain Productivity, Keep Some Margin

July 25, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Online retailers are accustomed to thinking about margin in a purely financial sense — as the difference between what an item costs and the amount at which it is sold. There are, however, other areas of an online retail business that need margin too. Margin may be thought of as a borde...
Business
5 Reasons to Consider Ubuntu for Your Small Business

July 24, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system focused on ease of use, simplicity, and security. This operating system is a good alternative to either Microsoft Windows or Apple's OS X, and may help small businesses get improved performance while saving money. Although some small business ow...
Shipping & Fulfillment
How to Reduce Picking and Packing Errors

July 23, 2012 • James Hyde

The picking and packing of ecommerce orders can be repetitive, mistake-prone work. But a well-designed workflow, using complementary software, can help reduce mistakes, provided that it supports the employees doing the work — not frustrate or hinder them. This article will explain how...
Payments
Visa, MasterCard Settlement Not an Automatic Win for Merchants

July 19, 2012 • Phil Hinke

Visa, MasterCard and 13 of the country's biggest banks have agreed to pay $7.25 billion to retailers in a settlement from a lawsuit over price-fixing on credit card transaction fees. The settlement, on behalf of about 7 million retailers, could be the largest antitrust class-action set...
Business
3 Ideas to Reduce Shipping Costs

July 18, 2012 • PEC Staff

Shipping policies can help make an Internet merchant successful. But shipping also is one of the largest cost centers. Amazon, Zappos, Overstock and Buy.com have stacked the cards in their favor by offering either free shipping or very aggressive shipping programs and policies. Conseque...
Business
Dr. Ralph Wilson on the Founding of Web Marketing Today

July 18, 2012 • Kerry Murdock

Before Google, Netscape, and Internet Explorer, there was Web Marketing Today. Dr. Ralph F. Wilson founded it back in 1995 as a vehicle to supplement his then-fledgling web development practice.
Amazon & Marketplaces
ShopRunner May Help Merchants Compete with Amazon Prime

July 13, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

For consumers, the cost of shipping has been one of the major drawbacks of ecommerce. During the last holiday season, free shipping made a comeback as merchants tried to ensure that consumers would buy online. So popular was the promotion many merchants continue to offer it. Now, with t...
Business
How to Change Your Online Reputation

July 11, 2012 • PEC Staff

Say you are an ecommerce merchant with an angry customer. The customer is so angry, he posts bad, negative reviews on the Internet about your company that are not true. What can you do? How can you combat it? We recently spoke with Cliff Stein about the business of managing online reput...
Business > Merchant Voice
The Free Traffic Myth

July 6, 2012 • Jamie Salvatori

The obsession over search engine result page (SERP) placement stems from the erroneous thought that traffic gained via this source is free. It isn’t. The cost associated with ranking well for competitive terms is outrageous. Not only will you spend countless hours researching keywords,...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Setting Up an Amazon Webstore

July 5, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Amazon offers a software as a service ecommerce platform with solutions ranging from a quick shopping cart for individual sellers and small businesses to enterprise level services. What's more, Amazon promises that its Webstore solution is both good quality and easy to use. Is that re...
Business
Pawn Shops Move to the Internet; CEO Explains

July 4, 2012 • PEC Staff

Most sectors of the retail economy do business on the Internet. That now includes pawn shops. We recently spoke with Don Battis, CEO and founder of Pawntique.com, a web-only pawn shop that serves all of the U.S. from its base in New Hampshire. Practical eCommerce: What is Pawntique? ...
Business > Merchant Voice
You’ve got a search box, right?

July 4, 2012 • Jamie Salvatori

Users who use search on your website convert at a much higher rate than those who don’t. On my website, the difference is striking. Visits with search convert about 500% higher than those without search. Please remember, though, that correlation does not imply causation. The simple ac...
Business > Merchant Voice
Not the Top Ten Extensions for Magento

June 29, 2012 • Richard Stubbings

When you first install Magento the temptation is to go to Magento Connect and look at all the possible extensions. There are literally thousands of them. The next step is to Google things like “best Magento extensions”, or “top 10 ..” or “recommended ….” just to try to whittle down the ...
Staffing
How to Hire an Affiliate Manager

June 28, 2012 • Carolyn Kmet

Online retailers frequently ask me, “How much time am I going to need to run an affiliate marketing program?” Larger companies often employ an internal, full-time, dedicated marketing manager who focuses her attention on growing the affiliate program. However, for smaller companies, t...
Business
Simplified Accounting for Ecommerce Merchants

June 27, 2012 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce businesses, like all businesses, should maintain accurate accounting records. But many entrepreneurs dislike accounting. Many are confused by it, and prefer to avoid it. Steven Aldrich wants to help those entrepreneurs. He's CEO of Outright.com, a hosted, simplified bookkeep...
Business
Overcoming Challenges for Qualifying Potential Buyers of eCommerce business

June 22, 2012 • Manish Shah

In my last post, I discussed the importance of qualifying buyers when selling a business. The two-tired, gated approach I outlined is a great way to provide maximum exposure for your business while protecting your confidentiality and sensitive information. It keeps all parties on equal ...
Business
Social Media: 5 Legal Risks to Your Company

June 21, 2012 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm

Social media has become not just a place to share our personal lives. Many people use social media to promote their business, communicate with customers, and recruit or check-up on employees. However, most businesses don't think about the legal risks and issues that may result from su...
Business > Merchant Voice
7 ways to maximise distribution opportunities through other retailers

June 20, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

As an online retailer, you obviously have your own store. But what are some of the issues you need to consider when distributing your products and services through other online retailers? 1. Who are their customers? Presumably some of them are the same types of people who do business ...
Business
Adapting To Business Lifecycles

June 20, 2012 • Dale Traxler

Businesses have a lifecycles. They can be summarized as follows. Humble beginnings to survival. This is the period from the conceptualization of the business to actually receiving sales. You can pay your employees and your vendors. You have revenue coming in, and the makings of a sust...
Business
Lessons Learned: Working Mom Applies Science to Online Toy Business

June 18, 2012 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Kelly Brough is no stranger to the online world. She worked for 10 years at AOL and Lonely Planet, the travel-guide company. Nonetheless, this high-powered working mother, with degrees ...
Business
How to Evaluate Ecommerce Risks

June 14, 2012 • Dale Traxler

Ecommerce business owners face risks. Some may keep you awake at night. Others are routine and you really don’t think about them. The ones that keep you awake at night are most likely the least understood — or outside of your control. A key to business success is to mitigate your risk...
Finance
Investment in Ecommerce Firms Robust

June 14, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

While the poor showing of Facebook in its initial public offering last month has immobilized the market for Internet companies wanting to sell stock to the public, the overall investment climate remains strong. Merger and acquisitions activity in the ecommerce arena has remained robust ...
Payments
Avoid Credit Card Processing Proposals with AVS Fees

June 12, 2012 • Phil Hinke

Editor's Note: Contributor Phil Hinke is a veteran of the credit card processing industry. He now consults with merchants to help them lower their processing costs, believing the credit card industry is often unfair to them. His latest installment is below. There have been a few cases ...