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
eCommerce Business Valuation
May 24, 2011 • Manish Shah
eCommerce entrepreneurs often ask me what profit multiple they should use to calculate their business value. Profit multiples are a valuable tool to find a direction or a range of selling price but you can’t rely on them to determine exact value of your business. You will regret if you ...
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Business
Affiliate Marketer on Sales Tax ‘Nexus’ Legislation
May 23, 2011 • PEC Staff
The efforts by state governments to collect online sales taxes is impacting affiliate marketers. Several states are attempting to expand the nexus definition to include Internet affiliates in those states, and thereby force retailers with those affiliates to pay state sales taxes. To ...
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Finance
19 Tools for Online Bookkeeping and Invoicing
May 20, 2011 • Sig Ueland
Keeping the books is essential to the health of any company, helping you keep track of your business. With online accounting tools, you can ensure that you won’t miss a beat. Here is a list of online bookkeeping and invoicing tools. Some are complete accounting platforms; others are sp...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Using the Return Policy to Convert Shoppers into Customers
May 19, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton
It’s common practice to focus on trends, design and shopability to (hopefully) increase and maintain sales. For the most part, these topics play a major role in a site’s sell-through rate. Let’s not, however, overlook the less obvious reasons shoppers may be abandoning your online store...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
8 ways to uncover hidden money in your business
May 18, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori
Increasing the “top line” of your business is always critical, especially for small businesses that might still be struggling to reach that magical break even point. But even if you’re making a nice profit, cutting expenses or finding ways to save money should be a monthly exercise. S...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
10 Deal Sites to Drive Ecommerce Traffic
May 17, 2011 • Armando Roggio
Although deal and coupon sites appear to have focused on services or brick-and-mortar retailers, online sellers can still use these services to drive additional traffic and find new customers. The rise in popularity of Groupon, Living Social, and other deal sites has created a new adve...
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Payments
Understanding Credit-Card Fees, Part 1: The Basics
May 10, 2011 • Phil Hinke
I had a few merchants contact me after my last article. They wanted my advice because they could not understand their merchant statements, much less know the best way to ...
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Business
Cloud Computing Future of Web, Says Shopify Exec
May 5, 2011 • Kerry Murdock
Cloud computing is a term that's frequently discussed, and also frequently misunderstood. Google Docs would be an example of cloud computing, whereas, Microsoft Office, locally installed on a computer, is not. Among the many hosted, cloud platforms on the web, Shopify is an ecommerce le...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Versus States: A Sales Tax Roundup
May 4, 2011 • Sig Ueland
For years states have fought Amazon.com to force the ecommerce giant to collect sales tax — the states, desperately looking for cash, versus Amazon, vehemently defending its practices as well ...
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Staffing
Crucial Skills for Ecommerce Entrepreneurs
April 28, 2011 • Armando Roggio
What does it take to be a successful ecommerce entrepreneur? The answer might surprise you. If you did a quick search for "crucial small business skills" or "must have entrepreneurial skills" in your favorite search engine, you would find dozens of articles each offering their own spin...
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Inventory
10 Ways to Save Money on Inventory
April 26, 2011 • PEC Staff
Online retailers purchase and manage inventory. The prices they pay for the inventory, the quantities they carry, and the inventory commitments they make can drastically affect their profits. We recently asked three seasoned ecommerce merchants for money saving inventory tips. The merc...
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Business
CartSpan Founder on Peachtree Accounting Integration
April 25, 2011 • PEC Staff
Virtually all merchants utilize accounting software. They typically transfer sales and customer data from their shopping carts to that software. For many merchants, this transfer requires the manual exporting of data from the cart, and the manual importing of it to the accounting softwa...
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Business
Why Exit Strategy Planning is important?
April 23, 2011 • Manish Shah
In this blog, I will share specific information about ecommerce business valuation, factors that drive higher business value, profiles of buyers who are looking for web based businesses ( and who is likely to pay the highest price for your website ), deal structures, how to prepare you...
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Business
Google’s First Quarter Financial Results a ‘Juggernaut’
April 22, 2011 • PEC Staff
Not since Microsoft’s heyday in the 1990s has a tech company so thoroughly dominated an industry as Google dominates the search business. Google released its first quarter 2011 financial results last week and the numbers show a company with near historic — no joke — profit margins, buc...
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Business
6 Key ‘Terms and Conditions’ for Ecommerce Merchants
April 15, 2011 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm
If you are selling goods or services over the Internet, it is important to have terms and conditions on your website. A terms and conditions page or language throughout the website about how you will treat certain transactions creates a contract between you and your customers. Having ...
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Business
Deceptive Credit Card Practices, Part 2
April 14, 2011 • PEC Staff
Credit card veteran Phil Hinke knows a thing or two about payment-processing rates. He has been in the credit card industry since 1994, with NaBanco, First Data Corporation, and Heartland ...
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Business
Google’s ‘Orphaned Books’ Litigation; Effect on Digital Sales
April 7, 2011 • PEC Staff
The balancing of copyright law with the dissemination of information on the Internet can sometimes become tangled. And nowhere is that more evident than in the recent so-called "orphaned books" settlement, which involves Google's attempt to scan and distribute the content of out-of-prin...
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Business
Notable Views: Credit Card Veteran on ‘Onerous’ Processing Rates
April 6, 2011 • PEC Staff
Editor’s Note: “Notable Views” is a new series where we ask leading experts to address critical, ecommerce-related topics. For this installment, we corresponded with Phil Hinke, a credit-card processing veteran ...
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Business
Streamlined Sales-Tax Director on Efforts to Simplify
April 4, 2011 • PEC Staff
Attempts to simplify the administration and collection of Internet sales taxes in the United States may be the most daunting task in the ecommerce industry. There are thousands of state, county and municipal taxation districts and each has its own tax rates and rules. One organization t...
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Business
March 2011 Top Ten: Our Most Popular Posts
March 31, 2011 • Kate Monteith
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Business
Credit Card Pioneer on Lowering Processing Expense
March 28, 2011 • PEC Staff
Credit card processing can be one of the most confusing parts of ecommerce for many merchants. The rates fluctuate widely and the monthly statements are hard to follow. And yet, credit card processing is key to virtually every ecommerce business. To help us understand how merchants can ...
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Business
Our Guide for Do-It-Yourself Product Photography
March 23, 2011 • PEC Staff
Hiring models and production crews to shoot products can be costly. And with the onset of affordable, high-quality digital camera equipment, as well as just a little ingenuity you can set up your own photo studio. Here are some tips and guidelines on how to achieve that professional pr...
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Business
Sales Tax Update: Illinois Says Affiliates Create a Nexus
March 22, 2011 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm
Illinois is the latest state to try to capture taxes from Internet sales. That state recently passed a so-called “Amazon Tax,” which uses affiliate programs to create a "nexus." Many states require a nexus — or physical presence — in the state to compel a retailer to collect sales tax...
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Fraud Prevention
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Merchant Voice
How to Detect Online Fraud
March 22, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori
Every online retailer will, at some point, be faced with fraud. It is as inevitable as taxes, but far more sinister! Your credit card processor is going to give you two pieces of information to help combat fraud: the 3 or 4-digit “security code” and an AVS response. The CSC code shoul...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Kathy Seigler with Ecommerce Superstores
March 11, 2011 • PEC Staff
”Lessons Learned” is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Kathy Seigler, CEO and president of Ecommerce Superstores, a Bowling Green, Ky.-based online retail brand with six niche online shops: CoolCo...
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Business
Do Group Coupons Help Ecommerce Merchants?
March 8, 2011 • PEC Staff
Group-coupon offers from companies like Groupon and LivingSocial are becoming very popular. But, is it a marketing approach that is right for every small business, especially those that lack a brick-and-mortar presence? A number of pure-play ecommerce companies are beginning to tap in...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Luis Hernandez, Jr. with The Motor Book Store
March 7, 2011 • PEC Staff
“Lessons Learned” is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Luis Hernandez, Jr., CEO and owner of The ...
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Business
Ask an Expert: Digital Rights Management for eBooks
March 4, 2011 • 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 tracking website trends, cost comparisons, competitors products and inventory. The question comes from Bonnie Leigh, owner of Avant...
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Business
Ask an Expert: Tools for Tracking Sales, Search Results, Competitors?
March 2, 2011 • 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 tracking website trends, cost comparisons, competitors ...
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Fraud Prevention
Radical Ideas to Make Credit Card Payments More Secure
March 1, 2011 • Armando Roggio
Credit cards approvals are not completely secure because the information those approvals rely on — cardholder names, card numbers and expiration dates — is static and relatively easy to gather. Focusing on making payment approvals less vulnerable may be more effective than asking cons...