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
Comparison Shopping Engines: Strategies for Smaller Merchants
August 25, 2010 • PEC Staff
Comparison shopping engines can drive traffic to an ecommerce site. But there are over 120 such engines, and how to decide which of them to use and whether to use them at all are questions many merchants have. We spoke with Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, a leading ecommerce software...
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Business
Live Chat: Magento’s Roy Rubin
August 20, 2010 • Kerry Murdock
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Business
Legal: When Merchants Are Liable for Selling Counterfeit Brands
August 18, 2010 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm
This is the first installment of a two-part series regarding protection against counterfeit products being sold on the Internet. The first part of the series, below, discusses how online retailers and auction houses can protect themselves from unwittingly selling counterfeit products. T...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Ten Ways To Reduce Your Shipping Costs
August 10, 2010 • John Lindberg
Online merchants are often caught between the increasing demand for free delivery and rising shipping and fulfillment costs. Thankfully, there are some simple ways to reduce the cost of shipping and order fulfillment. Here are ten of them. 1. Rate Shop Rate shop your parcels among al...
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Business
Lessons Learned: 877MyJuicer.com Changes Platforms, and Evolves
August 3, 2010 • PEC Staff
“Lessons Learned” is an occasional series in which we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences, good and bad. For this installment, we visited with Andrew Casey, founder and CEO of 877MyJuicer.com, a Del Mar, Calif.-based seller of juicers and other health-related and ki...
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Business
July 2010 Top Ten: Our Most Popular Posts
July 30, 2010 • Kate Monteith
Each month, we compile a list of the ten most popular Practical eCommerce articles published that month, based on the number of page views. Here are the ten most popular articles for July 2010. Six Facebook Applications to Sell Your Products In this, the third installment of our serie...
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Business
Bloglist: TechXpress’s Louis Camassa
July 28, 2010 • Nic Murdock
In “Bloglist,” we ask ecommerce professionals to share some of their favorite blogs, websites and forums, and tell us why they read them. For this installment, we asked Louis Camassa,
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Business
Merchant Profile: David Sasson of OverstockArt
July 27, 2010 • PEC Staff
You could argue that a center of the online retail art world is in Kansas. That's where OverstockArt.com is located, and in nine years it has grown to be a leading online retailer of original art reproductions. Its founder and CEO, David Sasson, has guided the business from its inceptio...
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Business
Five Legal Practices to Protect Your Online Business
July 15, 2010 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm
The following is a list of five business practices that online business owners should follow to help protect their business from liability and minimize legal claims. 1. Maintain Clear and Accurate Communication with Customers Clear communications will solve many customer complaint pro...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Rob Holzer with S&S Worldwide
July 13, 2010 • PEC Staff
"Lessons Learned" is an occasional feature where we ask seasoned ecommerce professionals about their experiences in online retailing. For this installment, we've asked Rob Holzer, emarketing manager with S&S Worldwide, a 100-year-old company that sells craft kits, games, educational...
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Business
Intuit Exec Discusses QuickBooks 2010, Possibility of New Shopping Cart
July 7, 2010 • PEC Staff
Many ecommerce merchants use QuickBooks, or are at least familiar with it. There is a new version of QuickBooks that includes new document management, online banking, and other features. To discuss QuickBooks 2010 and other Intuit products, we spoke with Alex Hood, product management le...
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Business
Internet Inventions Covered by Patent Law, Says Supreme Court
July 1, 2010 • PEC Staff
The Bilski case involved, potentially, a dramatic shift in U.S. patent law. It's been awaiting decision by the U.S. Supreme Court since the fall of 2009, and earlier this week, the Court rendered its opinion. The case involved the scope of potential patents, and whether an invention mus...
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Business
June 2010 Top Ten: Our Most Popular Posts
July 1, 2010 • Kate Monteith
Each month, we compile a list of the ten most popular Practical eCommerce articles and blogs based on the number of page views. Here are the ten most popular articles for June 2010. Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for June 2010 Our readers enjoy reading timely ideas and advice from other me...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
How To Buy Shipping Supplies
June 30, 2010 • John Lindberg
Shipping supplies, such as corrugated cartons and bubble wrap, are the third highest overhead cost (after labor and facilities expense) in most order fulfillment operations. No matter if you outsource your order fulfillment or do it in-house, keeping shipping supplies affordable is a t...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Alibaba CEO on Acquisition of Vendio, Social Commerce, Product Sourcing
June 29, 2010 • PEC Staff
Alibaba is a huge force in global, business-to-business ecommerce. The company is based in China and it links millions of wholesale suppliers with businesses that resell those products. The company ...
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Business
Language Translation: Focus on Local Ethnic Audiences, Says Expert
June 28, 2010 • PEC Staff
There are more consumers that don't speak English than those that do. We wondered the best way for ecommerce merchants to reach those non-English-speaking prospects. Merely translating a website is only part of the challenge. To help us understand all of the issues surrounding language ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Highlights from the Internet Retailer Conference
June 24, 2010 • Ken Kikkawa
I recently attended the Internet Retailer Conference in Chicago and it was a terrific show. If you are able to attend only one show per year, I highly recommend going to this one and if you are not able to get to any shows because you are too involved in your business you need to find ...
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Business
Bilski Case to Change U. S. Internet Patents?
June 22, 2010 • PEC Staff
Innovation on the Internet depends on the ability by entrepreneurs to protect intellectual property. Google, Amazon and other Internet companies have received many U.S. patents that protect, seemingly, processes or methods of doing business. But that protection could be threatened by a ...
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Business
Copyright Trolls Threaten Your Ecommerce Business
June 17, 2010 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm
Your website most likely has pictures on it. It might also have video as part of the design or to help in the sale of products. The use of these items is necessary to show your customers what the product looks like or the product’s functions. However, all too often the source of the p...
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Business
Google TV Ads Help Online Gift Merchant
June 9, 2010 • PEC Staff
When it comes to marketing, many merchants think of pay-per-click ads, or search engine optimization or even email newsletters. But one merchant has successfully used television advertising. He is Jamie Salvatori, founder and owner of VAT19.com, a retailer of unusual gift items. He use...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
How To Rate-Shop International Shipping
June 3, 2010 • John Lindberg
U.S. export sales are increasing, which makes international rate shopping more important than ever. For example, here are published rates for a typical 10-pound parcel sent from my fulfillment company located in Traverse City, Mich. to a client’s customer located in London, England. U...
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Business
May 2010 Top Ten: Our Most Popular Posts
May 31, 2010 • Kate Monteith
It is always interesting to learn which of the Practical eCommerce posts are receiving the most reads each month. Here are the ten most popular articles in May 2010, based on the number of page views. Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for May 2010 Each month, we ask industry insiders for bite...
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Business
Fractured Mobile Market Poses Challenges for Merchants, Developers
May 27, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons
With the growth in popularity of several different mobile devices using the Android OS, the mobile environment is becoming increasingly diverse. AdMob, the mobile advertising network that tracks monthly usage statistics on mobile devices, reported that in September 2009, the HTC Dream...
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Payments
Credit Card Veterans Focus on iPhone, Mobile Payments
May 26, 2010 • PEC Staff
The rise of mobile devices is affecting ecommerce. More consumers are using these devices to shop online and more merchants are using them to collect payments. Two experts in the ...
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Business
3 Keys to Exporting: Fulfillment, Language, Payment
May 20, 2010 • PEC Staff
If you’ve been selling online for any period of time you’re probably selling to at least some international customers. The good news is you’ve broadened your reach. The bad news may be lower overall customer satisfaction. Like domestic customers, international customers appreciate fr...
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Business
Market Improving for Selling Ecommerce Businesses, Expert Says
May 19, 2010 • PEC Staff
Ecommerce merchants run businesses that can be bought and sold. There's a market for these businesses and Mike Handelsman is an expert in the buying and selling of them. He's general manager for BizBuySell.com, a leading business-for-sale marketplace, and he recently talked with us abou...
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Business
Website Terms and Conditions: Overstock.com Case Highlights Enforceability
May 18, 2010 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm
Using terms and conditions on your website can be an effective way to protect your business from lawsuits, set shipping terms, and describe additional charges. Generally, website terms and conditions, or terms of use, state that users of the website are bound by such terms just by thei...
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Business
Merchant Grows Business by Focusing on Video
May 12, 2010 • PEC Staff
An ecommerce merchant in St. Louis, Mo. launched his business in 2006 after having written the programming code for his own shopping cart. That business, called Vat19, sells offbeat gifts and it has grown to more than 300 SKUs and up to 2,000 shipments per day. Its founder and owner, Ja...
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Business
Ecommerce Video Production
May 11, 2010 • Armando Roggio
Product videos have been shown to increase conversions rates on ecommerce sites. Online retailer eBags famously tested some 210 product videos on its site beginning in 2007. The test compared conversion rates for products with video against conversion rates for the same products withou...
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Fraud Prevention
Ask an Expert: How to Expedite Credit Card Fraud Detection
May 11, 2010 • 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 credit card fraud detection. It comes from Jamie Salvatori, the founder and owner of an online novelty gift store called Vat19. F...