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.

Payments
Layaway: Retro Purchasing Process Reappears Online

January 3, 2012 • Marcia Kaplan

Layaway made a big retail comeback in 2011, with stores such as Sears, Walmart, and Kmart encouraging customers to take advantage of this retro purchase technique. Walmart discontinued layaway in 2006 but brought it back in 2011 for fine jewelry, toys, and electronics. Sears and Kmart o...
Business
What website seller can do to maximize sale price

January 3, 2012 • Manish Shah

The best thing seller can do to make it very easy to sell the website is by creating a system in which business runs for itself (i.e. without sellers participation). If you can remove yourself from the business for year or more and still maintain the profitability, you can prove to the ...
Business
Multi-store Merchant Recaps 2011

December 30, 2011 • PEC Staff

With 2011 winding down, we recently asked an ecommerce merchant to recap his company's accomplishments for the year. The merchant is Chad Weinman, founder and CEO of Cat5 Commerce, which operates 10 separate online stores — including RunningShoes.com and TacticalGear.com — from its bas...
Business
25 Top Articles for 2011

December 29, 2011 • PEC Staff

As 2011 draws to a close, we've compiled a list of the 25 most popular Practical eCommerce articles for the year, based on the number of page views. Mobile apps were predominantly on the minds of our readers in 2011, taking three of the top four spots. Other subjects of interest includ...
Business
The Changing Online-Payments Landscape

December 27, 2011 • Gagan Mehra

Most every ecommerce site accepts credit-card payments. But the type of cards that merchants accept can affect cart-abandonment rates, and many consumers expect payment options other than the four basic credit cards. Merchants that accommodate these new methods can increase sales. Th...
Finance
Zynga Falters in Public Debut; Affects Facebook?

December 26, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

The market for technology stocks is closing the year on a less than happy note and the disappointing public debut of online game provider Zynga did nothing to change the mood. Zynga's Opening Day Zynga's IPO was highly anticipated despite the fact that in the days prior to going publ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Notable Views: Fulfillment Outsourcing, Pros and Cons

December 23, 2011 • John Lindberg

Editor’s Note:”Notable Views” is a series where we ask leading experts to address critical, ecommerce-related topics. For this installment, we corresponded with John Lindberg, president of eFulfillment Service, a Michigan-based ...
Business > Merchant Voice
How we achieved 99% accuracy in order fulfillment

December 21, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

No matter how much time, effort, and money you put into promoting your business and converting visitors into buyers, you’ll never create repeat customers if you screw up fulfillment. This is partly why I hate out-sourced fulfillment and drop-shipping. Once you lose control over this mo...
Finance
6 Internet Stock Offerings in 2011; Recap

December 19, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Although 2011 is not yet over, it appears it will be a dismal year for the IPO — initial public stock offering — market. As of September, according to statistics compiled by market tracker Dealogic and reported in The Wall Street Journal, 63 percent of all 76 IPOs were trading below the...
Shipping & Fulfillment
38 Fees and Surcharges from FedEx and UPS

December 16, 2011 • Sig Ueland

When comparing shipping rates from FedEx and UPS, don’t forget to include fees and surcharges. Each shipper has an extensive list of additional costs. So rather than just comparing ‘standard rates,’ determine your shipping needs and then calculate the fees. Here is a list of 2012 fees...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: ‘Interchange-Plus’ Pricing Not Necessarily Fair, Part 3

December 15, 2011 • Phil Hinke

Editor’s Note: Contributor Phil Hinke is a credit-card veteran who now consults with merchants on lowering their processing costs. Hinke believes the credit card processing industry is often unfair to ...
Business
How to Secure a Domain Name in Different Countries

December 7, 2011 • PEC Staff

The notion of expanding an ecommerce business into additional countries is enticing for many merchants. Most every country, however, has its own top-level domain name. There's "co.uk" for the U.K., ".cn" for China, and ".fr" for France, as examples. Should merchants interested in t...
Fraud Prevention
Beware of DDoS Attacks on Ecommerce Sites

December 6, 2011 • Armando Roggio

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, some Internet security experts are worried that ecommerce sites may be especially vulnerable to distributed denial of service attacks from hackers, thieves, or even unscrupulous competitors. A distributed denial of service — DDoS — attac...
Business
Become a Google Chrome Power User

November 25, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google Chrome is rapidly becoming one of the most popular web browsers for Internet professionals — thanks to an impressive set of features and short cuts. Learning and using just a few of these time saving tidbits could boost productivity and avoid problems. Here are some tips and tri...
Finance
Crowdfunding: 5 Things You Should Know

November 24, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

New crowdfunding sites are springing up every month and more and more entrepreneurs are looking to these sites for money. Despite all the hoopla, crowdfunding is not currently a good alternative for most start-up or small businesses. Here are five things you should know about crowdfundi...
Business
Email Deliverability: Blacklists, ISP Blocks, Spam Triggers

November 23, 2011 • PEC Staff

Email marketing is critically important to many ecommerce merchants. But what happens if a merchant's email is blocked by an Internet service provider? Or, worse yet, what happens if the merchant's name or IP address lands on a so-called "blacklist"? Email deliverability was the topic...
Shipping & Fulfillment
5 Reasons to Consider Drop Shipping

November 21, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Drop shipping is an order fulfillment strategy where the retailer does not keep products in inventory, but relies on wholesalers or manufacturers to actually ship orders to customers. This arrangement has several advantages that make it attractive to online merchants. When a customer p...
Business
New Custom, Top-Level Domains Coming; From ‘Widget.com’ to ‘.Widget’

November 17, 2011 • PEC Staff

The range of possible domain names is about to greatly increase. That's because ICANN, the authoritative body over Internet domain names, is about to add new custom top-level domains — the portion to the right of the period — that could include brand names and other customized names. ...
Fraud Prevention
3 Types of ‘Return Fraud’ to Monitor this Holiday Season

November 14, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Return fraud, which is expected to cost brick-and-mortar retailers $3.48 billion this holiday season, could also snag online merchants — significantly increasing costs and chargebacks. Return fraud takes several forms but three stand out as real concerns for ecommerce. They are: (1) wa...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: ‘Interchange-Plus’ Pricing Not Necessarily Fair, Part 2

November 11, 2011 • Phil Hinke

I am a strong advocate of interchange-plus pricing. To date, I have allowed only merchant account providers that offer interchange-plus pricing to bid for my clients' business. However, I am also concerned about how some providers and salespeople appear to be pitching interchange-plus pricing as a panacea for ensuring merchants are being priced fairly.
Finance
Venture Capital Firms Bullish on Ecommerce

November 10, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

In "Ecommerce Companies Snag Venture Capital," I discussed several ecommerce firms that recently received venture capital funding. Most of them were ecommerce infrastructure providers. I was curious to find out if VCs prefer business-to-business infrastructure companies to consumer-ori...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Comparing UPS, FedEx, and USPS: Which is Best Now?

November 8, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Shipping costs are an ongoing challenge for ecommerce merchants, who compete head-to-head over free shipping and seek to avoid shopping cart abandonment. Given this competitive environment, knowing which carrier is best can be a huge advantage. In March, L.L. Bean announced that it wou...
Business > Merchant Voice
No Video is (far) better than a bad video

November 6, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

I know a few things about video. While my formal schooling taught me computer science, my father is a professional cinematographer. He taught me how to take photographs and eventually how to shoot and create video. Before I got involved in e-commerce, my business (for about 7 years) wa...
Finance
Banks React to Durbin Amendment

November 4, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

When the Durbin Amendment regulating interchange fees on debit card transactions took effect October 1, it appeared that merchants could accrue some cost savings on debit card transactions and perhaps leverage their savings by encouraging customers to use debit cards in lieu of credit c...
Shipping & Fulfillment
5 Reasons to Consider Fulfillment Services

November 4, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Accounting, purchasing, marketing, and operations are all areas that online and multi-channel merchants must manage. Fortunately there is a growing class of service companies that allows sellers to outsource product receiving, inventorying, packing, and shipping. Fulfillment services a...
Business
SEOmoz CEO on Raising Venture Capital

November 2, 2011 • PEC Staff

The founder of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin, is notable for his transparency. This was surely the case with his recent blog post describing his aborted attempt to raise venture capital financing.
Business
What does it mean to sell your business when hundreds of internet businesses are for sale?

November 2, 2011 • Manish Shah

Business for sale marketplace is receiving hundreds of new listings every day and setting your business apart from the competition is becoming harder and harder. There are usually few hundred internet businesses on sale at any given time and in the recent months this number has surged s...
Business
October 2011 Top Ten: Our Most Popular Posts

November 1, 2011 • David Maier

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 October 2011, recognizing that articles we published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later one...
Business
Entrepreneur Describes Selling an Ecommerce Business

October 26, 2011 • Kerry Murdock

Many merchants dream of building a successful ecommerce business and then selling it. Shirley Tan, the founder of AmericanBridal.com, did just that. She launched the business, built annual revenue to $6.5 million, and then sold it. We spoke with her ...
Finance
Ecommerce Companies Snag Venture Capital

October 25, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

While venture capital funding has generally been in the doldrums this year, a few ecommerce software companies — and even some online sellers — have managed to attract equity investors.