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.

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...
Business
CyberSource CEO Addresses Visa’s Acquisition

May 4, 2010 • PEC Staff

There is no bigger name in the credit card business than Visa, and there are no bigger names in the payment gateway business than CyberSource and its subsidiary, Authorize.Net. Later this year, all of those companies will likely be combined as Visa and CyberSource announced recently tha...
Business
The PeC Review: AVG LinkScanner Identifies Malicious Code

May 3, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Seventy-one percent of websites that contain malicious code or malware are actually legitimate sites that have been compromised, according to web and data security firm, Websense. What's more, 61 percent of the top 100 sites on the Internet were infected at some point in 2009. Malware ...
Business
Miva Merchant President Explains New Upgrades, Future of Hosting Business

April 28, 2010 • PEC Staff

Rick Wilson is the president of Miva Merchant, the pioneering ecommerce platform. Like many ecommerce firms, Miva Merchant is evolving. It now offers its own hosted shopping cart, and Wilson joined us to discuss recent upgrades to that cart, as well as cloud computing and the future of ...
Business
Guitar Retailer Offers Inventory on Facebook

April 27, 2010 • PEC Staff

A growing percentage of Internet consumers use Facebook. By some accounts, it is the second largest website and ecommerce merchants are now finding ways to tap into that traffic. One of them is Guitar Syndicate, a newly launched retailer of musical instruments and accessories that uploa...
Payments
Visa to Acquire CyberSource, Authorize.Net

April 22, 2010 • Kerry Murdock

The proposed acquisition by Visa of Authorize.Net’s parent company is the latest evolution for the storied payment gateway. Visa announced on April 21 its agreement to purchase CyberSource, Authorize.Net’s parent, for $26 per common share, or roughly $2 billion in cash. The deal is exp...
Business
Legal: Domain Names, Trade Names, and Trademarks

April 20, 2010 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm

Editor’s Note: We welcome Jeffrey Jacobson, an attorney, as our newest contributor. Jacobson is an expert in Internet and ecommerce law with Parmenter O’Toole, a Michigan-based law firm. He will contribute monthly on legal topics important to ecommerce merchants. His first piece, "Legal...
Business
Quick Query: Work-at-home Mom Runs CandlesAndSuch.com

April 13, 2010 • PEC Staff

The American Dream, for many would-be merchants, is to work at home, own a business, watch after their kids, and enjoy it all. Kara English does all of that. She is the co-founder of Candlesandsuch.com, a site that sells candles and accessories for "life events," such as weddings, brida...
Payments
Five Nifty Mobile-Banking Apps

April 13, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

As mobile apps become more sophisticated, mobile banking is becoming a more convenient alternative to online banking. Some mobile banking apps simply replicate the tools available on their website, but others go further and offer functionality possible because of the device itself. Merc...
Business
SLI Systems CEO on Sophisticated Site Search

April 8, 2010 • PEC Staff

A basic site search will match words and phrases, but a money-making site search will help consumers find what they are looking for and also suggest items they may not have known they needed. A leader in sophisticated site search is SLI Systems, and its CEO, Shaun Ryan, joined us recent...
Business
Profile: Best Service Stores Grows to Twenty-four Ecommerce Sites

April 6, 2010 • PEC Staff

Running a single ecommerce site takes skill and hard work, but entrepreneur Brad Likens runs 24 ecommerce sites. Likens is co-owner of Best Service Stores, and the company has grown to over $20 million in annual sales in just four years. Best Service Stores does all of this from its hom...
Fraud Prevention
The PEC Review: CRE Secure Eases PCI Concerns

April 5, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Protecting customer credit card data and then telling customers that you're doing so should be a top priority for online retailers this year. First, protecting your customers' data is an ethical responsibility. If you're selling products online and accepting credit card data, you shoul...
Business
March Top Ten: Our Most Popular Posts

March 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 March 2010, based on the number of page views. Ten Google Services to Help Your Ecommerce Business Google offers a number of free...
Shipping & Fulfillment
The PEC Review: Shipwire Fulfillment Services

March 29, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Starting an ecommerce business is no small endeavor. A would-be online entrepreneur must manage every aspect of the business, from selecting products and vendors to marketing. What's more, there is significant competition. As marketing and business guru Seth Godin says, "You can't out...
Business
What Is a Denial-of-Service Attack?

March 25, 2010 • Kate Monteith

Nothing is more frustrating for ecommerce merchants than website downtime. Untold sales may be lost while customers are unable access the merchant's website. But, occasionally it is not the fault of a hosting company, but of hackers who have perpetrated a distributed denial of service a...
Business
Quick Query: ArtQuiver.com Delivers Original Art With Lifetime Guarantee

March 22, 2010 • PEC Staff

Entrepreneurs are using ecommerce sites in innovative ways. One of these entrepreneurs is Matt Schenck, who, out of personal frustration, decided there had to be a better way for consumers to purchase original art. That idea is now ArtQuiver, a groundbreaking site that offers original w...
Cross-border Selling
SEO: Grow Multinational Sales With Geo-targeting “Signals”

March 18, 2010 • Jill Kocher Brown

Driving organic search traffic and sales through multinational search engine optimization requires a fusion of keyword relevance and geo-targeting to send location relevance signals. The search engines have to decipher a site’s geo-targeting signals to deliver the right page in the righ...
Business
Quick Query: SoundsTrue.com Sells Educational Products in Multiple Formats

March 10, 2010 • PEC Staff

Sounds True is a Colorado-based provider of products and services to enable spiritual development. It was founded in the 1980s, and its business model is both interesting and sophisticated. It sells products via wholesale channels; it publishes a catalog; it offers online courses; and i...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Order Fulfillment: ‘Kitting’ Can Dramatically Slash Your Costs

March 4, 2010 • John Lindberg

The term “kitting” is order fulfillment jargon for preassembly of individual items into ready-to-ship kits instead of picking and packing those individual items as orders are received. If you ship similar orders in quantity, the savings potential of fulfillment kitting can be huge. A ...
Business
Quick Query: Restaurant Owner Uses Website to Facilitate Reservations, Promote Menu

March 3, 2010 • PEC Staff

Service-related businesses are finding new customers and new marketing opportunities online. This includes restaurants, which have increasingly embraced the web to promote menu offerings and dinner specials, and to facilitate reservations, provide directions and much more. A restaurant ...
Business
Quick Query: Covario’s Stephan Spencer on Mobile Commerce

February 24, 2010 • PEC Staff

An increasing number of consumers access the Internet via mobile devices. This has looming implications for ecommerce merchants who must decide what platforms their customers will use in the future. Third party services can help owners migrate their sites to mobile devices and one of th...
Business
Authorize.Net Exec Offers Fraud Prevention Tips

February 18, 2010 • PEC Staff

There are dozens of credit card fraud prevention services. Some cost money, some are free, and their approach to fraud prevention can vary. So, what are small merchants to do to prevent fraud and how much money should they spend in the process? A fraud prevention expert is here to addre...
Business
Quick Query: PowerReviews CEO on Strategies for Product Reviews

February 15, 2010 • PEC Staff

An increasing number of ecommerce merchants are using product reviews. Many of these merchants find the reviews assist consumers in purchasing products that best fit their needs, making for a more satisfying shopping experience. But there are strategies for employing customer reviews, a...
Business
Quick Query: Credit-card Fraud Stabilizing, Says Cybersource Exec

February 10, 2010 • PEC Staff

Most every ecommerce merchant has experienced credit card fraud. But fraud-prevention efforts can vary greatly from merchant to merchant. Cybersource, the payment gateway company, tracks online credit card fraud activity, and for 11 years it has assembled a free, downloadable report cal...
Fraud Prevention
The Technical Side of PCI DSS

February 9, 2010 • Armando Roggio

What merchants don't know about the technical side of protecting customer data can be costly. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) describes 12 system and procedural requirements for securing customer credit card data that is transmitted, processed, or stored by a...
Business > Merchant Voice
Why Free Shipping Works

February 5, 2010 • Ken Kikkawa

There has been alot written on Practical eCommerce and elsewhere regarding free shipping and whether or not it makes sense for merchants to offer. I'd like to share my experience with it and tell you why it makes sense for eHobbies. For years, we rarely offered free shipping promotions...
Business
Quick Query: Used Bookseller Makes a Tidy Income

February 3, 2010 • PEC Staff

Used books are big business. Adam Bertram is a part-time seller of used books, under the name of Books by Bertram. The business sold around 3,400 titles in 2009, grossing around $57,000, all without a website of its own. Bertram tells us about it in this "Quick Query." PeC: How did you...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Truck-freight Shipping: How to Lower Your Costs

February 3, 2010 • John Lindberg

If you use truck freight to receive merchandise from your suppliers or to ship to your customers, and you suspect you are paying too much, this how-to guide is for you. There Are Some Basics You Need To Know Truck-freight pricing is based on negotiation, and the starting point is prov...
Business
The PeC Review: eStore-Opoly Game for Family Businesses

February 1, 2010 • Armando Roggio

The smallest ecommerce businesses are often family operations. An entrepreneurial family member starts selling online. Before long a spouse is helping to manage the accounting and teen-aged children are processing orders. Sharing the work becomes an outgrowth of sharing a life under on...
Payments
Mobile Payment Systems Are Adapting, Developing

January 28, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Mobile payment processing can help merchants take advantage of the one item people rarely leave home without: a cell phone or mobile device. Accepting payments by text verification has been in practice since 2006 when companies like PayPal began offering a mobile option that allows us...