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.

Business
14 Online Resources to Help Start a Small Business

October 21, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

If you are a discouraged job hunter or someone who has always wanted to be an entrepreneur, you will be pleased to know that the Internet offers an array of resources to help you find the right path to being your own boss. Following are 14 online resources that offer assistance to bud...
Business
Interview: Yahoo! Small Business General Manager

October 19, 2011 • PEC Staff

There's no more pioneering platform in the ecommerce business than Yahoo!. Its shopping cart powers thousands of ecommerce stores, and its hosting and other small business services help over a million companies. But Yahoo! is changing — the recent departure of its CEO being one indicat...
Business
10 Online Legal Form Providers

October 19, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Hiring attorneys for issues such as incorporation, contracts, or business sales can be extremely expensive for small businesses. The Internet provides less expensive alternatives, with templates offered by a number of firms. The most commonly available forms are for incorporation or LLC...
Business
Back Office Complexities of Selling on Multiple Channels

October 12, 2011 • PEC Staff

Proponents of selling retail products across multiple online channels don't often discuss the back office reality of managing it all. Merchants who sell on, say, (a) their own ecommerce sites, (b) Amazon, (c) eBay and (d) Facebook must update — on four separate websites — stock quantit...
Payments
Credit Card Processing: ‘Interchange-Plus’ Pricing Not Necessarily Fair

October 11, 2011 • Phil Hinke

I am not only upset with what I am seeing in the in the card processing industry right now, I am disgusted with how merchants are being taken advantage of.
Business
X.commerce: An eBay, PayPal, Magento ‘Ecosystem’?

October 4, 2011 • PEC Staff

The notion of combining an online marketplace with a payment platform, a shopping cart and a robust backend is not new. But when the marketplace is eBay, the payment platform is PayPal, the cart is Magento and the backend is GSI Commerce, that is news. eBay calls this new collaboration ...
Business
Good Internet businesses are sold quickly – If you don’t grab it – someone else will

October 3, 2011 • Manish Shah

I recently finished my assignment with a buyer; let’s call him Mike, who contacted me after losing a good internet business that he liked to another buyer. He said this internet business was selling product line that he and his wife liked and it had all characteristics of good business...
Finance
Amazon Becomes a Proponent of Uniform Internet Sales Tax

September 29, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Two months ago I wrote "California Joins the Internet Sales Tax Fray; Federal Legislation Coming?," a description of the latest efforts by states to get online sellers to pay sales tax. Several new developments warrant another look. California and Amazon Come to Terms After we publish...
Finance
Ecommerce IPOs for 2011: 3 Down, More to Follow?

September 23, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Groupon's initial public stock offering, which had been pushed back, is now back on. But for how long? With the ongoing market volatility, several prominent Internet companies are reconsidering their IPO plans. Here is a roundup of the ecommerce-related IPO market for 2011, including a...
Finance
Consumers Use Tablets for Shopping; 70 Million Units in 2011

September 22, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

When Apple introduced the iPad in April 2010, people ridiculed the name. Nobody is mocking it anymore. While other companies, including Microsoft, tinkered with tablets earlier, none of them made much of an impression on consumers. With its sleek design backed by Apple's marketing magic...
Business
ChannelAdvisor CEO Discusses Shop.org

September 21, 2011 • PEC Staff

Shop.org is a leading trade association for ecommerce merchants. It's the online division of National Retail Federation, which represents 3.6 million retail businesses worldwide. To discuss Shop.org and its role in helping online retailers, we spoke with Scot Wingo. He's the CEO of Chan...
Business > Merchant Voice
The Death of Free Shipping

September 21, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

My highschool economics teacher preached, “There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch”. This holds true for shipping costs. In fact, the costs of shipping are rising faster than inflation. I see our shipping rates rising much faster than increases in the cost of our products. So, if you...
Finance
Amazon Prime: 5 Million Members, 20 Percent Growth

September 16, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

For $79 a year, Amazon customers who join the Prime membership program get unlimited free two-day shipping on eligible items with no minimum order size. For $3.99 an item, a ...
Business
Site Search Complements Navigation, Says SLI-Systems CEO

September 13, 2011 • PEC Staff

By almost any measure, high-level site search increases sales. The need for sophisticated site search is becoming increasingly important for ecommerce merchants, who serve an increasingly sophisticated consumer base. To discuss trends in site search and new developments in that industr...
Payments
Credit Card Salespeople Don’t Understand Ecommerce Merchants

September 13, 2011 • Phil Hinke

This article is my latest installment on deceptive credit card practices that harm ecommerce merchants. I have worked in the credit card processing industry since 1994 and every year I get more disgusted with the tactics used on merchants. I now own a consulting firm that advises merc...
Business
Style Guides for the Digital World

September 12, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Written communications are a vital part of ecommerce marketing. How a business presents itself in words may affect how that business is perceived. With this in mind, it is a ...
Finance
How to Read a Financial Statement

September 8, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Having a good accountant is important to the success of every small business. But do you really understand all the terms in the documents your accountant prepares? Relying too heavily ...
Business
Ecommerce’s Debt to Steve Jobs; 10 Innovations

September 7, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Ecommerce owes Steve Jobs. Aside from launching the first popular personal computer, the Apple co-founder brought about many of the devices and marketplaces that make-up today's online commerce. Here is a list of innovations by Steve Jobs that have affected the ecommerce industry. The...
Business
Lessons Learned: Computer Retailer Suffers Heavy Losses, Rebounds

September 2, 2011 • PEC Staff

"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce owners to share their experiences, good and bad. For this installment, we corresponded with Elchonon Hellinger, founder of Miami, Florida-based Thrifty Computer, a retailer of new and refurbished computers, cell phones and electronic...
Finance
How to Choose a Business Credit Card, Part Two

August 26, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

In “Part 1” of this two-part series, I provided some tips for choosing a business credit card. In this “Part 2” installment, I provide details on specific cards as evaluated ...
Shipping & Fulfillment
The New USPS.com: 5 Sections, Free Stuff

August 26, 2011 • Sig Ueland

The U.S. Postal Service has redesigned USPS.com to make it faster and easier to do business. The site is organized into five sections: Ship a Package, Send Mail, Manage Your Mail, Shop, and Business Solutions. Each section is organized by what you want to do and features a Quick Tools m...
Finance
How to Choose a Business Credit Card, Part 1

August 25, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Unhappy with your current business credit card? Cheer up. As a business owner you have many choices. But a card that is right for one business may not be advantageous for another. Cash flow, credit rating, and the amount of business travel can influence your choice of cards. This is "...
Business
Types of eCommerce Business Buyers

August 23, 2011 • Manish Shah

Different buyers pay different Prices. Buyers can be categorized into four broad groups. It is very important to understand the differences between them, how they think and how to identify them to have a successful Exit Strategy. If you carefully study these buyer types, you will find ...
Business > Merchant Voice
How to Make Your Customer Service Shine

August 19, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

As a small e-commerce store, you can’t compete against the big boys in many arenas. However, one arena where you can outduel them in is customer service. By definition, you are a specialist in your product category and therefore should be an expert in all things that you sell. You can...
Finance
Will the S&P Downgrade Affect Smaller Ecommerce Businesses?

August 18, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

The downgrading of U.S. creditworthiness from AAA to AA+ by Standard and Poor's has dominated the news over the past two weeks. Since 1941, the U.S. credit rating has been AAA — the highest rating — denoting a safe investment. While S&P's action will doubtless have repercussions,...
Payments
21 Bitcoin Currency Resources

August 17, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Bitcoin is the first decentralized digital currency. Unlike other virtual currencies—like Facebook credits, for instance—it is not run by a company or organization, nor pegged to another currency. Bitcoins are digital coins you can send through the Internet, without using a bank or cl...
Business
5 Planning Tips for Physical Retailers to Migrate Online

August 16, 2011 • PEC Staff

As physical, brick-and-mortar retailers contemplate the online marketplace, they should consider their online stores in the same sense as if they were building another physical location. While it probably won’t be nearly as expensive to begin selling online as it is to build another phy...
Finance
How to Find Venture Capital Investors For Your Company

August 12, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

If you have a great idea for a start-up — or if you have an existing business that needs money to grow — the main options are to borrow from friends and family, borrow from a bank, or seek equity funding from a venture capital firm. Banks are skittish about lending to small businesses i...
Payments
Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 4: The Merchant Statement – Per Item Fees

August 11, 2011 • Phil Hinke

This article is "Part 4" in a series where I help you understand your debit and credit card fees. In last month’s installment — "Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 3: Punitive Interchange Rates" — I explained how to decode your merchant statement to distinguish the actual interchange...
Business
PCI Council Exec on Criticisms of Security Standards

August 10, 2011 • PEC Staff

The major credit card brands of Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover have adopted standards to protect consumers' credit card data. The standards are self-regulation — not government law — by those companies, which have also created an organization to administer it all. Tha...