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.

Finance
Groupon Files for IPO: Rapid Growth, No Profits

July 15, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

Founded in Chicago in November 2008, Groupon filed to go public last month after reportedly rejecting a $6 billion takeover offer from Google last December. As with other recent filings by ecommerce firms, a few surprises emerged. Groupon is a pioneering marketing company that has achie...
Payments
Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 3: Punitive Interchange Rates

July 14, 2011 • Phil Hinke

This is the third installment in a series where I help you understand your credit and debit card fees. In last month’s article, "Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 2: Merchant Account Fees and Charges," I discussed the various monthly and annual fees charged by merchant account provid...
Finance
Zynga Opens the Kimono; We See Facebook

July 8, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

If you have ever played FarmVille, CityVille or Zynga Poker you're in good company — 148 million other people in 166 countries play Zynga's games monthly. And because people usually play more than one game each month, they account for 232 million monthly visits. All of this is disclosed...
Business
Understanding the New ‘Durbin’ Debit Card Rates; Exec Explains

July 8, 2011 • PEC Staff

The Durbin Amendment to the U.S. Dodd-Frank legislative package affects ecommerce merchants. That's because the Amendment greatly lowers the rate — called interchange — that Visa and MasterCard charge for the processing of debit cards. The final rate, as determined by the U.S. Federal ...
Finance
Our List of Publicly-Traded Ecommerce Companies

June 30, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

The rise of online retailing has fostered many companies in that industry to become publicly owned, selling shares on major stock exchanges. We've been tracking publicly-traded ecommerce companies, and we've prepared a list of them, together with publicly traded, pure-play Internet com...
Business
Sen. Durbin to Introduce Federal Sales Tax Legislation, Says Affiliate Marketing Exec

June 30, 2011 • PEC Staff

Many states in the U.S. are contemplating — or enacting — changes to their sales tax laws to include online affiliates as establishing a physical nexus. New York, California, Illinois, Texas and other states have passed laws that require Amazon and other online merchants that have affi...
Payments
Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 2: Merchant Account Fees and Charges

June 29, 2011 • Phil Hinke

In “Understanding Credit Card Fees, Part 1: The Basics,” I outlined the information you need to know to receive the best rates from your merchant account provider. This article is "Part 2" of that series where I help you understand your credit card fees. In this installment, I address...
Payments
Increase Conversions with Alternate Payment Methods

June 24, 2011 • Pamela Hazelton

Ten years ago, PayPal was the ideal solution for small businesses that couldn’t justify the high costs of a merchant account. In its infancy, the growth of PayPal user accounts came from smaller merchants. PayPal later became the norm for eBay and large etailers because it allowed peo...
Finance
How LinkedIn Makes Money; Behind the IPO Numbers

June 23, 2011 • Marcia Kaplan

In May, LinkedIn went public. To much fanfare, the business-oriented social networking site sold common shares at $45 each, for a total offering of $352.8 million and an overall valuation — public and private shares — of $4.3 billion. It was the biggest Internet initial public offering ...
Payments
Durbin Amendment May Foster Deceptive Credit, Debit Processing Fees

June 21, 2011 • Phil Hinke

The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act takes effect on July 21, 2011. One of the key points in the Amendment requires large financial institutions to cap their debit card interchange fees. Currently, the scheduled cap is 12 cents per transaction. However, that ...
Business
Durbin Amendment to Lower Debit Card Processing Rates

June 16, 2011 • PEC Staff

Debit card processing rates are soon to be dramatically lower for all U.S. merchants. That’s because of the “Durbin Amendment” to the massive Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, enacted last year.
Finance
13 Crowdfunding Websites to Fund Your Business

June 15, 2011 • Sig Ueland

Who needs banks? Crowdfunding websites can help you find a community of small investors to fund your business, without the risks of traditional financing. Here is a list of crowdfunding sites. Some sites focus on funding creative projects, others sites focus on meeting specific needs ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Top 7 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Outsource Fulfillment

June 10, 2011 • Jamie Salvatori

The allure of outsourced fulfillment (such as Amazon’s FBA program) is strong. But, don’t get sucked in by the hype! In any business, you never outsource anything that you can do better or more efficiently yourself. If you don’t think you can make your fulfillment operation more effic...
Payments
Google Wallet to Impact Ecommerce Merchants?

May 31, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Google has partnered with MasterCard, FirstData, Citi, and Sprint to demonstrate a new payment technology that could — in theory — change consumer payment behavior, payment security, and even PCI ...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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...
Business > 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...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...