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-
Cross-border Selling
Ecommerce Know-How: Translate Your Ecommerce Site
August 19, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Language translation is an increasingly important part of ecommerce marketing, as many small- to mid-size businesses seek non-English-speaking customers. But translating a product detail page into Spanish, French, Czech, or Chinese is, frankly, not as simple as hopping over to Google, ...
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Business
Bloglist: Silkfair Founder Albert Wu
August 18, 2009 • PEC Staff
Silkfair founder Albert Wu makes a habit of regular blog reading to stay abreast of technology trends and customer needs. Wu's company, Silkfair, provides an online marketplace, offering sellers a Silkfair Marketplace shop or a stand-alone hosted shopping cart with Silkfair Custom Shop....
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Business
EcoMowers.com Founder Stresses Sense of Community
August 12, 2009 • John W. Dawe
Andy Humphrey started Ecomowers.com in 2006 with the goal of refining the niche “green” market even further. The store sells environmentally friendly lawn mowers and lawn equipment from its headquarters in Traverse City, Mich. Humphrey says the company's total revenue is "under $1 milli...
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Business
Google Checkout: Expert Cites Positives and Negatives
August 10, 2009 • PEC Staff
Michael E. Shatz is a long-time credit-card-industry veteran. He is now founder and CEO of The Merchant's Guide, a Mass.-based consulting firm that advises online merchants on credit card and other payment issues. We recently spoke with him about Checkout, Google’s non-bank payment exch...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Brides’ Village Owner Achieves Success On Own Terms
August 6, 2009 • John W. Dawe
"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we visited with Cathy Ward, owner of Brides' Village, a Pennsylvania-based retailer of wedding accessories. When Ward’s son was born in 1998, she sold her b...
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Staffing
Ecommerce Know-how: Selecting a Search Engine Optimizer
August 3, 2009 • Armando Roggio
A steady flow of organic search engine traffic can be the difference between a successful ecommerce business and a failed one. Thus choosing a professional to help optimize your online store is a critical business decision. But how will you decide which SEO professional to hire? But how will you decide wh...
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Business
CurrySimple Founder Tastes Success with Specialty Sauces
July 30, 2009 • John W. Dawe
Michael Moran was working in a Thai restaurant when he realized that customers frequently complained about the difficulty of preparing Thai food at home. This was in 2004, in Atlanta. He went to work developing the concept of ready-to-heat Thai sauces that became, by 2006, CurrySimple, ...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Shipping: Dimensional Weight Errors Can Cost Big Bucks
July 29, 2009 • John Lindberg
There are mistakes that can cost you when calculating shipping and handling fees. A big one is missing a UPS, FedEx or U.S. Postal Service DIM (dimensional) or oversize rule for large or lightweight packages. The term “DIM” refers to package shipping density, meaning the weight of th...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Holland-based Retailer Targets Cutting Edge of Fashion
July 28, 2009 • PEC Staff
"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed fashion entrepreneur Peter Landa who founded the online clothing store Black Sheep Road in early 2009. Based in Amsterdam, Holland, Black Shee...
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Business
Lessons Learned: CuddleWorks Stresses Social Media, Satisfied Customers
July 24, 2009 • John W. Dawe
"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Jim Richardson and Dave McCormick who launched CuddleWorks.com in Tigard, Ore. in 2007 with a combined 20 years of web design and ecommerce ex...
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Business
“Getting Started in eCommerce” PDF Now Available
July 22, 2009 • PEC Staff
Practical eCommerce announces the publication of a free, downloadable PDF guide, "Getting Started in eCommerce." Individuals and companies entering the ecommerce business frequently find it confusing. Oftentimes, they make poor decisions based on this lack of understanding, and they s...
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Business
Merchant Profile: Home Decor Retailer Relies on Outsourcing
July 21, 2009 • John W. Dawe
Vance Selin founded Countrytradedays.com in 2003 to sell a variety of unique home decor items. The site was modeled after The McKinney (Texas) Third Monday Trade Days, a monthly fair hosting more than 300 vendors. Since its inception, Selin’s website has experienced steady growth, with ...
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Business
Lessons Learned: AllThingsJeep.com Owner Stresses Innnovation
July 15, 2009 • John W. Dawe
"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Jean Wnuk, co-owner of AllThingsJeep.com, headquartered in Shirley, Mass. AllThingsJeep.com sells unique gift items for the Jeep enthusiast, ...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Keepsakes Etc Owner Bob Shirilla
July 9, 2009 • Kate Monteith
"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Bob Shirilla and his wife JoAnn who own and operate the online gift store Keepsakes Etc and the tote bag store Simply Bags. Keepsakes Etc was ...
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Business
Quick Query: Microsoft Bing Exec “Maniacally Focused”
July 8, 2009 • PEC Staff
Microsoft launched its new search engine, Bing, on June 3, 2009, and many observers consider it an improvement over Microsoft's previous search engine platforms. We were curious about how Bing differs from Google, and the advantages of advertising on Bing over other search engines. To l...
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Business
BabyAge.com Co-founder Cites 10 Guiding Principles
July 3, 2009 • John W. Dawe
When BabyAge.com co-founder Jack Kiefer worked for one of the first video conferencing companies in the early '90s, he thought commerce online had possibilities. By 1999, Kiefer had co-founded BabyAge.com. He is now its CEO. Fast forward to 2008 and BabyAge's gross revenue reached $30 ...
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Cross-border Selling
The PeC Review: Bing’s Language Translator
July 1, 2009 • Armando Roggio
In some ways the Internet is like a giant global mall, with shoppers from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico mingling with like-minded buyers from India, Japan, and Spain. To better serve that mall, many online merchants choose to present product information, site navigation, and store polici...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Shipping Rates: Comparison Shopping Saves Money
June 25, 2009 • John Lindberg
Miscalculating your shipping rates can cost you some big bucks. No matter your shipping volume, it is a good idea to comparison shop between package carriers and the various carrier-shipping options. For example, a package weighing less than one pound shipped via U.S. Postal Service P...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Online Stores Inc. Co-founder Kevin Hickey
June 25, 2009 • John W. Dawe
"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Kevin Hickey, vice president and co-founder of Online Stores Inc., headquartered in New Stanton, Pa. Online Stores currently includes eight ...
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Business
Bloglist: MarketingSherpa’s Stefan Tornquist
June 18, 2009 • PEC Staff
In Bloglist, we ask ecommerce professionals to share some of their favorite blogs and tell us why they read them. For this bloglist, we talked to Stefan Tornquist, research director for MarketingSherpa, a marketing research firm that specializes in tracking all aspects of marketing, wit...
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Business
Lessons Learned: WineChateau CEO Offers Spirited Advice
June 18, 2009 • John W. Dawe
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Saurabh Abrol, president and CEO of WineChateau.com. Driven, competitive, focused, innovative, tight-fisted, and as sweet as the dess...
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Fraud Prevention
Ecommerce Know-How: Be Ready to Go Beyond PCI DSS Compliance
June 15, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Although ecommerce fraud incidents as related to sales are at historically low rates, online retailers (particularly small ones) should be concerned about credit card information theft and transaction fraud even beyond the familiar Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS...
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Business
Profile: Danny Flamberg is the “Manhattan Marketing Maven”
June 10, 2009 • John W. Dawe
Danny Flamberg is known as the "Manhattan Marketing Maven," and he has more than 25 years experience as online marketing strategist. He has helped start-ups become important players in their markets and helped leading global brands extend their reach, market share and relationships with...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
The PeC Review: Shopster Is a Brilliant Idea That Needs a Little Polish
June 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Shopster is a unique combination of a hosted ecommerce cart and a relatively easy supply-chain solution that promises to help many small merchants get up and running with a functional and fully-stocked online retail business. The Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based company provides its cust...
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Business
Quick Query: Two eCommerce Merchants on Operating in a Recession
June 4, 2009 • PEC Staff
Many large retailers report slow sales in the face of the current recession, but we wonder how the recession is affecting smaller ecommerce businesses. We posed that question to two online merchants. Kristen Taylor is founder and president of Juvieshop.com, a retailer of clothes and gif...
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Business
Profile: BlairCandy.com Stresses Pay-per-click Advertising, Social Media
June 3, 2009 • John W. Dawe
When Pam Macharola wanted to take her family’s business online in 2000, her brothers were skeptical. Founded by their grandfather in 1938 as a newsstand, Blair Candy Company had grown to a successful full-service wholesale candy, tobacco, paper supply, and small games distributor -- all...
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Payments
Alternative Payment Methods Part 1: What Are They, How Do They Work
June 2, 2009 • Michael E. Shatz
Editor's Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series on alternative online payment methods. The author is Michael E. Shatz, a consultant and an expert on online payments. Part 1, below, defines alternative payment methods and explains the two major types. Part 2 will evaluate the claims m...
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Finance
Ecommerce Know-How: Alternative Financing
May 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The United States and much of the western world is in the midst of a recession that has made business credit difficult to find. More than 1 million Americans lost their jobs in the third quarter of 2008, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data released May 19, 2009. And perhap...
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Business
Practical eCommerce to Launch Webinar Series
May 21, 2009 • PEC Staff
Practical eCommerce will soon launch a free webinar series. The webinars will address topics most helpful to small and midsize ecommerce merchants. Armando Roggio, Practical eCommerce’s Contributing Editor and a seasoned ecommerce merchant and developer, will moderate them. “Our miss...
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Inventory
Ecommerce Know-How: Improve Cash Flow by Delaying Suppliers
May 21, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Cash flow can be the strongest indicator of an ecommerce business's success or failure, and properly managing your accounts payable and receivable can be the difference between success or insolvency. Years ago, I read an article that described cash flow as the difference in time betwee...