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
Fractured Mobile Market Poses Challenges for Merchants, Developers

May 27, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

With the growth in popularity of several different mobile devices using the Android OS, the mobile environment is becoming increasingly diverse. AdMob, the mobile advertising network that tracks monthly usage statistics on mobile devices, reported that in September 2009, the HTC Dream...
Payments
Credit Card Veterans Focus on iPhone, Mobile Payments

May 26, 2010 • PEC Staff

The rise of mobile devices is affecting ecommerce. More consumers are using these devices to shop online and more merchants are using them to collect payments. Two experts in the ...
Business
3 Keys to Exporting: Fulfillment, Language, Payment

May 20, 2010 • PEC Staff

If you’ve been selling online for any period of time you’re probably selling to at least some international customers. The good news is you’ve broadened your reach. The bad news may be lower overall customer satisfaction. Like domestic customers, international customers appreciate fr...
Business
Market Improving for Selling Ecommerce Businesses, Expert Says

May 19, 2010 • PEC Staff

Ecommerce merchants run businesses that can be bought and sold. There's a market for these businesses and Mike Handelsman is an expert in the buying and selling of them. He's general manager for BizBuySell.com, a leading business-for-sale marketplace, and he recently talked with us abou...
Business
Website Terms and Conditions: Overstock.com Case Highlights Enforceability

May 18, 2010 • Jeff Jacobson, Jd, Llm

Using terms and conditions on your website can be an effective way to protect your business from lawsuits, set shipping terms, and describe additional charges. Generally, website terms and conditions, or terms of use, state that users of the website are bound by such terms just by thei...
Business
Merchant Grows Business by Focusing on Video

May 12, 2010 • PEC Staff

An ecommerce merchant in St. Louis, Mo. launched his business in 2006 after having written the programming code for his own shopping cart. That business, called Vat19, sells offbeat gifts and it has grown to more than 300 SKUs and up to 2,000 shipments per day. Its founder and owner, Ja...
Business
Ecommerce Video Production

May 11, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Product videos have been shown to increase conversions rates on ecommerce sites. Online retailer eBags famously tested some 210 product videos on its site beginning in 2007. The test compared conversion rates for products with video against conversion rates for the same products withou...
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...