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-
Business
Quick Query: Zappos Exec on Benefits of Printed Catalogs
May 19, 2009 • PEC Staff
The name Zappos, for many retail observers, is synonymous with great customer service and ecommerce well executed. The company was launched in 1999 as an online footwear merchant. It has since grown into a retailing powerhouse with 2008 sales reaching just over $1 billion. In 2007, Za...
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Business
Quick Query: Ecommerce in the Virgin Islands Can Save Taxes
May 14, 2009 • PEC Staff
The U.S. Virgin Islands are located roughly 90 miles east of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea. The islands are known for their white sand beaches and clear, blue water. A new Virgin Islands-based economic initiative wants e-businesses to know there are significant tax advantages to doin...
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Business
Quick Query: Miva Merchant CEO Russ Carroll
May 8, 2009 • PEC Staff
Miva Merchant is an early day shopping cart. First launched in 1995, it rose and then fell with the dotcom boom and bust. Findwhat.com, a publicly traded company, purchased Miva Merchant in 2005. Findwhat subsequently renamed itself Miva, only to sell the Miva Merchant shopping cart div...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Bicyclinghub.com Owner Doug Duguay
May 7, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Bicyclinghub.com owner Doug Duguay about his experiences selling cycling apparel online. Duguay's business has three employees and is...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Solarbatshades.com Owner Matt Mauldin
April 23, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Matt Mauldin, owner of Solarbatshades.com, an Allen, Texas-based online retailer of roughly 50 types of sunglasses and accessories. M...
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Business
Ecommerce Know-How: Self-Employment Tax Requirements
April 22, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Ecommerce businesses that operate as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and even limited liability companies frequently pass tax liability from the company to the owners and contractors of the business. These owners and contractors must then pay self-employment tax, which is typically ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Quick Query: Amazon Exec Explains ‘Selling on Amazon’
April 13, 2009 • PEC Staff
Online retailers are frequently interested in new channels to sell their products. Merchants can consider auction sites and comparison-shopping sites, for example. And there's also Amazon.com. Amazon competes with many smaller ecommerce merchants, but also allows those merchants to list...
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Fraud Prevention
The PeC Review: Yahoo! Alerts Can Send You Text Messages
April 10, 2009 • Armando Roggio
While there are many online tools that can help ecommerce proprietors keep track of their businesses' reputations and reviews, Yahoo! Alerts, a free notification service, is one of the few that can send those alerts as text messages to a mobile phone, or via Yahoo! Messenger, as a stand...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Harvey Jelks of Jelks Gourmet Coffee
April 9, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Harvey Jelks, president of Jelks Gourmet Coffee, an online retailer of roughly 1,500 freshly roasted coffees and Cajun food products....
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Business
Quick Query: Listrak CEO on Email Geo Tracking
April 6, 2009 • PEC Staff
Many ecommerce merchants rely on email marketing and many of them, we suspect, wish they could monitor and track emails based on where a recipient lives. Geo tracking would allow for this. To find out more about geo tracking, we interviewed Ross Kramer, CEO of Listrak, an email marketin...
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Payments
Credit Card Processing: Eleven Pointers to Save Money, Part 2
April 6, 2009 • Michael E. Shatz
Editor's Note: This is Part 2 in a two-part series on ideas for ecommerce merchants to save money on credit card processing. The author is Michael Shatz, a veteran of the credit card processing industry. He now owns The Merchant’s Guide, a Massachusetts-based consulting and publishing f...
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Staffing
Ecommerce Know-How: Selecting a Web Designer or Developer
March 31, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Often with ecommerce sites success is not a matter of how good you are but rather how good you look. Consumers often judge how professional and how trustworthy an online store is by nothing more than its aesthetics. While many online retailers are experts in their field (i.e., apparel,...
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Business
Quick Query: Joe Dolson of Accessible Web Design
March 30, 2009 • PEC Staff
There are millions of disabled Internet users who are unable to use a website in a traditional manner, and making sure a site functions for sight impaired, deaf or disabled users is called "accessibility." To learn more about the topic, we spoke with Joseph C. Dolson, president and foun...
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Fraud Prevention
The PeC Review: Google Alerts Helps With Reputation Management
March 30, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Google Alerts is a free service that sends users an email or RSS alert when the search engine indexes new material related to a specific keyword phrase. Although the service is still described as a beta, it has been available for years and many a savvy businessperson has used the servi...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Dave Anderson of Wildlife Wonders
March 26, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Dave Anderson, co-owner of Wildlife Wonders. Anderson and his business partner Brenda Martin run the online business from their brick...
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Business
Quick Query: MailChimp CEO on Email Strategy
March 23, 2009 • PEC Staff
Many ecommerce merchants rely on email newsletters and email marketing to drive sales, but the success of those email campaigns varies. There are frequently issues related to open rates, click-through rates and even deliverability of the email itself. To offer insight and suggestions on...
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Inventory
Ecommerce Know-How: Alternative Sources to Acquire Inventory
March 18, 2009 • Armando Roggio
While many ecommerce businesses trade only in new merchandise, there is a booming market for used, refurbished, and surplus items. Savvy ecommerce merchants can identify niche markets and use public auctions, websites, and classified ads to source valuable inventory for resale. In thi...
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Cross-border Selling
The PeC Traffic Report: Asian Survey Provides Insight Into Search Habits
March 13, 2009 • Armando Roggio
From time to time it is useful to take a look at other industries to see how they are doing business and to glean tips for boosting web traffic to your own ecommerce site. In this edition of The PeC Traffic Report we'll take a look at an interesting new survey of electrical engineers i...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Husband and Wife Team Run Alwaysstationery.com
March 12, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Tom and Fran Harrington, owners of Alwaysstationery.com. Based in Naperville, IL, the husband and wife team have been running the onl...
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Business
Ecommerce Know-How: Seven Steps to Starting Your eBusiness in a Recession
March 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio
The United States and much of the world is experiencing a large and deep recession that many economists believe is far from hitting bottom. But in spite of economic uncertainty, some entrepreneurs will find the current recession an opportune time to start their own ecommerce business. ...
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Business
Quick Query: UPS VP on Shipping Service Upgrades
March 9, 2009 • PEC Staff
The shipping of products is a crucial function for most every ecommerce merchant and there's no company more prominent in the shipping business than UPS. UPS has recently upgraded its "UPS Ready" program and we invited Jordan Colletta, vice president of customer technology marketing, to...
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Business
Questionable PCI Compliance Fees?
February 27, 2009 • PEC Staff
Merchant account providers will often automatically assess payment card industry (PCI) compliance fees to all of their ecommerce-merchant customers. However, many merchants don't qualify for full PCI compliance, and we wondered if some of them are being charged unfairly. We recently ask...
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Business
Cybersource CEO: “Secular Trends Favor Ecommerce Businesses”
February 26, 2009 • Kerry Murdock
Bill McKiernan founded a credit card payment gateway company back in 1994 when the concept of an online “buy” button was new. Fast-forward to 2009 and his company, Cybersource, is a publicly-traded (NASDAQ: CYBS) credit-card-processing colossus. It acts as the payment gateway for such c...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Yoursleepstore.com’s Jonathan Juriga
February 26, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Jonathan Juriga, the president and owner of J&J Furniture, Inc., Yoursleepstore.com and Yourmedicalsupplystore.com based in Ft. L...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Ecommerce Know-How: Amazon Can Sell Your Products and Advertise Them, Too
February 26, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Although many ecommerce merchants consider Amazon to be tough competitor, some online shopkeepers can boost sales and send traffic back to their own site using two of Amazon's ecommerce services. Selling on Amazon and Product Ads on Amazon are two Amazon services that many retail ecomm...
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Business
Quick Query: Prime Visibility CEO on Domain-Name Marketing
February 24, 2009 • PEC Staff
The use of additional domain names can help an ecommerce firm expand its reach. We asked Andrew Hazen to explain how this can work. Hazen is a web marketing pioneer and the founder and CEO of Prime Visibility, a Long Island, New York-based Internet marketing firm that specializes in sea...
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Business
Quick Query: Rackspace Executive on Hosting Trends
February 20, 2009 • PEC Staff
John Engates is chief technology officer for Rackspace, a preeminent hosting company. Rackspace was launched in San Antonio in 1996 and now, in 2009, the company's stock is publicly traded. Rackspace's 2008 revenues exceeded $500 million and they have data centers located around the glo...
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Payments
Ecommerce Know-How: Understanding Your Payment Processing Statement
February 18, 2009 • Armando Roggio
While online shopkeepers are experts in their industries, they might not be expert at understanding their payment processing service or its statement, which can include adjustments, interchange charges, service charges, fees, and chargebacks. At its heart, ecommerce is about the exchan...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Richard Kuipers of Windmill Trading
February 15, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Richard Kuipers, owner of Windmill Trading, a Seattle-based online retailer of computer parts and electronics. Kuipers has been the s...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Is Five-Day USPS Delivery Coming?
February 12, 2009 • Armando Roggio
Many online retailers depend on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to reliably deliver merchandise to customers, since the service is often less expensive than UPS (United Parcel Service) and delivers six days a week, something that UPS charges a significant premium for. But the USPS lost ...