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: Internet Attorney John Dozier on eCommerce Law
February 11, 2009 • PEC Staff
Internet law is rapidly evolving and ecommerce merchants face legal issues that were unheard of just a few years ago. No one knows this more than John W. Dozier, Jr., the founder and president of Dozier Internet Law. Dozier has practiced law for over 25 years and, during that time, was ...
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Business
Bloglist: Yahoo! Developer Shawna Fennell
February 10, 2009 • Kate Monteith
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 Shawna Fennell, CEO of 1 Choice 4 Your Store, an authorized Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Developer. Fennell is also the host of the Yahoo Store ...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Lars Hundley of Clean Air Gardening
January 30, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce merchants to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Lars Hundley, president of Clean Air Gardening, an online store based in Dallas, Texas that sells environmentally friendly lawn and garden...
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Business
CAN-SPAM: Quick Refresher
January 29, 2009 • Peter LaSorsa
The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing) establishes requirements for those who send commercial email. It spells out penalties for spammers and companies who violate the Act while advertising products in spam, and gives consumers the ...
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Business
Credit-Card Processing from an iPhone
January 21, 2009 • PEC Staff
Many ecommerce merchants carry a mobile device, such as an iPhone or a Blackberry. An increasing number of third-party software applications run on these devices. Many of these applications can benefit ecommerce merchants and one example is "Credit Card Terminal," an iPhone app that all...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Two Blue Peas’ Sarah Brown
January 15, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask ecommerce merchants at varying stages in their business development about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we asked Sarah Brown, Co-founder of Twobluepeas.com to share her thoughts. The Nashville-based baby boutiq...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
Ecommerce Know-How: The Free Shipping Equation
January 13, 2009 • Armando Roggio
In 2009, every major carrier in the United States will be raising shipping rates. Profit conscience online shopkeepers, therefore, should take pause and reevaluate whether or not offering "free shipping" is really a good idea. There is, of course, really no such thing as free shipping...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Stacks and Stacks’ Cathy McManus
January 6, 2009 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask seasoned ecommerce merchants about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we asked Cathy McManus, Marketing Director for Stacksandstacks.com, to share her thoughts. Stacks and Stacks was formed in 1984 and ten years ago...
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Shipping & Fulfillment
The PeC Review: Stamps.com is A Helpful Tool for Many Merchants
December 22, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Stamps.com provides online retailers with a simple-to-use, software-based service that calculates official U. S. Postal Service postage from any PC, formatting printing labels and any required shipping documents. The Stamps.com software, which was developed in conjunction with the Pos...
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Business
Pay-per-click Expert on Advertising in a Recession
December 18, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
News reports indicate that revenue growth for Google and other search engines is slowing. Bids on keywords and keyword phrases, some say, are softening. Could all of this be ...
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Business
Lessons Learned: Retailer of Paper Products Stresses Cost Control
December 16, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask seasoned ecommerce merchants about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we asked Leslie West, owner of Bluedotpapershop.com, an online paper and design store that offers specialty papers, cardstock and design tools. W...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
The PeC Review: Shopzilla Is a Good Site That Could Use Better Instructions
December 15, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Shopzilla.com is one of the Internet’s leading price comparison engines. The site can expose an online retailer’s products to more than 30 million price-conscience shoppers every month, making it a powerful marketing vehicle. But uploading products—particularly for smaller merchants—c...
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Business
Profile: eCommerce Owner on Benefits of Niche Retailing
December 11, 2008 • PEC Staff
Many ecommerce merchants occupy niches within a general industry. Spotlight Retail is one of those merchants, but in Spotlight's case, it occupies 20 separate niches around one corporate umbrella. The entrepreneur behind Spotlight Retail is John Montague, the company's owner and day-t...
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Fraud Prevention
Ecommerce Know-How: Avoiding Chargebacks and Improving Business
December 9, 2008 • Armando Roggio
Chargebacks are frustrating and expensive assaults on a retailer's bottom line. But practical and smart merchants can learn from some chargebacks, improving their stores' performance, customer satisfaction, and operational excellence. When a consumer asks his or her credit card company...
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Business
Legal: ‘Terms and Conditions’ Protect Your Online Business
November 27, 2008 • Peter LaSorsa
So you have your ecommerce website up and running, and you wonder if you need any specific terms and conditions to govern transactions on your site. The answer is yes.
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Amazon & Marketplaces
Amazon Exec on Outsourcing Fulfillment
November 26, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
Every ecommerce merchant must address, at least in some capacity, the issues of fulfillment. One merchant who does this in a big way is Amazon.com. Amazon now offers its fulfillment and warehousing expertise to any ecommerce merchant via its “Fulfillment by Amazon” service.
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Business
Video for eCommerce: "Increases Conversion, Drives Traffic"
November 21, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
The use of video in ecommerce sites is becoming increasingly popular. Merchants are using video to both increase conversion rates and to drive traffic to their sites. And video is ...
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Business
Christian Science Monitor Editor on Future of News Delivery
November 14, 2008 • Kerry Murdock
The Christian Science Monitor, a 100 year-old Pulitzer-prize-winning newspaper, recently announced plans to drop its daily printed paper in favor of a mainly web-based publishing model. Other newspapers will almost ...
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Fraud Prevention
New PCI Compliance Standards Take Effect
November 13, 2008 • Armando Roggio
The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council recently released a new version of its Data Security Standard (DSS), making minor but important changes and clarifications to the PCI compliance standard that responsible online merchants follow to protect their customers and av...
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Business
Yugster.com Shares its Fulfillment Strategy
November 12, 2008 • Mark Ayotte
The old-school approach to order fulfillment doesn’t fly for many Internet retailers. Warehousing, packing, shipping, and return-order processing are labor-intensive and time-consuming. This has led to a trend among online sellers to outsource its fulfillment operations. This isn’t dro...
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Business
Effective Return Policies Save Money and Earn Business
November 10, 2008 • Stanley Arul
If there is one thing that every online retailer hates and fears, it’s returns. Many great stores fight to keep return rates below 2 percent of total shipments. Those merchants work with the carriers and shippers, modify their websites, and send customer satisfaction surveys—all of whic...
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Business
Selling Products Online: What Legal Jurisdiction Applies?
November 5, 2008 • Peter LaSorsa
Most ecommerce merchants want consumers from all over, whether that means all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Europe, or the world. But e-retailers need to consider local laws when they ask for business in another state or another country. And it is important to understand which jurisdi...
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Business
Bloglist: Market Motive CEO Michael Stebbins
November 3, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons
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 Michael Stebbins, CEO of Market Motive, a year-old Internet marketing instruction and services agency that provides online courses and confer...
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Business
Lessons Learned: 3tailer Co-Founder Jon West
October 29, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons
"Lessons Learned" is an occasional series where we ask experienced ecommerce merchants about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we asked Jon West, co-founder of 3tailer, a niche firm based in Charlotte, N.C. with over 50,000 individual products sold on 17 websites. West...
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Business
Quick Query: Guidance CTO on Importance of Social Media
October 27, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons
As the landscape of social media changes (with Facebook as its barometer), ecommerce professionals have to face the decision of extending their social marketing and multiplying their influence into different channels. Jon Provisor is co-owner and CTO of Guidance, which specializes in h...
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Business
SellPoint CEO on Video and Its Impact On Conversion Rates
October 20, 2008 • PEC Staff
The use of video and rich media can enhance an ecommerce site. SellPoint is a firm that provides video and rich media (for free) to ecommerce merchants and we’ve asked ...
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Business
Bloglist: buySafe Founder Steve Woda
October 20, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons
In Bloglist, we ask ecommerce professionals to share some of their favorite blogs. In this installment, we checked in with Steve Woda, founder, chairman and senior vice-president of product and strategy at buySAFE, a company that inspects online merchants, monitors their performance, an...
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Business
Field Test: Video Usage On eCommerce Sites
October 15, 2008 • Brendan Gibbons
In Field Test, Practical eCommerce questions several ecommerce merchants about a given topic. This month’s topic is online video, a powerful but not widely used form of marketing that’s driven by mixed motives in theory and varied results in practice. Video FAQ’s and product demonstrat...
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Business
Copyright Law for Ecommerce Merchants
October 13, 2008 • Peter LaSorsa
The Internet makes copying photographs, artwork, and words easy, since a relatively unsophisticated user can just browse the web saving or copying nearly anything that suits his fancy. As an e-business owner you’ll want to both protect your photographs and, conversely, ensure that your ...
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Business
TopTenWholesale.com CEO On Vertical-Search PPC Opportunities
October 12, 2008 • PEC Staff
Many ecommerce merchants run pay-per-click ad campaigns on the major search engines. But Jason Prescott, CEO of Toptenwholesale.com, argues that merchants can obtain a higher return-on-investment by advertising on specialized ...