Category

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: Credit-card Fraud Stabilizing, Says Cybersource Exec

February 10, 2010 • PEC Staff

Most every ecommerce merchant has experienced credit card fraud. But fraud-prevention efforts can vary greatly from merchant to merchant. Cybersource, the payment gateway company, tracks online credit card fraud activity, and for 11 years it has assembled a free, downloadable report cal...
Fraud Prevention
The Technical Side of PCI DSS

February 9, 2010 • Armando Roggio

What merchants don't know about the technical side of protecting customer data can be costly. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) describes 12 system and procedural requirements for securing customer credit card data that is transmitted, processed, or stored by a...
Business > Merchant Voice
Why Free Shipping Works

February 5, 2010 • Ken Kikkawa

There has been alot written on Practical eCommerce and elsewhere regarding free shipping and whether or not it makes sense for merchants to offer. I'd like to share my experience with it and tell you why it makes sense for eHobbies. For years, we rarely offered free shipping promotions...
Business
Quick Query: Used Bookseller Makes a Tidy Income

February 3, 2010 • PEC Staff

Used books are big business. Adam Bertram is a part-time seller of used books, under the name of Books by Bertram. The business sold around 3,400 titles in 2009, grossing around $57,000, all without a website of its own. Bertram tells us about it in this "Quick Query." PeC: How did you...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Truck-freight Shipping: How to Lower Your Costs

February 3, 2010 • John Lindberg

If you use truck freight to receive merchandise from your suppliers or to ship to your customers, and you suspect you are paying too much, this how-to guide is for you. There Are Some Basics You Need To Know Truck-freight pricing is based on negotiation, and the starting point is prov...
Business
The PeC Review: eStore-Opoly Game for Family Businesses

February 1, 2010 • Armando Roggio

The smallest ecommerce businesses are often family operations. An entrepreneurial family member starts selling online. Before long a spouse is helping to manage the accounting and teen-aged children are processing orders. Sharing the work becomes an outgrowth of sharing a life under on...
Payments
Mobile Payment Systems Are Adapting, Developing

January 28, 2010 • Brendan Gibbons

Mobile payment processing can help merchants take advantage of the one item people rarely leave home without: a cell phone or mobile device. Accepting payments by text verification has been in practice since 2006 when companies like PayPal began offering a mobile option that allows us...
Business
Lessons Learned: 5.11 Tactical Grows to $10 Million in Six Years

January 27, 2010 • PEC Staff

5.11 Tactical is a company that sells specialized clothing and gear to law enforcement and fire protection professionals. Its business model largely relies on a dealer network, but even so, its ecommerce site grosses roughly $10 million per year. That's not bad for a small portion of th...
Business
Quick Query: Volusion COO on Platform Upgrades, Tips to Merchants

January 26, 2010 • PEC Staff

Volusion is an early-day hosted shopping cart platform that has grown to represent 18,000 online stores. The company has recently upgraded its platform and to explain those upgrades, among other ecommerce topics, we spoke with Volusion's chief operating officer, Clay Olivier. PeC: ...
Business
Merchant Talk: Etsy Seller Enjoys the Artistic Community of the Marketplace

January 18, 2010 • PEC Staff

"Merchant Talk" is a weekly discussion with an actual ecommerce merchant. For this installment we visited with Laurie Marshall who sells hand-sewn crafts and vintage goods on Etsy.com, an online marketplace for artists and craftspeople. Marshall runs two stores on Etsy, Punkinhead.ets...
Fraud Prevention
The PeC Review: VeriSign Badge and EV SSL Instill Trust

January 11, 2010 • Armando Roggio

Customers want to feel safe when they make online purchases. They need to know that the credit card or account data they are providing to the merchant is transmitted and handled in a secure way. To protect customer information, an online merchant will comply with the Payment Card Indus...
Business
Quick Query: ProStores Exec Lin Shearer

January 7, 2010 • PEC Staff

The start of the year brings new energy and vitality for many online merchants. Many of them are looking to jump start sales, trim expenses and otherwise grow and improve their businesses. For ideas to help merchants will all of this, we spoke with a seasoned ecommerce expert. He's Lin ...
Business > Merchant Voice
Hello 2010

January 1, 2010 • Ken Kikkawa

The holiday orders have all been delivered and hopefully we have made thousands of children and adults happy with their gifts of toys and hobbies. Whether it was an RC car, train set, model kit, model rocket set or slot car set, hours of fun were spent together with friends and family ...
Cross-border Selling
Ask an Expert: European Payment Solutions

December 30, 2009 • 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 concerning European payment solutions from Rashda Ali, commercial manager, Europe, with Comvita.com, a New Zealand-based retailer of healt...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Free Shipping: The How-to Economic Model

December 29, 2009 • John Lindberg

Free shipping is a growing trend in the ecommerce industry. As the owner of an ecommerce fulfillment company, I work with hundreds of successful webstore merchants and am in a unique position to see both the threats and opportunities posed by free shipping strategies. Different Type...
Business
Quick Query: Full Sail Educator on Online Learning

December 28, 2009 • PEC Staff

There are numerous options for ecommerce merchants who want to learn new skills that can be applied to their business. Full Sail University is one of those online options. With a physical campus in Winter Park, Florida, the university offers online programs in fields such as web design ...
Business
Internet Attorney on Online Defamation

December 24, 2009 • PEC Staff

Nearly every ecommerce merchant has experienced disgruntled customers or angry competitors who post dishonest comments about his or her business. This could be in so-called complaint sites, forums, blogs or other online venues. Internet attorney John Dozier of the law firm Dozier Intern...
Business
Ecommerce Know-How: Taking Advantage of Online Education Opportunities

December 24, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen

An online education can come in a variety of forms and it can mean a lot of different things. It might mean a traditional college degree offered via the Internet. It could come in the form of a single unaccredited course taken simply because it offers an opportunity to grow one’s skil...
Business
Managing the Technological Side of Your Business When You Don’t Understand Technology

December 23, 2009 • Kevin Patrick Allen

A businessperson doesn’t necessarily understand technology. Nor does a technology expert necessarily understand business. But the two fields certainly do intersect in the world of ecommerce. So how does an ecommerce merchant who is lacking in technological understanding, manage a suc...
Business
Ask an Expert: Managing Outside Developers

December 21, 2009 • PEC Staff

Editor’s Note: This is the inaugural edition of "Ask an Expert," a new Practical eCommerce feature in which ecommerce merchants submit a question to be answered by a fellow merchant or an industry colleague. Our goal with “Ask an Expert” is to allow you to tap into the collective know...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne on Holiday Sales, Free Shipping

December 21, 2009 • Kerry Murdock

It's not every day that we speak with a Stanford PhD who has funded the construction of schools around the world. That same person started dabbling in ecommerce a decade or so ago and his company is now a publicly traded retailing powerhouse. He is Patrick Byrne, and the company is Ov...
Payments
The PeC Review: PayPal’s Website Payment Pro is a Good Value for Small Merchants

December 18, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce is not possible without online payment processing. You might have the best products. You might have the best website. But, if customers cannot order and pay for products online, you’re not in the ecommerce business. PayPal’s Website Payments Pro is an all-in-one payment proc...
Business
MonsterCommerce Co-founder Stephanie Leffler ‘Juggles’ New Venture

December 15, 2009 • PEC Staff

Stephanie Leffler started selling sun protection products online while in college. That was around the year 2000. She became frustrated with her web developer and she decided to produce, with her partner, a shopping cart herself. That cart became MonsterCommerce, an early day hosted ...
Fraud Prevention
The PeC Review: Filtrbox for Reputation Management

December 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio

An increasingly social Internet has transformed Facebooking moms, tweeting trend-followers, and Digging teens into powerful brand and product influencers. And as your ecommerce business grows, you should be concerned about what these social Internet influencers are saying regarding yo...
Business
Lessons Learned: Fairytale Brownies Relies on Catalogs, Empowers Employees

December 9, 2009 • Kate Monteith

"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business executives to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed David Kravetz, the catalog and web team leader of Fairytale Brownies, an online brownie gift store based in Phoenix, Ariz. Fairytale Brow...
Business
Lessons Learned: Boyd Badten of PrintingForLess.com

December 3, 2009 • Ankush Agarwal

"Lessons Learned" is a series where we ask ecommerce business executives to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Boyd Badten, director of technical service for PrintingForLess.com, a pioneering, online printing company located in Livingston, Mont. ...
Business
Merchant Talk: Self-published Author Migrates to Ecommerce

November 26, 2009 • PEC Staff

“Merchant Talk” is our weekly discussion with a practicing ecommerce merchant. For this installment, we visited with Jill Exler, the founder and CEO of Jexbo.com, an ecommerce site for ...
Business
Quick Query: Internet-related Patents In Jeopardy, Attorney Says

November 25, 2009 • PEC Staff

Doing business on the Internet requires the use of sophisticated software and complicated processes. Many of these innovative products have been patented. Google, Amazon and others hold many hundreds of patents, but the U.S. Supreme Court may be about to greatly restrict the issuance ...
Business
QuickBooks 2010 Helps Merchants “Go Paperless”

November 23, 2009 • PEC Staff

QuickBooks is the leader in small-business accounting software. According to Intuit, which produces QuickBooks, nearly 50 million people use it or a similar Intuit product. Intuit releases a new version of QuickBooks annually. The 2010 version was just released on Intuit's site. The ...
Business > Merchant Voice
UPS vs. FedEx vs. USPS. Which is best?

November 20, 2009 • Ken Kikkawa

The holiday craziness begins a week from today. But long before the anticipated ramp up in sales takes place, experienced merchants have already taken a look at an important component ...

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