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.
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Business
Trademark Registration
August 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.
This article will be the first of three covering trademarks, copyrights and patents. The decision as to whether to register each is based upon unique business considerations. For trademark registration, there is a process to go through in evaluating the cost and benefit of federal regis...
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Business
Quick Query: RedRoller.com’s Bill Van Wyck
August 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
What Travelocity does for travel, RedRoller does for shipping packages. The site is built to look and feel like an etravel site. Shipping for small businesses is a day-to-day occurrence. The typical ecommerce business spends close to $1,000 per month and ships 120-150 packages every month.
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Business
Tech Support: August 2006
August 1, 2006 • Brian Getting
Question: My web host has different bandwidth levels depending on the price. How can I compute what my ecommerce site's bandwidth needs are? Brian Getting: Bandwidth can be a tough one to understand for most people. I like to use the analogy of a water pipe where the speed of your In...
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Business
Website User Agreements
July 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.
Website user agreements establish the terms under which the relationship between a visitor and a site is governed. A common practice for small websites is to "borrow" language and attempt to customize the terminology to fit their needs. The problem is that drafting a websiteuser agreeme...
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Business
AbeBooks.com Co-founder Rick Pura
July 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
Rick Pura just finished writing the software code for "Rick’s Search Engine." He thinks it works pretty well, and he may go into the search engine business.
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Business
Quick Query: Coremetrics’ Jane Paolucci
July 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
PeC: Why is conversion important to ecommerce businesses? Paolucci: Ecommerce businesses are constantly seeking new ways to enhance their websites to drive incremental revenue, reduce costs associated with customer acquisition and sales and increase customer loyalty. While driving ...
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Business
Givens Books Partners with AbeBooks.com
July 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
When most of us think about an ecommerce website, we think of a place with pictures and descriptions of inventory, which a shopper can toss into a virtual shopping cart and buy with a mouse click. With the advent of portals such as Abebooks.com, there are esellers who don’t have carts. ...
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Business
Privacy Policies
June 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.
Even at the turn of the 17th century, Francis Bacon had it right: knowledge is power. Today, we are in the midst of the information age and, in relation to customer management and relationships, in the beginning stages of an age of invention. The challenges of managing your business inc...
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Business
What’s Selling, What’s Hot and How to Find It
June 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Are you searching for the next trendy gadget to sell at your online store? Many people are looking to catch lightning in a bottle, but locating trends in the marketplace requires thought, research and analysis. Find Clues to New Trends There are resources for online entrepreneurs who ...
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Business
Product Sourcing: What Not to Do
June 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
One thing an entrepreneur shouldn’t do is search online for “wholesale supplier” or “drop ship” when trying to locate a wholesale partner. This is according to Chris Malta, founder and CEO of Worldwide Brands, Inc. “You can look online all you want to,” said Malta, “but you won’t find ...
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Business
Drop Shipping: Pros and Cons
June 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Drop shipping remains a hot topic among etailers but, even though it has many benefits, it isn’t the best option for every business. A drop shipper is a product supplier who is willing to ship individual orders. Usually when products are purchased for resale, you have to buy them in bu...
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Business
Quick Query: ProStores’ Julian Green
June 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock
In January 2005, eBay Inc. purchased Kurant’s StoreSense, an online ecommerce provider. Using Kurant’s technology, eBay subsequently launched ProStores, an ecommerce solution for small to medium-sized merchants. ProStores has since signed up “tens of thousands” of online merchants. Juli...
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Business
BuySafe.com Founder Steve Woda
May 31, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
For every person who shops on the Internet, there are hundreds of others who don’t – who won’t. They don’t want to. They feel, with some justification, that doing so would lead to the nightmares...
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Business
Sourcing Options for eCommerce Firms
May 31, 2006 • PEC Staff
Finding products to sell remains one of the hottest topics for online entrepreneurs, and it’s the top question eBay Radio gets from its listeners, according to Chris Malta, Product Sourcing Editor for The eBay Radio Show and Founder and CEO of Worldwide Brands, Inc. Malta defines produc...
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Business
Clear Block! TracksideSales.com Rides The Mainline
May 31, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
Clear Block is a railroad signal, indicating that the block of track ahead is clear and no train wrecks are in the offing. Joe Derouin, a 48-year-old who loves trains, dreamed of being in the model-railroad business. He got the “clear block” call from his wife Jeanne almost eight years ...
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Business
Zoovy CEO David Steel
May 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
The song, the one by Leroy VanDyke in 1959, tells about a boy from Arkansas who longs to be an auctioneer. He went off to school and learned how to say things like, “Thirty dollar bid it now, thirty-five Will you gimmie thirty-five, To make it thirty-five, to bid it a thirty-five Who wo...
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Business
Greatlookz.com: Persistence Pays for Zoovy Store Owner
May 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
"I always wanted to be a pioneer coming across the plains in a covered wagon,” says Marion Keisling. However, there is not much need for covered wagon driving these days, so Keisling has done her pioneer thing in the ecommerce business. She runs a company called Greatlookz.com and does...
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Business
Web Hosting: Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst
May 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.
Last month we discussed web development agreements. Next question: Who is going to host your site? My advice is to know whom you are dealing with, and then make sure that if something goes wrong you have an exit strategy. In other words, do your due diligence. Then hope for the best and...
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Business
Quick Query: Jeremy Hanks
May 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock
What's Doba.com? Doba.com helps simplify product sourcing. That is, we streamline product sourcing for the emerging market of web-based entrepreneurs starting and growing a retail business. Our web-based platform empowers entrepreneurs to find and sell products, and suppliers to connec...
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Business
Payment Options and Simple Checkout
May 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
A truly successful and customer service friendly ecommerce shop will have an intuitive and welldesigned checkout system. The more difficult it is to purchase something from you, the less likely a customer will try. Here are some tips to ensure you’re running a customer service-friendly ...
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Business
Authorize.Net President Roy Banks
April 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
The credit card industry has come a long way since 1951, when Diners Club issued a credit card to about 200 members, which they could use at any of 27 restaurants in the New York City area. Then in the 1960s Bank of America began issuing Bank Americard, then came MasterCharge, American ...
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Business
TheGroceryGame.com Scores With Coupons
April 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
Owner: Teri Gault URL:Thegrocerygame.com Established: 1999 Products: Weekly list of grocery coupons; system for saving on groceries. Shopping Cart: Custom Payment Gateway: Authorize.Net Quote: "I calculated that I made 80 cents per hour my first year." When Teri Gault and her fami...
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Business
Quick Query: Comodo’s Melih Abdulhayoglu
April 1, 2006 • Kerry Murdock
Internet commerce depends on safe and secure transactions. Because of that, we’ve asked a few questions to Melih Abdulhayoglu, an Internet security expert and CEO of Comodo, a leading provider of security software and encryption products for smaller ecommerce merchants. PeC: What does...
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Business
Web Development Contracts
April 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.
We get an interesting mix of client inquiries each week. Sometimes we are asked to draft a “simple” or “basic” contract, neither of which really exist in the online world. We don’t even attempt to do that. Or, in the other extreme, we are asked to review and provide a legal analysis of ...
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Fraud Prevention
Payment Processing: Choose the System that Fits
April 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
One of the most critical decisions business owners have to make is how they are going to process payments from their website. Entrepreneurs frequently find themselves asking if a merchant account is what they need or if they need a private payment system (a “PPS”) such as PayPal or the ...
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Fraud Prevention
eCommerce Fraud: Build a Human Firewall
April 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
There is a fellow from Europe named Kevin Mitnick, who can find your Social Security number online in 15 seconds. He was the hacker who was elevated to “computer terrorist” status by the FBI and Interpol. They caught him and put him in jail for five years, but there are thousands like h...
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Fraud Prevention
Winning the Fight Against Click Fraud
April 1, 2006 • PEC Staff
If somebody were to tell you that 20% of your advertising budget was being wasted on fraud, would you be worried? If you advertise on pay-per-click search engines, such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), MIVA, or others, you have reason to be concerned. Acc...
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Business
Affiliate Marketers
March 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.
Over half of our law firm’s practice involves affiliate marketing. If we are not setting up an affiliate marketing program, we are involved in claims relating to affiliate misconduct. On the one hand, the riches to be realized by your merchant site through a successful and well managed ...
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Business
MIVA CEO Craig Pisaris-Henderson
March 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
The concept is as old as sales itself. Somebody delivers qualified customer leads to you and you pay them for each lead. It is up to you to convert that lead into a sale. It’s not too hard to comprehend.
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Business
Recoverysuperstore.com Offers a Web of Support
March 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox
Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. So was Anthony Baggett. Elvis reached the pinnacle of success and then died of drug abuse in 1977. Anthony was a success and an addict, but his story is different—it’s one of hope. Anthony Baggett was, by all measure, a successful advertis...