Merchant Voice
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Business
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Merchant Voice
To grow an ecommerce business, step away
May 11, 2016 • Eric Bandholz
I recently returned from a trip to Amsterdam. It wasn’t a holiday, but a strategy meeting. The three owners of Beardbrand spent a week in the city to focus on ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Dollars per visitor more important than conversion rate
May 10, 2016 • David Sasson
Conversion optimization has been discussed in ecommerce circles since, well, the dawn of ecommerce. Improving conversions can have a major impact on revenue. Making small tweaks to your website — such ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
How I measure ecommerce success
May 5, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
Most merchants measure ecommerce success by revenue. Shopify’s dashboard notes tell me my website is in the top five percent of those launched in the last 12 months. But I don’t ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Why FringeSport uses Shopify
May 3, 2016 • Peter Keller
FringeSport has used Shopify for six years. I started on the platform after reading an early Tim Ferriss blog post, where he pimped the brand. We’ve never looked back. I get ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Are your passwords secure?
April 12, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
As an online merchant, I have to review my company’s security procedures to retain PCI compliance. Whilst I am not sure of the merits of PCI compliance — I cynically ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Does your company have a soul?
April 9, 2016 • Eric Bandholz
When they hit a plateau on the growth of their business, entrepreneurs often look at ways to initiate a spark. One of the biggest things that companies overlook is the ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Lessons from a corner shop closing down
April 4, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
You’ve likely seen a few brick-and-mortar shops go out of business in recent times. I recently saw hastily-printed sheets at local ice cream store — called Lick Me — thanking ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
The evolution of FringeSport’s KPIs
March 16, 2016 • Peter Keller
How do you run your business? What numbers are meaningful, and on what intervals do you review them? When FringeSport was a side project, I mainly looked at revenue and gross ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Pop-ups bad for the web, bad for business
March 9, 2016 • Eric Bandholz
Our company is approached frequently by app makers that are selling pop-ups, or modals, for our ecommerce site. The pitch is usually the same: Use our pop-up to get more ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
A tale of two suppliers
March 9, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
The attitude of some suppliers amazes me. Recently, we have been going to trade shows to find new products. We have been looking for quality, niche suppliers that have higher-value ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Entrepreneur, founder, C.E.O.?
February 24, 2016 • Peter Keller
What is a C.E.O.? If you founded and are running a start-up, when should you really take C.E.O. as a title? These are questions I’ve struggled with over the last year.
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Business
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Merchant Voice
For PPC ads, filter by demographic data
February 23, 2016 • David Sasson
Driving traffic is at the heart of building a successful ecommerce business. There are so many retailers and so many options for consumers that you must continually find new ways to ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Could a new slogan increase sales?
February 19, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
My Wedding Decor has gradually evolved in the 10 months since I launched the site. Four weeks ago I made two simple changes that may have been responsible for increasing my ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
What’s the future for smaller ecommerce retailers?
February 10, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
With the growing dominance of Amazon and Ebay for everyday consumer items, what future is there for the smaller ecommerce business? Amazon and Ebay both emphasize price. Many shoppers on those sites ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Beardbrand’s photography process
February 9, 2016 • Eric Bandholz
Photography should be a high priority for ecommerce merchants. There are tons of guides on how to take great photographs. This article won’t be one of those. Instead, I hope ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Unfair taxes squeezing my U.K.-based business
January 27, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
I am based in the U.K. Some of the challenges that affect my ecommerce business at first appear different from U.S. businesses. But, in fact, many of these challenges apply ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Lessons from changing ecommerce platforms
January 25, 2016 • David Sasson
My company, overstockArt, recently changed ecommerce platforms. It was a complete change of our website, not just look and navigation, but the entire underlying technology. We switched from the Yahoo store ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Technology stack for Beardbrand
January 12, 2016 • Eric Bandholz
I’ve always appreciated other companies opening up about their business. So I’d like to share a bit of details on our technology platform. As of January 2016, our business is ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
The perils of pre-orders
January 3, 2016 • Richard Stubbings
A few years ago, much of my business was built on customers ordering products in advance of the products’ release. Pre-orders allowed us to know what the likely demand was ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
You lose money under-promising and over-delivering
January 2, 2016 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
There seems to be a well-meaning but misguided belief that as online retailers we should under-promise and over-deliver to make our customers more loyal. But I don’t believe this to be ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Selling on Amazon: my company’s strategy
December 11, 2015 • Eric Bandholz
The elephant in the room when it comes to ecommerce is Amazon. The assumption among many merchants and their customers is that you have to be on Amazon or you ...
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SEO
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Merchant Voice
Is Google the right search engine to optimize for?
November 25, 2015 • Richard Stubbings
In my previous post — “Is search engine optimization worth the effort?” — some readers questioned what I wrote. But no one picked up on my first assumption, that Google, being ...
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Conversion
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Merchant Voice
How I doubled my conversions in one month
November 25, 2015 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
My Wedding Decor turned seven months old on November 23. In the last month, advice from three sources — a wedding directory business development manager, a retailer on the Shopify forum,
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Business
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Merchant Voice
The beauty of compound revenue growth
November 24, 2015 • David Sasson
When my company had sales of just $66,000 a year, I thought, “How will we ever get to a million dollars?” When we got to that level, I thought, “How ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
YouTube: The coolest social media platform
November 19, 2015 • Eric Bandholz
YouTube is the coolest social media platform. I don’t know why it gets overlooked in the business community. If you ignore YouTube, you are missing out on a great community.
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SEO
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Merchant Voice
Is search engine optimization worth the effort?
October 30, 2015 • Richard Stubbings
Is search engine optimization a dying trade? Just because there are a large number of firms offering to do the work, is there really a need for it? Whilst there ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Low-cost alternative to multichannel software
September 21, 2015 • Richard Stubbings
Due to the ever increasing cost of multichannel software, I have looked for an alternative solution. Until recently I have not found any. I have now. I use Linnworks, an ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
8 tips for setting up gift certificates, for ecommerce
September 9, 2015 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
With the festive season fast approaching, setting up a gift certificate option on your website can increase sales. This is something I plan to add on my wedding decor site, like ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Multichannel selling: How to evaluate solution providers
August 29, 2015 • Richard Stubbings
In “Selling on multiple channels creates headaches,” my previous post, I detailed some of the problems a retailer has when trying to sell on third-party websites. There are companies that provide ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
How I implement new ecommerce ideas
July 31, 2015 • David Sasson
I often take time during the workweek to think about new ideas and to look for new trends that can affect our company — positively or negatively. Sometimes the new ...