Merchant Voice
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Does Facebook’s WhatsApp purchase affect ecommerce?
March 11, 2014 • David Sasson
This post does not address whether Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp is a good one, though my opinion will be evident to the reader. There have been many articles written about ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Beware retargeting
March 5, 2014 • Jamie Salvatori
Advertising is a pain in the butt. It’s expensive. It requires constant maintenance, and it’s not always measurable. In our industry, though, we tend to think that we can determine ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Adapt or die
March 5, 2014 • Richard Stubbings
Once you have a successful ecommerce site and the orders are flowing, by all means congratulate yourself for achieving what many do not. But do not rest there. The most ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
7 free ways to keep your customers happy and reassured
February 17, 2014 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
There are a number of things you can do that cost nothing but offer your customers satisfaction, reassurance, and acknowledgement. 1. Keep your customers informed This is such an obvious thing to ...
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Amazon & Marketplaces
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Merchant Voice
Does 2014 mark the beginning of the end for Amazon?
January 31, 2014 • Richard Stubbings
Probably not, but it is certainly going to be a difficult year for Amazon in Europe. Legislation in Europe is significantly different than in the U.S, in two major ways,
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Business
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Merchant Voice
The formula to online success, from ‘Lessons Learned’ merchants
January 29, 2014 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
Since March 2012, I’ve been writing the monthly “Lessons Learned” column, which has profiled online merchants selling products ranging from remedies for intestinal problems (“Trusting your Gut to Online Success”)
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Please start shipping internationally
January 17, 2014 • Jamie Salvatori
Our international orders represent approximately 15 to 20 percent of our total sales. That’s huge. We achieved this level of success through a variety of simple tactics, which I’ll outline ...
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Inventory
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Merchant Voice
Trials and tribulations of inventory management
January 15, 2014 • David Sasson
Holding inventory can be an advantage and a disadvantage. It can be both a competitive edge and an incredible headache. Some retailers choose to only drop ship and others sell ...
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Local Business
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Merchant Voice
Ecommerce expanding into brick-and-mortar
January 6, 2014 • Richard Stubbings
When I first started in ecommerce, it was as a way of expanding my brick-and-mortar business as a second sales channel. I was not the only one. It seemed to ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
7 tips to plan for Valentine’s Day gift orders
December 12, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
Christmas is such a major sales period for many online retailers that it can make you overlook Valentine’s Day, which falls barely six weeks later. Here are seven tips to get ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
What can online retailers learn from the Black Friday frenzy?
December 9, 2013 • David Sasson
Every year I make a trip to at least one store during the crazy first hours of Black Friday. I consider this a pilgrimage of sorts. As online retailers we ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Multichannel order management packages
December 9, 2013 • Richard Stubbings
I use Magento and sell on my own site, six Amazon country sites, and Ebay. That’s a total of eight channels. I would be lost without a package that merged ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Focusing on the top 20 percent of your customers
November 18, 2013 • David Sasson
By segmenting customer lifetime value and identifying the top 20 percent, an ecommerce company can develop a focused marketing effort to increase revenues with limited additional spend. As online merchants we ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Further Christmas thoughts
November 5, 2013 • Richard Stubbings
It is impossible to ignore Christmas this time of year. It is the single most important season for most ecommerce sites. This is why there are already two excellent columns ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Preparing for the holidays
October 31, 2013 • David Sasson
Consumers always seem to stress about the holiday season. They think about all they have to do in order to have a “good showing.” They need to buy all their ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Are you using social media all wrong?
October 30, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori
Social media is probably the worst advertising vehicle for small ecommerce merchants I’ve found. Well, perhaps advertising on a park bench would be worse, but social media is pretty darned ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
8 ways to help customers with Christmas gift deliveries
October 30, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
When customers start placing holiday orders — and especially as deadlines loom — you need all the help you can get in ensuring their purchases arrive safely. There’s a few ways ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Magento 1.8 Is Here: Upgrade or Not?
October 2, 2013 • Richard Stubbings
Magento 1.8 has finally been released. When Magento first came out, releases were frequent. But this time it has been over a year since 1.7 came out. It was beginning ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Adding a wedding category could produce extra sales — and headaches
September 23, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
You may think you can’t tap into the wedding market if you don’t sell venues, honeymoons, caterers, dresses, hair and make-up, invitations, flowers, cars, jewelry, cake, nor entertainment. However, there could ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Sell banner advertising? Yeah. Sell banner advertising.
September 19, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori
You should sell ads on your e-commerce site. I’ve yet to find evidence that putting banner advertising on your e-commerce site to be a bad thing. I know it sounds counter ...
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Checkout Tactics
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Merchant Voice
Reducing Cart Abandonment
September 6, 2013 • Richard Stubbings
The most important part of any ecommerce site is the checkout: the collection of money from your customers. You have spent time and money getting customers to your site, you ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Content is King and Time is Your Queen
August 23, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori
In your business, you must focus on two things: content and time. They are both equally important and inextricably intertwined. Great content will never go out of style. Seriously, there’s a ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Which Cart Should I use ?
August 3, 2013 • Richard Stubbings
All too often these days I see posts on forums of the type "I want to open an ecommerce shop, what cart should I use?" Then there are dozens of different replies from people all recommending their favourite solution. Rarely does anyone ask the original poster what they are planning to s...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
7 ways to increase newsletter sign-ups before the holidays
August 2, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
Less than five months to Christmas Day, now is the time you should be growing your newsletter database as fast and effectively as possible. I just signed up - or attempted to sign up - to 14 online gift retailers' newsletters and here is what I'd suggest. 1. Put your newsletter sign-u...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Thinking of starting a business? Think again!
July 31, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori
I’ve been running my own small business for over a decade and I often speak with people who are thinking about starting their own business. Listening to their expectations usually results in my shaking my head later and thinking, “They have no idea what they’re getting themselves into!”...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Book review: Custom Nation
July 21, 2013 • Elizabeth Hollingsworth
If you sell online, you can customise online, and if you don't, you're leaving money on the table. So says Anthony Flynn, creator of the customised energy bar company, You Bar, and his co-writer sister Emily Flynn Vencat. Flynn writes a compelling case in his book Custom Nation (BenBe...
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SEO
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Merchant Voice
SEO and Magento Ecommerce
July 8, 2013 • Richard Stubbings
Magento has been labelled as very Search Engine friendly, but what does this mean? Why is this important? The bottom line for any Ecommerce site is selling products. The idea is (or should be) to make money. In order to do this you have to get people to visit your site, and once there ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Credit Card Processing Sucks
June 20, 2013 • Jamie Salvatori
Credit cards are cool. They make online shopping possible. But credit card processing, the system by which money moves from a customer to a merchant, totally sucks. It sucks for three reasons: cost, liability, and security. Let’s outline each in their stunning absurdity. Credit card ...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Growing Pains
June 8, 2013 • Richard Stubbings
Being successful comes with its own problems. As your customer base grows and your orders come in higher volumes, you need to expand to carry on. Sooner or latter you need to recruit staff to help carry the workload. This is a massive step. No matter how much effort you put into selecti...
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Business
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Merchant Voice
Price Fixing Cartels
June 3, 2013 • Richard Stubbings
As the rise of the bedroom sellers continue, a new problem has arisen. Suppliers have gotten into the act. Now whilst some suppliers do not care who they sell to, nor how low retailer margins go, other suppliers are more and more concerned about maintaining the quality value of their pr...