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Each month, Practical ecommerce asks industry insiders to share a great, innovative idea that could help an ecommerce company. Here’s what ten of them had to say for the May 2009 installment.

Optimize Comparison Shopping Engine Feeds

“Start inexpensively with Google Base. When the feed is optimized well, the results can show up on the first page of Google within hours (over months with seo) and conversions are easier since the traffic is qualified for ‘shopping’.”

Manjula Higginbotham
Support Manager
AmeriCommerce Shopping Cart Software
Americommerce.com

The Evolution of the Payment Provider

“With the status of the financial market, the standard payment service provider tries to provide innovative solutions. A preferred option is …

Last week, Amazon.com announced quarterly sales of $4.89 billion, up 18 percent from the first quarter of 2009. While many factors contributed to the company’s strong quarter and more than $1.14 billion gross profit, Amazon executives pointed to strict inventory management and better than expected Kindle related sales.

“We worked well with vendors in terms of getting vendor savings…working with them to ship in bulk to the nearest [Amazon] facility,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said when asked how his company had managed to keep operating expenses in check.

The company had relatively low total operating expenses of $904 million on the aforementioned $4.89 billion in sales from the quarter.

Bezos also praised Amazon’s Kindle 2 and Kindle-re…

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Article marketing has been around since the beginning of the Internet, seemingly. It is practically free (if you write the articles yourself); it builds trust; and it attracts customers and influences people while they are in the process of making a buying decision.

The Proof is in the Numbers

According to Adfusion in a March 2009 report, “67% of people between the ages of 18 and 24, and 56% of those making at least $75,000 per year, say they are ‘very likely’ or ’somewhat likely’ to read and act upon article-based advertising.”

So, why don’t more ecommerce storeowners use articles to promote the marketplace and influence buyers? I am not sure, but I suspect that many folks believe that it doesn’t really fit their business model. If…

Print advertising is a waning media vehicle. It has become less effective in the post-interruption era. However, in spite of this decline, printed display advertising and classifieds can still provide a solid return on investment (ROI) for some ecommerce merchants willing and able to measure and optimize their print campaigns.

I must confess a certain affinity for printed media. As someone who spends many hours each day working and reading on a computer, I find a sort of nostalgic comfort in flipping through the glossy pages of a magazine, or in feeling the inky lightness of newsprint. Yet I also understand that it has become increasing difficult to be heard in a marketplace where print advertisers tout seemingly unending tag lines to w…

Last week, eBay announced first quarter 2009 revenue of $2.02 billion, a $171.6 million year-over-year decrease. While PayPal, Classifieds and Skype performed well, according to eBay, delivering year-over-year revenue growth, and text and graphical advertising revenues were flat compared to Q1 2008. Marketplace revenues fell sharply. All told eBay’s net income for the quarter ended March 31, 2009 reached $357.1 million or $0.28 per diluted share.

eBay sees strength for PayPal, expecting the <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online payment processor to more than double its revenue in the next few years. eBay also strengthened its core auction business by announcing plans to purchase one of Korea’s largest <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online marketplaces.

“We delivered solid results in the first qua…

Event and movie tickets earned average orders of $252.14 in March 2009, topping a list of <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online retail categories, according to a new report.

The report from Nielsen <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online via marketingCharts.com showed that the ticket category outpaced its closest competitor category, computer hardware, by more than $63 per average order. Automotive-related products and consumer electronics each generated slightly more than $120 on a typical order, while child and baby care items, sporting goods, home and garden products, office supplies, and food products all hovered near $75 in revenue for a customary order.

Related articles

Chart of the Week: Twitter (or Similar) Used by One in Ten Americans
Chart of The Week: Personalized Product R…

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Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool can help ecommerce merchants find pertinent keywords specific to a given URL, potentially improving search-engine-optimization and pay-per-click-advertising campaigns.

Using URLs from your AdWords account, the Search Based Keyword Tool (SKTool) “displays a list of relevant user queries that have occurred on Google.com (and on other Google search properties, such as google.co.uk) with some frequency over the past year,” explained Google in its description of the tool. Users can find these suggestions under the “Keyword” tab in their AdWords account or at the SKTool pages. SKTool doesn’t just offer keyword suggestions, but also provides indications regarding keyword pricing, monthly searches, competiti…

Practical ecommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing “Cart of the Week” feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart’s owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses.

Here we profile ProductCart, by Early Impact, Inc. Based in Mission Viejo, Calif., the company offers the licensed cart for a starting price of $695 with optional add-ons. We interviewed co-owner Massimo Arrigoni about the cart. We then asked Kevin Cook, ProductCart developer and owner of Nuclearsiloman.com, for his evaluation. Cook is a ProductCart customer.

PeC: Please provide some general background on the cart.

Arrigoni: “ProductCart is a licensed shopping cart. We started in 2001, and we’re currently shipping version 3…

“Lessons Learned” is a biweekly series where we ask ecommerce business owners to share their experiences and advice. For this installment, we interviewed Matt Mauldin, owner of Solarbatshades.com, an Allen, Texas-based <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online retailer of roughly 50 types of sunglasses and accessories. Mauldin worked in <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online marketing before launching the <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site in 2006. He now operates the business himself and earns just under $100,000 in annual revenue. Here we give you Mauldin’s experience and suggestions.

Shopping Cart Software

“We’re running on Zen Cart. It’s an open source cart with lots of customizable features. It has an incredible support community and quite a bit of open source extensions to allow you to customize. Before I launched the s…

Many email templates were developed using older table-based layouts that “break” easily and are very complicated to maintain.

Tables in HTML are fantastic for displaying tabular data. But as a layout tool they interfere with some dynamic and rich media elements, cause accessibility challenges, hog bandwidth, create maintenance issues, and are more fragile than CSS layouts. And for all of these reasons, it is time to update your broadcast email templates.

In this edition of web Design Tips, I’ll quickly show you how to convert a broadcast email template from a table-based layout to a fast and lovely CSS layout.

Handle With Care: Table-Based Layouts Break Easily

I have a confession to make. One of Practical ecommerce’s email templates …

ecommerce businesses that operate as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and even limited liability companies frequently pass tax liability from the company to the owners and contractors of the business. These owners and contractors must then pay self-employment tax, which is typically a higher rate than what would have been withheld from a paycheck if those individuals were employees (versus owners and contractors) of the company.

ecommerce has been one of the great social and business levelers in recent times. To some extent, small merchants with very little capital have been able to sell right alongside massive corporations. While that trend may be changing (a topic for a later article), it has meant that a significant number of onli…

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Editor’s Note: The World Wide web Consortium recently approved new accessibility guidelines. Passed in December 2008, the new “web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0” is the official recommendation for web accessibility for the disabled.

The new guidelines focus on four fundamental principles:

1. Is it perceivable?
2. Is it operable?
3. Is it understandable?
4. Is it robust?

This article addresses “understandability,” and is part three in a series discussing the impact of WCAG 2.0 on your web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site.

The understandability of text is crucial to web accessibility. At broad levels, this means specifying text languages, explaining the meanings of jargon or idioms, and expanding abbreviations to clarify text. It’s not just text that can …

Editor’s Note: Greg Laptevsky is a longtime Practical ecommerce contributor and a professional search-engine-marketing consultant. We asked him for tips to help ecommerce companies hire seo firms. What follows, below, is his response.

The checklist below will help you choose the right specialist for your search engine marketing campaigns.

1. Stay away from agencies/companies that guarantee top rankings.

If you’ve been in the business long enough, you know that there are few guarantees with search engine marketing. No company can guarantee top natural rankings on Google, Yahoo!, MSN or any other search engine.

Agencies/consultants can, in fact, guarantee that you’ll be able to generate traffic via paid alternatives such as pay-per-cl…

Nearly 80 percent of U.S. Internet users spent roughly 5 hours watching videos in December 2008, with an average view time of 3.2 minutes per video, according to a study by comScore.

Here are four ways your ecommerce business can use video to engage your visitors and increase sales, no matter what business you are in or what type of prospects visit your web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site.

1. Solve a Problem

Create a video that addresses or solves your prospect’s problem. That is, after all, the point of your business, helping people solve problems. The video doesn’t have to be an Oscar winner - just clear and concise. Use pictures, charts and examples to tell a story. A web cam and screen capture products like Camtasia make it easy to create a movie without a…

Facebook, the social networking <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site, now has more than 200 million users with over 100 million users logging in daily, the <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site said.

In just the last six months, Facebook says that it added more than 23 million new users in the U.S. alone. The Silicon Alley Insider, a trade publication, noted that if Facebook were a country, the number of users would be the equivalent of the fifth most populated nation in the world, behind China, India, the United States, and Indonesia.

“The U.S. had more Facebook users than any other country. However, the largest concentration of users was in the Eastern U.S. and Western Europe,” wrote eMarketer in its analysis of the recently released Facebook numbers.

“From January to March 2009, peop…

ecommerce entrepreneurs are busy people who manage suppliers, web marketing, merchandising, accounting, and more. Many of these entrepreneurs keep lists on legal pads or stick dozens of yellow Post-it notes to the sides of their monitors like a mane on a lion.

Australia-based Remember the Milk is a web-based task manager that can help ecommerce merchants keep, track, and check off any sort of task.

Each week, The PeC Review takes a quick look at products and services that could help an <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online merchant. Our goal is to both rate and identify those products. This week I reviewed Remember the Milk’s basic (free) task management tool, awarding it 4 out of a possible five stars.

Video: Remember the Milk

Don’t Forget an…

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Companies are frequently looking for ways to position their products in front of consumers that will most likely result in a conversion or a purchase. While there are several different options for targeting pay-per-click campaigns, the recent advances in Yahoo!’s audience targeting capabilities warrant a close look today. Before we delve into these advances, let’s first look at how targeted advertising works with a PPC campaign.

What Is Targeted PPC Advertising?

PPC campaigns increase return on investment by targeting keywords used specifically by a segment of searchers. Bidding on more specific, less competitive keywords makes a company’s pay-per-click ads more relevant to people who know exactly what they’re looking for. In other wo…

Practical ecommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart systems. In this ongoing “Cart of the Week” feature, we profile a specific cart, asking the cart’s owners and users about its strengths and weaknesses.

Here we profile Shop2Cart, a Boca Raton, Florida-based hosted cart. We asked Paul Ross, President of Shop2Cart, Inc., to review the cart. We then asked M. J. Votypka, President of Mark Edwards Jewelry, about her opinion of the cart. Votypka uses Shop2Cart for Markedwardsjewelry.com, Nauticalflagjewelry.com and Skeletonfish.com.

PeC: Please provide some general background on the cart.

Ross: “The Shop2Cart platform is currently in version 2.1 and is a hosted solution serving over 200 ecommerce web<a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites and growing daily. Sho…

There’s much talk about social media <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>sites and there’s also talk of how companies can use social media for marketing purposes. One company doing just that is Comodo, a firm that provides <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online security solutions. Comodo has recently created a “social media officer” job position and Comodo’s CEO, Melih Abdulhayoglu, is here to discuss it with us.

PeC: Why did Comodo create a social media officer position?

Abdulhayoglu: “Well, humans rode on a horseback for tens of thousands of years and then in less than 100 years, we went from a horseback to a jet plane. What caused that revolution? What was the trigger to get us from a horseback to a jet plane? The answer was the Gutenberg press, the invention of printing that allowed us to…

Good ecommerce merchants know that email campaigns built around opt-in lists are an effective way to reach potential customers. But more than 18 percent of email marketers in the U.S. either don’t or cannot measure the return on investment for their email campaigns, according to a new survey.

Some 82 percent of U.S. marketers surveyed are measuring the performance of their email campaigns, according to an eMarketer article, which uses data from eROI, an email marketing agency. This is a very good statistic. Unfortunately, it also means that nearly 20 percent of marketers are not measuring their campaigns, and these marketers are missing the opportunity to optimize their email campaigns.

If you find yourself and your <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>online store in th…

I’m a visual learner. I need to see and interact with things to understand them. It therefore helps me to mimic the behavior of search engine spiders when I’m digging into a <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site for the first time to review its search engine optimization issues. I like to think of it as “being the bot.”

The key thing to remember is that search engines crawlers don’t have JavaScript, CSS or cookies enabled. They can’t “see” content embedded in media files such as images, Flash, video or audio. You take all this away, and what are you left with? Plain HTML, text and links. In many cases, the entire focus of the page is rendered indecipherable, and in some cases the <a href=”http://www.gchera.org/go/seo“>site isn’t even navigable. It’s an incredible illustration of the structural challenges bo…

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A postcard marketing campaign can be inexpensive, and it could increase your store’s sales next month.

Almost every weekday at about 2 p.m., I trot out to my mailbox, wave at the retired Marine smoking cigarettes on his porch across the street, and collect my U.S. mail. I sort out the Netflix mailer, which the kids are always eager for, assemble the bills and important letters, and peruse circulars and direct mail advertising as I make my way back to my home office. Collecting and sorting my mail is an event and a nice break in my daily routine.

I’m not alone. Many people treat gathering their physical mail with a certain amount of ceremony. Pavel, my mechanical-engineer friend who lives nearby, gets home at around 5:15 p.m. every wor…

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The growth in new mobile broadband subscriptions fell significantly in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to a new report.

The total mobile PC data card subscriber base grew 5 percent in the final three months of 2008, compared to 22 percent growth in the prior quarter, according to comScore, a respected Internet measuring and tracking firm. While it is important to not look at a glass half empty (overall PC data card subscriptions grew 163 percent in 2008), the rapid slowdown in new subscriber growth seems to correspond to the much lamented general economic weakness that many nations are experiencing.

Mobile broadband is different than Wi-Fi Internet access. According to comScore, “mobile broadband employs cellular tele…

<img align=”left” alt=”Facebook_thumb_thumb” border=”1″ height=”45″ hspace=”12″ src=”http://www.gchera.org/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/63147_Facebook_thumb_thumb.png” vspace=”6″ width=”60″ />

Facebook offers ecommerce companies an opportunity to both market their products and connect with their customers. Traffic to Facebook has increased by 149% from February 2008 to February 2009, according to Hitwise, and it’s not just from the young crowd. Visitors over age 35 have increased by 23% over the same time frame.

First, Create a Facebook Profile

ecommerce companies can create Facebook profiles very similar to what is available to individuals. Using Facebook applications, merchants can easily and automatically display content from Flickr, Twitter, blogs and even lists of products. Consumers who are interested in your company and products can become a “fan” and are then automatically notified of your updates. You can also add…