Practical eCommerce Podcasts

Web marketing specialist Claudiu Murariu advises, "When performing A/B tests make sure especially of two things: to have statistically significant results and to choose the right success metric for your campaign (which can be revenue, profit, orders, average order value, CTR, or other important metrics)." ...

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John Panyavorachart is co-founder and CEO of Vevo Systems, an ecommerce software company based in Bangkok, Thailand that developed VevoCart,an online shopping cart. In this "Cart of the Week" supplement, Panyavorachart talks about how his ecommerce education and career began in the U.S., and how he eventually returned...

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To ensure cross-channel consistency, SKUs, prices and product information should be the same online and in-store so they can be treated exactly the same from a fulfillment and service perspective. The result is less work, higher customer satisfaction and a reduced need to develop separate staff or procedures for online...

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Advertising specialist Mike Sprouse says take advantage of tax time. "March is the height of tax season, which makes it the perfect time for financial services marketers to target consumers filing their taxes online with great deals and special promotions. During tax season, people are looking for online incentives that...

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Social marketing is important and time consuming. If you are serious about it, make a specific plan, commit to being regularly active on the social site, and make your profile dynamic. But, if you can’t perform social marketing well yourself, hire an expert or delegate it to someone who can....

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Take advantage of the free comparison shopping sites available. For instance, Google Product Search is a staple of any shopping channel strategy, theFind has a free program to enhance merchant visibility, Sortprice has a Facebook store application for merchants, and Oodle is for merchants who also have a physical store....

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If your products are technical with many features or detailed specifications, make sure your ecommerce software has a comparison tool that allows shoppers to view detailed feature breakdown for a number of products side by side for easy comparison. This improves usability and can reduce returns. ...

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Marcus McConnell is the founder and president of BV Software, the developers of BV Commerce shopping cart. In this "Cart of the Week" supplement, McConnell talks about how he started his computer career as a software salesman and consultant, and how the demand for comprehensive ecommerce...

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Want people to click that "buy" button? Be sure to design your web pages to lead the eye to the action spot. Take advantage of the fact that people read from left to right. Use arrows to point, and color your order button to stand out on the page....

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A great source of free information for beginners can be found at SearchEngineBook.com. It will provide you with the 'ABC’s' of SEO. Sign up for the free beginners SEO course and you will receive an easy to understand email once a day for a week on the basics of search...

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Use phrases like "Add to Cart" on your buttons rather than phrases like "Buy." Consumers don’t like commitment. It is like saying "Will you go on a date with me?" versus "Will you marry me?" You are more likely to say yes to the date because less commitment is required....

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Sounds True is a Colorado-based provider of products and services to enable spiritual development. It was founded in the 1980s, and its business model is both interesting and sophisticated. It sells products via wholesale channels. It offers classes and instruction. It publishes a catalog. And it has an...

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Online retailers should consider that much of their future traffic could be coming from mobile devices and take steps to make sure mobile users can access their content. A general principal of mobile optimization is to keep web design simple and remove images, Flash or menus that make the user...

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You can get started in social media marketing by finding others with like interests. Be patient, be honest, be genuine, and share meaningful, valuable content and information to grow your community. Social media requires sweat equity. You have to put in the time to participate on a consistent, active level,...

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Matt DeLong is president and CEO of CoreCommerce, the makers of CoreCommerce shopping cart. In this supplement to "Cart of the Week," DeLong talks about how the cart was originally a licensed version called digishop PRO that was used exclusively by web developers, and how the cart software was...

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Creating an iPhone app is not necessarily cost prohibitive. It takes a lot of creativity to find someone to do the work relatively cheap, but there are plenty of iPhone app developers and Facebook app developers to be found working in India, Pakistan, or the Ukraine. They are reasonably priced,...

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If you want to find new products, monitor your competitors, keep a close eye on your sales, and stay up to date on the trends in your category. Based on what you learn, buy new products in small quantities and display them on a "new products" section of your web...

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Today's ecommerce merchants should make sure they are on a platform that outputs their site for a range of mobile devices and has an interface/payment system tuned for the mobile world. Deploy your site for mobile browsers now, and make sure that your web server detects and serves the correct...

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An increasing number of consumers access the Internet via mobile devices. This has looming implications for ecommerce merchants who must decide what platforms their customers will use in the future. Third party services can help owners migrate their sites to mobile devices, and one of those is Mobile...

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Service-related businesses are finding new customers and new marketing opportunities online. This includes restaurants, which have increasingly embraced the web to promote menu offerings and dinner specials, and to facilitate reservations, provide directions and more. A restaurant that has used its website to do all of this in...

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