Armando Roggio

Articles by: Armando Roggio

Armando Roggio

Armando Roggio is the longtime senior contributor to Practical Ecommerce. He's a global ecommerce authority and a practicing merchant, developer, and journalist.

Since 2008 he's written over 1,300 articles for Practical Ecommerce addressing all matters of ecommerce and presented dozens of webinars.

His previous positions include director of ecommerce for a regional retail chain and marketing publications manager at Micron Technology, a publicly-traded computer-chip manufacturer. He holds a B.A. in English Writing and Journalism from The University of Pittsburgh.

Contact Armando via email or LinkedIn. Follow his ecommerce tweets at @ecommerceboy.

Photography & Video
The PeC Review: Zoomify Adds Product Image Details

February 24, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Zoomify is a simple to use and easy to implement tool that adds an effective zoom-and-pan feature to product images, allowing customers to see high-resolution details, potentially boosting conversion rates for online merchants. Online shopkeepers have stiff competition from tradition...
Social Media
Ecommerce Know-How: Use Facebook, LinkedIn to Promote Your Store

February 23, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Online communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tangle allow members to join groups, post content, and respond to other's activity. While some marketers have tried to exploit the media, there are positive ways for online merchants to participate in linking networks and build stronger re...
Payments
Ecommerce Know-How: Understanding Your Payment Processing Statement

February 18, 2009 • Armando Roggio

While online shopkeepers are experts in their industries, they might not be expert at understanding their payment processing service or its statement, which can include adjustments, interchange charges, service charges, fees, and chargebacks. At its heart, ecommerce is about the exchan...
Code
Web Design Tips: Use CSS to Adjust Opacity

February 17, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The CSS opacity property lets web designers define how particular page elements will blend, adding both style and emphasis to important page sections. Essentially, this property allows you to adjust an element's translucency, changing the amount of diffused virtual light that seems to ...
Design & Dev Tools
The PeC Review: Audacity Makes Audio Editing a Snap

February 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Audacity is an excellent, free, open source audio editor that makes it a snap for ecommerce merchants to develop customer-engaging podcasts for any online store. More and more online shopkeepers are turning to rich multimedia content to inform (and even enthrall) Internet shoppers. F...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Is Five-Day USPS Delivery Coming?

February 12, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Many online retailers depend on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to reliably deliver merchandise to customers, since the service is often less expensive than UPS (United Parcel Service) and delivers six days a week, something that UPS charges a significant premium for. But the USPS lost ...
Photography & Video
The PeC Review: The Nikon D60 Camera is a Good Value

February 11, 2009 • Armando Roggio

The Nikon D60 is a full-feature DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera that will capture great product pictures for any ecommerce site. The D60 has a very good graphical user interface that makes this precision optical instrument easy to understand and use. For example, when you a...
Social Media
Ecommerce Know-How: Social Media as a Marketing Tool

February 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

An integrated social media marketing strategy can help you and your ecommerce site increase brand visibility, improve customer loyalty, and gain important insights about the markets you serve. And with the dramatic growth in social media traffic, ecommerce merchants would be smart to in...
SEO
Survey of The Month: SEO is Both Important and Misunderstood

February 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Ecommerce merchants overwhelming said that search engine optimization (SEO) was an active part of their marketing efforts and that they believed it accounted for a significant portion of their web traffic, but many of those same merchants identified black hat SEO tactics, like purchasin...
Checkout Tactics
PeC Traffic Report: Accept Competitors' Coupon Codes

February 6, 2009 • Armando Roggio

With the retail market suffering under the weight of a global economic recession, online shopkeepers must take every step to attract more site visitors. Accepting competitors' coupons in your own online store is a tactic that can help attract bargain-hunting customers, encourage loyalty...
Photography & Video
Ecommerce Know-How: Three Tips for Good Product Photographs

February 5, 2009 • Armando Roggio

In a brick-and-mortar store, customers can pick up a product, feel its texture, and sense its weight. These sensory inputs have an effect on a shopper's buying decisions. For online stores, achieving the same level of emotional buying excitement can be hard. One solution is to offer goo...
Code
Web Design Tips: Basic CSS for Headers

February 4, 2009 • Armando Roggio

How your site looks matters. Even subtle improvements—like using fonts or colors that compliment your theme—can have a positive effect on how consumers rate the trustworthiness of your store. According to a 2003 Stanford University study of 2,440 people, 46.2 percent of online shoppers...
Photography & Video
The PeC Review: Canon’s Rebel XSi DSLR for Taking Product Images

February 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Canon's Rebel XSi is a 12.2 megapixel DSLR camera that is both inexpensive and powerful. It features relatively large pixels, a very functional auto focus, and several excellent presets that together make it a very good choice for capturing do-it-yourself product photos. There is no ...
Email Marketing
The PeC Review: MailChimp is a Full-Featured Email Campaign Manager

January 28, 2009 • Armando Roggio

MailChimp offers a complete email marketing solution that is simple and inexpensive enough for small businesses but powerful enough for fairly large Internet merchants with sales of $5 million per year or more. According to its staff, MailChimp has over 60,000 users. It manages lists...
Content Marketing
Ecommerce Know-How: Customer-Centric Content as Link Bait

January 26, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Online shopkeepers can use good customer-oriented content to improve PageRank and increase sales. In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), link baiting is the practice of creating web content that is virtually irresistible to bloggers, Diggers, or other members of the linkerat...
Marketing & Advertising
Ecommerce Know-How: Start a Buzz with Word-of-Mouth Marketing

January 20, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Consumers talk. There is nothing you or anyone can do about it. The shoppers who visit your store and purchase your wares will tell their friends and acquaintances about it if they are given a chance. This phenomenon is nothing new. But marketers are starting to understand how to use th...
Design & Dev Tools
The PeC Review: Firebug Is a Developer’s Tool Worth the Buzz

January 19, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Firebug is a free Mozilla Firefox add on that gives developers a powerful tool to inspect and edit HTML, perfect CSS, or even admire the beautiful code from other websites. For many, the add-on has become an indispensable part of website design, development, and maintenance. "This is ...
Marketing & Advertising
PeC Traffic Report: Advertising in the Post-Interruption World

January 16, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Advertising has changed. Companies can no longer simply interrupt consumers with advertising messages and expect them to march off and buy something like little credit-card wielding lemmings. But ad tactics that reach out to customers when they're already interested or that tell authent...
Shipping & Fulfillment
Ecommerce Know-How: The Free Shipping Equation

January 13, 2009 • Armando Roggio

In 2009, every major carrier in the United States will be raising shipping rates. Profit conscience online shopkeepers, therefore, should take pause and reevaluate whether or not offering "free shipping" is really a good idea. There is, of course, really no such thing as free shipping...
Platforms & Apps
The PeC Review: Magento Is the Open Source Powerhouse

January 12, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Magento is an open source ecommerce platform designed to empower online merchants and remove barriers in business process and flow. The platform has been downloaded more than 600,000 times, Magento says, perhaps making it the fastest growing ecommerce solution in the market. With a fu...
User Experience
The Shopping Experience: Really Old Records

January 9, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Since 1998 Really Old Records of Natick, Mass. has been offering a selection of "unusual and collectible recordings," taking full advantage of the Long Tail concept. But the store was slow to ship and did not communicate at all with me after I made a purchase online. On December 22, 20...
Code
Web Design Tips: Rounded Borders in CSS

January 8, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Consumers often judge online stores by visual aesthetics alone, so Internet shopkeepers are wise to use large appealing images, handsome fonts, and occasionally an eye-pleasing curve. When that curve is added someplace unexpected, say in a border around a text box or an image, it can b...
SEO
Ecommerce Know-How: Information Architecture to Improve SEO and Usability

January 7, 2009 • Armando Roggio

Taking lessons from two marketing disciplines, online retailers and their web designers can build a well structured Internet store organized into themes or categories that will make it easy for shoppers and search engines alike to find important information and product pages. In this ...
Checkout Tactics
PeC Traffic Report: Will 2009 Be the Year of the Coupon?

January 6, 2009 • Armando Roggio

2009 begins in the shadow of global economic recession. The Consumer Confidence Index hovers at 38, a new low in United States, and those consumers that are shopping want deals. So could 2009 be the year of the ecommerce coupon? According to a Dec. 10, 2008 comScore report, coupon use ...
Customer Retention
Survey: 2008 Holiday Sales Slipped for Many Internet Merchants

January 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

For the first time in years, holiday ecommerce sales fell in 2008 as online shoppers, apparently worried about the global economy and their personal finances, cut seasonal spending 3 percent, according to an established Internet tracking firm. But 47.7 percent of Internet store keepers ...
Customer Service
The PeC Review: Boldchat is An Easy-to-Use Live Chat Solution That May Improve Sales

January 2, 2009 • Armando Roggio

BoldChat provides online communication software that allows Internet retailers to actively engage customers and potentially increase both conversions and profits. The BoldChat software (I tested version 5.20.3240.27126) was a responsive and powerful solution for live chat on any ecomme...
Technical SEO
Ecommerce Know-How: Bot Herding, A SEO Internal Linking Tactic

December 30, 2008 • Armando Roggio

A relatively simple SEO linking strategy can improve how well and how often your store's product pages are indexed and displayed in organic search engine results. This linking technique goes by several names. Bruce Clay Inc., an Internet business consultancy, refers to it as "siloing."...
Keyword Research
PeC Traffic Report: Use Blog Titles that Reflect Keywords and Content

December 26, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Blog titles play an important role in how search engines index blog posts. Bloggers that want to get the most web traffic possible seed post titles with important keywords and make interesting promises about the content. Many online retailers use blogs to both communicate with consumer...
Shipping & Fulfillment
The PeC Review: Stamps.com is A Helpful Tool for Many Merchants

December 22, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Stamps.com provides online retailers with a simple-to-use, software-based service that calculates official U. S. Postal Service postage from any PC, formatting printing labels and any required shipping documents. The Stamps.com software, which was developed in conjunction with the Pos...
Technical SEO
PageRank: What Is It? And How Do You Calculate It?

December 19, 2008 • Armando Roggio

Google’s PageRank technology plays an important role in how online stores show up in search results. Understanding how this ranking system works will help ecommerce merchants improve their search engine optimization and potentially increase website traffic. PageRank is a proprie...