Business

An ecommerce site is a business. Our Management & Finance category addresses online payments, funding needs, employee issues, merchant profiles, key metrics, multichannel and omnichannel strategies, cross-border analyses, inventory management, accounting topics, sales taxes, and much more.

Business
Siteworx’s Adelle Emery

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

What makes customers unhappy at a website? Adelle Emery, director of customer experience at Siteworx, answers the question and gives website owners tips on how to improve the customer’s experience ...
Business
Customer Experience Matters

December 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

After more than a decade of ecommerce activity and an arsenal of new technology at our disposal, it's still the basics that most sites haven't mastered. Problems in the checkout process and having products that are too hard to find remain among the top issues that irritate customers and...
Business
Dieselpoint’s Chris Cleveland (Part 2)

November 13, 2006 • PEC Staff

In the second of a two-part series, Chris Cleveland CEO of Dieselpoint speaks with Practical eCommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about how site-search technology improves sales at websites. Cleveland also ...
Business
Dieselpoint’s Chris Cleveland

November 6, 2006 • PEC Staff

In the first of a two-part series, Chris Cleveland CEO of Dieselpoint speaks with Practical eCommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about how site-search technology improves sales at websites. Cleveland also ...
Business
Protecting Your Domain Name

November 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.

Domain names are addresses. But, of course, a domain name generates traffic, which means it is also a major sales source. The traffic could result from those typing in your name in the address bar of the browser, or it could be from search engines grading your website higher because of ...
Business
This Month: Adding Staff, Computers and Equipment

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

As any ecommerce merchant knows, there’s more to launching a successful online business than just launching a website. Patrick Coughlin has owned and operated American Diamond Importers, an independent brick-and-mortar jewelry store in St. Clair, Mich., for almost 15 years. St. Clair i...
Amazon & Marketplaces
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne

November 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

A doctorate in philosophy from Stanford University probably helps Founder, CEO, and Chairman Patrick Byrne deal with the daily esotericism that goes with running a company like Overstock.com ...
Business
Ongoing Growth Challenges Carolina Rustica

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Richard Sexton has parlayed his 10 years of brick-and-mortar success into a dynamic multichannel sales business with Carolina Rustica. With a combination of brick-and-mortar and online sales, Carolina Rustica expects to generate about $3.5 million in 2006, a 30 percent increase from the...
Business
Carolina Rustica’s Richard Sexton

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Richard Sexton has parlayed his 10 years of brick-and-mortar success into a dynamic multichannel sales business with Carolina Rustica. With a combination of brick-and-mortar and online sales, Carolina Rustica expects ...
Business
ChannelAdvisor’s Scot Wingo

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo discusses the new opportunities businesses have with the advent of new online sales channels. ChannelAdvisor provides consulting and software to help merchants deploy products across multiple ...
Business
Merchant Advantage’s Michael Lambert

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Are you wondering why you should you be pushing products to shopping comparison sites or are you looking for a tool that can help you push products to various shopping ...
Business
Stone Edge Technology’s Barney Stone

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Do you need an order management solution to help manage activity from multiple sales channels? Are you struggling to manage the mounds of paperwork from sales that come to your ...
Business
Infopia’s Ralf VonSosen

November 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Ralf VonSosen, vice president of Infopia (www.infopia.com), a company that provides an ecommerce platform to help merchants manage multichannel sales endeavors, speaks about how to begin thinking about selling in ...
Business
Newsletter Tips from Blue Penguin

October 23, 2006 • PEC Staff

Michael J. Katz is founder and “chief penguin” of Blue Penguin Development, Inc., a consulting firm helping companies increase sales by showing CEOs how to market to their existing relationships,
Business
Email Marketing Tips from Clint Smith

October 16, 2006 • PEC Staff

How frequently should I send email marketing messages and newsletters to my customers, what should I put in the subject line to improve the open rate, and how to include ...
Business
MyEmma.com’s Clint Smith Part 2

October 8, 2006 • PEC Staff

Are you still using Outlook Express or another text-based email client to email information to your customer base? Are you afraid to convert to and .html-based email service because you ...
Business
Website Profile – Satellite Radio Superstore

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Matt and Amiee Moffett launched the Satellite Radio Superstore three years ago have an quickly built their site into one of the top 10 independent retailers for XM Radio. Sales ...
Business
Scene7’s Sheila Dahlgren

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Scene7 is another leading company in the image management business. Scene7 provides services that can improve the product display features on ecommerce sites including zoom and pan features, online catalogs ...
Business
Equilibrium’s Sean Barger

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Equilibrium is one company in the marketplace that automates imaging solutions and offers various display options including zoom and pan features. Sean Barger, CEO of Equilibrium, says there’s been a ...
Fraud Prevention
Is Your Data Vulnerable?

October 1, 2006 • Pamela Hazelton

Having just returned from the MIVA Conference, I’m sure my editor is quite antsy. I’m late with this column— not due to procrastination. I’ve always got something to say, but after I instructed a session on security for online store administrators, I realized that a great percentage of ...
Business
Getting a Patent is Pricey

October 1, 2006 • John W. Dozier, Jr.

Small businesses are interesting beasts. An entrepreneur comes up with an idea and one of the first thoughts is protecting the new business from competition. Big business often protects novel “inventions” through patent registration. Small businesses quickly find out that obtaining a qu...
Business
Thralow.net’s Daniel Thralow

October 1, 2006 • Michael A. Cox

In December of 1996, Daniel Thralow (pronounced Trah-low) sold one pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses on the Internet. Thralow: A local guy said to me, “I’m starting this little group of websites. Give me a hundred dollars and I’ll build you a web page.” So we built this little web page—it ha...
Business
Satellite Radio Superstore Finds Success

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Three years after launching Satellite Radio Superstore, Matt and Aimee Moffett’s online business is pushing $3 million in sales and their company was recently named one of the top 10 independent retailers by XM Radio. Satellite Radio Superstore is an authorized XM satellite radio deale...
Business
Striking Gold With Diamonds

October 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Patrick Coughlin knows that brick-and-mortar businesses need to think outside the box if they want to improve their bottom lines. Coughlin has owned and operated American Diamond Importers, an independent jewelry store in St. Clair, Mich., for almost 15 years. St. Clair is a small, idy...
Business
MyEmma.com’s Clint Smith

September 25, 2006 • PEC Staff

Clint Smith, co-founder of Emma, discusses several important tips to improve email campaigns and addresses that age-old question of whether an email should use images or not. This podcast ...
Business
Four Things You Should Know Before Starting an eBiz

September 25, 2006 • PEC Staff

Renowned ebiz author Sydney Johnson created the now-famous Auction Genius courses to aid people wanting to create their own ebusinesses. She shares some important tips for anyone looking to learn the online retail industry: Tip 1—Start Small Many of Johnson’s students are eager to div...
Business
KEMP’s CEO Kevin Mahon

September 18, 2006 • PEC Staff

Kevin Mahon, founder and CEO of KEMP, and Peter Melerud, the company’s marketing and business development officer, talked with Practical eCommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about what a load balancer ...
Business
Delightful Deliveries’ Eric Lituchy

September 11, 2006 • PEC Staff

Eric Lituchy is the founder and CEO of Delightfuldeliveries.com, a leading site for gift baskets and unique gift items, such as gourmet food items and desserts. Given how important product ...
Business
ChristmasNightInc.com Brings Light to the Holidays

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

If you are an admirer of nativity sets on the lawns of homes and churches during the Christmas season, chances are you seen a product from Christmasnightinc.com. Claire Henderson launched the business about seven years ago and has carved out a unique niche selling life-size scenes of t...
Payments
The Rising Tide of Alternative Payment Systems

September 1, 2006 • PEC Staff

Alternative-payment systems are flowing into the payment processing industry. During the last two years, many new options have been announced, re-announced, tested, trialed, released or re-released. Many others are in development. Marc Abbey, a Partner of First Annapolis Consulting, sa...