Ecommerce Conversations

Jill Exler is founder and CEO of Jexbo.com, an online retailer of books that have been self-published by their authors. She founded the business in 2007, after having been frustrated by the options to sell her own self-published book. Exler’s business is based in Michigan, in the U.S., but she divides her time between there and Germany. She joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Doing business on the Internet requires the use sophisticated software and complicated processes. Many of these innovative products have been patented; Google and Amazon, for example, hold many hundreds of patents. But the U. S. Supreme Court may be about to greatly restrict the issuance of patents. To help us understand the case at hand and its relevance to software and Internet developers, we ar...

Video provides a compelling way for retailers to sell products. But is it for every ecommerce merchant? And, is it being fully utilized? One man who has a strong opinion on the matter is Justin Foster. He’s the founder of The Video Commerce Consortium, a group of ecommerce professionals, online marketers, and technologists dedicated to advancing the use of video in ecommerce. He’s our guest in thi...

Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is a complex issue that’s difficult for ecommerce merchants to understand. It’s also a complex issue for vendors. But it cannot be ignored. Massimo Arrigoni is the co-owner of Early Impact, developer of the licensed shopping cart ProductCart. He has thoroughly studied the PCI compliance issue. In this Ecommerce Conversation he gives us a vendor perspective on...

Cynthia Snyder is the founder of Yonder Star Christmas Shop, a Pennsylvania-based online seller of Christmas Nativity scenes. Snyder launched the business in 2000 using a Yahoo! shopping cart. She joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss the business’s history and its current operations.

Running a business is challenging even when the economy is growing. But during a recession, it can be especially tough. Scott Dunlap, CEO of NearbyNow, understands that. NearbyNow, Inc. was founded in 2005 to simplify shopping for consumers who browse online but buy in stores. The company was showing solid growth until the economic downturn. That’s when NearbyNow management had to rethink their bu...

TransFS is a comparison shopping website for credit card processing providers. Sean Harper is the company’s CEO and co-founder. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Allen to discuss the state of credit card processing for smaller online merchants, including PCI compliance rules.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently announced changes to its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”. Those changes address endorsements by bloggers and others who accept payment to review a product. Failure to follow the rules can result in substantial fines. In this “Ecommerce Conversation,” Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Patrick Allen talks with Julie O’N...

It has become conventional wisdom that an email list is a vital weapon in your marketing arsenal. And in the world of email marketing there is no bigger name than Constant Contact. Eric Groves is senior vice president, market development for Constant Contact and he’s the author of the new book The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing. We hear Groves’ insights for merchants in this conversatio...

Online shoppers are increasingly relying on video to demonstrate a product or explain its use. But for many ecommerce merchants, producing, embedding and playing the video is a complicated, confusing process. There’s a company, however, that provides all of these video services on a self-serve basis, for a low monthly cost. It’s called Faculte.com and its founder is Maher Hakim, who joins Practica...

In the field of tracking and reporting on Internet traffic, there’s no more prominent name than comScore. It was founded in 1999 to track and report on ecommerce activity and, since then, it has diversified to track online advertising, socializing, searching, and much more. It’s now a publicly traded company, too, and its director of industry analysis is Andrew Lipsman, who tells us how it is that...

There’s no more innovative ecommerce company than eHobbies.com. Founded in 1999, it has grown to become a leader, if not the leader, in its field of hobby and toy retailing. Ken Kikkawa is the CEO of eHobbies.com. He also writes “The (eCommerce) Corner Office” blog at Practical eCommerce, and we’re pleased that he’s joined us to discuss ecommerce merchandising and, in particular, steps to prepare...

The technology exists for ecommerce merchants to track where their visitors live. Digital Element is a firm that provides this geo-tracking service, which allows merchants to change their home pages and other landing pages based on, say, whether a visitor lives in Alaska or Florida. The technology behind this service is IP addresses. Every computer on the Internet has an IP address and, in this fo...

There was a time, in the 1990s, when the only place to buy a domain name was at Network Solutions. That storied company has since had its up and downs, but no one disputes the pioneering nature of its products. Recently, Network Solutions redesigned and repositioned its website and its product offerings. This includes its newly-named shopping cart, nsCommerceSpace. Julia Dalton is senior product m...

The ability to target consumers is important for many ecommerce businesses. In fact, many businesses could benefit greatly from knowing where a consumer lives, so that the offer, and even the language, can be tailored to that geographic area. Well, there’s a company that provides that level of targeting to online merchants. It’s called Digital Element and its co-founder and chief operating officer...

Microsoft’s new search engine is called Bing. It launched on June 3, 2009 and observers have already described it as a dramatic improvement over Microsoft’s previous search engine efforts. Most every ecommerce merchant relies on search engines, and many of them, we suspect, will be interested to learn how Bing affects their businesses. Dave Wascha, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Bing Shopping, joi...

For many retail observers, the name Zappos is synonymous with great customer service and ecommerce well executed. The company was launched in 1999 as an online, footwear merchant. It has since grown into a retailing powerhouse, with 2008 sales reaching just over $1 billion dollars. In 2007, Zappos, a purely ecommerce firm, began publishing a printed catalog. That product is now a four-times-a-year...

The U.S. Virgin Islands are located roughly 90 miles east of Puerto Rico, in the Caribbean Sea. The islands are known for their white sand beaches and clear blue water. But a new Virgin Islands based economic initiative wants e-businesses to know there are significant federal tax advantages to doing business there. This new initiative partners the University of the Virgin Islands with private tech...

Miva Merchant is an early day shopping cart. First launched in 1995, it rose, and then fell, with the dot-com boom and bust. Findwhat.com, a publicly traded company, purchased Miva Merchant in 2004. Findwhat.com subsequently renamed itself Miva, only to sell the Miva Merchant shopping cart division to a private investor in August 2007. That investor is Russ Carroll. He’s now the CEO of Miva Mercha...

There is much talk about social media sites, and there’s talk of how companies can use social media for marketing purposes. One company doing just that is Comodo, a firm that provides 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 Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Online retailers are frequently interested in new channels to sell their products. In addition to a merchant’s own ecommerce site, he or she can consider auction sites and comparison shopping sites, for example. And there’s also Amazon.com. Amazon competes with many smaller merchants, but it also allows those merchants to list products there, too. The service is called “Selling on Amazon” and the...

Many ecommerce merchants rely on email marketing and many of them, we suspect, wish they could monitor and target emails based on where a recipient lives. This would allow for offers specific to a market or geographic area. Well, Listrak, an email marketing provider based in Pennsylvania, now offers email “geo tracking.” Listrak’s CEO is Ross Kramer, and he joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdoc...

Millions of Internet users are blind, deaf or are otherwise unable to use a website in a traditional manner. Ensuring that a site functions well for these users is called accessibility, and our guest for this interview is an expert on that topic. Joseph Dolson is CEO and founder of Accessible Web Design, a St. Paul, MN based firm that designs and consults on accessibility matters. He joins Practic...

Jordan CollettaThe shipping of products is a crucial function for most every ecommerce merchant. And there’s no company more prominent in the shipping business than UPS, who has recently announced upgrades to its “UPS Ready” program. Jordan Colletta is vice president of customer technology marketing for UPS, and he joins Practical eCommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss those upgrades. Mr. Colletta h...

Andrew HazenThe use of domain names to enhance an ecommerce “footprint” is growing in popularity. We’ve asked Andrew Hazen, the founder and CEO of Prime Visibility, a Long Island, NY-based Internet marketing firm, to explain domain-name strategies to us. Hazen is an Internet pioneer, having founded Prime Visibility in the late 1990s. The firm specializes in search engine optimization and pay-per-c...