Practical Ecommerce Radio

Scot Wingo followed consumers' online shopping journeys while running ChannelAdvisor, the pioneering marketplace management platform he launched in 2001. He says consumers approach the process in three stages: researching the market, finding suitable products, and buying the right item. The acronym — ReFiBuy — is the name of his latest company. It's a generative AI optimization platform...

Optimizing for visibility in generative AI platforms seems easy enough. Enter a sitemap URL into Bing Webmaster Tools and Search Console, and, voilà, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and even ChatGPT access and reference the content. But Clint Butler reminds us it's not that simple. He says the problem is knowing which platform to optimize, as the tactics differ. And rarely do those platform...

Ted Kubaitis once managed organic search for a retailer with 25,000 SKUs and 500 categories. He feared competing against Amazon for rankings until he realized most of its product pages had zero backlinks. Then an epiphany hit. "All it took was 25 backlinks," he told me. Ted is now the founder of SEO Tool Lab, a prominent agency and software provider, and the host of "SEO Fight Club,...

President Trump’s tariffs have merchants scrambling to gauge the impact on imports, exports, and overall cost. There’s no better authority to assess that impact than Alex Yancher. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Passport, a global provider of cross-border logistics, localization, and support for ecommerce sellers.

We occasionally hear from ecommerce pros seeking employment. Many this year report extended searches with little to no acknowledgment from would-be employers after submitting a resume. To inquire, we once again turn to Harry Joiner. He's a 20-year ecommerce recruiter with a seasoned perspective for job seekers and the companies who hire them.

Harry Joiner launched his ecommerce recruiting firm in 2005. He has experienced booms, busts, and nonstop changes. I contact him periodically for a recap on ecommerce executive employment in the U.S. Our conversation last week touched on post-Covid impacts, the demand for remote work, the dominance of LinkedIn, and more. The entire audio of our discussion is embedded below. The transcript is edite...

I last spoke with Mark Daoust in late 2022. His firm, Quiet Light, a digital business brokerage, had just witnessed a post-pandemic hangover from cheap money and booming ecommerce. A normal acquisition market had returned. We connected again last week. I asked him for an update on the state of buying and selling ecommerce companies. No one is more qualified for that update than Daoust. His firm ha...

Barry Schwartz was just 23 when he launched Search Engine Roundtable in 2003. Google had started five years earlier, and optimizing web pages for organic rankings was primitive, at least by today's standards. Fast forward to 2022, and Search Engine Roundtable is a pillar of industry news and how-to. And so is Schwartz. He's a pioneering tech publisher, journalist, and search engine autho...

What is the current state of ecommerce acquisitions? Curious, I turned to Mark Daoust. He's a pioneer in ecommerce M&A, having launched Quite Light, a brokerage, in 2007.

It's been a rough year for many ecommerce companies. Even the largest players — Amazon, Shopify — have announced layoffs. Amid the turmoil, we thought of Harry Joiner. He's a longtime ecommerce recruiter, having launched his executive search firm in 2005. We recently asked him about the state of ecommerce employment, hiring tactics, and more. 

Amid the onset of the Russian invasion, we received an email from Ukraine. The sender was the co-owner of the Whidegroup, an ecommerce agency in Zaporizhzhia, near Crimea. Politely, Anastasia Zhuk asked if we would renew her company’s directory listing.

The best tactic for improving organic search rankings is analyzing successful competitors. That's according to Victor Karpenko, the founder of Ukraine-based SeoProfy, a global consultancy.

It took a war for many of us to realize the skills of Ukrainians. The country is full of technology talent with impressive educational credentials and a strong work ethic. This interview is with Alyona Mysko, the founder of Fuel, a cloud-based financial platform located normally in Kyiv. Fuel provides essential ecommerce accounting and financial services for not a lot of money.