E-Commerce Blog

Social media can be a terrific way to share information with your customers, provide them with crucial support, and otherwise communicate with them.

But almost all social media sites have accessibility problems. Though they are fairly accessible as a group, they do have a variety of issues which can decrease their effectiveness with a disabled market segment. If you want your business to be able to connect with all your customers, you’ll need to be aware of these issues and what solutions are available for them.

You are probably already taking advantage of social media by posting product videos on YouTube, conversing with customers through Twitter or Facebook, or performing any of the numerous functions available to you within the hun…

Originally posted here:
Accessibility and Social Media

Disabled consumers often face great challenges when browsing and making purchases online. Perhaps as many as ten percent of online shoppers have a disability, such as low-or-no vision or an inability to use a keyboard, that can make it difficult to understand content and navigate websites.

“The Accessibility Review” is a monthly series that attempts to help ecommerce merchants improve the accessibility of their websites. For this month, we visited Pets Contained, an online store that sells cages, fences and crates for pets. Owners Ken and Belinda Fagin requested this accessibility review.

There are a number of different ways to approach an accessibility audit. In last month’s review of Lori’s Wigsite, I walked through the technical iss…

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Accessibility Review: PetsContained.com

Disabled Internet users often face great challenges when browsing and making purchases online. Perhaps as many as ten percent of online shoppers have a disability, such as low-or-no vision or an inability to use a keyboard, that can make it difficult to understand content and navigate websites.

“The Accessibility Review” is a monthly series that offers a candid assessment of an online store, providing insight for ecommerce merchants to improve the accessibility of their websites. For this month, we visited Lori’s Wigsite, an online store that specializes in wigs and hairpieces. Its owner, Lori Roddey, requested this accessibility review.

Lori’s Wigsite is a good example of a website that, though not built with accessibility in mind, ne…

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Accessibility Review: LorisWigsite.com

He won the US presidential election in no small part due to a brilliant online strategy, which Barack Obama is encouragingly continuing at his Change.gov website.

Today, the soon-to-be American president launched a new social democracy-in-action feature on the site, The Citizen’s Briefing Book.

On it, Americans (or anyone, really), are invited to submit ideas to
the new administration as well as to rate or comment on other posted
ideas. Like Digg, the most popular ideas rise to the top, and
presumably to the attention of the Commander-in-Chief.

This is
more than an empowering example of online democracy and the tactics
that helped a nation radically change course. It’s a strong example of
how organizations, large or small, can leverage social media to engage
audiences, as well as listen to and presumably address their concerns.
To encourage and facilitate participation, the site is searchable, and
posts are tagged and categorized.

As if the guy doesn’t have enough on his plate before Tuesday’s inauguration!

Online
marketers and analysts should keep an eye on the Briefing Book to glean
best practice ideas for online research, surveys, engagement marketing,
and likely, some surprises we haven’t even thought of yet.

View original post here:
Obama continues to leverage social media and online democracy

Since the dawn of US ecommerce, the question has been “to sales tax, or not to sales tax?”

Consumers and online retailers are squarely in the don’t-tax camp, while state governments, which stand to reap the tax dollars, are of a differing opinion. New York state has been trying to get out of state sellers, such as Amazon, to collect and pay state sales tax on transactions, which could reap hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue for the cash-strapped government (particular now that once-lucrative Wall Street revenues are fading fast).

The rule of thumb has long been that if the online seller has a bricks and mortar local presence in the state, e.g. Apple.com has local Apple stores, state tax is levied on online transactions. Amazon, as well as other online-only retailers such as Overstock.com, challenged New York’s attempt to get them to pony up 8.25 percent on all New York state transactions.

Yesterday, a NY State judge dismissed Amazon’s suit as groundless.

Blame…..the affiliates?

Because Amazon generates more than $10,000 in referrals from New
York-based affiliates, the judge’s reasoning goes (ergo, New Yorkers to
earn money from other New Yorkers) Amazon, as well as other
out-of-state retailers with affiliate programs, are going to have to
get on the state tax bandwagon.

And that’s going to hurt. Not NY state, of course, but online retailers and consumers.

A
seldom-discussed bit of accepted wisdom is that ecommerce is buoyed in
no small part by its ability to enable buyers to avoid paying taxes on
high ticket items (which also lessens the burden of shipping charges).
Buying that new laptop on Amazon versus a local store can shave a
couple hundred dollars in sales tax right off the price - a strong
incentive to buy, particularly in tough economic times.

The
aftermath of this ruling is going to be interesting. How much (more)
will online retailing suffer, now that their tax amnesty status in New
York is lifted? Will affiliate programs be designed on a state-by-state
basis in the US? It’s an absurd notion relative to the nature of the
web, but entirely possible in hard economic terms.

This will be
an interesting one to watch. Bottom line, New York’s decision to
disincentivize ecommerce could not possibly have come at a worse time.

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Recession collides with “Amazon Tax”