E-Commerce Blog

For many merchants, the holiday season is the largest sales period of the year. In this “Great Ideas for the Holidays” series, we’ll be asking ecommerce experts for ideas to help online retailers.

For this first installment, we’ve asked Massimo Arrigoni, CEO of Early Impact, which publishes the ProductCart line of licensed shopping cart software products, at EarlyImpact.com, and John Montague, owner of Spotlight Retail, operator of 20 niche ecommerce sites, at Spotlightretail.com.

Offer Free Shipping

“Free shipping is a must. It’s by far the primary reason for shopping cart abandonment according to many studies. To offset the cost of this, focus on high-margin complimentary services like gift-wrapping. Make the fact that you do offer …

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Great Ideas for The Holidays: Part 1

What our friends and relations think matters to us. I care about what my wife thinks of my new shirt, and when I got a 12-inch table saw this summer, I was sure to discuss the tool’s finer points my friend Steve. I am not alone. Shoppers like and trust recommendations and opinions from friends and family. We all talk about the great deal we got from one store or about the horrible shipping experience we had with another store, and our friends are listening.

Simply put, our peers influence us and we them. They help us make many buying decisions, and savvy online merchants can use this rather natural tendency to increase sales and make happy customers this holiday season. Specifically, I am going to describe three ways to use coupon code…

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Sharable Coupons Can Boost Sales

Practical eCommerce counts over 300 different shopping cart platforms. In this, our “Cart Of The Week” feature, we’ll profile—but not evaluate—a specific shopping cart and ask its management about its strengths and weaknesses. We’ll then ask a customer about the cart, too.

In this installment, we’ve featured Actinic, a U.K.-based licensed shopping cart that is distributed in North America by Sure Solutions. Actinic is a Windows PC application for small and mid-size business owners who want control over their online store, but don’t want to keep a full-time designer or developer. We spoke with Brian Johnson, President of Sure Solutions. We also spoke with a customer of Actinic, Fred Riehl, of Surfeyes.com.

PeC: How long have you been …

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A newly released consumer survey from Harris Interactive, a research firm, and Volusion, a hosted shopping cart company, suggests that payment security is—not surprisingly—a top issue for online shoppers.

The survey asked more than 2,400 online shoppers aged 18 or older what factors influenced them to buy from a particular online store initially. In response, 93 percent thought that a secure checkout process was important or very important.

The survey also found that a variety of quality products and easy to use navigation and features are also important.

Related Articles

Do Security Measures Boost Conversion?
Tuning Up Your Checkout Process
Payment Options and Simple Checkout

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Secure Checkout Most Important in Attracting New Customers

The Camino Project released its newest version for Mac OS-X in September 2008. Version 1.6.4 of this union of Mozilla and Macintosh offers a solid, Mac-compatible browsing experience with quick load times and crystal-clear renderings using the Gecko engine.

For the past several weeks, Practical eCommerce has been reviewing the leading web browsers, pointing out each one’s strengths and weaknesses. The Apple minority is a vocal one, so when Google upped the ante in browser performance with the release of its powerful and clean Chrome browser—a PC only tool so far—Mac users called for a better browser too. Mike Pinkerton and the rest of the Camino Project heard their cry, and released the newest version of its open source, Mac-centric br…

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Camino Web Browser is Best in Mac Universe