E-Commerce Blog

There are more than 500 online shopping carts. And each week we feature one, interviewing both the cart’s developer and a customer. “Cart of the Week” is not a review or an evaluation, but rather an opportunity to learn about a shopping cart from the people who build it and use it.

This week, we’ll hear from Mitchell Harper, co-founder and product marketing manager for Interspire, the company behind BigCommerce online shopping cart. Interspire’s North American headquarters are in Austin, Texas, with engineering teams located in Sydney, Australia and London, England.

“BigCommerce is the SaaS [software as a service] version of our licensed ecommerce platform, Interspire Shopping Cart,” said Harper.

The company launched BigCommerce in S…

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Cart of the Week: BigCommerce

Many experts predict that mobile commerce will eventually exceed traditional website sales. We wonder how many ecommerce sites are already optimized for mobile devices; and we’re curious what your view of mobile commerce really is. The goal of this month’s Practical eCommerce survey is to learn what readers think about the usefulness of mobile web devices and to predict their future use in ecommerce.

The March survey consists of four questions that seek your views on mobile web devices. We want to know if your business will likely be materially impacted by mobile commerce in the future, and whether your site is already optimized for mobile devices. We wonder if you use an iPhone, a Blackberry, or any other mobile web device. And, we won…

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Take the Survey: Is Your Website Mobile Optimized?

Americans made 14.5 billion Internet searches in February 2010, according to comScore, the Internet tracking firm. Google users accounted for roughly 9.5 billion of those searches, equating to an approximate 65.5 percent market share, up .1 percent from January.

Microsoft beat Google in percentage gain between January and February, however. In January Microsoft controlled 11.3 percent of the market, and by the end of February it held 11.5 percent, according to comScore.

Yahoo!, Google’s closest competitor in terms of market share, lost the most ground when it dropped from 17 percent market share to 16.8 percent. Ask Network, which includes the Ask.com search engine, also lost market share, dropping from 3.8 percent in January to 3.7 …

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Chart of the Week: Google Increases Market Share in February

There are thousands of ecommerce-related products and services that small- to mid-sized merchants can use to improve their businesses. But often the challenge to engaging these products and services is not funding, or even the products’ capabilities. Instead, it is the difficulty associated with getting all of these diverse products or services to work together.

I strongly believe that most small ecommerce businesses start for one of two reasons: (1) either the entrepreneur has web development skills and wants to use those skills to start an ecommerce business, or (2) the entrepreneur has marketing or product expertise and wants to sell online.

In the latter case, the would-be merchant usually has to hire a developer, a web designer, o…

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The PEC Review: Chimpified Connects Two Powerful Platforms

“Ask an Expert” is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about social media marketing. It comes from Theresa Fox, managing director of direct and digital initiatives at Sounds True, an online store that sells products and services to enable spiritual development.

For the answer, we turn to Lawrence Cramer, CEO of Application Dynamics, founder of Cartweaver, and a specialist in ecommerce and social media strategies.

If you’d like to submit a question, email Kate Monteith, staff writer, at kate@practicalecommerce.com and we’ll at…

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Ask an Expert: Examples of Social Media Marketing Success?