E-Commerce Blog

If Activision is to be believed, then its new “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ video game has blown away all competition with the lethality of a Javelin missile plowing through Russian terrorists. Included in the smoking wreckage: not just previous gaming bestsellers like “Grand Theft Auto IV” and “Halo 3,” but also the mangled corpses of Batman and Harry Potter. The company announced Wednesday that “MW2″ made $550 million worldwide in its first five days of sale. Activision says that makes it the “biggest entertainment launch in history.”

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‘Modern Warfare 2′ Shocks and Awes With Explosive Sales

Meredith Bowen was getting tired of requests from Facebook friends to exchange make-believe pansies, daffodils and tiny cartoon characters for her “Lil Green Patch,” a virtual garden that sprouted on her social-networking page about a year ago. She was ready to delete it, until she learned The Nature Conservancy was getting a portion of the ad revenue generated by the game. “I’ve saved like 133 square feet of rainforest,” the 31-year-old Holt resident said. Bowen illustrates both the potential upside and downside for charitable causes hoping to cash in on social networking sites.

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Do Charities Get a Decent ROI From Social Networking?

It’s been a tough week for the gaming industry. NPD reported a 17 percent decline in console video game sales for March, and the “Grand Theft Auto IV: Chinatown Wars” debut was not so grand. Activision’s upcoming “DJ Hero” stirred up legal issues, while “Fallout” developer Bethesda Softworks got busy with a new addition to the franchise. While game sales in the U.S. may have once appeared impervious to the recession, making double digit gains despite declines in other forms of entertainment, March took its toll, according to sales figures from the NPD Group.

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Game Sales Sputter, ‘GTA’ Fails to Steal the Show

The information you present to customers during the checkout is critical to helping them decide whether or not to complete the purchase. Throughout this process you will need to continually reassure them, providing them with the necessary elements essential to developing trust and security. These elements are commonly called customer assurances. Their job is making the customer feel comfortable enough to complete the intended action (i.e. buying your product.)

10 Proven Methods to Decrease Your Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

When it comes to setting up your Web presence, entrepreneurs are surprisingly lax. Depending on who you talk to, about half of small businesses do not have a Web site. Most of those will tell you that it’s just too complicated, time-consuming and expensive a job to take on. With the availability of free and very low-cost drag and drop Web building tools, however, entrepreneurs have no more excuses for being off-screen. It’s getting harder than ever for all those entrepreneurial types out there to stay ahead of the game.

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How to Build a Small-Business Web Site, Part 1: Nuts and Bolts