E-Commerce Blog

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce has gathered twelve seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is shopping carts.

The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, MuttMart; Chris Stump, Only Hammocks; Mike Reiman, PoolDawg; Dan Stewart, Xtreme Diesel Performance; Roman Kagan, Appliance Parts Pros; Cindy Barrileaux, Write Your Best; Claudette Cyr, Gear-Source; Mike Butler, Bloom Designs Nursery; Kristen Taylor, Juvie; Jeff Muchnik, RedBox Tools; Kara English, Candles & Such.

Here are three responses, chosen randomly and published anonymously to maintain candor.

PeC: What shopping cart do you use?

FIELD TESTER 1: Miva Merchant 5.5.

FIELD TESTER 2: GravityMarket by Netconcepts.

FIELD TESTER 3: Yahoo! Merchant Solutions.

PeC: How long have you used this cart?

FIELD TESTER 1: We have been a Miva customer for nearly three years now. We just…

See the rest here:
Field Test: Shopping Carts, Part One Of Three

“Lessons Learned” is an occasional series where we ask seasoned ecommerce professionals about their mistakes and successes. For this installment, we’ve asked Allan Regenbaum, owner of Keylan, Inc., a company that sells cookware, coffee machines and fitness products online. Keylan, Inc. is 12 years old and based in Atlanta. It has two employees, Regenbaum and his wife Robyn, with an annual revenue approaching $1 million. It offers about 200 products. Here we give you Regenbaum’s experiences and suggestions.

On general advice for ecommerce merchants
“People like to speak to other people. Customers yearn to speak to someone with good product knowledge. They are tired of minimum wage, gum-chewing salespeople who have zero product knowledge. Compete in areas where Amazon.com cannot, for example where just being there to explain the product to the client is a unique differentiator. For high-ticket items, I think the web is going to be used more and more to push customers to call…

More here:
Lessons Learned: Scanpancookware.com Owner Allan Regenbaum