E-Commerce Blog

Google Insights, a free and relatively new research tool, provides detailed search data that can help online retailers improve their pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization.

Like it or not, many online retailers depend on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) to drive shoppers to their digital stores. If the clicks slow down, so does business. And keeping good-quality traffic flowing has been a real challenge. Retailers, particularly those with annual sales of less than $100,000, have had to constantly massage their PPC and SEO programs, tweaking a keyword here to save 3 cents per click or adjusting a landing page there to make an incremental gain in organic listings. This constantly chang…

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Review: Google Insights Can Help Merchants Optimize PPC/SEO Campaigns

Copyrights are perhaps the most common type of intellectual property (along with trademarks), and are the first stop when it comes to protecting software-based products. This is because copyrights, which protect a particular expression of an idea, exist automatically upon fixation of an author’s work in a tangible medium of expression. This means that a graphic designer’s works are protected the instant they are drawn on paper or saved on a computer. A software programmer’s works are protected the instant they are saved to disc.

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The Rocky Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds, Part 3: Copyrights

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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Having even one credit card number stolen from your site can tarnish your reputation and impact sales for years. It is important to be aware of potential security flaws and how to mitigate them to protect yourself.

“A breach of cardholder data can be big money in fines and remediation efforts. If there isn’t a need to keep this data, it’s suggested that it’s not kept at all,” suggests John Carr, owner of Bluebird Consulting, a Detroit based security firm. “For many ecommerce sites, the best option is simply to work with a third-party processor that will not only process credit cards, but also be the payment site [to store the data] as well.”

Improper Storage

Many ecommerce sites store customer data and credit card numbers well after…

Excerpted from:
Credit Card Theft: Steps to Protect You and Your Customers