E-Commerce Blog

The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council recently released a new version of its Data Security Standard (DSS), making minor but important changes and clarifications to the PCI compliance standard that responsible online merchants follow to protect their customers and avoid fines. On November 25 and December 17, 2008, the PCI Security Standards Council will host a series of complimentary webinars to explain the changes to the PCI standards.

Many of the changes were clarifications or expansions, but there are also new more detailed testing standards for some network situations.

Leading credit card brands (American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa Inc.) formed th…

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New PCI Compliance Standards Take Effect

I like parties, and Social Couture is a high-end party supply website. On its corresponding MySpace site (always a good thing to have, but especially important if your gig is party supplies) Social Couture says, “whether your style is traditional or modern or whether your guests are young or old, our products and services will simplify the way you entertain.” Unfortunately, a descriptive statement like that doesn’t appear on the SocialCouture.com homepage or on any sort of high-level “about us” page. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The site is good-looking with nice graphics throughout. So let’s take it one step at a time and see what’s really under the tablecloth for this installment of “SEO Report Card.”

Home Page Content

As menti…

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SEO Report Card: Socialcouture.com Stresses Social Media

Preliminary results from a new Practical eCommerce survey showed that at least 63 percent of respondents thought traffic generation was a big challenge, and more than 31 percent saw it as their biggest challenge.

Practical eCommerce launched the first of a series of reader surveys on November 3, 2008. The survey was designed to give readers a voice in Practical eCommerce’s editorial, focusing us on the issues that matter most to ecommerce merchants. Although the survey will run through November 25, there has been a significant response. And thus far, traffic generation has been the largest concern.

These initial results should not be that surprising since stores—whether brick-and-mortar, catalog, or online—must have customers to succee…

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Online Retailers Want More Web Traffic

The old-school approach to order fulfillment doesn’t fly for many Internet retailers. Warehousing, packing, shipping, and return-order processing are labor-intensive and time-consuming. This has led to a trend among online sellers to outsource its fulfillment operations.

This isn’t drop shipping or outsourcing to a traditional warehouse. I’m talking about ecommerce fulfillment providers (EFPs). They take the “friction” out of order fulfillment. In a typical scenario, a consumer will buy merchandise from a company’s website. This purchase triggers an order that is sent electronically to an EFP who processes the order. A shipper such as FedEx or UPS is then automatically notified. Upon shipment of the order, an automated notification is …

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Yugster.com Shares its Fulfillment Strategy

The Maxthon web browser brings several great features to the same platform as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and lets users pretend to be from other counties so they can access otherwise restricted sites.

For the past several weeks, Practical eCommerce has been reviewing the leading web browsers, pointing out each one’s strengths and weaknesses. Our reviews have been in response to what we believe is a new, more heated battle for browser supremacy. Google fired the shot of this renewed browser war when it launched the beta version of its Chrome browser in September. These browser battles can and will have an effect on how everyone accesses the Internet and what they expect from the websites or online stores they visit.

The Skinny o…

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