E-Commerce Blog

Sounds True is a Colorado-based provider of products and services to enable spiritual development. It was founded in the 1980s, and its business model is both interesting and sophisticated. It sells products via wholesale channels, it publishes a catalog, it offers online courses, and it has an ecommerce site with a custom platform that sells both physical and digital products. The web manager of Sounds True is Theresa Fox and she joined us recently to discuss it.

PeC: What does Sounds True sell online?

Theresa Fox: “Sounds True is a spiritual book publishing company and we primarily emphasize audio books, which is a bit different than books on tape. We also have DVDs, we have physical books and we do online courses and live ev…

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Quick Query: SoundsTrue.com Sells Educational Products in Multiple Formats

“Ecommerce News Around the Web” is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. In this week’s edition we are taking a slightly different tack and focusing on ecommerce and social media. Among other things, we have pulled together several articles that focus on creating a Facebook Fan Page that really works.

Facebook Grows as Ecommerce Platform - EDL Consulting

Since it achieved profitability in 2009, Facebook has begun a slow trajectory toward greater use of ecommerce. A deal with PayPal in February led to greater development of Facebook’s virtual product sales, which in turn have led to the sale of consumer goods through brand fan pages. Procter & Gamble has become the …

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Ecommerce News Around the Web for March 5, 2010

Videoconferencing systems have existed since the 1960s and since then, these systems have slowly been integrated into the enterprise. The vision of videoconferencing has always been clear in theory, as depictions from “The Jetsons,” “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” and other science-fiction titles have shown. As companies realized the value of synchronizing real-time, interactive, immersive nonverbal communicative cues with the verbal conversations already available through the telephone, they sought similar solutions.

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I See You: Video Collaboration in the Enterprise

Service-related businesses are finding new customers and new marketing opportunities online. This includes restaurants, which have increasingly embraced the web to promote menu offerings and dinner specials, and to facilitate reservations, provide directions and much more. A restaurant that has used its website to do all of this in an innovative way is manna, with a vegan-focused menu and located in the heart of London. Its owner is Roger Swallow and he spoke with us about it.

Practical eCommerce: Why does your restaurant need a website?

Roger Swallow: “How does a restaurant, or any business, exist without a website? We have been around for 43 years in the same location, and for people who don’t know us, it’s a perfect opportunit…

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Quick Query: Restaurant Owner Uses Website to Facilitate Reservations, Promote Menu

If you are an ecommerce merchant, your business likely cannot survive without search engine exposure through Google. But Google has over one hundred other services and products that have blossomed from its core web search tool. Just keeping up with the names of these products is challenging, let alone figuring out how you can utilize them to improve your bottom line.

Let’s take a look at the Google services most relevant to ecommerce site owners and some of the newer features that you can leverage for your business.

Google Web Search

Google’s flagship search engine is still the go-to Internet entry point for much of civilization (with Facebook representing a worthy challenger). One of Google’s more recent advances in search technology…

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Ten Google Services to Help Your Ecommerce Business