Ecommerce Conversations, By Practical Ecommerce

Do you need an order management solution to help manage activity from multiple sales channels? Are you struggling to manage the mounds of paperwork from sales that come to your store from various sales channels? Barney Stone, President of Stone Edge Technologies, the company that produces Stone Edge Order Manager, says merchants tend to begin looking at order management solutions when they reach 10-15 orders per day. He explains what an order management solution does for a merchant, how it can incorporate an inventory management system for merchants selling across multiple channels, how much a typical solution costs, how that solution communicates to shipping and fulfillment operations and how a merchant get a return on that investment.

Do you have trouble with shopping cart abandonment? Research has shown that online consumers abandon their shopping carts 75 percent of the time. Second Bite (www.secondbite.com) integrates with a shopping cart and offers a potential solution for order recovery after a consumer abandons a cart. Chad Herman is the director of business development for Second Bite and he recently spoke with Practical Ecommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis.

Ralf VonSosen, vice president of Infopia (www.infopia.com), a company that provides an ecommerce platform to help merchants manage multichannel sales endeavors, speaks about how to begin thinking about selling in multiple channels and what these new sales opportunities can do for help your brand and boost your bottom line. Ralf also outlines several pitfalls that a merchant should be aware of when beginning to diversify sales into other channels.

Michael J. Katz is founder and “chief penguin” of Blue Penguin Development, Inc., a consulting firm helping companies increase sales by showing CEOs how to market to their existing relationships, and which specializes in the development of electronic newsletters. He recently spoke with Practical Ecommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about the importance of communicating with customers, how to get the “genuine you” into a regular electronic newsletter and what types of content to put in these newsletters.

How frequently should I send email marketing messages and newsletters to my customers, what should I put in the subject line to improve the open rate and how to include paid ads in an email newsletter are all topics discussed in this podcast by Practical Ecommerce Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis and Emma’s co-founder Clint Smith. Today’s podcast discusses several important tips to improve email campaigns, and it is the third and final installment in our podcast series with the myemma.com’s Clint Smith.

Are you still using Outlook Express or another text-based email client to email information to your customer base? Are you afraid to convert to and .html-based email service because you think it’s too hard to use? Practical Ecommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis continues his discussion on email marketing with Clint Smith, the co-founder of Emma, a web-based email service at www.myemma.com. They talk about how easy it is to use an email service, the types of response tracking those services bring to the table and Clint provides tips on how to build a quality email list.

Matt and Amiee Moffett launched the Satellite Radio Superstore three years ago have an quickly built their site into one of the top 10 independent retailers for XM Radio. Sales at their site should hit around $3 million this year and that means there are plenty of orders to keep their 12 staff members hopping. Matt and Amiee have also started selling products on eBay and are close to launching a store for Sirius satellite radio products. The Satellite Radio Superstore was profiled in the October edition of Practical Ecommerce. Matt spoke with Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about some of the challenges they have faced, including how to manage thousands of orders from multiple sales channels.

Scene7 is another leading company in the image management business. Scene7 provides services that can improve the product display features on ecommerce sites including zoom and pan features, online catalogs and improve product images. Sheila Dahlgren, senior vice president of marketing and corporate communication at Scene7, recently spoke to Practical Ecommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about the benefits of product display software.

Equilibrium is one company in the marketplace that automates imaging solutions and offers various display options including zoom and pan features. Sean Barger, CEO of Equilibrium, says there’s been a number of studies showing that people are more likely to buy a product if they can see the details — the front, the back and close-ups — especially for items that are detail-oriented, such a jewelry and electronics. He recently spoke to Practical Ecommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about the benefits of product display software.

AuctionCheckout offers a competitively priced merchant account package that is an alternative to PayPal. It’s one resource in the marketplace that can be used by an ecommerce owner to serve as a merchant account on his site and also be integrated on an auction site like eBay and Overstock so an ecommerce owner doesn’t need multiple payment channels. John Waldron and Sloane Bouchever acquired AuctionCheckout (www.auctioncheckout.com) in mid-July and recently spoke to Practical Ecommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis.

Clint Smith, co-founder of Emma, discusses several important tips to improve email campaigns and addresses that age-old question of whether an email should use images or not. This podcast is the first in a series of podcasts with Clint Smith covering email marketing.

Kevin Mahon, founder and CEO of KEMP, and Peter Melerud, the company’s marketing and business development officer, talked with Practical Ecommerce’s Contributing Editor Mitch Bettis about what a load balancer does and noted some of the tell-tale signs of when a small business owner will know it’s time to deploy a load balancer.

Eric Lituchy is the founder and CEO of Delightfuldeliveries.com, a leading site for gift baskets and unique gift items, such as gourmet food items and deserts. Given how important product images are to a web site, in particular those selling food products, Eric speaks about his site’s incorporation of product display software and that software’s special features — like it’s zoom and pan technology.

Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine discusses niche markets, changes in the marketplace, and more.

Claire Henderson is the owner and president of ChristmasNightInc.com, a business and website that have evolved through the years, but simple principles have guided her business since its inception: Know your product, know your market and provide great customer service.

Mike Randolph is the founder and CEO of AbleCommerce. He discusses the merits of a software shopping cart solution, how that differs from hosted solutions like Yahoo! Stores and various trends he sees in the ecommerce landscape that ecommerce owners need to be aware of.

Manish Chowdhary of GoECart outlines in great detail his vision of the future of online shopping carts as well as discussed some of the differences between software solutions and hosted cart solutions.

Dimitri Krakovsky is the vice president of product, Yahoo! Small Business. He discusses the merits of a hosted shopping cart solution and various trends he sees in the ecommerce landscape that ecommerce owners need to be aware of.

Julian Green, director of ProStores, discusses the landscape of shopping cart options for small ecommerce businesses, some of the merits of a hosted solution and trends that might impact ecommerce owners.

Corey Koenig, channel sales manager for Authorize.Net, provides an interesting insight into the landscape of shopping carts and what a payment gateway like Authorize.Net is concerned about. Koenig also discusses PCI compliance, something each ecommerce merchant is required to follow.