Ecommerce Conversations, By Practical Ecommerce

The days of being tied to a desktop computer are long gone. Ecommerce merchants can work wirelessly with laptop computers, personal digital assistants, and increasingly, smart mobile phones. Quickoffice is a Texas-based software company which focuses on providing mobile office software. David Brennan is Quickoffice’s vice president of ecommerce . He speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Patrick Allen.

It’s not every day that we speak with a Stanford PhD in philosophy who has funded the construction of schools around the world. That same person started dabbling in ecommerce a decade or so ago and his company is now a publicly-traded retailing powerhouse. He’s Patrick Byrne and the company is Overstock.com. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss holiday sales strategies, among other ecommerce topics.

Nearly every ecommerce merchant has experienced disgruntled customers or angry competitors who post dishonest comments about his or her business. This could be in so-called complaint sites, forums, blogs or other online venues. Internet attorney John Dozier says there are steps merchants can take to limit the damage from these attacks, and he joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss these steps and his new book, Google Bomb.

Stephanie Leffler started selling sunscreen products online while in college. That was around the year 2000. She became frustrated with her web developer, and decided to produce a shopping cart herself. That cart became MonsterCommerce, an early-day, hosted ecommerce platform that she sold in 2006 to Network Solutions. She’s an ecommerce and Internet pioneer, in other words, and she joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss her new venture, Juggle.com.

Ecommerce merchants want to affect behavior. More specifically, they want consumers to buy from them. Dr. BJ Fogg is a professor at Stanford University who studies how technology can be used to change behaviors in positive ways. He is also the creator of the Fogg Behavior Model, which illustrates the three elements, he believes, must converge for a behavior to occur. Dr. Fogg speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Patrick Allen for this “Ecommerce Conversation.”

Social media has become a mainstream tool that businesses are increasingly using to interact with their customers and boost sales. SocialGrub is a new service that helps businesses in the restaurant and retail industry optimize their social marketing efforts.Sam Rubin is co-founder of SocialGrub. Mr. Rubin is a restaurant and email marketing veteran. He created SocialGrub to further assist his clients with marketing their brands by utilizing social networks.He speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Patrick Allen for this “Ecommerce Conversation.”

Jill Exler is founder and CEO of Jexbo.com, an online retailer of books that have been self-published by their authors. She founded the business in 2007, after having been frustrated by the options to sell her own self-published book. Exler’s business is based in Michigan, in the U.S., but she divides her time between there and Germany. She joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Doing business on the Internet requires the use sophisticated software and complicated processes. Many of these innovative products have been patented; Google and Amazon, for example, hold many hundreds of patents. But the U. S. Supreme Court may be about to greatly restrict the issuance of patents. To help us understand the case at hand and its relevance to software and Internet developers, we are joined by Lawrence M. Hadley. Mr. Hadley is a seasoned intellectual property attorney and a partner in the firm of Hennigan, Bennett and Dorman, in Los Angeles. He speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Video provides a compelling way for retailers to sell products. But is it for every ecommerce merchant? And, is it being fully utilized?One man who has a strong opinion on the matter is Justin Foster. He’s the founder of The Video Commerce Consortium, a group of ecommerce professionals, online marketers, and technologists dedicated to advancing the use of video in ecommerce. He’s our guest in this “eCommerce Conversation” with Practical Ecommerce Contributing Editor Kevin Patrick Allen.

Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is a complex issue that’s difficult for ecommerce merchants to understand. It’s also a complex issue for vendors. But it cannot be ignored. Massimo Arrigoni is the co-owner of Early Impact, developer of the licensed shopping cart ProductCart. He has thoroughly studied the PCI compliance issue. In this Ecommerce Conversation he gives us a vendor perspective on becoming PCI compliant.

Cynthia Snyder is the founder of Yonder Star Christmas Shop, a Pennsylvania-based online seller of Christmas Nativity scenes. Snyder launched the business in 2000 using a Yahoo! shopping cart. She joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss the business’s history and its current operations.

Running a business is challenging even when the economy is growing. But during a recession, it can be especially tough. Scott Dunlap, CEO of NearbyNow, understands that.NearbyNow, Inc. was founded in 2005 to simplify shopping for consumers who browse online but buy in stores. The company was showing solid growth until the economic downturn. That’s when NearbyNow management had to rethink their business model. We hear about Dunlap’s experience in this conversation with Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Patrick Allen.

TransFS is a comparison shopping website for credit card processing providers. Sean Harper is the company’s CEO and co-founder. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Allen to discuss the state of credit card processing for smaller online merchants, including PCI compliance rules.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently announced changes to its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”. Those changes address endorsements by bloggers and others who accept payment to review a product. Failure to follow the rules can result in substantial fines.In this “Ecommerce Conversation,” Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Patrick Allen talks with Julie O’Neill, of the Washington D.C. office of the law firm Morrison & Foerster. She’s a former staff attorney for the FTC in New York and offers guidelines pertaining to your business relationship with bloggers and reviewers.

It has become conventional wisdom that an email list is a vital weapon in your marketing arsenal. And in the world of email marketing there is no bigger name than Constant Contact. Eric Groves is senior vice president, market development for Constant Contact and he’s the author of the new book The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing. We hear Groves’ insights for merchants in this conversation with Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Allen.

Online shoppers are increasingly relying on video to demonstrate a product or explain its use. But for many ecommerce merchants, producing, embedding and playing the video is a complicated, confusing process. There’s a company, however, that provides all of these video services on a self-serve basis, for a low monthly cost. It’s called Faculte.com and its founder is Maher Hakim, who joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

In the field of tracking and reporting on Internet traffic, there’s no more prominent name than comScore. It was founded in 1999 to track and report on ecommerce activity and, since then, it has diversified to track online advertising, socializing, searching, and much more. It’s now a publicly traded company, too, and its director of industry analysis is Andrew Lipsman, who tells us how it is that comScore knows all of that information. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

There’s no more innovative ecommerce company than eHobbies.com. Founded in 1999, it has grown to become a leader, if not the leader, in its field of hobby and toy retailing. Ken Kikkawa is the CEO of eHobbies.com. He also writes “The (eCommerce) Corner Office” blog at Practical eCommerce, and we’re pleased that he’s joined us to discuss ecommerce merchandising and, in particular, steps to prepare for the holiday ecommerce-selling season. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

The technology exists for ecommerce merchants to track where their visitors live. Digital Element is a firm that provides this geo-tracking service, which allows merchants to change their home pages and other landing pages based on, say, whether a visitor lives in Alaska or Florida. The technology behind this service is IP addresses. Every computer on the Internet has an IP address and, in this follow up interview, we asked Digital Element co-founder and executive vice president Rob Friedman what, exactly, is an IP address. He joins Practical eCommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

There was a time, in the 1990s, when the only place to buy a domain name was at Network Solutions. That storied company has since had its up and downs, but no one disputes the pioneering nature of its products. Recently, Network Solutions redesigned and repositioned its website and its product offerings. This includes its newly-named shopping cart, nsCommerceSpace. Julia Dalton is senior product manager – ecommerce services, with Network Solutions, and she joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.