Ecommerce Conversations

Yahoo! Small Business remains a leading, hosted platform for ecommerce businesses. But the company itself has experienced turmoil — the CEO was recently fired — and critics of the shopping cart platform say it’s dated. The man in charge of that platform is Tom Byun. He is vice president and general manager of Yahoo! Small Business, and he speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock on the state of Yahoo! and its hosted shopping cart.

The rush to sell products across multiple ecommerce channels is fine until a merchant starts to manage the back office complexities of updating inventory, prices, product descriptions, and then sales and shipments. Without automation that entire process can be a nightmare. Our guest today runs a company whose goal is to eliminate the complexities of selling across multiple channels. He is Fred Lizza, CEO of Dydacomp, makers of Multichannel Order Manager. He speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock on how merchants should best utilize third-party selling channels.

Sophisticated site search helps consumers find products on an ecommerce site, and therefore increases sales. But site search can also work with faceted category navigation to help consumers. The blending of site search with faceted category navigation is our topic, and to explain it we are joined by Scott Zielinski, co-founder of SearchSpring, a leading search solution provider. He speaks with Kerry Murdock of Practical Ecommerce.

The notion of combining an online marketplace with a payment platform, a shopping cart and a robust backend is not new. But when the marketplace is eBay, the payment platform is PayPal, the cart is Magento and the backend is GSI Commerce, that is news. eBay calls this new collaboration x.commerce. Its general manager is Matthew Mengerink. He speaks here with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Networking and exchanging ideas can help many online retailers. One organization that promotes this type of activity is Shop.org, the trade association for online merchants. Our guest today is the CEO of a leading ecommerce services firm, and he’s just been elected to the Shop.org board of directors. He is Scot Wingo. His firm is ChannelAdvisor. And he’s here to discuss Shop.org and its role in helping ecommerce merchants. He speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

The need for sophisticated site search is becoming increasingly important for ecommerce merchants, who are all serving increasingly sophisticated consumers. By almost any measure, high-level site search increases sales. To discuss trends in site search, and new developments in that industry, we are joined by Shaun Ryan. He’s the CEO of SLI Systems, a pioneering site search provider. He speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

There are innovators and trendsetters in the ecommerce business. Our guest, Harley Finkelstein, looks for these innovations, and trends, and then shares some of them with us. In this month’s installment of “Innovators and Trendsetters,” Finkelstein — who is chief platform officer with Shopify, the hosted shopping cart — discusses three interesting ecommerce sites with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock

The Durbin Amendment to the U.S. Dodd-Frank legislative package affects ecommerce merchants. That’s because the Amendment greatly lowers the rate — called interchange — that Visa and MasterCard charge for the processing of debit cards. But, importantly, it does not automatically lower the fees that merchants actually pay to their merchant account providers. Our guest today is a longtime veteran of the credit and debit card industry. He’s Sloane Bouchever, the founder of Interchange Plus Solutions, a merchant account provider, and he’s here to suggest ways for merchants to make certain they receive the lower debit card rates. He speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

The migration to online retailing is putting U.S. states in a bind. Their reliance on sales tax from local brick and mortar retailers means that as local sales lessen, so does the sales tax revenue from those transactions. Some of these states are now attempting to expand who is liable for sales taxes, and some states now say this includes companies with local Internet affiliates. Our guest today, Oliver Roup, is the CEO of VigLink.com, an affiliate marketing company. He says targeting affiliates is wrong. He suggests another solution, and he’s here today to discuss it with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

The ecommerce industry in the U.S. is robust. It’s also robust in other industrialized countries, while other regions lag in ecommerce activity. The state of worldwide, online retailing is our topic today. And to help us understand it, we welcome Joanne Bethlamy. She’s with Cisco, the worldwide technology