Ecommerce Conversations

An ecommerce merchant in St. Louis launched his business in 2006 after having written the programming code for his own shopping cart. That business, called Vat19, sells offbeat gifts (such as a five pound Gummy bear), and has grown to 300 SKUs and up to 2,000 shipments per day. How have they done it all? Jamie Salvatori, the founder and owner, is here to explain it to Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

There is no bigger name in the credit card business than Visa, and there are no bigger names in the payment gateway business than Cybersource and its subsidiary, Authorize.Net. Later this year, all of those companies will likely be combined, as Visa and Cybersource announced recently that Visa intends to purchase that company. To explain the transaction and its impact on ecommerce merchants, Michael Walsh, president and CEO of Cybersource, and John Bodine, its vice president of small business sales, visits with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

A growing percentage of Internet consumers use Facebook. By some accounts, it is the second most-popular website, and ecommerce merchants are now finding ways to tap into that traffic. One of them is The Guitar Syndicate, a newly-launched retailer of musical intruments and accessories. It uploads inventory from its ecommerce site to a “Store” tab on its Facebook site. The co-owner of The Guitar Syndicate, Scott Burnett, discuss the company’s Facebook strategy with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Rick Wilson is the president of Miva Merchant, the pioneering ecommerce platform. Like many ecommerce platforms, Miva Merchant is evolving and it now offers its own hosted shopping cart. Wilson joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss recent upgrades to that cart, cloud computing generally, and the future of third-party hosting companies.

The process of collecting and processing online payments is confusing. There are many parties involved, and the fees are oftentimes difficult to decipher. One company that hopes to clear up the payment process, and to simplify payments from international customers, is Adyen. Its president of North America, Peter Caparso, joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

The American Dream, for many aspiring merchants, is to work at home, own a business, watch after their kids and enjoy it all. Our guest today does all of that. She’s Kara English, the co-founder of Candlesandsuch.com. She taught herself the ecommerce business, launched a site, and prospered. All from her home. She discusses it with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Mobile commerce will likely affect most every ecommerce merchant in one way or the other. NetSuite is a leading ecommerce platform with many ecommerce merchant customers. Its solutions are among the most comprehensive on the market. Malin Huffman is a principal product manager at NetSuite in charge of the company’s mobile efforts, and he joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss NetSuite’s view of the future of mobile commerce.

There’s site search, and then there’s money-making site search. The former will match words and phrases, and the latter will help consumers find what they are looking for and then suggest items they may not have known they needed. A leader is sophisticated site search is SLI Systems, and its CEO, Shaun Ryan, joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Running a successful ecommerce site takes skill and hard work. But what about running 24 of them? That’s what Brad Likens does. He’s the co-owner of Best Service Stores and, in four years, his company has grown to over $20 million in annual sales with 24 separate ecommerce sites. He does this from his headquarters in suburban Kansas City, and he joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Entrepreneurs are using ecommerce sites in innovative ways. One of these entrepreneurs is Matt Schenck, who, out of personal frustration, decided there had to be a better way for consumers to purchase original art. That idea is now ArtQuiver.com, a groundbreaking ecommerce site that offers high-quality, original works of art directly to buyers. Schenck joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss the concept, the website and the first year of Art Quiver.