Ecommerce Conversations

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 offers classes and instruction. It publishes a catalog. And it has an ecommerce site with a custom platform that sells both physical and digital products. The manager of this site is Theresa Fox, Sounds True’s managing director – direct and digital, and she joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

An increasing number of consumers access the Internet via mobile devices. This has looming implications for ecommerce merchants who must decide what platforms their customers will use in the future. Third party services can help owners migrate their sites to mobile devices, and one of those is Mobile Site Optimizer from Covario, the SEO software and services company. Its creator is Stephan Spencer, Practical Ecommerce’s longtime SEO contributor, and he joins Kerry Murdock to discuss Mobile Site Optimizer and mobile strategy generally.

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 more. A restaurant that has used its website to do all of this in an innovative way is manna, with a vegan-focused menu located in the heart of London. Its owner is Roger Swallow and he joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

There are dozens of credit-card-fraud prevention services. Some cost money, some are free, and their approach to fraud prevention can vary. So, what are small merchants to do to prevent fraud, and how much money should they spend in the process? A fraud-prevention expert is here to address that for us. He’s John Hammond, technical account manager with Authorize.Net, the credit-card payment gateway company. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Product reviews on ecommerce sites improve conversions. But they also help with customer relations and, recently, even physical-store merchants have used them. But merchants, both online and in physical stores, should carefully plan the use of product reviews, and develop ideas for soliciting valid ones. To help us sort through the use of product reviews, we welcome Pehr Luedtke, the CEO of PowerReviews, a leading product-review provider. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Most every ecommerce merchant has experienced credit card fraud. But some merchants have experienced more fraud than others, and fraud-prevention efforts vary from merchant to merchant. Cybersource, the payment gateway company, tracks all of this. For 11 years now it has assembled an online fraud report called “Online Payment Fraud Trends, Merchant Practices and Benchmarks.” The architect of the report, and the survey behind it, is Doug Schwegman, CyberSource’s director of customer and market intelligence. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Used books are big business. Just ask Amazon.com, or Abe Books or Alibris. You can even ask Adam Bertram. He’s been selling used books for two years under the name of Books by Bertram. He’s made a nice part-time income from that business, and he’s here to discuss selling books, managing multiple marketplaces, juggling inventory and more. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Volusion is an early day hosted shopping cart platform that has grown to represent 18,000 online stores. The company has recently upgraded its platform and to explain those upgrades, among other ecommerce topics, we are joined by Volusion’s chief operating officer, Clay Olivier. He speaks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

There’s a company that sells specialized clothing and gear to law enforcement and fire-protection professionals. The company is 511 Tactical. Its business model largely relies on a dealer network, but even so, its ecommerce site grosses roughly $10 million per year. That’s not bad for a small portion of the business, and how that site got to that level is our topic today. It’s 511Tactical.com and the ecommerce manager is Brian Rogers, who joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Etsy.com was launched in 2005 as an online marketplace for handmade items and vintage goods. It has since grown to include hundreds of thousands of sellers, and many more buyers. It reportedly facilitated over $180 million in annual transactions in 2009. Many of Etsy’s sellers are part-time craftspeople, and one of those is Arkansas-based Laurie Marshall, who has been selling hand-sewn crafts and vintage items on Etsy since 2007. Her two sites there are Punkinhead.etsy.com and Girlchild.etsy.com. She joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.