Ecommerce Conversations

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.

Mobile devices could be the next major platform from which consumers shop for products. But, for ecommerce merchants, there are issues with mobile commerce having to do with screen size, product-image display and payments. Payments on a mobile device, from a consumer to a merchant, can be difficult. But there are companies seeking to simplify paying for products via a mobile device. One of them is mPayy and its CEO and founder, Conrad Sheehan, joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

The start of the New Year brings new energy and vitality for many online merchants. Many of them are looking to jump start sales, trim expenses and otherwise grow and improve their businesses. For ideas to help with this, we visited with a seasoned ecommerce expert. He’s Lin Shearer, senior marketing manager with ProStores, a leading ecommerce platform. He joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

There are numerous options for ecommerce merchants who want to learn new skills that can be applied to their business. Full Sail University is one of those online options. With a physical campus in Winter Park, Florida, the university offers online programs in fields such as web design and development, Internet marketing, and graphic design. Ani Gasti is Full Sail’s director of faculty development. He talks with Practical Ecommerce’s Kevin Patrick Allen about educational options for ecommerce merchants.

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.”