Ecommerce Conversations

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.

The ability to target consumers is important for many ecommerce businesses. In fact, many businesses could benefit greatly from knowing where a consumer lives, so that the offer, and even the language, can be tailored to that geographic area. Well, there’s a company that provides that level of targeting to online merchants. It’s called Digital Element and its co-founder and chief operating officer is Rob Friedman, who joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.

Microsoft’s new search engine is called Bing. It launched on June 3, 2009 and observers have already described it as a dramatic improvement over Microsoft’s previous search engine efforts. Most every ecommerce merchant relies on search engines, and many of them, we suspect, will be interested to learn how Bing affects their businesses. Dave Wascha, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Bing Shopping, joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock to discuss it all.

For many retail observers, the name Zappos is synonymous with great customer service and ecommerce well executed. The company was launched in 1999 as an online, footwear merchant. It has since grown into a retailing powerhouse, with 2008 sales reaching just over $1 billion dollars. In 2007, Zappos, a purely ecommerce firm, began publishing a printed catalog. That product is now a four-times-a-year magazine/catalog mix, and Zappos mails it to several million prospects annually. Jeanne Markel is Zappos’s Director of Casual Lifestyle and Performance. She’s involved with the execution and production of the catalog and she joins Practical Ecommerce’s Kerry Murdock.