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"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about how to encourage customer feedback. It comes from Rita Perdue, CEO and owner of Pick My Decor, an online store that sells home décor products and collectibles. For the answer, we turn to Paul Chaney, Internet marketing director for Bizzuka, a content management software company, and a longtime contributor to Practical eCommerce. He is an expert in social media marketing and the author of a book on social media marketing entitled The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media. If you’d like to submit a question, email Kate Monteith, staff write...

Target.com is well known in the world of web accessibility. It was sued in 2006 by the National Federation of the Blind, Bruce F. Sexton, Jr., and the National Federation of the Blind of California because its website was not accessible to visually impaired shoppers. The lawsuit was ultimately settled in 2009, and Target Corporation was required to make its website accessible to the blind. How Target.com Fares Today In February 2010, the National Federation of the Blind granted Target.com “Nonvisual Accessibility Web Certification,” asserting that the website is now equally usable by blind and sighted users, making Target.com one of the first major retail websites to implement web accessibility. Since implementing the required rev...

The number of people accessing social networks via mobile devices has generally increased in the past year. According to comScore, 11.8 million people used a mobile phone to access their Facebook accounts in January 2009. The number of people using mobile phones to access Facebook in January 2010 grew to more than 25.1 million users, a 112 percent increase. The number of people accessing MySpace via mobile phone has dropped over the last year, however. 12.3 million people accessed MySpace via mobile browser in January 2009. By January 2010, MySpace had lost 7 percent of its mobile audience. Facebook was exceeding MySpace's mobile phone audience by February 2009. Twitter’s mobile audience increased the most, skyrocketing 347 percent...

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 publishes a catalog, it offers online courses, and it has an ecommerce site with a custom platform that sells both physical and digital products. The web manager of Sounds True is Theresa Fox and she joined us recently to discuss it. PeC: What does Sounds True sell online? Theresa Fox: "Sounds True is a spiritual book publishing company and we primarily emphasize audio books, which is a bit different than books on tape. We also have DVDs, we have physical books and we do online courses and live ev...

Social marketing experts have been trumpeting the advantages of using social sites such as Twitter and Facebook to promote ecommerce businesses. We wondered how many of our readers are using social media sites as a marketing channel and whether it has helped or hurt their businesses. Our February 2010 reader survey addressed the present and future role of social media in ecommerce. The survey consisted of four questions and a comment section below each question. Readers who completed the survey and then provided us with their names and email addresses were automatically entered in a contest to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate. The contest winner, chosen by a random number generator, was Hope Ann Hackett of NexTag. Facebook and Twitte...

Many online stores have begun to include product videos aimed at boosting sales conversions, reducing shopping cart abandonment, and lowering product return rates. But not all product-related videos are the same, and merchants will need some metrics for measuring which videos are, in fact, helping the bottom line. The video trend makes good sense for ecommerce in general. For example, there is plenty of evidence that potential Internet shoppers are comfortable with online video. Late last year, comScore found that nearly 85 percent of U.S. Internet users had watched online video. But marketers should be careful. Product videos that do nothing more than show still images set to music could be off-putting. What's more, Forrester Researc...

The agreement for Yahoo! to use Microsoft's Bing search platform has been approved by U.S. and European authorities. We wonder what this agreement means for ecommerce merchants. Greg Laptevsky, a Practical eCommerce contributor and a seasoned search marketing expert, provides some answers. Practical eCommerce: Please explain the newly formed partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo!. Greg Laptevsky: "Microsoft and Yahoo! announced in February that they received clearance from the U.S. and European regulatory authorities to move forward with a search integration deal. Here’s what we know so far: "This is a ten-year, search only (technology and traffic) deal; display businesses will remain separate. "Microsoft adCenter is going to be th...

There are thousands of ecommerce-related products and services that small- to mid-sized merchants can use to improve their businesses. But often the challenge to engaging these products and services is not funding, or even the products' capabilities. Instead, it is the difficulty associated with getting all of these diverse products or services to work together. I strongly believe that most small ecommerce businesses start for one of two reasons: (1) either the entrepreneur has web development skills and wants to use those skills to start an ecommerce business, or (2) the entrepreneur has marketing or product expertise and wants to sell online. In the latter case, the would-be merchant usually has to hire a developer, a web designer, o...

"Ecommerce News Around the Web" is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. In this week's edition we are taking a slightly different tack and focusing on ecommerce and social media. Among other things, we have pulled together several articles that focus on creating a Facebook Fan Page that really works. Facebook Grows as Ecommerce Platform - EDL Consulting Since it achieved profitability in 2009, Facebook has begun a slow trajectory toward greater use of ecommerce. A deal with PayPal in February led to greater development of Facebook's virtual product sales, which in turn have led to the sale of consumer goods through brand fan pages. Procter & Gamble has become the ...

There are more than 500 online shopping carts. And each week we feature one, interviewing both the cart's developer and a customer. "Cart of the Week" is not a review or an evaluation, but rather an opportunity to learn about a shopping cart from the people who build it and use it. This week, we'll hear from Marcus C. McConnell, founder and president of BV Software, the developers of the hosted BV Commerce shopping cart and a licensed ecommerce package called BV Commerce Toolkit. The company is based in Richmond, Va. and its ecommerce software currently has around 5,000 active users. We'll also hear from a BV Commerce customer, Charles Wolfinger, director of operations for eofficedirect.com, a site that sells office supplies. PeC: Ple...