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Below are the notes from the Graduate Coaching Session held March 25, 2008 by Michael Stone:

Avoiding Fraudulent Charges

• Call Customer to confirm any order over $50.
• Require AVS and CVV.
• Call credit card company.
• Billing/Shipping Address the same.
• Ask customer for additional confirmation.

Order Processing

• .pdf receipt via QuickBooks
  • Immediate.
  • Professional.
  • Saves you from printing a receipt.
• Professional shipping labels.
• Freebie. (more…)

Name: Eric Leuenberger, Owner Company: Enhanced Concepts, Inc. In Bloglist, we ask ecommerce professionals to identify their favorite blogs. For this installment, we asked Eric Leuenberger, ecommerce conversion marketing expert and owner of Enhanced Concepts, Inc. Entrepreneurs-journey.com This blog provides some superior information on how to get the most out of monetizing your website. From informative tips on affiliate programs to traffic monetization strategies, this blog has it all. Copyblogger.com Great blog for keeping in tune with copy writing techniques that help you persuade visitors to act. Toprankblog.com This blog provides a range of useful resources that cover various search marketing techniques, including social media marketing, blog marketing and other online public relations ideas. Sethgodin.typepad.com These are some of the most enlightening marketing concepts you'll ever read. Seth Godin always has something to say that makes you step...

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is fraud prevention. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Chris Stump, Only Hammocks; Mike Feiman, PoolDawg; Dan Stewart, Xtreme Diesel Performance; Roman Kagan, Appliance Parts Pros; Cindy Barrileaux, Write Your Best; Claudette Cyr, Gear-Source; Mike Butler, Bloom Designs Nursery; Kristen Taylor, Juvie; Jeff Muchnik, RedBox Tools. The responses for three of the ten merchants follow below. The answers are shown to preserve anonymity. Pec: Has your ecommerce business been the victim of credit card fraud? FIELD TESTER 4: In over eight years in business we haven't had a single case of credit card fraud. While no company can claim to be 100 percent invincible, we try to utilize every option available to prevent fraudulent transactions. FIELD TESTER 5: No. FIELD...

While there may be plenty of business for everyone online, unless you’re a well known brand, if you’re not being found on the major search engines, you really don’t exist. If I asked if you had enough money to compete against WalMart, most of you would say “No Way!” But with PPC marketing you can actually complete against big business. Here’s how why.

PPC is a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.

Unlike traditional advertising, ecommerce entrepreneurs can go head to head with the “big boys” using PPC marketing for a fraction of what it would cost through traditional marketing channels. Whether your unique selling proposition (USP) is customer service, a superior product, better warranty, better price, etc., leverage it, and sell it using PPC marketing. While you may not be able to bid on as many keywords as a Fortune 500 company, you can still compete on some of the keywords that will bring you qualified buyers, thus “stealing” customers away from the larger companies. You can do this because it’s significantly less expensive to launch an effective PPC campaign that it is to launch other types of advertising campaigns. In fact, for less than $50 on most PPC search engines, you can open an account, start bidding on keywords, and immediately start wooing customers away from your competitors. With PPC, you can level the competitive playing field, and is the perfect way for you to start reaching new customers. (more…)

There’s an old saying in the SEO world that “Content is King.” You may have heard or read something similar to this if you’ve been around some basic search engine optimization forums, blogs, or other sites. But how does this idea really apply to you?Well, there are actually several ways that we could approach this topic, but today I want to approach it from the standpoint of having unique content. In other words, you don’t want your site to say the exact same thing as everyone else.

Here’s a great example of this concept: every now and then I’ll have a student come into the program that says that they already have a website. I’ll usually take a look at their site and sometimes it just so happens that it is the exact same site that another student showed me a few weeks ago.

Well, what’s the problem with this? Is it their own site? Sort of, but not really. You see, there are programs out there that will either give you or sell you a site, but it is the exact same site as everyone else. This creates some problems when it comes to natural search engine rankings. (more…)

Below are the notes from the Graduate Coaching Session held March 17, 2008 by Michael Stone:

Advanced Blogging for Marketing

Why

• Get to the top of Google.

Content

• Provide advice rather than ads
• Product Reviews
  • Don’t do sales; provide advice
  • Product comparisons
  • Go for specifics, such as model numbers
  • “ad25/sr plus” (more…)

One of the most exciting trends on the Internet today is interconnectedness. Application programming interfaces (APIs) help make this possible. For example, if I have created a blog at WordPress, I can get a free key to use the API at Akismet, a comment-spam-prevention service. Additionally, if I have a Flickr account, I can get another free key to access its API to display my photos from Flickr on my new blog. By interfacing with other websites, in other words, my blog is now more functional than it used to be. So what are APIs, and why should I pay attention to them? The first question is much easier than the second, so let's start with it. When a website such as Flickr offers an API it provides a method for other applications, such as other websites, to access its content. In the same way a person can visit Flickr and be presented with web pages, an API provides a way for computers to visit Flickr and be presented with the requested content. Here's an example. Say a user...

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is fraud prevention. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, MuttMart; Chris Stump, Only Hammocks; Mike Feiman, PoolDawg; Dan Stewart, Xtreme Diesel Performance; Roman Kagan, Appliance Parts Pros; Cindy Barrileaux, Write Your Best; Claudette Cyr, Gear-Source; Mike Butler, Bloom Designs Nursery; Kristen Taylor, Juvie; Jeff Muchnik, RedBox Tools. The responses for three of the ten merchants follow below. The answers are shown to preserve anonymity. Pec: Has your ecommerce business been the victim of credit card fraud? FIELD TESTER 1: Attempted fraud, but nothing that ever actually went through. FIELD TESTER 2: Hundreds of fraud attempts, but I think we actually only got stung once for a small amount. FIELD TESTER 3: Yes, we typically see a handful of...

Interactive Corp., or IAC, owns many large Internet-based companies. These companies include Lendingtree.com, Realestate.com, Match.com and Ticketmaster.com. IAC also owns Ask.com, the search engine that competes with Google, Yahoo! and MSN. IAC's chairman, Barry Diller, is attempting to sell many "non core" Internet companies and focus largely on Ask.com and other related companies. As such, we asked two Ask.com executives, Jeff Shioya, Regional Vice President IAC Advertising Solutions, and Ryan Massie, Vice President of Product Management, about Ask.com and how it is different than the other search engines. PeC: Most search traffic is at Google. Why should ecommerce companies consider pay-per-click ads at Ask.com? SHIOYA: No advertiser will reach all search users by running a campaign with a single search company. The payoff of any search marketing campaign eventually hits a plateau because there are only so many keywords and price adjustments that can be made. Ask...

There is not a day that goes by that I don't reflect on how to leverage social media, including social networks, for marketing purposes. I have tried a number of approaches, some of which have been successful and some of which have not. This month, I want to share an idea that I think has genuine potential. I call it "getting a table of your own." A basic rule of thumb in social media marketing is that, in order to gain influence, you must actively participate in the communities of which you are a member. That means commenting on blogs, participating in forums and message boards, joining fan groups at major social networks like MySpace or Facebook, and dialoging via online chat on sites like Twitter. Participation in social shopping sites such as Judy's Book, Kaboodle or ThisNext is a good thing as well, and essential to any effective marketing strategy. However, I liken all of these activities to getting a seat at someone else's table. How much better would it be to get your...