Ecommerce Articles

Sure, e-commerce is hot here in the United States—but it's also gaining serious momentum overseas. Globally, the number of Internet users is growing, with the fastest growth occurring in the Asia-Pacific marketplace.There's a strong international market, and e-tailers are noticing—especially since the number of Net buyers is also growing. There were 106.4 million online buyers worldwide in 2000, says the IDC study, and that number is expected to hit 464.1 million by 2006. More...

Online spending is expected to go through the roof this holiday season. Will your company be ready to maximize sales?According to eMarketer, online spending will rise to $9.1 billion in 2004, and IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers projects fourth-quarter spending alone will hit a record-setting $2.35 billion. What's more, the most affluent web users, with household incomes of $75,000-plus, are more likely to purchase more than half of their holiday gifts online, according to a survey from BURST! Media. More...

Have you ever heard of the "Pareto Principle"? If you haven't, you're missing out on one of the most effective routes there is to bigger profits. Also known as the "Vital Few and Trivial Many" rule, the Pareto Principle was named after the Italian economist who observed in 1906 that 20 percent of the Italian population owned 80 percent of Italy's wealth. But when it comes to your e-business, you're missing out on a lot of profit if you don't realize that . . .20 percent of your customers are responsible for 80 percent of your sales. More...

No matter how cool your site or how fabulous your product, you're not going to generate enough sales to make your business viable unless you can generate traffic. You have to get the word out about your site and give people a reason to visit it, or else you'll go the way of the dinosaur. More...

In a recent past article, I showed you the top 10 strategies you can use to drive traffic to your site—without spending a dime. If you've read it, you may be thinking you now know all the essentials about driving as many qualified visitors to your site as possible.

Wrong! Sure, those 10 strategies will get you a long way toward your goal, but if you're really serious about driving huge numbers of visitors to your site, you should also look into traffic-generation techniques that cost a bit of money—but are well worth the cost. More...

Pay-per-click (PPC) search engines can be a powerful, instant source of qualified traffic for your website—provided you do your homework and invest a bit of time in managing your campaign. In fact, many website owners who've mastered keyword targeting and know the "insider" bidding strategies tell me that more than 90 percent of their traffic comes straight from the PPC search engines! More...

If you want your online business to be successful, it's a good idea to optimize your site on a regular basis to make sure it's got a good position in the Web's top search engines. However, in order to maintain your ranking, you have to keep on top of what's happening in the rapidly changing search engine industry. The rules that affected your ranking yesterday may be meaningless tomorrow. More...

If you're serious about the success of your online business, then you need to find ways to give yourself every advantage you can over your competition. If you're thinking, "But I'm just a one-person business working part time out of my home. I don't need a business plan," think again! Unless you want your business to stay small and to keep your day job, you desperately need a business plan. It's one of the best ways to motivate yourself to drive your business to the next level. More...

My customers and subscribers are always asking me about freebies on the Net: Can free resources provide solutions to their marketing needs? Are they a viable way to avoid some of the costs of marketing online? Aren't there any freebies I can use?

Allow me to restate my mantra: Your most important e-business tools must be high-quality, dependable products and services. You'll never establish your e-business as a serious presence on the Net if your pages are filled with the garish advertising and sponsorships that typically go hand-in-hand with free services, or if your site has too much downtime, or if the services you use are constantly closing up shop. More...