If you’ve ventured into the quilting blogosphere, you’ve probably come across the occasional blog tour. Blog tours come in many different forms, but essentially they are a series of posts scheduled on different blogs within a short time period designed to promote something. The most common blog tours are for book releases, as publishers and…Click to read more >
The Do’s and Don’ts of SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a moving target and requires continuous learning, tweaking, and updating. In previous articles, we discussed key steps of SEO and the process of selecting your keywords. I think now is a good time to step back and outline some of the Dos and Don’ts in the SEO process. I want…Click to read more >
PCI Compliance – Small Businesses Facing Increased Scrutiny
Should you be worried about Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards? If you accept any type of payment card—debit, credit, and even prepaid cards—then, yes, shopowners must take PCI Compliance (as it is informally known)very seriously. Businesses found to be out of compliance with these rules face, at the very least, serious fines from their…Click to read more >
Turn Old Inventory Into Cash Using Vendor Archives
We’ve heard about the importance of keeping inventory fresh time and time again. We know that any trendy fabric more than a year old should be should be marked down and cleared out. But what happens if you mark down those older fabrics and they still don’t move? How do you possibly get it sold…Click to read more >
Convert Abandoned Shopping Carts Into Sales
It happens all the time in retail shops—a customer picks up an item, wanders around, returns the item to the store shelf, and leaves the store without purchasing a thing. In the world of online retailing, a whole “cart” of merchandise is regularly left behind, more often than a sale is actually made. That’s right,…Click to read more >
Adding e-Commerce to Your Site
Starting an online business or adding e-commerce to your existing website can be a great asset to your business; however, it also requires dedication, persistence, and quite a bit of time and energy. Existing Options or New Software? When you’re ready to add e-commerce to your website, there are a couple of ways to tackle…Click to read more >
Converting Transactions Into Long-Term Customer Relationships
Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar shop or an online store, you spend a good deal of time on PR, advertising, shop hops, classes, and special events designed to get people through your physical or virtual doors. Previous Panning for Gold columns have discussed how to attract people to your website, how to merchandise online, and how…Click to read more >
How the EU Value-Added Tax Affects Online Sellers
The new EU Value-Added Tax (VAT) changes, effective January 1, 2015, have a major influence on online merchants selling digital goods. It’s important for e-tailers to understand what these changes mean. Our team at Ecwid has put together the below to make it easy for merchants to accommodate the new policies. The New EU VAT…Click to read more >
3 Holiday E-Commerce Policies For A Merry Q4
You may not think of your shipping or return policies as part of marketing’s purview, but contributor David Rekuc argues they can be as influential as ads or promotions this time of year. Well, it’s here. Halloween has officially passed and Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away. At this point, retailers should be well…Click to read more >
Five Tips for Maximizing Your SEO
I’m here to tell you that SEO is not rocket science. It is relatively easy to understand the basics and get started immediately improving your search rankings. More so, I am a strong believer in the philosophy, Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and…Click to read more >