Ecommerce

A blog on your ecommerce website can be an excellent platform for direct communication with your customers. Of course, like every other business decision there are two sides to an ecommerce blog.

If you decide to set up a blog, I recommend the WordPress platform. It is free and open source. But the default themes leave a bit to be desired. That is where a premium theme such as PageLines 2.0 might be preferred.

Reliable hosting is a primary requirement for an ecommerce business. If you have read my article titled: How to Select the Right Hosting for an Ecommerce Website, and would like some more information, I have a great article for you. This one is written by my colleague Bryan, and is titled: How to Find a Web Host.

If you are a single-person work-from-home ecommerce business, you are one of many. But should you really work from home? My colleague Mindy recently wrote about the pros and cons of working from home. Here are two must-read articles:

• The Pros of Working From Home
• The Cons of Working From Home.

In May 2011, Wal-Mart took a minority stake in the Yihaodian -- a Chinese ecommerce player. Today, Wal-Mart announced that it was hiking its stake to 51%.

This move is just one of many by US giants trying to establish a foothold in emerging markets. Watch this space for more reports on global ecommerce action.

Many people prefer to go in for hosted ecommerce solutions, such as Shopify, that require little or no coding. But if you are a power user, you can adapt your software to your needs better if you coded the visual parts of it.

CSS transitions and transformations are a helpful visual technology for websites. My colleague Jennifer has some interesting articles and illustrations that will help you understand these techniques better:

• CSS Transformations
• CSS Transitions Examples
• CSS Transformations vs. Transitions
• CSS Transformation Examples
• CSS Transitions Examples

Some of the largest businesses in the world are ecommerce businesses. So it is interesting that some of the smallest businesses are also ecommerce businesses. That is the new paradigm of business, and in this paradigm ecommerce is the great leveler.

If you run an ecommerce business as a home business, you will have a lot of tax-related questions. My colleague Mindy recently authored some articles to help you out. Here they are:

• 15 Self-Employed Tax Deductions
• Top 5 Tax Return Audit Questions For Self-Employed
• 5 Frequent Tax Questions For Home Business Deductions
• 5 Common Questions Concerning Taxes For Self-Employed

The online world changed the way business is transacted. As a natural corollary, business processes have adapted to the new paradigm. For instance the way marketing is done today is not the same. That is what prompted me to help you develop an ecommerce marketing plan.

An interesting tool that online marketers are using is: content marketing. My colleague Bryan wrote a couple of articles about the concept. I recommend you read them:

• What Is Content Marketing?
• How To Use Content Marketing In Your Online Business
• Book Review: Content Marketing for Dummies

Recently I wrote a Shopify review. Now it is time to post my thoughts on a licensed ecommerce software package. And it is not the one that you are thinking about. Instead, I wrote an article about WordPress for Ecommerce.

While some of you might think of that as an obvious choice, others might wonder why blogging software is masquerading as an ecommerce platform.

You do not need an MBA degree to set up an ecommerce business. But you sure need to have a plan. And the most important part is your ecommerce marketing plan. What you put into it is up to you. But there needs to be a plan, so that you are not meandering through issues aimlessly.

Despite all your SEO and PPC campaigns, there is a limit to how much traffic you can drive to your site. If you could harness the power of affiliate marketing, you would open up whole new audiences. There are many ecommerce setups that succeed solely because of the business that is brought in by affiliates.

But an affiliate marketing program is no silver bullet. You have to learn the basics, and then use your judgment in implementing the best affiliate offer.

While you are at it, do not overlook the close relative of affiliate marketing: referral marketing. Confused? Why not read my article titled: Affiliate Marketing vs. Referral Marketing?