What Does Amazon’s New Payment System Offer Online Retailers?

Amazon’s new payment system shows that when the *80,000-pound gorilla moves, the business and technology press jump up, notepad at the ready. The latest news was the announcement this week (broadcast by a huge PR effort) that the retailing/cloud services hosting giant has ramped up its payment offering. Branded as “Login and Pay with Amazon,”
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Do Online Retailers Need a Brand?

Do online retailers need a brand like Apple, Coke, 3M, Nike and thousands of other well-known, well-branded companies and organizations?  Apple Passes Coke as World’s Top Brand This was the one of the top stories and headlines today on CNN. The summary, taken from the annual report from branding consultancy Interbrands, tries to quantify the economic
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Mobile Commerce Growth Accelerates and Splinters

As Internet retailing expands, mobile commerce growth continues. Across a wide variety of industries and interests, it represents an ever-growing share of the total online retailing pie. But one mobile customer is not like another; some use tablets while others use smartphones. This apparently insignificant difference actually translates into some really important distinctions, as Internet
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How to Learn More About Your Competitors

Why You Should Like Your Competitors The easy way to learn more about your competitors is to like them. Not in a “let’s invite them over for dinner” kind of way, but in a friend/follow/like kind of way. We know you’re busy, but here are some quick things to do to keep on top of
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Websites with High Traffic and Low Conversion

FastPivot has helped several thousand ecommerce retailers increase their online traffic, conversions and profits for 15 years. We’ve been around the block, and heard a lot of optimism, pessimism and frustration when talking to prospective customers. In the latter category, we’ll place the frustration of prospects who categorize their sites as “high traffic, low conversion”
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The Easiest Way to Improve Search Engine Marketing ROI

Without a doubt, the easiest way to improve search engine marketing ROI (from both your paid and organic search efforts) is already within your reach. It’s information you should already have. And it doesn’t cost anything to use. What is it? Your site search data. What Site Search Can Tell You Every online retailer should
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How Online Retailers Should Handle Negative Product Reviews

It’s been years since online reviews began appearing on ecommerce sites. Amazon popularized product reviews by recent buyers, and companies like BazaarVoice and PowerReview then made it easy for retailers to capture and integrate the voice of the customer into the retailing experience. Product reviews are now (almost) everywhere online. But how should retailers handle
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A Day in the Life of Fast Pivot Developer Chris Harman

After profiling FastPivot Developer Chris Harman, we decided to look at a typical workday in the Harman home. Here is how Chris describes his typical Day in the Life as a FastPivot developer: 6:30-7:00 am: I usually wake up around this time because this is when our one-and-a-half-year old son gets up. Admittedly, my wife
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Online Sales Taxes and the Marketplace Fairness Act: 5 Things to Know

After our high level introduction of the online sales tax issue, we’re going deeper today with a guest post from sales tax experts Avalara. Avalara answers five of the most important questions retailers have about the online sales tax issue. 1. When might Marketplace Fairness go into effect? While the potential effective date is indeterminate
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