March 14, 2016 4:24 pm In August 2015, Rakuten Affiliate Network commissioned Forrester, the research company, to conduct a study on the factors driving growth in the affiliate industry.Forrester surveyed decision makers at 151 large U.S. advertisers (in excess of $200 million in annual revenue) and 151 large U.S. publishers (with traffic that ranks in the top 5,000). Forrester also conducted 10 interviews with advertisers a

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm Instagram is the social platform for visual content. For brands, Instagram can be a place to show off products, celebrate your culture, feature your community, and even make some sales.Here is a list of brands on Instagram. Some of the brands post their own content, while others feature images and videos from followers and contributors. Several of the brands offer feeds to purchase items from images.Ai

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm Writing a blog can be a good way of providing your shoppers with useful product information while also establishing your expertise. Here is a list of helpful plugins to customize a WordPress blog. There are plugins to manage your content, improve your site speed, optimize your pages, engage your readers, and add ecommerce solutions. Plugins for a WordPress Blog Editorial Calendar. This editori

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm Making videos accessible for blind and disabled users involves three components: the visual content, the audio content, and the player itself. PayPal offers an accessible HTML5 video player, as does YouTube and several others.A video is a compelling option when you want to demonstrate a product or show off its features. But a video can cause accessibility challenges. They aren’t insurmountable, b

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm Search engine optimization can create more traffic and sales. It can also provide insight for other, non-SEO activities. Google’s Keyword Planner can help with both.Every company needs more of something. Maybe your company?s goals focus on more customers. Or maybe it?s more conversions. Whether it?s more sales, more leads, more registrations, more items sold per transaction, it?s always more. Tha

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm News on the mobile web is now four times faster, thanks to Google?s Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP, as the project is known, is targeted at Google mobile searchers looking for long-form editorial content. Mobile searchers experience AMP pages when they go to Google?s mobile search results, which?now show a carousel filled with AMP-enabled news content. A sample?of a Google AMP search result. S

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm In “Why change ecommerce platforms?,” my post last month, I discussed my decision to switch ecommerce platforms ? from Volusion to Bigcommerce ? in the fall of 2013. I made that decision based on several things that I felt were holding us back. Since the migration, I?ve talked to dozens of folks who have felt the similar pain points with their current provider. They’ve asked what they

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm What is one thing all?ecommerce stores have in common? They use HTML. In fact, just about every website uses HTML. That means when an update to HTML comes out, it has far-reaching effects.What Is HTML?HTML ??HyperText Markup Language ? describes how a web page is structured. A web browser ? e.g., Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer ? uses that description to render the page on your screen.For example, a

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm Contests can build awareness and help grow lists for future marketing. Moonray’s, a seller of landscape accessories, runs sweepstakes on Facebook. Folks simply enter for a chance to win.A well run online contest can bolster your social media following, energize loyal customers, collect information about the folks who enter, and help build lists for further marketing.Contest marketing uses contest

March 14, 2016 4:24 pm A pair of new image-analysis solutions could open the door for powerful ecommerce and retail applications that significantly improve shopping experiences or create new marketing opportunities.On Feb. 18, 2016, Google released the beta version of its image recognition service as a public, paid application programing interface called Cloud Vision API.Google Cloud Vision APIOpen to everyone, Cloud Vision