Blog Category: eCommerce

If you have an online store, there are times when for some reason, a transaction for a customer is declined. This article tries to explain the process, and why many banks will hold the funds, making them unavailable to a client, even when a transaction is denied.

Much of this information is from Authorize.net and from a very helpful online store merchant ArtisticGiftBaskets.com who have done a great job explaining what happens and have given me permission to repost it here.

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Many of my readers may be familiar with a very popular article I wrote in May of 2008 about the then new Washington State Destination Based Sales Tax. Today I received news from one of my readers that alerted me to a new development: SB5113.

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I frequently set up GeoTrust SSLs on my client’s ecommerce websites who are hosted with DreamHost. For those of you who wanted to give this a try yourselves, here are the steps I follow to set up a GeoTrust SSL at DreamHost.

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Can you trust online stores you are doing business with? Lately I’ve been on a mission to get my business certified as a green web design company. As part of that effort, I have been doing research online into how exactly to accomplish this. I wound up on one online store that looked legitimate and I started to purchase carbon offsets. I quickly lost trust in the online store and wanted to share with you the red flags I found.

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As we approach the holiday season, I thought it would be appropriate to give some tips on how to make sure you’re getting the most out of your online store in terms of search engine optimization, including some examples.

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This is topic covers one of the things that annoys me the most when I’m shopping online. I recently had a particularly frustrating purchasing experience with Ticketmaster that I wanted to share. This example will help explain why I’m so against forcing online shoppers to create a login account before they can purchase something from your online store.

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Static vs Dynamic website pages explained: I’ve found myself explaining this to my clients, with varying degrees of success, so I thought a really well-written blog article might help. This article will attempt to explain the difference between static web pages and dynamic web pages, and why your particular website might have one or the other or even both.

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If you’re like me, you do quite of a bit online activities that utilize secure websites. Shopping on online stores, banking, and investing all require a secure connection between your browser and the website you are sending your private information to.

But how often do you notice whether the little padlock in the upper right hand corner of your browser is actually there? This article serves as a reminder to always, always, always check.

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A client of mine recently hired a bookkeeper to do her state and local taxes and was surprised to find out that she should be collecting sales tax on shipping and handling.

I wanted to write this article to provide help for other online retailers who may be asking the same question, because the answer was a bit hard to find.

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Many of my website clients, after watching their website traffic statistics, are dismayed to see many people coming to their website leaving after only visiting one page (this is called the “bounce rate“).

They also often see visitors who may look around at several pages and then decide to leave without purchasing anything.

They even see people who were very close to a purchase. Visitors who after adding items to a shopping cart and starting the check out process, left before completing the purchase ( this is called “shopping cart abandonment“). While all of these visitor activities are normal and expected, what’s often surprising to my client is how often they happen.

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