December 29, 2011 By Outright.com There are two kinds of posts that are inevitable this time of year. One is the never-ending barrage of holiday posts, telling you everything and anything you would ever want to hear about buying and selling. The other, of course, is the end-of-the-year-get-ready-for-tax-season post. We hate to tell you, but [...]

October 4, 2011 By the ZippyCart Content Team As the world gears up for Q4, ecommerce solution managers have bigger things on their minds than managing backlogged accounting work. It’s a time to look at the present and forward, focus on marketing, and daydream about the holiday feasts to come. (Okay, that should be restricted [...]

Earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled a case with Twitter regarding, in the opinion of the FTC, lax electronic administration of Twitter's website.

This is the second installment in a two-part series regarding protection against counterfeit products being sold on the Internet. In the first installment, "Legal: When Merchants Are Liable for Selling Counterfeit Brands," I wrote how online retailers and auction houses can protect themselves from unknowingly selling counterfeit products.

Success must be measured, and performance metrics are powerful resources that can help an ecommerce business assess just how things are going.

In Part One of this series, I described several important financial metrics and began to discuss some important web traffic numbers to watch. Here in Part Two, I continue writing about web analytics and add a bit about site performance, too.

Financial management is critical to ecommerce companies. But the tools to manage financial matters vary, and many of them don't automatically integrate with a merchant's ecommerce site, making the financial tracking and reporting process even more burdensome.

Performance metrics can help ecommerce businesses measure progress and assess financial and marketing health.

But with so much data available from tools like Google Analytics, it can be hard to know what to measure or even what those measurements mean. With this in mind, I put together a list of the metrics I pay attention to most.

This is the first installment of a two-part series regarding protection against counterfeit products being sold on the Internet. The first part of the series, below, discusses how online retailers and auction houses can protect themselves from unwittingly selling counterfeit products. The second part of the series will discuss protecting your product or website brand from being counterfeited.

The following is a list of five business practices that online business owners should follow to help protect their business from liability and minimize legal claims.

1. Maintain Clear and Accurate Communication with Customers

Clear communications will solve many customer complaint problems, but may also protect you from claims of false advertising and investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Many ecommerce merchants use QuickBooks, or are at least familiar with it. There is a new version of QuickBooks that includes new document management, online banking, and other features. To discuss QuickBooks 2010 and other Intuit products, we spoke with Alex Hood, product management leader for QuickBooks Desktop for Windows.

The Bilski case involved potentially, a dramatic shift in U.S. patent law. It's been awaiting decision by the U.S. Supreme Court since the fall of 2009, and earlier this week, the Court rendered its opinion. The case involved the scope of potential patents, and whether an invention must be tied to a machine to be eligible for patents.

Innovation on the Internet depends on the ability by entrepreneurs to protect intellectual property. Google, Amazon and other Internet companies have received many U.S. patents that protect, seemingly, processes or methods of doing business. But that protection could be threatened by a case pending at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Your website most likely has pictures on it. It might also have video as part of the design or to help in the sale of products. The use of these items is necessary to show your customers what the product looks like or the product’s functions. However, all too often the source of the pictures or video is not properly documented.