How to Add a Pinterest “Pin it” button to Miva Merchant product pages

Posted by on Jan 13, 2012 in Blog, eCommerce, Shopping carts, Social media | 12 comments If you’ve not heard of Pinterest yet, you soon will. Pinterest is an online pin-board which lets user pin, organize and share the stuff they love. It’s growth has been amazing. Here’s a chart from Hitwise which shows it’s current growth rate. Pinterest is mainly used by women. Since my eCommerce site has an audience that is mainly women, I thought it was time to add the...
read more

*Giveaway* Win this Stylish Pink Laptop Bag from Rainebrooke (closed)

Posted by on Nov 1, 2011 in Blog, eCommerce | 55 comments Here’s a special giveaway for my followers… I’m giving away one pink laptop bag from my eCommerce company, Rainebrooke.com! Rainebrooke offers a huge selection of pink laptop bags for women. If you’re trying to think of the perfect give this holiday season, consider a pink laptop bag, cases, tote or sleeve from Rainebrooke.com The pink laptop bag being offered in this...
read more

Comparison Shopping sites – Holiday rates increases

Posted by on Oct 12, 2011 in Advertising, eCommerce, Opinion | 1 comment *Opinion* – If you’re an advertiser on comparison shopping sites, it’s that dreaded time of year again. Time for the annoying holiday rate increase emails. They  started yesterday for me… one from Pronto and one from Nextag, with more to come. Each year I get really annoyed at these increases. Why? Because I don’t feel they’re justified.  While some really...
read more

How to set up conversion tracking with Miva Merchant and Adroll ad retargeting

Posted by on Sep 27, 2011 in Advertising, eCommerce, Marketing, Shopping carts | 0 comments Ad “retargeting”. If you have an eCommerce site then you’ve probably heard of it. If you haven’t heard the term, then now is the time to get started. Retargeting is a marketing method that delivers ads to visitors who have visited your site, but left without purchasing. It attempts to retarget or get the visitor back to your site to make a purchase or complete some other...
read more

5 things I’d tell my 22 year old self

Posted by on Sep 20, 2011 in Advertising, eCommerce, Marketing, Opinion, Startup | 0 comments The year was 1989. I was 22 years old, fresh out of college and ready to take on the world. That’s what I did, but not in the same way I would now if I could go back and do it again. Thanks to my parents I was always encouraged to work for myself. Besides a few jobs during high-school and college, I’ve never had to work for anyone except for my customers. Right out of college I...
read more

How to add Schema.org microdata to a Miva Merchant product page

Posted by on Sep 13, 2011 in Design, eCommerce, Search, SEO, Shopping carts | 0 comments Schema.org microdata & rich snippets… two topics that keep coming up in news feeds I subscribe to.  If you’re unfamiliar with microdata then you can read more about it at Google or Schema.org. As described by Google: “.. a new initiative from Google, Bing and Yahoo! to create and support a common set of schemas for structured data markup on web pages. Schema.org aims to be...
read more

10 common design mistakes made by new websites

Posted by on Sep 7, 2011 in Design, eCommerce, SEO, Startup | 0 comments Every website, eCommerce store, and blogger has to start somewhere. Some people start a website without much thought or research into what makes one website successful and another site a failure. Starting a website can be a fun and exciting project, but if it’s done wrong the mistakes can be costly. I’ve seen a lot of new websites start up and then fail because of some simple design...
read more

Miva Merchant Website Designers and Developers (List)

Posted by on Aug 29, 2011 in Design, eCommerce, Shopping carts | 2 comments Anyone who follows me knows that Miva Merchant is my favorite eCommerce shopping cart for small business. It’s the shopping cart solution that runs my eCommerce site Rainebrooke.com. Miva Merchant has unlimited design flexibility, excellent support, it’s secure and has an easy to use interface for managing and processing your eCommerce orders. While Miva Merchant offers some basic...
read more

My Top 10 Favorite Stock Photography Sites

Posted by on Aug 22, 2011 in Advertising, Blog, Design, eCommerce, Marketing | 2 comments With the ever increasing popularity of digital photography, there’s an expanding list of stock photography sites where you can buy and sell stock photos. Thanks to this increasing volume of photos, if you’re a website owner, blogger or advertiser, you’ll find it’s very easy to get low priced stock photos… many times you can get what you want for free. For those times...
read more

iPad users scrolling further into search results

Posted by on Aug 15, 2011 in Advertising, Blog, eCommerce, Search, SEO | 0 comments If you’re an iPad user, your probably like me and many others. When you search you’ll scroll further into the search results than you would if you where on a desktop or laptop. A few months ago, Chitika did a study to show this.  According to Chitika… We took a look at traffic by Google result for iPad users and found that the #1 spot is much less dominant in the touchscreen...
read more

Free Open-Source Software for Small Businesses

Posted by on Aug 9, 2011 in Blog, Design, eCommerce, Email, Marketing, Software | 2 comments If you’re starting a new small business or already run an existing one, you’re probably looking for ways to save money. Open-source software can be a great place to start saving. With the options of open-source software continuing to increase, many small business owners find that they can “almost” run their business entirely from free open-source software. I personally use...
read more

Logo Design Sites, Logo Blogs and Logo Inspiration

Posted by on Aug 1, 2011 in Branding, Design, Uncategorized | 1 comment Logos. They’re extremely valuable for companies. Logos give your company an identity. They connect your company to your ideas, products and website. Poorly done and they can ruin your companies chance of success. Poorly done and they’ll give your potential customer a feeling that your company and website is amateurish and not safe to do business with. Well done and your chance of...
read more