Christianna Cannon

To many people, "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) sounds impossibly technical. You may feel it’s too difficult for the average person to approach. But, while it’s true that SEO is a big pond to dip your feet into, it’s a skill that can be learned.

This article will explain the basics of SEO and give you a working knowledge that you can put to use on your own site. You’ll also learn how to keep away from ineffective tactics that can harm your website in the long run.

Great product photography is a critical part of a successful online store. However, for many eCommerce merchants, this is an area in which it's easy to fall short. A lack of knowledge of proper techniques, underestimation of its importance, or a mere misunderstanding as to what makes a good product image makes product photography a weak point for many online stores.

Good product photography is not as simple as placing items on a table and just pointing and shooting a camera. Even a brand new[...]

Shift4Shop’s Unsplash integration makes it easy to quickly add free stock photos to your eCommerce website. Let’s take a look at how it works, and some strategies for choosing the best stock images!

Email marketing is one of the cornerstones of eCommerce. Building an email list is a crucial step toward building an email marketing strategy, but there's more to it than just collecting as many email addresses as you can. In fact, the quality of your email list is one of the factors that determines how successful your email marketing can be. To create a high-quality email list with the most potential, it's going to require some maintenance: you need to clean your email list.

Whether you're new[...]

Email marketing is one of the best, most important methods for marketing an eCommerce business. Understanding effective email marketing is the key to growing an audience of recurring customers. Of course, the effectiveness of your email marketing can strongly depend on the tools you use to run it. Your email marketing platform has to equip you with the right features and capabilities to set up effective campaigns.

Every business faces a big challenge in gaining and keeping customers. Since attracting a new customer to your online store can already be difficult, you want to do everything you can to convince them to stick around. A loyalty program can be very effective for meeting this goal, because it helps your customers feel rewarded and appreciated.

In fact, loyalty programs are so popular that some customers expect them to be offered, and are likely to turn away from a business that doesn't have one.[...]

Facebook has become a central part of eCommerce. Between Facebook Business Pages, public reviews and other engagements, Facebook Shops, and Facebook ads, what began as a niche social media platform has expanded to become a crucial business tool.

Businesses often view Facebook advertising as a necessity. This is true for brick-and-mortar businesses looking for local customers, but it applies even more to eCommerce businesses that are already attempting to grow through the internet. Facebook's[...]

Long before eCommerce existed, people invented other ways to shop remotely. Physical catalogs have been around for over 200 years and are still popular. Newspapers also have a long history of advertisements that invite shoppers to mail in an order. Even comic books have had mail-order products advertised on the last few pages.

But no matter how much the methods have changed, mail-order shopping has always required a correct shipping address. From newspaper ads to eCommerce, a business needs to[...]

YouTube offers lots of opportunity for content creators through the process of uploading and monetizing video. It provides a valuable way for you to build and reinforce your brand, and even become an influencer. Plus, ads aren't the only way you can make money on YouTube. You can set up multiple income streams, increase sales of your own products, and much more.

The process of creating your videos and building your audience can be really exciting. However, you need to put a lot of effort into[...]

You never know when you're going to need to take a screenshot. There are all kinds of reasons why you might need one.

Maybe you're writing an article for your online store's blog, and you want to mention one of your favorite websites. This would be a perfect place for a screenshot to enhance your content. Or maybe you're trying to choose between two products, and you want a friend's opinion on which looks better. Sure, you could send links, but a screenshot would save your friend some time.

Sometimes a business might need to change its website's domain name. There are a few reasons why you might need to do this.

Building a website is a lot easier than it used to be. However, it's still a significant project. And just like any other type of project, you need a solid plan.

The layout of your website is the most crucial part of this plan. Colors, graphics, and other content can all be changed much more easily than the layout. Think of the layout as your site's skeleton. It determines the structure of each page, to be fleshed out later.

Inventory management is one of the most crucial parts of running a successful store. Whether you're selling online, offline, or both, proper inventory management will reduce problems and lighten your workload. It can even increase sales and brand loyalty, such as by offering back order for products rather than simply marking them as out of stock.

When it comes to running a business, there are some strategies everyone uses. Even with the possibility of a vast difference between industries, things like SEO and email marketing are old standbys, for example. But sometimes, a business will need to use a more uncommon strategy.

This is especially true for B2B merchants, who thrive on building personal relationships with the customers they supply. It's common for B2B sellers to work out customer-specific pricing or other special deals to help[...]

Coupons and other types of promotions are excellent for boosting your sales. Customers always love a great bargain. And during certain times of the year, like the holiday season, a big sale is pretty much expected.

Customers aren't the only ones who benefit from promotions. Not only can your business get that coveted sales increase, you can also earn more repeat customers who originally found your website because of the promotion. A great promotion will please shoppers and breathe more life[...]

In the last several years, Facebook has exploded in popularity. It's fair to say it redefined social media. It definitely innovated new opportunities for many walks of life. This includes business owners.

With the introduction of Facebook Pages, businesses were able to stake a claim on Facebook and create their official social media profile. This led to new avenues of customer service through reviews and messaging. It also helped create a kind of directory that helped customers find all types[...]

Selling online is complicated. You have a lot on your plate, and it's easy to fear that you've overlooked something. For one, you need customers to trust you, or else they'll turn away. This may have already been happening to you. In that case, you're probably wondering how to get customers to believe in your business.

It might just be that your website doesn't have enough content.

Your eCommerce website is not just an online store. Simply having product pages, categories, and a shopping cart[...]

Every business owner wants to earn more customers and make more sales. Sometimes, though, this can seem like an impossible task. It can even be discouraging, especially if you're not growing at the rate you want. If you're already using the most well-known marketing tactics, and your SEO is on point, what else can you do? Are there any eCommerce tools you haven't taken advantage of?

Gift cards, or gift certificates, are something everyone knows about. But they're often not used to their full[...]

No matter how careful you are to provide the highest-quality products and the best customer experience, returns are a fact of life in eCommerce. Even if your store policy completely forbids the return of any orders, you're still going to have situations where customers at least want to make a return and inquire about it. You're going to need a system in place to handle returns no matter what.

As feature-rich as Shift4Shop is, eCommerce is always moving forward. New advancements in technology lead to greater potential for online businesses, but they also lead to new customer expectations and new pain points for business owners and customers alike. That's one reason Shift4Shop has made it easy for developers to create apps that integrate with our eCommerce software: by building an app, you can expand Shift4Shop with new functionality and help your potential clients stay on top of the[...]