E-commerce insights for a rainy Friday (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – April 8, 2011)

Howdy, Big Thinkers! Happy Friday. Not a lot of setup today, but I thought it would be good to get back to my e-commerce roots. And with that in mind, here are 5 fantastic e-commerce insights from around the web to get you through the weekend. Enjoy ’em:

• Let’s jump right in with Smashing Magzine’s fundamental guidelines of e-commerce checkout design. Good stuff.
• SEOmoz has a great look at tips and must-haves for your e-commerce platform. I may have linked to this before, but it’s worth reviewing if you haven’t seen it.
• In big news for e-commerce analytics, Google announced it’s adding event goals to Google Analytics (in beta, anyway). Still, this provides a huge benefit for all kinds of websites, e-commerce and otherwise. Look forward to it in your accounts soon.
• Another popular topic in the e-commerce world these days is coupons. And our old friend Linda Bustos takes a look at e-commerce coupons. Check it out.
• Finally, GigaOm looks at whether will Facebook ever be an e-commerce powerhouse. The key takeaway, according to Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, “…when it comes to e-commerce and driving substantial amounts of business-to-consumer revenue, Facebook may already be as big a player as it’s ever going to get.” I think it’s way too soon to say whether Facebook will become huge in e-commerce, but there’s no questioning that F-commerce is for real.

Oh, and just for fun, I can never think about e-commerce without this great xkcd cartoon coming to mind:

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here next week.

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