Do you have the perfect idea for a product but lack the capital to make it come to life?

Then crowdfunding could be just what you need.

It gives you the ability to raise money from a collective group of people who are connected through the internet and want to support your project.

And it's extremely popular these days.

But before you dive into your first campaign, it's important to determine which of the many crowdfunding sites is right for you.

Let's explore the top five crowdfunding platforms for entrepreneurs and businesses in terms of popularity, types of projects funded, and other basic information so you can choose the best one for your business.

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Shopify 2 is a major update and redesign to your store’s admin panel. In addition to a new look and feel, we’ve added over 60 new features and enhancements to help you run your store.

After several months of beta testing, we're proud to announce the release of Shopify 2 to all stores.

After you upgrade, your store will look exactly the same to your customers – only your back-end admin will be different. And Shopify 2 comes at no extra cost to you, even though you get more features.

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You have undoubtedly heard the term gamification by now. In fact, you have probably participated in countless forms of gamification knowingly and unknowingly. Have you ever collected frequent flyer miles, participated in a casino’s loyalty program to get a free buffet dinner, or been tempted by Expedia’s “124 others are viewing this hotel right now” popup? Those are all examples of businesses using gamification to influence your purchase or participation decisions.

According to industry analysts at Gartner, “By 2015, 40% of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations." And taking a look at Google Trends volume of search traffic for “gamification,” it’s clear that this new form of persuasive marketing isn’t going anywhere. Check out its staggering growth since the term was coined late 2010:

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Did you know that video is one of the most crucial weapons in your ecommerce marketing arsenal?

In a previous post, we provided you with 5 reasons why ecommerce product videos will increase sales. After Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Ignoring such a large reservoir of potential customers to promote your products is foolish. Every ecommerce retailer should be using video as a part of their marketing strategy, and they should know the analytics to track their YouTube campaigns performance.

Once you have learnt the proper analytics behind your videos, you can implement strategies to widen your video's reach, thus increasing sales. We've compiled ten of the best techniques to analyse and track you YouTube video performance.

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You might have already heard about the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA), also known as the “Internet Sales Tax.” It’s a bill that recently passed the United States Senate and will soon be before the U.S. House of Representatives. If passed through the House, the MFA would require ecommerce retailers selling over $1 million per year to collect sales tax from customers in about 45 different U.S. states and pay taxes to each customer’s state and local government. Here’s what you need to know:

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The biggest challenge that online store owners face is increasing traffic to their ecommerce store. Knowing where to start and how to stand out from the thousands of other shops that are competing for the same traffic is a daunting challenge.

The explosion of growth in the ecommerce world has only made it tougher for ecommerce sites to attract the critical mass of visitors needed to stay in business.

In this post there I'm going to give you 12 different strategies to help you grow your online community and increase traffic to help you boost sales. Pick the strategies and tactics you find most interesting and suitable for your business and start seeing your business grow.

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Twitter has over 200 million active users creating over 400 million Tweets per day. That’s a lot of people and a lot of tweets.

For business owners, Twitter has become an important tool for distributing content, providing support to existing customers and proactively reaching out to potential customers.

To make its platform more attractive to businesses and brands, In 2012 Twitter began slowly rolling out its paid ads platform, however it was only made available to certain partners on an invite-only basis. This past April that all changed when Twitter announced that they would be making Twitter Ads available to all users in the U.S.

That means no matter how big or small your business is, and no matter how many followers you have, you can now start leveraging Twitter's paid service to amplify your Twitter presence, gain new followers, create more awareness about your business and drive more traffic to your website.

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Search engines and customers are smarter and savvier than ever before at sniffing out low-quality and spammy marketing techniques. Yet many companies still use antiquated marketing methods that are ineffective at best and downright dangerous at worst.  

Below are three of the worst marketing techniques for today's online environment – and what you should be doing instead.

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Right now your ecommerce store could have 5 deadly sales-killers you didn't even know existed. Fortunately, there's a lot of literature in the UX and eye-tracking space, and today you're going to get these insightful studies served up in laymen's terms, allowing you to incorporate their findings into your site's design and interface.

You'll see how seemingly minor aspects of your website can be huge determinants of how well your business performs. Let's get into the research by diving in to problem #1 with your online store:

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ABC's Shark Tank is currently one of the most popular shows on television.

Its premise is simple. Hopeful entrepreneurs go on the program and present their business idea to a panel of self-made millionaire investors (Sharks) in the hopes of getting an investment in exchange for a stake in their company.

Typically that interest comes in the form of an equity stake or royalty scenario, or sometimes both.

The demand to get on the show has never been higher due to the dramatic impact it can have on sales - a phenomenon that's become known as 'The Shark Tank Effect'.

It's not unusual for products featured on the show to experience up to a 700% increase in sales.

For example BuggyBeds went from being in 60 stores to being in 600 hundred stores with sales going from $150,000 to over $1,200,000 in the two months following their appearance on the show.

In other words, simply getting in front of over seven million weekly viewers can be all your business needs to reach its tipping point.

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