Shopping online is becoming the de facto route of choice for many during the festive season – comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, earlier reported that holiday season spending thus far had topped $15 billion in the US alone, marking a 15% increase over last year. How much of that did you spend? And how much time did your employees spend shopping online (and on the clock) during this holiday season? Apparently, for many, enough to get on the naughty list.

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The online world is made up of women, be it moms sharing tips, too-good-to-be true Russian brides or barely legal women acting badly for men’s entertainment. The one place women are not is on the boards of big online firms — or so the unenlightened think.

In fact, women are often the brains behind the entire operation in e-commerce and can bring with them a degree of beauty that your average balding Joe in a pinstriped suit simply cannot, as we shall demonstrate. Without further ado, then, here are ten tech-savvy temptresses who have made it big in online business.

10. Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss

Two for the price of one. Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss founded RentTheRunway.com in 2009. Their New York City based online business allows women experiencing wardrobe malfunctions to rent the latest in designer fashion wear for black tie events, weddings, dates or just a night on the town.

With over 450,000 members and growing fast, the two Jennys are enjoying the wealth that comes with a successful online business model. The pair of Harvard Business School educated fashionistas are hoping to further tap into the student market and expand their range, giving them a whole new host of outfits in which to look good — a skill they excel at naturally.

9. Rachelle Hruska

“Queen Bee” of the new wave of web writers Rachelle Hruska was given her nickname by a New York Post article that chartered the rise of GuestofaGuest.com, the website she co-founded with Cameron Winklevoss (played by Armie Hammer in The Social Network). The site chronicles the culture, lives and partying of young people in New York.

Since its inception in May 2007, GuestofGuest.com has expanded to feature the lives of young socialites in other cultural hubs, such as Los Angeles and the Hamptons. It boasts daily traffic of around 50,000 views. Rachelle hopes the website will grow nationwide as a social diary for young, hip Americans. She is more than just a pretty face and a fine pair of legs; this is an online entrepreneur with business acumen and a sting in her tail.

8. Kim Polese

Would you believe that this queen of online business is almost 50? Kim Polese is the former CEO of software firm SpikeSource. She now serves on the executive councils at TechNet and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Kim spent several years with Sun Microsystems as their Java product manager before co-founding Java business Marimba, which was later sold for $239 million in 2004.

Time magazine named Kim in its list of 25 most influential Americans in 1997. She makes our list for maintaining youthful good looks while working in the cutthroat world of commerce.

7. Gina Bianchini

Gina Bianchini is the co-founder and former CEO of Ning, an online platform allowing people to create social networks. Since leaving Ning, Gina has taken up the role of executive in residence at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm co-founded by her Ning partner Marc Andreessen. The company invests in leading social networking sites. In February 2011, it invested $80 million in Twitter, and it also holds stock in Digg, Zynga and Foursquare.

The holder of an M.B.A from Stanford University, Gina has also held positions at Goldman Sachs and CKS Group, which together with her more recent roles have made this brilliant brunette a made woman.

6. Chloe Sladden

Chloe Sladden is a key part of the Media Partnerships team at social networking giant Twitter. Fast Company has named her as one of the most influential women in technology this year. It was Sladden who realized the potential of @replies and hash tags, and she also helped harness the power of Twitter to cover live events, such as the 2008 Presidential Election Debate and the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards.

Chloe has established partnerships with leading news organization, such as the Washington Post, enhancing the immediacy of news and helping to stimulate debate. She hopes to tap into TV and the world of moving images to boost Twitter’s range of services. And, as you can see, Chloe’s a pretty attractive prospect herself.

5. Heather Harde

Heather Harde is CEO of technology superblog TechCrunch. It was Heather’s leadership and corporate strategy that helped boost the profile of TechCrunch, leading to AOL acquiring the business for a reported $50 million.

Before joining Techcrunch in 2007, Heather was another powerful woman who plied her trade at Harvard Business School. She also spent ten years with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp before joining TechCrunch. As the figurehead of a major online company, she has the brains and beauty to take up a rightful place in our top ten women in online business.

4. Marissa Mayer

Marissa Mayer is Vice President of Location and Local Services at search engine behemoth Google. Mayer joined the company in 1999 as its first female engineer. She now has the final say before a product is released to users and has become a very beautiful public face for the company.

Marissa is the youngest woman ever to make Fortune magazine’s top 50 most powerful women in the world and can be credited for the successes of Google Search and Gmail. At 35, Mayer has a lot left in the tank and can take inspiration from being named one of BusinessPundit.com’s hottest woman in online business.

3. Hilary Rowland

Hilary Rowland is a one-woman army and a giant of the online world. In 1995, aged 15, she created the first online women’s magazine, Hilary.com, later renamed Urbanette.com. In the same year she founded NewFaces.com, an online portfolio site for models. She remains CEO of the two sites as well as President of the holding company eClick Interactive.

The sites Hilary created as a teenager continue to enjoy commercial success, but this hasn’t stopped the tenacious blonde, a model herself. Since 2009, she has devoted her time and savings to ProjectMigration.org, a social enterprise selling fashion to support single moms and children in the slums of Africa. A truly inspirational young woman with looks that kill plus ideas that can save lives.

2. Shira Lazar

Shira Lazaar is a 28-year-old web personality, journalist and online entrepreneur. She follows digital trends and viral videos on her blog, OnTheScene, on CBSNews.com, and hosts a live stream for CBS on Saturday mornings, as well as acting as a regular contributor to CNN, The Huffington Post and Fox News Channel.

This media empress is also co-founder of online production company DISRUPT/GROUP, which works to develop corporate online strategies. LA Weekly called the brainy brunette: “The human manifestation of the convergence of technology and entertainment.” We call her exceedingly hot and talented. Long may she continue to grace our computer screens.

1. Justine Ezarik

Blonde bombshell and internet personality Justine Ezarik is the founder of viral video blog and popular YouTube channel iJustine. The idea was conceived in 2007 when Justine began lifecasting on Justin.tv when the site was at its beta stage.

Justine invited viewers to witness her everyday life and gained widespread notoriety for a video about her 300 page iPhone bill, which questioned the environmental commitment of AT&T, the service provider for iPhone. Her web stardom has helped her land cameo roles in popular crime dramas, such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, while her YouTube channel has had over 200 million views and currently has over a million subscribers. Do we need to add that she’s clearly smoking hot?

For a time it seemed as if tech companies were the geese that not only laid golden eggs but also made those eggs into delicious omelets that could give people superpowers. Combining tech companies to breed even more successful geese can seem like a surefire winner. Alas, business is business, even on the internet, and the 21st century has seen some disastrous tech mergers, leaving feathers all over the place and egg on the CEOs’ faces.

10. AOL/Bebo

In 2008 Bebo was a force to be reckoned with. A userbase of 40 million enticed AOL to hand over a payment of $850 million for the social networking site. Unfortunately for AOL, Bebo had peaked and users were abandoning their accounts for the simpler format of Facebook. AOL sold off the company just 2 years later for an undisclosed sum thought to have been less than $30 million (with some sources claiming the figure to have been under $10 million). Wryly attempting to spin this $820 million loss into some kind of positive, the AOL chairman and CEO, Tim Armstrong, floated the idea that it would “create a meaningful tax deduction.” Indeed.

9. Alcatel/Lucent

In 2006 these two telecommunications tech companies merged in a $13.4 billion stock-swap deal, with Alcatel CEO Serge Tchuruk boldly proclaiming that it was “the right time, the right solution, the right companies.” If that’s what’s right then it’s difficult to see what wrong might be, in light of the fact that after the Franco-American marriage Alcatel-Lucent posted eight consecutive quarterly losses amounting to billions of dollars. Sounds like grounds for divorce.

8. ITV/Friends Reunited

In 2004 a young man named Mark Zuckerberg registered a little website known as Facebook. Meanwhile, over the pond, the UK’s main commercial broadcaster, ITV snapped up Friends Reunited for a cool £120 million (around $200 million). ITV planned to use Friends Reunited’s userbase as a captive audience for its programming. Unfortunately, constantly changing prices and other rejiggings aren’t very popular with users, and as Facebook grew, Friends Reunited withered away. In 2010 ITV sold the site for a paltry £25 million ($40 million) and went back to concentrating on what it does best: ridiculous soap operas, mediocre talent shows and reruns of American programs.

7. IAC/Ask Jeeves

In 2005 web company IAC cut a check for $1.85 billion for Ask Jeeves (now known simply as Ask.com). Speaking at the time, the head of IAC, Barry Diller, said: “We believe that in the future Ask Jeeves has the potential to become one of the great brands on the internet and beyond.” The potential might have been there – and in all fairness the nice little butler was a terribly polite interface – but it certainly wasn’t realized. The rise of Google was unstoppable, and all the butler saw was a faltering market share. In 2010 AIC cut jobs and took a $991 million impairment charge relating to its search and media business. That means you, Jeeves.

6. News International/Myspace

In yet another corporate merger ruined by Facebook, News International acquired Myspace in 2005 for a sum of $580 million. What’s particularly galling is the fact that Myspace (formerly MySpace) had won its own popularity by wiping out Friendster, but nobody at News International thought that the same thing might happen to Myspace. While Myspace is still a home for the odd independent musician or two, it’s certainly not the powerhouse it once was with ad revenue falling. Instead, News International has been left with the reject of the internet weighing down its books.

5. Sprint/Nextel

They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but executives at telecommunications company Sprint may well disagree after their 2005 merger with Nextel was ranked by Bloomberg as one of the worst mergers of the early 21st century M&A boom. In 2005 Sprint paid $36 billion for Nextel but in 2010 was worth less than half of that amount! Worse still, in March this year the company was trading at less than the value of its assets minus liabilities – that’s cheaper than 99% of the companies ranked on Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

4. Yahoo/Overture Services

Yahoo shelled out $1.6 billion for pay-per-click text advertiser and AltaVista search engine owner Overture in 2003. They then, for some reason, ditched Overture’s technology and replaced it with their own, then dumped the Overture brand name in 2005. Whatever the motivation, it didn’t do anything to put a dent in Google’s search domination: in 2002 Google’s ad revenue was half that of Overture’s, but by 2005 it had surpassed Overture to extent that it was making $2.50 for every dollar that Overture brought in.

3. HP/Compaq

In 2002 HP finally managed to take ownership of Compaq, after a long, hard battle with various naysayers. The deal cost a princely $25 billion, but within days HP’s shares had taken a hit of a full quarter of their price before the deal. Investors’ worries eventually led to the CEO, Carly Fiorina, being forced off the board, with shares left at half of the price they had been when she took control. It’s unlikely that she’ll be looking for a reference from that place of employment.

2. Lycos/Terra Networks

In 2000 we were at the dawn of a new millennium, and though it was only a little over a decade ago, the internet landscape looked very different back then. Lycos was a big hitter in the search engine market, thought to be in the top three most-visited internet sites in the US. The Spanish telecom company Terra Networks planned to use Lycos’ popularity to launch itself into the big leagues of online players. The deal was announced to be worth $12.5 billion, but the markets reacted by devaluing the companies to such an extent that a few months later, when the deal went through, it was worth only $4.6 billion.

1. AOL/Time Warner

This merger of giants was worth an astonishing $164 billion in 2000 and sparked fear of a mega-monopoly of media. Of course with hindsight we know such fears were unwarranted, as AOL is now the preserve of people who aren’t really sure what this internet thing is, but want their grandchildren to be able to send them pictures. Using dial-up. Whatever that is. With AOL’s stock falling even faster than its reputation, the merger led to a loss of $99 billion in 2002, and towards the end of the decade Time Warner abandoned AOL to its fate. Without doubt one of the worst mergers in history.

If you sell goods to buyers over the Internet, the process of product storage, purchase by an end-buyer, packaging, labeling and finally shipping the product is called “order fulfillment”. It is no secret that as your business grows you may find this process becoming incredibly time-consuming, costly, as well as distracting. When outsourcing your needs to the “professionals” you can concentrate on marketing your product and growing your business. This is where outsourced order fulfillment services start to look compelling.

In a nutshell, outsourced order fulfillment is defined as storing your inventory in a third-party warehouse (3PL or third-party logistics) where you route your orders for processing. This outsourced fulfillment provider will take your order then pick, pack, and ship the order to your customers in a way that you define.

The Power of Multiple Warehouse & A Global Warehouse Network

For online e-tailers selling product nationwide or globally, this is critical. Location is key to shipping price savings; however don’t settle for one (1) good location; you need multiple locations that are geographically close to major population centers and your buyers.

Why Multiple Warehouses Are Better For Your Business

If you ship 25% of your orders to the U.S. West Coast, 25% to the U.S. East Coast, 25% to Canada and 25% to Europe it is very probable that most of your shipments will go to major population centers where buyers are, (LA, Chicago, New York, Toronto, London, Paris, etc). If your current warehouse is in Portland, you’ll only be outsourced and optimized for only 25% of your orders, if you are lucky.

A better solution would be to spread your inventory out into 5-6 warehouses in LA, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver and the UK or mainland Europe. Move inventory globally using bulk freight shipments and local warehouse storage close to major population centers. Shipping orders out from the warehouse closest to the end-buyer results in lower parcel delivery costs, faster delivery times and true shipping cost savings.

Multiple Warehouses Reduce Costs

If you strategically place inventory in multiple locations, you can decrease delivery time and costs.
Now if you were thinking, “I would have to pay to move my inventory to my second warehouse.” Consider this. Bulk freight shipping, those 18-wheelers seen on the interstate, is cheap compared to the outbound piecemeal parcel shipping of FedEx or UPS. An 18-wheeler filled with 10,000 stuffed animals will cost less than $5,000 to ship from NYC to LA, that’s $0.50 a stuffed animal, in return for $3.00, $5.00, or more in savings for each stuffed animal you would ship individually – not to mention your buyers get faster delivery times.

Therefore, the rule is to strategically place inventory closer to the end-buyer, and always try to shorten the last leg of the parcel delivery by the carriers. In industry jargon, this is sometimes known as “forward warehousing”; think of it as real savings. Alexander the Great actually invented the concept; he called it a “forward supply depot.” Whatever you call it, it means real savings to you.If you want to know more about outsourcing your order fulfillment including checklists and questions to ask potential vendors please see our guide to outsourcing order fulfillment.

About the author: Nate Gilmore is VP of Marketing at Shipwire Product Fulfillment, with warehouses in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

1. Involvement

Customers want to feel like you care about their needs, and that you’re emotionally invested in helping them solve their problems. It’s a little easier to convey this message in a brick and mortar setting, but online survey software can let your e-commerce customers know that you’re completely involved in meeting their needs, too.

2. Speed

If you can deliver your product faster than your competition, your customers will be more than satisfied, they will be happy!

3. Availability

Today’s customer has had enough of voicemail and automated responses. They want to know that a real person is available when they have a question or need help. Offer multiple ways for them to contact a knowledgeable representative including phone, email, fax, and live chat. If the customer is important to you, give them your home or cell phone numbers, too.

4. Courtesy

How much money would you spend if the salesperson was rude every time you visited their store? In most cases, not very much. Customers don’t expect you to put on a song and dance for them, but they do expect you to be polite and respectful.

5. Honesty

If you fail to live up to your promises, not only will you have an unsatisfied customer on your hands, but they will spread the news of your broken promise to anyone that will listen. The best practice is to underpromise and overdeliver. A customer who is pleasantly surprised will be just as anxious to tell everyone about their positive experience.

6. Satisfaction

Most people aren’t shopping for a product, they’re looking for a solution to their problems. If you can solve their issue and provide satisfaction, you’ll have a customer for life!

7. Can-do Attitude

Your customer doesn’t want to hear any excuses – even if they are valid. They don’t want to hear the shipment is delayed, the computer is down, or your technician didn’t show up for work yesterday. They want to hear that you can get the job done. Forget about excuses and problems, and begin focusing on solutions.

8. Skilled Service

Consumers look to you for expert, up-to-date knowledge in your industry. They feel like its part of what they’re paying for.

9. The Little Extras

Customers expect the “little extras” at no extra charge. If you nickel and dime them for every little thing, they’ll quickly decide that you’re only interested in taking their money. By adding value to the product at no additional cost to your customer, you could find your competitive edge and increase your customer base.

10. Appreciation

Who wants to spend their hard-earned money with someone who doesn’t appreciate their business? Make sure that you offer a sincere “thank you” frequently and offer special promotions or discounts to your regular customers.

If you can give your customer what they want, your success is virtually guaranteed!

This is a guest post by Fee Fighters’ Stella Fayman.

The holiday season is the best time of the year for opportunistic retailers. Unfortunately, it is also the most wonderful time of the year for people specializing in fraud. Luckily, there are some easy ways to protect your business, whether brick and mortar, from credit card fraud:

Nip the fraudsters in the bud- Take preventative measures such as having customers sign receipt and checking signatures on the back of each and every card. Ecommerce merchants should always use an Address Verification Service (AVS) and have customers enter the 3 digit security code on the back of each card (called the CVV). More helpful tips can be found in this comprehensive article.

Be patient- As the holidays near, tensions run high as popular items are high in demand and low in supply. Maintaining a level of excellence in customer service will make sure customers don’t get belligerent and make your life more difficult (think chargebacks).

Be prepared- Make sure to know the policies and procedures around chargebacks—when a customer disputes a charge on his/her credit card. Reach out to your merchant account provider before one occurs, and then use that information to develop a stand policy in your business about who handles and how to handle chargebacks.

FeeFighters.com is the comparison shopping site for credit card processors. FeeFighters lets business owners compare top quality processors on an apples-to-apples basis, similar to using Priceline for travel. If you have any questions, feel free to email Stella at stella (AT) feefighters (DOT) com.

Google has offered to pay $5.3 billion plus $700 million in management bonuses–a total of $6 billion–for the online coupon company Groupon. If the deal goes through, it would be Google’s biggest acquisition ever. From the New York Times:

(Groupon) would help Google get into local advertising and give it specific insight into consumer spending habits. Local online advertising is expected to grow 18 percent, to $16.1 billion, next year, according to the advertising research firm Borrell Associates.

Google has big ambitions for local services, which include listings of businesses alongside its mapping service, although Google has had only modest success with the program after years of trying….Google fears the damage rivals could inflict if they acquired Groupon instead. Facebook, which has become a larger threat in recent years, could use Groupon to enhance its formidable position in social networking, (Search Engine Land editor Danny) Sullivan said. Meanwhile, Microsoft could use Groupon to erode Google’s dominance in search.

Combining Groupon’s user credit card information with Google’s Web navigation data could help the company evolve its ad targeting and localization systems. Google, an engineering company, must see good potential to build smarter systems by integrating Groupon’s data.

Groupon, which gets 50% of every coupon sold, has an estimated yearly revenue is $500 billion and 35 million subscribers around the world, according to the NYT. The company was valued at $1.4 billion in April, making Google’s bid inflated according to investors, writes the NYT.

Google would also help Groupon evolve. The company recently unveiled plans to expand, offering a coupon feed, multiple deals a day, user capability to list Groupon buys on Facebook, and a storefront where merchants can register and list coupons without having to wait (backlog has been a problem, according to the WSJ article that reported this). Groupon also just announced three acquisitions in Asia. Google’s technology and engineering know-how could be a boon to Groupon.

But Google needs to tread carefully with this deal, writes
Business Insider:

Groupon is all about sales and marketing and improv-comedy writers, and Google is all about engineering. Specifically, if the Google brains come charging in and try to “optimize” Groupon or some crap like that, the most talented of Groupon’s 3,000 employees will flee and all Google will be left with is a gigantic sales force that no longer has any interest in selling anything.

If Google “integrates” Groupon that way, this deal has a chance of being a home run, even with a $6 billion price tag. If Google tries to insert its brilliant Google brains into the Groupon mix, though, look out.

Google plans on opening Google Edition, its own eBook store to compete with Apple and Amazon, this month, according to an unnamed media source. The Wall Street Journal has the story:

The long-delayed venture—Google executives had said they hoped to launch this summer—recently has cleared several technical and legal hurdles, people close to the company say. It is set to debut in the U.S. by the end of the year and internationally in the first quarter of next year, said Scott Dougall, a Google product management director.

Digital book sales are expected to more than triple to $966 million this year, according to Forrester Research, from $301 million in 2009.

The big potential I see with Google Edition is its revenue-sharing model. More authors will jump on board if Google makes that more generous than competitors. It would also help if Google’s reader wasn’t tied to Internet connectivity, so that users could read book anywhere. As with other Google products that sound juicy at inception, we’re going to have to wait and see how Google Edition plays out. There’s no guarantee of superiority, or even success.

Black Friday, the major shopping day after Thanksgiving, can give you amazing bargains. But, as any experienced shopper knows, a successful Black Friday requires preparation.

When it comes to preparing, the Internet is your friend. Several entrepreneurs have set up websites to help you navigate Black Friday deals, store hours, and ad updates. Their information will help you avoid hours of searching for Black Friday ads on Google, as well as find bargains you never knew existed. We compiled a list of the ten best websites for finding Black Friday deals, so that you can focus your energy on being in the stores.

10. BlackFriday.info

Features:
Ad scans
Blog
Search by store or category
Email updates
Deal of the day
Register to create a shopping list
Store hours

This relatively generic Black Friday website doesn’t have much in the way of standout features, but if you just want the basics, it does the trick.

9. Black-Friday.net

Features:
Blog
Facebook presence
Shopping list
Most popular products list
Online Black Friday deals
Search by store and category
Email updates

This site offers pretty basic Black Friday coverage with a decent interface. It lacks store hours, but covers you on all the other essentials.

8. BlackFriday.org

Features:
Ad scans
Email updates
Blog
Search by store
Online sales
Shopping list
Tabulated store hours

BlackFriday.org’s clean interface gives you easy access to scanned circulars, either via their blog or by flipping through them at the top of the website. The blog displays circulars as they come out and gives a summary of a circular’s main discounts, store hours and, if applicable, associated online coupon codes. Slick design makes this website pleasing to the eye and easily navigable.

7. DealNews

Features:
Ads by store
Lists due dates on ads it doesn’t yet have
Can follow on Twitter/Facebook
RSS feeds
Sort by product
Email newsletter of deals

This Black Friday site is incorporated into DealNews’ more extensive site, which includes deals by location and Mac-specific deals. It’s a relatively simple site with a blog-like Black Friday resource that includes information on how consumers research Black Friday, myths about Black Friday, and more. Downside: At time of viewing, the site hadn’t collected all the ads that it listed as due (or past due).

6. Black Friday 2010, by Bradsdeals.com

Features:
Blog
Email alerts
Adscans
Store hours
Deals you can scroll through
Facebook/Twitter

Black Friday 2010 has a really good blog, which adds a human touch to deal-hunting. Besides updated deals, they cover useful Black Friday tips, a history of the big day, and other topics. They don’t have a forum, however, nor do they include as many stores as some other sites.

5. DealTaker’s Black Friday

Features:
They put checkmarks next to store names on left sidebar after they’ve received ads for that store
Many ads accessible to people with visual impairments
Forums
Email updates
Adscans
Excel-based Black Friday Organizer
On Twitter/Facebook

Find deals by store icon or coupon link on this site. It updates frequently, but doesn’t include a blog, so you get a bare-bones list of deals. Their forums help you find details. A good website if you want to skip details and go find deals by store.

4. Black Friday @ Gottadeal.com

Features:
Frequent updates
Adscans
Good tips in the FAQ section
Personalized shopping list (with registration)
Store hours
Email alerts
Message boards

Cool features make this site a worthy visit for any Black Friday shopper. Their Item Tracker shows you a list of products you can order online now for Black Friday ad prices or less. Their Sale Tracker lists dates, times, discounts, and any additional information for major Black Friday retailers. You can also get your Black Friday info-fix through geek a personalized shopping list and email alerts. If you’re into FAQs. they also happen to have the best FAQ list of any site we surveyed.

3. TGI Black Friday

Features:
Shopping list
Coupons
iPhone.Droid apps
Adscans
Filter by merchant and price

If you like to find deals by product or category, try out TGI Black Friday. They update findings at the top of the page in blog format. When you navigate down the page, you’ll see top deals, accompanied by a photo of the product. At the bottom of each product listing, you can add the product to your shopping list, or share it. The user interface makes it easy to interact with the website. If you like an interactive, visual component, try this site.

2. FatWallet’s Black Friday

Features:
Forum
Blog
iPhone app
Twitter feed/Facebook presence
Email newsletter

Winning navigation defines this site, which makes sifting through ads much easier than the typical “click on a store logo and see what you get” format. You can filter your preferences by store, category, price, brand, rebate, door buster, free shipping, and whether the ad is online or not. Once you filter, a list of matching ads appears in a sortable menu box in the center of the screen. Most ads in the list are linked to the retailer’s website. This is about as easy as sorting Black Friday ads gets.

1. BFAds

Features:
Around 50 stores in their database
Adscans
Buying guides
Good tips
Personalized shopping list (with registration)
Store hours
Mobile-compatible updates
Message boards
On Facebook/Twitter
…and T-shirts (you know you want one)

Daily updates give you the lowdown on deals, as well as links, instructions, and coupons (or coupon codes), where pertinent. You get complete information and analysis on each new deal they post. Whoever is behind the blog–another great feature of the site–obviously knows how to bargain hunt. The blogs tells you where to find discounts, how long they’ll last, and whether they’re sold out or not. Frequent updates and a thorough level of detail make this my favorite website.

This is a guest post by FeeFighters’ Stella Fayman.

If you’re in ecommerce, “payment gateway” is a phrase you’ve most likely heard before. Yet many business owners have no clue what the word “gateway” actually means. Read below to get the answers to the most common questions about gateways.

What is a gateway?

A gateway is a piece of hosted software (software as a service) that sits between your ecommerce site’s shopping cart (or POS system if you have a physical shop) and the merchant account provider.

The gateway’s main function is to accept your transaction data, clean it up, and pass it along in the proper format to the merchant account provider. Gateways provide additional functionality such as storing a record of the transaction, providing an interface for browsing and modifying transactions, filtering transactions for fraud and generating reports.

Do you need a gateway?

If you plan to accept payments via credit card online and you’re not using a third party processor (like PayPal or Google Checkout) then yes. Third-party processors have the gateway automatically built into their service.

Which gateway should you get?

Depends on who you ask. Be wary. Often, merchant account providers will recommend certain gateways to merchants because they get a commission on the sale instead of really seeing which gateway best suits the merchant’s needs. The most widely used gateways are Authorize.net, First Data Global Gateway, Chase Orbital and Cybersource.

Keep in mind that merchant account providers will need to help you get set up with a gateway, but they are flexible and can usually work with any number of different options.

Is there any reason why you shouldn’t just get Authorize.net?

Probably not. Unless you have specific technical specifications, gateways all perform the same basic function so there’s usually no need to get a more complicated and expensive gateway.

To learn more, check out the FeeFighters blog, where there is a ton of information about credit card processing.

FeeFighters.com is the comparison shopping site for credit card processors. Just like getting multiple quotes for airfare using Expedia, FeeFighters lets business owners compare top quality processors on an apples-to-apples basis. If you have any questions, feel free to email Stella at stella (AT) feefighters (DOT) com.