April 2006 - Posts
GlobalSpeak has a excellent series of
Webinars to help business owners of any size discover successful strategies for global markets. Produced by the U.S. Commercial Service, learn about market opportunities and best prospects for continued growth; bilateral and multilateral trade patterns; as well as costs and benefits of alternative market entry strategies for American companies interested in India, China, South Africa, CAFTA, Vietnam and more.
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Recent numbers suggest that online retail spending is strong, but retailers can do better.
A new survey by MarketingSherpa of 1,120 online shoppers asked this question: "How much do these factors keep you from doing more online shopping?" Results were divided by overall shoppers and heavy online shoppers.
- 53% (39%) Sharing personal information
- 49% (21%) Fraud/identity theft
- 41% (36%) Return/exchange policies
- 14% (12%) Sites/carts too complicated
It is interesting to note that the "heavy" online shoppers were far less concerned with fraud/identity theft than the "overall" shoppers. Perhaps the "heavy" shoppers take more precautions, are more educated about secure sites, or are just accustomed to the risks. That would make an interesting follow-up study.
In a separate study of 100 retail websites, again by MarketingSherpa, only 10% of retailers offered an email opt-in on their home page with a privacy hotlink placed immediately next to the form. House email lists are proven to be profitable. These studies seem to suggest that by prominently displaying security information in areas where personal information is being requested, the top roadblocks to e-commerce success can be overcome. This appears especially true when trying to appeal to the casual or new online shopper. (This topic was also explored in the Feb. 2006 issue of Website Services Magazine and the article Emailology by Peter Prestipino.)
See the May issue of Website Services Magazine for an in-depth look at e-commerce success.
Not a subscriber yet? Sign up for your free subscription.
Castpost is a new web-based service that offers the easiest way to broadcast
your personal video and audio clips. With Castpost, you can share your personal
media – like a home movie, a reality TV show audition, a voicemail message, a
weekly podcast show – with family, friends, and other folks. Your clip can be
seen and heard both online and offline – from your Castpost account, from your
existing Typepad or Blogger blog, from another website, or from a mobile media
player like an iPod.
CastPost is currently alpha
(pre-beta) testing which can be unstable and buggy. This means that you may
occasionally encounter problems with the service. So try out the
CastPost video and audio broadcasting service
and let us know how it goes.
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Today there over 70 million registered Internet domain names across the globe, according to Dotster, Inc., a leading provider of Internet domain name and hosting services.
According to the most recent Verisign reports, 8.5 million new domains registered were registered in the 3rd quarter of 2005, a 33% increase from 3rd quarter 2004 and a 94% increase from 3rd quarter 2003. Internet use worldwide reached the landmark number of 1 billion users in the 3rd quarter of 2005.
“While some may have the perception that all the good domain names are gone, the reality is that what we are seeing today is only the frost on the tip of the iceberg,” says Kilroy. “It’s still very much a buyer’s market as far as online real estate goes. Years from now, those who have purchased and registered domain names today – whether for business or personal use -- will look back at this time period as a golden opportunity to acquire the domain name of their choice and put their e-stake in the ground.”
By the way, Dotster is running a 99 cent domain sale - get one domain for 99 cents with any non-domain purchase over $6.99.
Technorati Tags:
domains, dotster, domain names
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Getting your email message in front of the right people is an ongoing struggle and it's getting tougher. Email delivery rates continue to fall and with email certification and in-depth verification processes on the way, some marketers are opting out of email and jumping on the video blog bandwagon. Who's advocating video blogging you ask? Well, Marlon Sanders of Higher Response Marketing for one. Here are some interesting excerpts from a press release distributed at PRWeb this morning, "Three Reasons Why a Video Blog Beats Email Marketing":
Reason #1: Deliverabilty. Video podcast technology lets you send your message to your recipient's computer directly and bypass the spam filters altogether.
Reason #2: Convenience plus flexibility. To receive video blog content, you simply subscribe to a “feed” via iTunes or other comparable software. (Most are free.) The feeds can contain video, audio or text. Once subscribed, a newsletter, ezine or other message is sent straight to a subscriber’s computers or video iPod, automatically avoiding the spam email filters completely.
Reason #3: Affordability. A CNN.com article recently explained that charging a postage fee for sending emails would likely happen in the future – another problem avoided with video blogs. Both AOL and Yahoo have hinted at the idea of email postage in the past year.With the rise of broadband and availability of less expensive hardware, video blogging is already changing the way marketers are looking at Web promotions. Just take a look at all the hype surrounding YouTube and you'll see what I mean. Learn more at Marlon's
vblogsecrets.com - it's a little hokey for me personally but when you're as excited as Marlon is about the possibilities, you just can't help but use psychadelic backgrounds and roller-coaster scenery in your video message. Either way, I believe Marlon is absolutely right, video blogging is well on its way to greater use.
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While it's not the first application of the method,
MyLifeOfTravel.com, a London-based travel blog is allowing its members to use their Google Adsense accounts on the individual blogs that they create. It's a powerful incentive for bloggers to create valuable content on third-party sites taking collaboration to a entirely new level. Calan Horsman, site co-founder, said: "Having positioned ourselves as a niche blogging platform focused on user experience, we are now very excited about giving travellers the opportunity to be rewarded for sharing their unique travel experiences."
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If you need a simple, yet elegant and professional way to send invoices
online, check out BlinkSale.com. It seems to
be a good solution for anyone who needs to invoice clients for services or
products - including attorneys, accountants, designers, IT professionals,
software developers, journalists, contractors, engineers, architects, even
videographers according to the site. BlinkSale works well with Firefox, Safari
and IE6. Your clients will receive invoices via email or you can print and send
invoices via snail-mail. It appears to be a terrific way to keep track of your
business finances. WSM will test it out and keep you posted.
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Microsoft released an English version of
IE7 Beta 2 last night - German,
Finnish, Arabic and Japanese versions will be released in the coming weeks. This
release is not the preview or the update to the preview, but the real Beta 2 of
IE7 for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows XP 64-bit Edition.
So the time is officially here to start testing how your pages look within the
new browser!
From the
IE blog: We acted on a lot of the feedback and bug reports from the previous
public releases. In particular, I feel good about changes we made based on
reports from web developers around some CSS behaviors, application compatibility
feedback, reliability data (yes, we do analyze the information that comes when
you click “Send Error Report”), and user experience feedback. People on the team
will post additional details about changes over the next few days.
Key features of the new release include a streamlined interface (fewer
intrusive toolbars), tabbed browsing (offers a single view through thumbnail
images of all open tabs), automatic shrinking for improved printing, RSS feeds
(awesome!) and some new and improved security features to help protect against
malicious software.
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TrueLocal will be launching their
Local Traffic Estimator at Ad Tech today in San Francisco. The Estimator is the
first of its kind built exclusively for local search - aggregating and showing
users traffic statistics of TrueLocal.
Advertisers can type in a zip code and a
search term and receive information about TrueLocal traffic from the previous
month. Our Local Traffic Estimator Tool is the first designed specifically for local
search,” states Jake Baillie, President of TrueLocal. “We want our advertisers,
no matter how big or small, to maximize their ROI and this tool will allow them
to see the best search categories and zip codes for their business.” The
estimator provides such information as map clicks, or listing views in relation
to the most popular categories and nearest zip codes to the searched term and
location. For example, a user can type in shoes in 60612 and the local traffic
estimator determines the three most popular categories for this search and the
five nearest zip codes to 60612.
Learn more about
TrueLocal in Website Services Magazine's Who's Who Directory
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The numbers are in for 2005 and they are impressive.
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), both respected authorities for Internet advertising information, announced that total online advertising revenues in the US reached $12.5 billion for 2005. This figure is 30% higher than 2004, that saw $9.6 billion. Revenues totaled $3.6 billion alone in the fourth quarter of 2005, 33.9% higher than the fourth quarter of 2004.
Clearly business is booming, but are we in for another bust? David Silverman, Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP doesn't think so. “The Internet continues to be a vibrant and ever-changing channel, providing advertisers with broad offerings that enable them to promote their brands using a highly cost effective platform. This year’s record figure of annual internet advertising revenue demonstrates the enduring enthusiasm for the medium as a whole.”
Some highlights from the IAB Internet Advertising Report; Search leads all online advertising with 41% of spending, up slightly from 2004. Display (34%), classifieds (17%), referrals and lead generation (6%) and email (2%) round out the top five. The importance of search and site search is clear.
The upcoming May issue of Website Services Magazine is all about e-commerce and getting the most out of your online business.
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Unless you scour the Web relentlessly for the "latest and greatest"
solution to seamless design and cutting edge SEO practices, you may
not have yet come across the term microformats. "Designed for humans
first and machines second," according to the
official site, microformats "are a
set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted
standards." The purpose of using microformats (or at least as I
understand it) is to convey as much semantic meaning as possible through the use
of common standards. For example, if you tag blog posts then you are using one
set of microformats (for categorization on sites such as technorati or del.icio.us).
If you use the popular rel="nofollow" attribute when including
a link to another's site then you are using another one of several microformat
open standards.
Why bother with microformats? Well for one, it's a standards based
approach and everybody appreciates a good standard, right? More importantly, microformats may very well
be the future of how search engines treat the content on your pages in the
coming years. If search engines were to recognize the value in microformats and
account for their inherent metadata, the Web (and search results pages) would be
a much different place. The reason is because accurate and appropriate metadata
is one of the keys to tying all of the World's available content together. See
where I'm going with this? More opportunities to "explain" your content to the search engines will result in more accurate results for end-users. And who's going to argue against that?
Using microformats enables websites to provide detailed information to search
engines which in turn can be used to refine the data those services provide the wider Web population. The current problem
as I see it however is that while their is a push for a common "dictionary"
of these standards, most designers and SEO's still don't use them and search
engines really don't account for them yet - that is a big "yet" though. Adoption
is strong and all signs are pointing to the fact that search engines will begin
interpreting and understanding the relationships between sites, the people
behind them and the ideas that spawned them soon - some argue very soon.
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"Our ad model is performing very well thus far. We offer gateway audio ads, often voiced by ESPN talent and a 30-second brand-sell spot," said Marc Horine, general manager-new media, ESPN Radio. "We are looking at new technology that will provide a much richer advertising experience and hope to roll that out very soon."
That is from a story published recently by Advertising Age. Website Services Magazine has been keeping a close eye on podcasting news, so it comes as no surprise that advertisers are aggressively pursuing this new revenue source.
ABC will soon test the idea of a subscribed and captive audience. Currently, ABC sells individual shows on iTunes. They will soon offer those same shows for free on its own site with ads that can't be skipped. NBC and AOL's In2TV are preparing to launch similar programs.
For an in-depth look at podcasting, including "how-to's", check out the upcoming May issue of Website Services Magazine. Subscribe free at www.websiteservices.com.
Blogging on the Go...
Sometimes you hear news or come up with great ideas during a commute or while
you're at a meeting But if can't get to a computer with Internet access in order
to post to your weblog, what do you do if your idea or news just can't wait?
Start blogging on the go.
Mobispine has just launched free mobile blog, which makes it possible for
users to post a blog directly from their mobile phone without paying for text
messaging or multimedia messaging. “Blogging should be instant. Lots of users
have an idea, or a picture that they want to share with many people right away.
Posting to a blog directly from a mobile phone means they don’t have to wait
until they’re at the computer,” says Joacim Boivie, CEO of Mobispine.
Learn more at www.mobispine.com
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Advertisers will spend over one billion on behavioral targeting this year
according to a report released last Thursday by eMarketer. By 2008, ad spend on
behavioral targeting will jump to $2.1 billion, according to eMarketer. But
who's adopting all this behavioral technology and why? First adopters (those
companies that understand how the technology works) are the ones integrating
behavioral solutions and the reason is because they have a clearer understanding
of its potential positive impact on their bottom line.
For example, SalesBuilder Inc., a behavioral profiling and targeting engine for
online engagement, personalization and lead conversion announced last week that
FastServers.Net, a dedicated server and co-location service provider based in
Chicago, IL, will use SalesBuilder's profiling and targeting system on their web
site and in upcoming marketing campaigns to improve lead conversion rates and
optimize their sales cycle. "Companies spend a lot of money to get leads in the
door, but few spend money on technology that can help them convert those leads
to revenue," said Olivier Chaine, founder and CEO of SalesBuilder Inc. "FastServers.Net
immediately understood the value of our online technology, and after testing the
system extensively, decided to implement it into their upcoming marketing
campaigns. I am confident they will experience what many other companies have
already found - that SalesBuilder can vastly improve a company's return on their
marketing dollars."
Stay up to date on all issues behavioral. Subscribe free to Website Services
Magazine...
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While it may not be designed for the mobile Web, your website is available
through mobile devices. I recently came across an interesting post at
Threadwatch about the "unseen
parts of google". Most intriguing to me was a link to a tool that enables
webmasters to test drive their website
and see how it appears in mobile phones. I tested a few of my personal
sites and, of course, the WebsiteServices.com site (which actually did not
appear very well much to my chagrin).
Looking for more cool tools? Subscribe free to Website Services Magazine...
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WebSideStory Search 4.0 has been launched. The company claims this to be the first site-search solution to fully integrate search with website behavioral data. Marketers should be able to optimize the ranking of their search results based on factors such as conversion rates, entry pages, most requested pages and visits.
Theoretically this results in improved relevancy of content from search and higher conversion rates. The new feature should allow consumers to more accurately find what they are looking for, and faster.
E-commerce sites stand to benefit greatly as measuring results and, ultimately, ROI will be made faster and easier.
“Driving site search relevancy based on a full set of web analytics data is an important innovation in the market,” said Susan Aldrich, senior vice president for Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group, a leading analyst firm specializing in the customer experience. “Combine that with its on-demand model and other new capabilities, and WebSideStory Search 4.0 has set itself apart as a top choice for enterprise site search.”
WebSideStory Search 4.0 offers a number of other,capabilities, including guided site navigation, a 10-fold increase in search capacity, and automated SEO sitemap and shopping engine feeds.
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Some members of Congress are pushing a law that would abandon "Network
Neutrality". Network neutrality prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and
Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you — based on what site
pays them the most. Ok, so that's what the Save The Internet Coalition says.
Others argue that the real debate is over the management of private networks and
the cost of providing service. Essentially, it's a battle between those who
built the networks that Web consumers use to access the Web with those who use
them to provide a service.
Synopsis from the SaveTheInternet Coalition Website:
"Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field and is the
reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation, civic participation
and free speech. The Save The Internet Coalition believes that the Internet is a
crucial engine for economic growth and democratic discourse and are working to
urge Congress to take steps now to preserve network neutrality to ensures that
the Internet remains open to innovation and progress."
Learn more at SaveTheInternet.com
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Last year, local advertisers spent $420 million on search advertising and
according to Borrel Associates
that number is expected to rise to nearly $1 billion and nearly double again
next year, reaching more than $4 billion by 2010. Evidence that local
advertisers have "gone beyond experimenting" according to the executive report.
Eighteen months ago, local advertisers occupied just 5.6 percent of sponsored
links on the major search engines; today it's more than one-third.
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As in most fields of business, there are only a handful of experts - and for a reason. These folks not only understand the current landscape of their industry, they are constantly working, researching and innovating. In the case of Web linking, few others can match SEOcompany.ca's Bob Mutch in terms of expertise when it comes to building inbound links to your site from directories. I've had the chance to talk with Bob a few times over the past weeks and not only is he a fun, fascinating and amazingly astute guy, he's also more than willing to share his knowledge with those who are concerned with making their sites more successful online.
Website Service has posted a brief Q&A with Bob Mutch about directory linking. Bob graciously answered our questions on what makes a directory link worthy, what percentage of paid directory links versus free links he would recommend, the most and least valuable links, new methods of obtaining links and the importance of variance in anchor text. With any luck, WSM readers will get a chance to read more about Bob's new ILQ rating system in our fourth issue.
Read the Linking Q&A With Bob Mutch - SEOcompany.ca
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The mobile Web is coming. Whether it's coming at a rapid pace is up for debate
but these days, most people have cell phones - and as the cost to own a mobile
device decreases and the service plans to access the mobile Web lowers, it's
essential to start paying attention. In fact, you may want to start paying
attention now. The reason is because those that regularly use the mobile Web are
not just first adopters when it comes to technology, they are usually the first
adopters (and the most vocal) when it comes to other things as well - namely
your services or products.
An M:Metrics survey of 35,649 US mobile subscribers (based on a three
month moving average), revealed that 34.1 percent sent a text message, 10.4%
retrieved news and information, 10% purchased a ring tone, 9.8% used photos
messaging, 7.7 used personal e-mail, 6.5% used a personal instant messenger (AIM
for example), 4.6% used work e-mail, 4% purchased wallpaper or screensavers and
3.3% downloaded a mobile game.
In line with one aspect of this is our site of the day,
wampad.com - a
mobile website portal which I've recently tested. While it's a little rough
around the edges - the site is well thought out in the sense that it acts as a
meta-portal to the mobile web. Currently, users can search popular sites such as
del.icio.us, flickr, wikipedia, the IMDB, news, patents, upcoming.org, stock
quotes and a few other cool things. Sure you could use Google Mobile or Yahoo
Mobile (you may already use these services) but there's so much more to the
mobile Web.
Wampad.com is worth a look - but through your mobile browser.
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A recent survey by GlobalSpec, (a specialized search engine and information source for the engineering, industrial and technical communities), found that 56% of respondents are increasing their marketing spend in 2006, with only 7% planning to reduce spending. In addition, 35% of respondents indicated that they will spend upwards of half of their marketing budget online. GlobalSpec indicates that this shift towards online spending in the industrial sector is being driven by the need for ROI accountability. The top marketing channels by this sector in 2005 were online directories/websites (64%), email advertising (54%) and SEM (53%).
This information indicates a shift in thinking for suppliers and manufacturers who, in the past, have relied primarily on traditional marketing channels.
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Zixxo.com has launched a service to provide local coupons via RSS. What was that sound? Oh, sorry, that was the sound of direct mail coupons simultaneously combusting in our mailbox.
Hooray! Here is how Zixxo works: Advertisers (who are not being charged for the rest of 2006) create a business profile and coupon on the Zixxo site. These coupons can be targeted to any geographic location (locally or nationally - although local is the focus. Users are notified of the coupons via email through an alert gathered by RSS (they can also search or browse the site). The potential for mobile advertising is really more apparent here that in any service to date.
Some other interesting features are the availability of stock pictures (to make the coupon look professional), and even suggestions on how to make offers achieve various business objectives. Coupons are a powerful way to encourage consumer behavior that is favorable to a business. Zixxo's belief in local coupons via RSS may be rooted in the fact that last year, 323 billion coupons were distributed in the U.S., and of those just 4.5 billion were actually used. If RSS takes off with the general public, Zixxo could be huge. That's a big "if" but a great gamble. Zixxo will opening an API in the next few weeks.
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With the third issue in the esteemed hands of our designer and with final edits
and tweaks being made by our crack editorial staff, it's probably time to let
you know where you can pick up the third issue of Website Services Magazine if
you are not already a subscriber.
Wait! You're not a subscriber? If you are not currently receiving Website
Services, subscribe here -
it's free forever! If you have received issues in the past and would
like to continue receiving your free copy, just visit
free.websiteservices.com and
follow the simple instructions!
Here are the tradeshows we'll be attending this spring
and summer:
Ad:Tech, San Francisco: April 26-28th
Search Engine Strategies,
Toronto: April 25-26th
ISPcon, Baltimore, May
16-18th
Internet Retailer,
Chicago: June 5-7th
Affiliate Summit, Orlando:
July 9-11th
Technorati Tags:
ad-tech, search engine strategies, affiliate summit, internet retailer, ispcon
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An interesting site came across my radar this morning.
Web2list.com is a start-up based just outside of San Francisco that introduces a wide range of web2.0 sites and offers a wide range of ideas and opinions on the topic of web2.0. The focus of the site is to create a network of users and developers who will determine what the top 2.0 sites are via a rating system. Always keen on discovering new great sites, I made a visit and was pleasantly surprised to see many sites I knew and I few I had never heard of. If you're up on 2.0 (and even if you're not), it's a must visit today.
Technorati Tags:
Web 2.0, web2list
Del.icio.us Tags:
Web 2.0, web2list