For this chapter I decided to focus on portals since I don't know a whole lot about them. The definition of a Portal is "internet sites providing access or linkage to other sites." I found an article that discusses how Yahoo, Forbes.com, and InvestingDaily.com are using the portal subscription website model.
Yahoo, Forbes, and InvestingDaily are free subscription websites, yet they can be used in a premium way to drive more traffic and gain more subscribers. These premium subscription models include membership, newsletter, reference, periodical, magazine, and application.
Portals have different levels and composition. For instance, Yahoo, a general purpose portal, is a vast amount of varied websites; which according to the article makes it a "media website, online business, or website network." Yahoo actually includes different archetypes, such as their Yahoo Dating section which is a membership website.
However a majority of publishers are just interested in posting content from their own publications and other inner sources. This is used to supplement any relevant content they use from outside sources including contributors and/or subscription websites. These outsiders may get some compensation by the publisher or are just hoping to increase traffic through the links back to their own websites.
Some interesting numbers to think of provided by the article; Yahoo.com had 168,021,757 unique visitors from the United States in September of 2013, Forbes.com had 13,722,071 unique visitors from the United States in the same month, while InvestingDaily.com took in a mere 182,215 unique visitors from the United States that same month.
Another interesting article I found talked about the Obama administration's new health insurance portal for small businesses in Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio. This is a trial launch before the rest of the 50 states have the service available.
Friday, November 21, 2014
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Important Features of Google Analytics / Web Analytics Resources
For Google Analytics, what really seemed to stand out as important is the function of measuring bounce rates. This measurement can be hugely beneficial in figuring out why your website isn't keeping people engaged on your site and going even deeper through your page. It can make you aware of a design issue with the initial page the user lands on, usability issues, or perhaps they couldn't find the information they needed right away on the first page, and there seemed to be no link to click that was relevant.
Next I thought measuring site speed is important, especially considering nowadays people have very little patience for technology and expect content to load almost instantaneously. Site speed reports get measured through latency aspects such as: the page load time for your pages, through different browsers from users located worldwide, the speed at which an action is executed after a user clicks, and image loading. Lastly, how quickly the browser makes the data available for users to interact with it on your site.
Other web analytics resources I found are: Occam's Razor, a blog run by Avinash Kaushik. He provides tips and help to people on using web research and web analytics through this blog.
I also found an organization called Luna Metrics, they are an analytic consulting firm that is affiliated with Google. They provide quick responses to customers (within the next business day according to their site), and even work on weekends to help customers with their website needs.
Next I thought measuring site speed is important, especially considering nowadays people have very little patience for technology and expect content to load almost instantaneously. Site speed reports get measured through latency aspects such as: the page load time for your pages, through different browsers from users located worldwide, the speed at which an action is executed after a user clicks, and image loading. Lastly, how quickly the browser makes the data available for users to interact with it on your site.
Other web analytics resources I found are: Occam's Razor, a blog run by Avinash Kaushik. He provides tips and help to people on using web research and web analytics through this blog.
I also found an organization called Luna Metrics, they are an analytic consulting firm that is affiliated with Google. They provide quick responses to customers (within the next business day according to their site), and even work on weekends to help customers with their website needs.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Chapter 9, Online Content and Media
In an article by the WSJ, the author discusses the debate whether or not e-books will replace paper books eventually.
The Pew Research Center found that the percentage of e-book readers rose just 7% from 2012-2013, from 16% to 23%. The survey also found that 89% of people that consider themselves "regular book readers" had read at least one paper printed book in the last year. While just 30% of those reported in the survey said they had read an e-book in the previous year.
The article then discusses what the Association of American Publishers had found in its own research, that is the annual growth for e-book sales dropped to 34% in 2012, opposed to its preceding triple digit growth from 2008-2012.
Another interesting survey the article notes, conducted by Bowker Market Research, claims that it found 16% of Americans have purchased an e-book; there was also 59% who said they had "no interest" in buying one.
One theory behind why the e-book purchases may be declining in the United States is that consumers are purchasing multi-purpose tablets instead, and that people simply want an e-book to add to their reading by way of audio books; instead of full on replacing their printed books.
The last interesting thing I found in this article is from what Pew's research found to be approximately 90% of e-book readers still read printed books as well; these statistics seem to suggest that the two sources of books here offer some different purpose to the consumer.
The Pew Research Center found that the percentage of e-book readers rose just 7% from 2012-2013, from 16% to 23%. The survey also found that 89% of people that consider themselves "regular book readers" had read at least one paper printed book in the last year. While just 30% of those reported in the survey said they had read an e-book in the previous year.
The article then discusses what the Association of American Publishers had found in its own research, that is the annual growth for e-book sales dropped to 34% in 2012, opposed to its preceding triple digit growth from 2008-2012.
Another interesting survey the article notes, conducted by Bowker Market Research, claims that it found 16% of Americans have purchased an e-book; there was also 59% who said they had "no interest" in buying one.
One theory behind why the e-book purchases may be declining in the United States is that consumers are purchasing multi-purpose tablets instead, and that people simply want an e-book to add to their reading by way of audio books; instead of full on replacing their printed books.
The last interesting thing I found in this article is from what Pew's research found to be approximately 90% of e-book readers still read printed books as well; these statistics seem to suggest that the two sources of books here offer some different purpose to the consumer.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Chapter 8, Online Retail and Services
For this blog entry I decided to look at the online financial services industry and more specifically the customer satisfaction end.
Consumers like online financial services because they like to save time, like most people; they also desire the information available from that institution as well. But consumers also don't like when financial institutions seem to be taking advantage just because they think they can get away with it.
As you can see people are not happy at all with BofA, for a variety of reasons. The screen clip here is only a fraction of hundreds if not thousands of unhappy customers (and rightfully so in most cases) on the corporation's Facebook page.
People also took to the BofA Facebook page to complain about not being notified on any social media platforms about the services being down for the website and mobile today. It sounds to me like BofA is in need of a restructuring of the company as a whole, because there seems to be a disconnect at multiple levels.
For one thing the PR team at BofA needs to step up their responsiveness and BofA itself needs to seriously consider customer complaints about fees and other issues like getting loans. We all know the bank corporations don't like to lose money, and you might think they would not care about losing a few customers due to monthly fees; but on the grand scheme of things, even if a customer is only worth $500 to BofA, multiply that by even a fraction of the millions of customers they have and you're looking at a few billion dollars in loss. Although, Bank of America did report revenue of $88.94 billion, and total assets of 2.1 trillion dollars in 2013.
Have no fear however, here are a list of banks with online and mobile banking with absolutely no fees: Click for the list
BofA isn't the only one committing the fee offensive against its customers, there are plenty of other big banks like Sovereign Bank, for example, that recently doubled its maintenance fee to $10 (can be avoided if you deposit $500 or more monthly). Also, banks like Union Bank are getting more creative by charging for things like "cutting the line when in a telephone queue" and "..$1.50 a month for online bill paying" to try and squeeze more money out of their consumers.
Consumers like online financial services because they like to save time, like most people; they also desire the information available from that institution as well. But consumers also don't like when financial institutions seem to be taking advantage just because they think they can get away with it.
Bank of America for example charges a monthly maintenance fee of $12 for not having a checking balance averaging $1,500 or more daily. Bank of America does not have a great track record with customer, and even employee satisfaction ; according to that article they were at the bottom of the industry in terms of reputation. Bank of America lags behind Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Chase, and even JPMorgan in terms of customer service, and they had to deal with paying roughly $2B in penalties over Madoff's ponzi scheme.
People also took to the BofA Facebook page to complain about not being notified on any social media platforms about the services being down for the website and mobile today. It sounds to me like BofA is in need of a restructuring of the company as a whole, because there seems to be a disconnect at multiple levels.
For one thing the PR team at BofA needs to step up their responsiveness and BofA itself needs to seriously consider customer complaints about fees and other issues like getting loans. We all know the bank corporations don't like to lose money, and you might think they would not care about losing a few customers due to monthly fees; but on the grand scheme of things, even if a customer is only worth $500 to BofA, multiply that by even a fraction of the millions of customers they have and you're looking at a few billion dollars in loss. Although, Bank of America did report revenue of $88.94 billion, and total assets of 2.1 trillion dollars in 2013.
Have no fear however, here are a list of banks with online and mobile banking with absolutely no fees: Click for the list
BofA isn't the only one committing the fee offensive against its customers, there are plenty of other big banks like Sovereign Bank, for example, that recently doubled its maintenance fee to $10 (can be avoided if you deposit $500 or more monthly). Also, banks like Union Bank are getting more creative by charging for things like "cutting the line when in a telephone queue" and "..$1.50 a month for online bill paying" to try and squeeze more money out of their consumers.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Chapter 7, Ethical, Social, and Political Issues in E-commerce
I read an article that talked about the impact of NSA surveillance on the technology industry.
The issue lies with the U.S. NSA and their monitoring of communications worldwide and the negative effects it is having on the technology sector, jobs specifically, for Americans. With this surveillance in place, governments abroad are showing distrust of America, and vice a versa.
They even talked about France and Germany creating an EU-wide communication network so they could bypass having to go through the U.S. But everyone is concerned that the internet may just end up "breaking" because of the reactions to the NSA's activities.
One possible solution some nations, such as Brazil are going for is called data localization. 'This in itself breaks the internet due to it creating a "border" of just how far the internet can go', according to Colin Stretch, general counsel at Facebook. He also warns this could make the data less secure and allow more access by the country in which data localization is being used for espionage since there are some that don't obey the rules.
Some smaller companies like Dropbox are concerned if this becomes a trend to localize data. During a discussion in Palo Alto, IBM announced plans to spend a whopping $1 billion on creating local data centers inside Europe. Dropbox on the other hand doesn't have a billion just doing nothing on hand. With more than 70% of Dropbox's customers being overseas, and "20 or so countries" proposing data localization, this could very well make it impossible for Dropbox to retain those customers.
Some feel that the tech industry could benefit from data localization, in particular Jim McGregor, an analyst at Tirias Research. He says they would create more servers and foreign countries would "invest more to build up their IT."
What do you think?
The issue lies with the U.S. NSA and their monitoring of communications worldwide and the negative effects it is having on the technology sector, jobs specifically, for Americans. With this surveillance in place, governments abroad are showing distrust of America, and vice a versa.
They even talked about France and Germany creating an EU-wide communication network so they could bypass having to go through the U.S. But everyone is concerned that the internet may just end up "breaking" because of the reactions to the NSA's activities.
Quote about the above: 'If the internet isn't somehow broken by reactive Balkanization and software/hardware firewalling in response to [the NSA's activities], then it's likely to simply become a swamp, void of any real meaning, through concerted efforts by Google and a zillion other online data-tracking, data correlating and data-selling commercial organizations focused on monetizing users' personal information for maximum possible gain," said Stealthbits CTO Kyle Kennedy.'
One possible solution some nations, such as Brazil are going for is called data localization. 'This in itself breaks the internet due to it creating a "border" of just how far the internet can go', according to Colin Stretch, general counsel at Facebook. He also warns this could make the data less secure and allow more access by the country in which data localization is being used for espionage since there are some that don't obey the rules.
Some smaller companies like Dropbox are concerned if this becomes a trend to localize data. During a discussion in Palo Alto, IBM announced plans to spend a whopping $1 billion on creating local data centers inside Europe. Dropbox on the other hand doesn't have a billion just doing nothing on hand. With more than 70% of Dropbox's customers being overseas, and "20 or so countries" proposing data localization, this could very well make it impossible for Dropbox to retain those customers.
Some feel that the tech industry could benefit from data localization, in particular Jim McGregor, an analyst at Tirias Research. He says they would create more servers and foreign countries would "invest more to build up their IT."
What do you think?
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Chapter 6, E-commerce Marketing and Advertising Concepts
I found an article that talked about some of the key behaviors by consumers that are changing online marketing.
It discussed the old way in which consumers would buy products online, through comparison shopping sites. However in this day and age consumers are busier than ever and want all of the information they need in as little searches as possible.
Consumers rely on queries that bring them more specific information, such as the model number of a phone or computer they are interested in researching more about. They are also more responsive to imagery, instead of long amounts of data to go through. Pinterest/Instagram are good examples of the success that images have on consumers, they are simple and show you visually the thing you are interested in. The article even cites a source stating that images rank higher than product specific details, description, ratings or reviews as being the reason for making a purchase.
Consumers also rely on the opinions of others before making purchases, which is one reason that Amazon is such a successful marketplace, it fulfills this consumer desire. The article even states what HubSpot found to be 71% of people were more likely to make a purchase based on friends' social media suggestions, and 70% based on customer reviews (see Amazon). These two things of course tie back into trust, which makes a purchasing decision easier and more likely to happen.
Consumers also want facts, the details about the products they are looking for that are accurate, and not some clever marketing and advertising scheme. Even with all of these things working perfectly together, the consumer is also heavily affected by price, and if in the end the price isn't worth it in their eyes they won't buy the product.
It discussed the old way in which consumers would buy products online, through comparison shopping sites. However in this day and age consumers are busier than ever and want all of the information they need in as little searches as possible.
Consumers rely on queries that bring them more specific information, such as the model number of a phone or computer they are interested in researching more about. They are also more responsive to imagery, instead of long amounts of data to go through. Pinterest/Instagram are good examples of the success that images have on consumers, they are simple and show you visually the thing you are interested in. The article even cites a source stating that images rank higher than product specific details, description, ratings or reviews as being the reason for making a purchase.
Consumers also rely on the opinions of others before making purchases, which is one reason that Amazon is such a successful marketplace, it fulfills this consumer desire. The article even states what HubSpot found to be 71% of people were more likely to make a purchase based on friends' social media suggestions, and 70% based on customer reviews (see Amazon). These two things of course tie back into trust, which makes a purchasing decision easier and more likely to happen.
Consumers also want facts, the details about the products they are looking for that are accurate, and not some clever marketing and advertising scheme. Even with all of these things working perfectly together, the consumer is also heavily affected by price, and if in the end the price isn't worth it in their eyes they won't buy the product.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Chapter 4, Building an E-commerce Presence: Web Sites, Mobile Sites, and Apps
In this chapter I chose to blog about mobile apps. Forbes.com listed an article titled "is 2014 finally the year of mobile?" The contributor from Forbes, Ms. Whitler seems to think so, she cites data from IBM's analytics benchmark as an indicator that mobile traffic has been steadily driving 25% of total online traffic to retail sites. Even more evident that this is the year for mobile is that 20% and higher of total online sales are from mobile.
The article talks about the importance of companies designing mobile apps from the ground up for their business, instead of trying to take an existing business website and fit it into the mobile format because of the issues that arise.
One thing in particular I thought was very interesting was the IBM "presence zones," which engage customers in store by using location-based sensors to send them promotions in real time based on their location in the store, and time spent in certain aisles.
Something in the article also reminded me of the article we read about "IT doesn't matter" by the Harvard Business Review. It was the last paragraph, Ms. Whitley quotes Henderson as saying that "I'd love to say all you need to do is buy some technology, but it isn't a one dimensional problem. You have to pick the right technology and invest in the right people and re-imagine your internal processes."
The article talks about the importance of companies designing mobile apps from the ground up for their business, instead of trying to take an existing business website and fit it into the mobile format because of the issues that arise.
One thing in particular I thought was very interesting was the IBM "presence zones," which engage customers in store by using location-based sensors to send them promotions in real time based on their location in the store, and time spent in certain aisles.
Something in the article also reminded me of the article we read about "IT doesn't matter" by the Harvard Business Review. It was the last paragraph, Ms. Whitley quotes Henderson as saying that "I'd love to say all you need to do is buy some technology, but it isn't a one dimensional problem. You have to pick the right technology and invest in the right people and re-imagine your internal processes."
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Chapter 3, E-commerce Infrastructure: The Internet, Web, and Mobile Platform
This chapter discussed the history of the Internet, as well as web 2.0 and m-commerce.
I find mobile platform commerce to be particularly interesting to me because of its ease of use (if the app is decent) and the fact that they will usually have an existing platform elsewhere. For example, eBay/PayPal has both their main desktop site and a mobile app that you can still use for most of the same features, albeit some slight alterations for mobile compatibility.
Mobile commerce also comes in a vast array of diversity. There are countless apps for all kinds of businesses and services out there, all growing in the vast marketspace of today. Even Blogger has its own app that you can make blog posts from, although I could not create a new blog from the app itself disappointingly enough (see decent apps.)
I find mobile platform commerce to be particularly interesting to me because of its ease of use (if the app is decent) and the fact that they will usually have an existing platform elsewhere. For example, eBay/PayPal has both their main desktop site and a mobile app that you can still use for most of the same features, albeit some slight alterations for mobile compatibility.
Mobile commerce also comes in a vast array of diversity. There are countless apps for all kinds of businesses and services out there, all growing in the vast marketspace of today. Even Blogger has its own app that you can make blog posts from, although I could not create a new blog from the app itself disappointingly enough (see decent apps.)
Chapter 2, E-Commerce Business Models and Concepts
This chapter discussed the aspects of B2B and B2C business models and the business strategies involved with each one. I chose to focus on the transaction-fee business model because eBay, the business solution that my business uses primarily for sales is based upon it.
eBay is the middleman between e-business' that have a product marketable on eBay, and the consumers that want an easy place to buy products that are relatively affordable (my experience with eBay is that consumers go on their for 'cheap deals'.)
This old but interesting article talks about eBay in China going towards a 'no transaction fee' business model after fierce competition with another transaction fee-less site called Taobao. Taobao accounted for 57% of the total volume of online auctions in China, while eBay struggled to make it to just over 34%.
A little bit of eBay history and the eBay business model.
eBay is the middleman between e-business' that have a product marketable on eBay, and the consumers that want an easy place to buy products that are relatively affordable (my experience with eBay is that consumers go on their for 'cheap deals'.)
This old but interesting article talks about eBay in China going towards a 'no transaction fee' business model after fierce competition with another transaction fee-less site called Taobao. Taobao accounted for 57% of the total volume of online auctions in China, while eBay struggled to make it to just over 34%.
A little bit of eBay history and the eBay business model.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Chapter 1, E-Commerce: The Revolution Is Just Beginning
Chapter 1 of the text gives a brief talk about the features and significance of E-commerce in the marketplace and introduces to us the many types of E-commerce, such as B2B, C2C, and social E-commerce (something I haven't heard much about.)
The business where I am employed is successful mainly through the use of the E-commerce website eBay (C2C), where we pay very little to be in a vast "marketspace." What goes along with this is the fact that it is a market that can be accessed virtually anywhere at any time through any number of technological devices; it is this ubiquity that will also reduce the costs for not only us but for customers transactions. Consider the gas you use going to the store, even the time you spend; however with E-commerce sites you don't even have to get out of bed if you choose to. Even though eBay is considered a consumer-to-consumer type of e-commerce, I personally see it as a combination of B2B, B2C, and C2C. This is because on eBay we deal with other businesses on eBay, as well as selling as a business directly to the consumer, and we can purchase items to re-sell from other consumers.
eBay overhauls seller fees in an attempt to steal customers from Amazon.
eBay uses B2B strategy with Dell Data Centers to lower transaction costs.
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