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.
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