Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: February 1-10 2005

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10 February

Online dating sites - stagnating industry?

Online dating sites have sprung up everywhere in recent years - heck, I even took a crack at starting up a dating site directory; it held my interest for about 5 minutes :).

It appears that the industry is beginning to stagnate. According to Jupiter Media and reported by Internet Week, dating site visits have dropped by nearly a third in recent times and revenue for the industry is only expected to grow 9 percent this year - pretty low in comparison to other relatively new online industries. Growth for 2002/03/04 was 73, 72 and 19 percent respectively. So it's probably not the best time to start up an online dating service. Pssst.. wanna buy a cheap dating site directory? ;).

Telco industry 4th largest online advertisers

According to Nielsen Netratings, the telecommunications sector is not only one of the largest online advertisers in terms of industry, but it was also the fastest growing consumer of advertising space in the last year. 

Other industries such as finance, retail and web media showed no growth in online advertising.

8 February 2005

Pink contracts, spammers and web hosts

I was introduced to a new term today - "pink contract". 

According Spamhaus, an industry authority in subjects relating to spam, a major web host is providing services to 187 spam gangs.

Spamhaus state that a "pink contract" is involved with these cases. A pink contract is an agreement that exempts the hosted party from the traditional terms of service of the hosting provider. These contracts come at a price of course. Spamhaus has gone public with these accusations and also state they have repeatedly contacted the hosting company about the spam gangs.

If this is true, it's a very sad statement about this publicly traded web hosting company - boosting their bottom line by supporting blatantly criminal activity. If Spamhaus is mistaken, they may find themselves in a lot of hot water. Stay tuned.

Read Spamhaus's statement

5 February 2005

Microsoft spending big on marketing search

As mentioned earlier this month (below), the new MSN search is now out of beta. It appears that Microsoft isn't relying on it's current user base and organic growth to build popularity. The company is also injecting $200 million dollars into TV advertising, including coverage during the SuperBowl

Spam to hit 95% of all email by mid 2006

According to SpamHaus, 75% of all incoming email arriving at ISP's is spam. The prognosis isn't good either. New developments in proxy hijacking spam software tools has seen many ISP's report steadily increasing levels of spam. Spamhaus suggests that the new strategies used by spammers to be a serious threat; so much so that they've forecast that 95% of all incoming email will be spam by the middle of 2006. The consequences of this will be increasing problems with email servers choking on mail queued for filtering.

Read more about the threat on SpamHaus.

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3 February 2005

Google now a registrar - hosting next?

Google has become an ICANN-accredited registrar and is approved to sell .com, .net, .org, .biz., info, .name and .pro domains. This bit of news has the industry buzzing as to what the company's next move will be - perhaps hosting? 

Google already has some hosting experience from its Blogger service - the mind boggles as to what kind of hosting plans they are capable of rolling out. 

Competition is great, but the hosting industry has gone into overdrive lately in terms of price cuts, causing a number of small, but good hosts to sell up. I envision a situation in a few years where the market will be cornered by just a few major players - and whether this is beneficial to the consumer remains to be seen.

I have a contact associated with a very, very large hosting company and he was telling me that this particular company offers very low prices to get people in the door. The company's level 1 support team (front line staff) aren't actually experienced hosting techs - they are a sales team. They work off canned responses and each time you contact them via phone or email, their focus is to upsell to you. Each member of this "support team" has a $ quota to meet each week. It's a little disturbing. Of course, that company isn't Google :)

2 February 2005

Small business to spend more on IT in 2005

eMarketer's SMB IT and E-Business Spending Report, states that small and medium sized business are planning to increase spending on computer hardware and software by 6 - 8% in 2005.

Small business (fewer than 100 employees) planned spending:

Microsoft search out of beta

After many months of beta testing, the new MSN Search is now the default search application for users of the service.

I'm seeing some big differences in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) in comparison with Google and Yahoo, depending on the industry. At this stage, I'll reserve judgment - I've only carried out a few dozen queries. Even though rankings have changed dramatically on a number of the terms of interest to me, it hasn't seemed to have affected traffic levels one way or another. What is impressive are backlink listings (use link:www.site.com) - much more comprehensive than other major engines. 

A nice feature for searchers is that it includes information from Microsoft Encarta, the MS encyclopedia that was very popular in the late 90's - but that doesn't help we ecommerce site owners wanting those people on our sites ;).

If you're into PPC, be prepared to open yet another new account - I'm sure that MS will be breaking ties with Overture (Yahoo) at some stage, but according to Overture's site, the contract extends to June 2006.

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1 February 2005

Kids not as web savvy as you may think

I remember the days of my mobile computer business in the mid-90's, paying house visits on my clients and finding them to be in awe of their children's adeptness at using a computer. It wasn't adeptness in most cases, it was just blind usage with little methodology - in a number of instances ending up with rather disastrous consequences. But try telling a dating parent that little Johnny is a danger to the computing world - it's not a good way to get repeat business :). 

As I started gaining more of an online focus, I noticed the same type of behavior with "little Johnnies" as they made their way around the web. I observed kids not stopping to read directions or to persevere by thinking around the problem when they couldn't get what they wanted in a short space of time. Tasks were completed more by good luck than good management and quite often included the downloading of spyware or other such nasties. A lack of fear does not equal competence :).

It seems that I'm not alone in my opinions. According to a study of 13 to 17 year olds carried out by the Nielsen Norman Group, teenagers, generally speaking are not as skilled as adults in finding their way around the Web. This finding is especially important to those merchants targeting this demographic.

Read more about site usability and teenagers.

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