Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: February 21-28 2005

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28 February 2005

New article - gauging email open rates

If you utilize email marketing as part of your promotion, do you know how many people actually take a look at what you are sending them? No? Find out how. 

Google - fresh is best

Wow, I'm impressed. I published a new article late on Saturday evening EST and by late Sunday evening it was displaying in the general SERPs - just over 24 hours is the closest I can pin it. Very impressive Google!

25 February 2005

Anti-spam software/services to skyrocket

According to research company, IDM, the market for anti-spam software solutions and services will have grown from 300 million dollars in 2003 to 1.7 billion dollars in 2008 - a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42% through 2008. 

It's great news if you sell anti-spam solutions, but the news is another harbinger of massive problems for ISP's. As I mentioned in an earlier report, SpamHaus predicts that spam will hit 95% of all email by mid 2006. I don't believe these kinds of predictions to be alarmist at all. As a manager of a web hosting company, I've been able to watch first hand as the spam problem has increased. The company I work for, ThinkHost, has thrown a lot of resources into addressing the problem and we are adding yet another server just for filtering mail in the next week.

Learn more about how spam winds up in your inbox.

Learn more about anti-spam blocking and filtering services.

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23 February 2005

Search query length affects sales?

Oneupweb recently carried out research to determine if the number of keywords used in a search query had any affect on conversion rates. Some interesting results from their study:

Time to get optimizing on 3 and 4 word queries perhaps? :).

Download How Keyword Length Affects Conversion Rates (PDF).

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"Spim" suspect charged

A few months ago I wrote about the increasing incidence of Spim - spam over IM (Instant Messaging) applications. While I am yet to experience this myself, the Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that approximately 16.8 million USA based adult Internet users have been "Spimmed".

According to TechWorld, the first criminal charges for Spimming have been laid against an 18 year old New Yorker. The person is accused of sending over 1.5 million Spim messages and faces up to 18 years in prison under the CAN-SPAM act. It's something to think about if you have been considering sending unsolicited messages over IM networks as part of your marketing mix :).

21 February 2005

Ecommerce consumer satisfaction drops

According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) from ForeSee Results, E-retail experienced a significant drop in year-over-year customer satisfaction, despite the estimated 25-30% growth in online sales this past holiday season. Some of this drop was due to the decrease in sastisfaction related to Amazon, and some to increased expectations from consumers of ecommerce transactions generally. E-retail is still a long way in front in comparison to general retail customers satisfaction.

Download the Consumer Satisfaction Report

Affluent users the largest Internet growth sector

According to Nielsen Netratings, Internet users with household incomes exceeding 150k increased by 20% during the period of January 04 -05. This slice of the market also spends 76 hours per month online and views over 2000 pages per month - also higher than any other income group.

Read more of the Nielsen Netratings report (pdf)

Valentines day drives traffic

Also from Nielsen Netratings, visits  to gift and flowers destinations generated 2.5 million at-home visitors, which represented a 40% increase in traffic during the week ending February 6 as Valentine’s Day approached. Read more (PDF)

In a post Valentines Day study, NN reported that the top three online floral advertisers for Valentine’s Day boosted advertising by 333 percent during the week leading up to the event. The number of consumers visiting the sites jumped 75%, to nearly 4.4 million unique visitors. Read more (PDF)

Consumers search thoroughly before purchasing online

Doubleclick, in conjunction with ComScore have released a report on the results of a survey conducted of people purchasing Apparel, Computer Hardware, Sports/Fitness and Travel items from 30 sites. Amongst the key findings:

• Search was involved of nearly half of all online purchases.
• The majority of pre-sale search activity used generic terms involves generic terms, not searches on brand names.
• Brand names played a greater role in search activity closer to the actual purchase
• Over 54% of consumers engage in search 2 weeks or more in advance of the purchase.

The last point is interesting. I know that it took me two months of searching off and on for a particular piece of computer hardware before I decided who I was going to buy it from. This kind of activity raises the question for merchants of just how effectively tracking their search conversions with such a long lapse between search and purchase.

Read more - "Search Before The Purchase" (PDF)

 

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