Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: March 21 - 31 2005

Would you like to receive regular email updates of my ecommerce and marketing research, plus news of additions to the site? Subscribe today for free via the form in the right hand column of this page!

Return to research index

March 28 2005

Whatever happened to load times?

Something I've mentioned before, but given what I just experienced while doing some research; I feel it's worthwhile bringing up again. I'm working away from my office at the moment on a very slow connection - 28.8k. I just visited a news site and it took 1.5 minutes for the home page to fully load.

Only a few years ago, you couldn't visit a web development site without load times being a major point of discussion. That issue seems to have been overlooked in recent times. 

The fact remains, fast load times are still very important. Sure, broadband has captured a good share of the market, but there's still many, many people using dialup at 56k, and some unfortunate souls (such as myself at the moment) battling a 28.8k connection. It seems that designers are forgetting that non-broadband connected people are also potential clients. Nobody wants to hang around for a minute waiting for a page to load when Joe Smith with the site "next door" has a front page that will load in 15 seconds; even if his site is of slightly lower quality.

If you feel that your kb heavy page is worth the wait, give people something to look at or read while the rest of the page is loading; in the case of ecommerce sites, some pre-sales grooming is a good idea. 

You can easily be achieve this by breaking up your page into *separate* tables instead of encapsulating all your page elements within a single table, and then having tables inside that. The latter is slow to load as browsers wait until they have all the information for a table before displaying it. By splitting up the tables, you can have a top section display first with content to keep the visitor interested while the rest of content is coming down the line. Of course, if you're really into your coding, you could use CSS for positioning elements and achieving the same effect.

Dont' forget the 15 second rule in relation to 56k dialup users; there's more of them out there than you may think - and will be for some time to come.

Looking for manuals on technologies such as CSS, PHP, ASP.NET or Flash? Try our web development books section. There's free chapters to download!

March 25 2005

Spammers encouraged by clicks

Mirapoint and the Radicati Group have published some interesting results of a survey on what they term "email hygiene". The findings show that many email users still need to be educated in issues relating to spam and virus proliferation. A disturbing number of people are still clicking links in emails from unknown sources.

Survey findings include

• 31 percent of those surveys have clicked on links in spam emails, exposing themselves to phishing and virus risks.

• 18 percent of respondents have attempted to use "unsubscribe" links in spam. This is one of the oldest spammer tricks in the book. By clicking on these links, it just indicates to the spammer that the address is "live"

• More than 10% of respondents have purchased items marketed in spam emails

Read more of this report (pdf 88kb)

Learn more about how spam winds up in your inbox

Anti-spam - free trial offer! Sick of spam/virus email clogging your inbox? You never have to look at these emails again. Simple to set up and use with your current email address!

23 March 2005

eBay celebrates a decade

I always love these stories - the mega sites that were built up in a relatively short time from very humble beginnings. eBay, which started out in founder Pierre Omidyar's apartment, generated $3.3 billion in revenue in 2004 and has 135 million users worldwide.

Happy 10th eBay - read about eBay's history

Yahoo Mail going 1 gig

Users of Yahoo's free email service will soon get a healthy storage boost - up to 1 gigabyte; the same as Google's Gmail service. Wow, it wasn't too many years ago when my hard drive didn't even hold that much.

The upgrade is reported to be occurring in late April.

21 March 2005

Spam glossary

Don't know your "Whack-a-mole" from your "SPEWS"? Like any industry, spam related issues and activities have created their own language amongst System Administrators and other technical professionals. Learn more about spam terminology - impress your friends and influence people :)

Learn how spam winds up in your inbox - the different strategies that spammers use to clutter up your mailbox

VOIP awareness gaining

The 2005 Telecommunications Report, carried out by Harris Interactive, of U.S. adults shows that awareness of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is considerably higher among business over consumers.

• 87% of business decision makers are aware of VOIP

• 76% of business decision makers are "somewhat familiar"

• 36% of consumers are aware of VOIP

• 56% of consumers are "somewhat familiar"

The Harris Interactive survey shows that the biggest barriers to adoption are:

a) Understanding of VOIP
b) Failure to see a value proposition
c) Businesses and consumers waiting for VOIP to become more mainstream

72% of the businesses who will implement VOIP over the next 12 months project a saving of between 11 - 40%. Of those businesses currently using VOIP, around 41% state that they are either very or extremely satisfied with the technology.

Read more of this VOIP report 

Learn more about the basics of VOIP and the benefits to ecommerce.

Stagnant growth in time spent online

Nielsen Netratings has reported that users in the United States, along with those in a number of other mature markets, are showing minimal to no growth in time spent online.

Nielsen Netratings states that easier growth opportunities still exist in markets such as Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy and Japan where there have been major increases in time spent online at home ranging from a 10% in Australia to 25% in Hong Kong. A senior analyst has stated that given the stagnation in the United States, the market is now ready for the "next big thing".

The report also states that US users spend approximately 14 hours online per month, whereas Hong Kong users average 22 hours.

Read more of the report (pdf)

Return to research index

Free ecommerce magazines! Totally free Internet industry print magazines! No obligation to buy, no shipping fees, no hidden conditions - delivered to your door! Dozens of free magazine subscriptions! NEW!! - Visit our web templates store Great designs for your site. Professional design, also logo templates and flash intros. Compatible with FrontPage, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Download a template today! Autoresponder software guide/reviews An all-in-one mailing list manager and autoresponder software solutions review. Ecommerce - The Internet's best shopping carts & web marketing solutions Powerful, easy to implement shopping cart with full web marketing modules, including affiliate program functionality. Our review includes free & low cost carts & ecommerce solutions. Looking for tools for writing/creating a web  development or marketing proposal?

Home