Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: June 1 -10 2005

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10 June 2005

Tabbed browsing available for IE 6

I'm excited.. the new MSN Search Toolbar will also add tabbed browsing to IE6. Tabbed browsing wasn't due to be released until the rollout of IE7, but I guess with the FireFox camp snapping at IE's heels, Microsoft decided it was time to get their butts into gear. 

Tabbed browsing allows you to open multiple pages in different windows with a tab at the top, directly underneath the menu bar to make it easier to switch between pages. The new MSN toolbar can be downloaded here.

8 June 2005

Internet marketing pioneer dies in car crash

I had quite a shock today to learn that Corey Rudl, a well known Internet marketer, died in a tragic race car crash a few days ago. Corey began his online career in 1996 and built a thriving, multi-million dollar business from very humble beginnings. 

Corey was one of the original proponents of the sales letter format which has been used (and more often abused) by thousands of aspiring online entrepreneurs seeking to imitate his success. Corey introduced people to many other marketing strategies that are in broad use today.

In the brief dealings that I had with Corey a few years ago, he was always abundant with enthusiasm for his products and a friendly guy. He will be sadly missed by many online business owners who depended on his advice to help them promote their businesses. Corey's passing is the end of an era in Internet marketing history. He was only 34 years old. My sincere condolences go out to his wife and family. 

June 7 2005

Online ad spend of $2.8 billion in Q1 2005

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has reported that online advertising totaled over $2.8 billion for the first quarter of 2005; the high level in over 2 years and a 26% increase over the first quarter of 2004.

Read more of the Interactive Advertising Bureau report

VoIP revenue to pass $1 billion during 2005

According to TeleGeography's study of consumer uptake of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), U.S. residential subscribers to VoIP services have grown from 150,000 in 2003 to over 2 million during March 2005. TeleGeography projects that totals will bypass 4 million by the end of 2005, creating gross revenues for providers of over 1 billion dollars.

Learn more about VoIP and applications to ecommerce

June 5 2005

Email support for online customers still poor.

Survey results released by The Customer Respect Group show that many technology companies, even major corporations, have a long way to go in terms of providing rapid and useful email support to their online customers. Across hundreds of web sites measured, 27% of email inquiries were ignored completely and only 48% of inquiries were responded to within a day. 40 percent of all responses provided were considered less than very helpful.

Read more of this report (PDF 44kb).

June 4 2005

Consumer attitudes/awareness of cookies

As mentioned earlier this month, the increasing trend of cookie deletion and blocking is becoming a major concern for marketers, site owner and affiliates.

A study recently carried out by Burst Media of 10,000 Internet users gives a little more insight into the awareness of cookies among consumers and their views of them. Some of the findings:

• 21.6% stated that they were very familiar with cookies

• 28.1% where somewhat familiar

• 19.9% said they knew "a little" about cookies

• 30.4% had never heard of cookies

• 29.9% agreed with the statement "Internet cookies allow [them] to have a better online experience" 

• 66.2% agreed that cookies allowed tracking of online activities

• 54.5% of men and 41.8% of women stated they had deleted cookies.

Read more of the Burst report on cookie awareness.

Virus infected email increases 300+ percent

According to Postini, virus infected email increased by 381 percent during during May over April levels. The majority of the emails infected contained the Sober worms.

Sober worm infection reached a record high in early May, when the level of infected emails actually exceeded the level of legitimate email. Scary stuff.

Learn how virus/spam emails wind up in your inbox.

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New Google tool for webmasters to improve coverage

Google has recently released a new tool to help webmasters and site owners improve their coverage in the Google database. Google Sitemaps  is a crawling system that allows webmasters to communicate directly with Google, providing the search engine with data regarding new pages and changes to existing pages. Google states that Sitemaps will provide fresher results.

This free service requires the use of the Google Sitemap Generator to create an XML Sitemap. Site owners can also sumbit a text file containing all the URL's of a site.

More free Google tools

June 3 2005

Broadband to dominate by 2010

According to a report by Jupiter Media, the US online population will grow from 75 million households to 88 million by the end of the decade, which is fairly minor growth when compared with the previous decade - the market is maturing. Seniors will be the fastest growing group of online users, nearly 10 million in 2004 to just over 20 million by 2010.

Broadband in the home is is something that is expected to continue to grow rapidly, from 32 million u.s. households in 2004 to 69 million in 2010. 

Four-fold increase in third-party cookie rejections

WebTrends reports that average third-party cookie rejection rates have increased more than 400 percent in the last 16 months, to 12.4 percent.

Industry sector averages:

• Retail - 16.9%
• Telecom - 15.4%
• Healthcare - 14.7%
• Transportation - 13.0%
• Technology - 12.4%
• Media - 12.1-%
• Services - 11.8%
• Travel/Hospitality - 11.8%
• Legal/Accounting - 10.6%

As I've mentioned previously, aside from the problems caused to site owners in measuring traffic and marketing effectiveness, cookie rejection and deletion has a huge impact on those who engage in affiliate marketing. If a cookie is rejected or deleted, the referring affiliate does not get credited the commission.

Read more of WebTrends report on cookie rejection.

Shopping cart software Learn more about shopping carts or read our reviews of some the best shopping cart software around! Need to learn more about merchant accounts or payment processors? Try our ecommerce guides

US online shoppers - confusion

A study just released by  the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has revealed that many people engaged in online shopping may know a lot less about ecommerce than we as merchants think. Amongst some of the key findings:

• 64% of shoppers were unaware that it is legal for "an online store to charge different people different prices during the same time of day"
• 75% stated they were confident that the presence of a privacy policy on an ecommerce site meant that the merchant would not share information about them with other companies, regardless of the wording.
• 68% of US online users surveyed believe that comparison shopping sites such as those travel related must include the lowest air fares.
• 49% cannot distinguish a phishing scam

Read "Open to Exploitation:American Shoppers Online and Offline" (pdf 579kb)

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