Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: June 21 -30 2005

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June 29 2005

Browser battles statistics update

So how is Firefox going in it's assault on IE? What about that other browser, Netscape - it's kind of hard to believe that a decade ago it was the industry leader. The following are current statistics taken from TheCounter.com, based on a quarter of a billion - yes, billion visitors during the month of June:

Yes, I know - the figures add up to over 100%. I must ask them about this one day :). I use TheCounter as a source given the incredibly high levels of traffic their network experiences over a diverse range of sites.

June 28 2005

Unique (free) online business promotion

I was just cruising the CNN site and came across their "online evolution" section. If you've been around the web for a while, you'll find it a bit of a nostalgic trip! CNN are also wanting examples of how the Web changed people's lives; including online business stories, to be published in the section (and possibly shown on TV). Could be a great way to get some free exposure  for your online business! 

Learn more

June 25 2005

New article - click tracking

In this article, we take a look at making marketing more effective through better click and conversion tracking. Includes tips, strategies and software review.

Search engine statistics

As part of any search engine marketing or optimization effort, it's good to know which engine can bring you the most traffic. Given all the shakeups in the recent months, I decided to spend a few hours researching relatively recent data on which engines people are using. I found that the search engine landscape really hasn't changed all that much.

That leaves only around 12% of the remaining market spread between many different minor engines. That's still millions of searches every month. Given the broad range of queries, there really isn't much point in targeting these minor engines, except in the case of PPC; where some PPC companies cover many of these smaller search appliances. It's also worthwhile noting that different engines tend to attract different types of users. Google tends to attract professionals and business owners, whereas Yahoo and MSN is more for the young, hip 'n funky non-tech set in my opinion.

June 24 2005

Fraud making consumers wary of ecommerce

Growing fears in relation to security are changing the way that consumers behave in the online world according to a report from The Conference Board. I think it's great that people are becoming more security savvy, but it appears the fear is also impacting on ecommerce activities.  Key findings:

• Nearly 70% of online users have installed additional security software on their PCs - great!
• 54% now “opt-out” of special offers - hm; ok.
• 41% are purchasing less online - now that's scary

As with many other aspects of life, age plays a role in the level of apprehension. Only 49% of consumers under age 35 are extremely concerned about online transactions, whereas 63% of those aged 55 and over expressed a high level of concern.

Read more of the Consumer Internet Barometer report

Research shows 80% of all chargebacks are the result of "friendy-fraud". Save time, frustration and recoup more of your hard-earned cash with preCharge's free chargeback collection service.

June 22 2005

Microsoft enforcing sender ID

In a move that's expected to raise the hackles for some engaged in email marketing, Microsoft has announced that they are now enforcing "Sender ID".

The Sender ID Framework (SIDF) is designed to prevent spoofing by verifying that email communications purported to be from a particular domain are actually from that domain's server. While Sender ID will help to cut down the amount of spam reaching HotMail users, this could provide challenges to marketers using a mail server to send valid marketing material that is not associated with the domain in question. This includes the use of third party list management services; although there are options built into the framework to allow such mailings and most reputable list management vendors would have made the appropriate arrangements by now.

Messages failing the sender ID test will be moved to the junk mail folder or filtered out altogether depending on other factors. Failed mail going to the junk folder will be accompanied by an alert in the HotMail "safety bar" with text such as "The sender of this message could not be verified by Sender ID." 

Learn more about Hotmail's implementation of Sender ID.

Online travel purchasing trends

Nielsen NetRatings has released a report stating that even though 54% of online travel shoppers commence their travel research with an online agency, when it comes to the actual purchase, 50% of people book through the agency, the other 50% through the travel provider sites.

Netratings also reported that 37 percent of online travel shoppers start research at a travel provider web site, and 9 percent begin with a travel meta-search engine.

Read more from the Nielsen//NetRatings Quarterly Travel Benchmarking Survey. (PDF 156kb)

The demise of dialup and Michael's dummy spit.

Currently I'm away from my office and accessing the web via dialup. After using broadband, it's excruciatingly slow visiting some sites. 

As has always been the case, developers and site owners  seem keen to suck up every bit of progress made with bandwidth availability by creating ridiculously heavy pages. I personally don't give a rat's ass about seeing someone's spinning logo or if it's going to keep me from reading what's on the actual page. That type of scenario becomes even more frustrating when viewing sites over broadband - it should never happen.

(steps off soapbox)

Having said all that, it does appear that dialup's days are numbered. According to  a report on eMarketer, the following figures forecast the demise of narrowband over the next 3 years (USA users, in millions):

but...

Even the figures for 2008 show that just under 20% of US users will *still* be on dialup. Page load times used to be a hot topic a few years ago, but not so noticeable today. I believe it is still a very important subject. Potentially having 20% of your visitors turn away from your site because it takes so long to load is a very real issue that you may want to keep in mind before building your next site or upgrading your current one. Keep your developers and designers on a short leash on this point - pages, especially vital ones used for promoting your products, should have a maximum load time of 15 seconds on a 56k connection. Dialup users will love you for it, and broadband users will also appreciate it.

I feel a full article on this subject coming on.. brace yourselves ;).

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