Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: August 1-10 2005

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August 10 2005

Internet Explorer 7 For XP Beta 1 review

I'm excited. Yes, I'm easily excited :). I've been hanging out for IE 7 for quite some time now, much to the horror of my purist-type FireFox associates. I dunno, just so many memories of the web are tied up in IE for me. That and the fact that the vast majority of surfers use it... oh, and it's a good product!

While I haven't been lucky enough to test drive IE7 Beta 1 myself, some of the crew from TechWeb have been putting it through it's paces lately. The version they are testing supposedly only has 25% of the features that will be in the final rollout version, but what they've seen is looking good. Some of the new features include

• tabbed browsing

• shrink to fit for printing

• RSS feed viewer

• phishing filter

Will I be downloading IE7 as soon as it's publicly available? Heh, no way; I'll wait for a month or so. I've been using MS products (and all other computer related items) long enough to have learned that the latest and greatest = bugs.

Read the comprehensive review of IE7 Beta 1 

August 9 2005

Web sites and gender bias

A study carried out by researchers at the University of Glamorgan has drawn the conclusion that men and women react differently to various types of web site design - very differently.

According to the research, men favor:

• Straight lines

• Few colors 

• Formal typography

• Formal/technical language

The sites that were shown to male and female participants were a selection of University sites. Based on reaction, it turned out that 94% of the sites had a masculine bias and just 2% appealed to women.

Read more

Learn more about marketing to women on the web.

Paid search to overtake banner spending by 2010

JupiterResearch has forecast that paid search ad spending will overtake banner ad spending by 2010, based on search ads currently having a 12 percent annual growth, whereas banner displays will increase by around 7 percent.

Jupiter research also predicts that online spending by consumers will double from $9.3 billion at the end of 2004, to  $18.9 billion in 2010. 

For the same period, rich media is forecast to grow at a 25 percent compound annual rate and streaming media will grow at a 30 percent compound annual growth rate.

Read more

August 8 2005

Online real estate advertising to grow 55%

According to Borrell Associates, spending on online advertising for real estate is set to grow by 55% this year and is expected to overtake newspaper ad value by 2009. The end of this year will see online ads hitting 15.7% of the entire US real estate ad market. Borrell also states that lead generation and PPC are the leading mediums, with brokers paying $1 per click and $10 per lead on average.

Read more

August 7 2005

80% of execs state email writing skills important

Information Mapping, Inc have released some results from a recent survey where 80% of participants deemed email writing skills to be 'extremely' or 'very' important in terms of executing their roles effectively. The bulk of the 600 people surveyed were professional and managerial staff. Other findings:

• 65% of respondents spend 1 - 3 hours writing/reading email daily

• 34% stated that they spend between 30 and 60 minutes each day reading poorly written emails

Among the main complaints in relation to poorly written emails:

• poor organized content
• missing/hard to locate critical information
• content is too long

Many people still have not grasped the basics of email communication. I believe the key, just like any other form of communication, is to put yourself in the recipients position and estimate their level of knowledge, taking into account what you know about the person. Learn more in my guide to email etiquette.

Read more of the Information Mapping report

August 5 2005

2.2 million+ people generating income from eBay

Over 724,000 people in the USA state that eBay transactions are their primary or secondary source of income; according to survey results released by the company - and that's just "professional" eBayers. There's also another 1.5 million people that claim a supplemented income benefit from selling on eBay. Up to June, 2005, USA eBay members collective generated sales totalling $10.6 billion. 

Read more of the eBay survey results

PPC keyword prices drop during July

Averages for search engine keyword prices dropped 4% in most categories during July according to Fathom Online. While most sectors dropped slightly, Telecom/Broadband prices dropped 13% to $1.72 which impacted on overall averages.

Despite the drop, the Finance Mortgage category was still averaging $4.63 per keyword according to the report.

July is traditionally a quieter time in advertising in the USA given the holiday period; but it won't be long before things really start steaming along in preparation for the Xmas season.

Fathom Online began tracking keyword prices in August 2004, and since that time keyword prices have increased 21% on average. The company tracks 500 generic keywords over eight categories for the top five rankings. 

Read more 

Learn more about reducing pay per click costs

August 3 2005

Blogs, RSS - how many are reading them?

According to an excerpt from Forrester Research's The State Of Consumer Technology Adoption, only 6 percent of online consumers read blogs and 2 percent use RSS.

Forrester also states that 70% of online consumers utilize the web to research products for purchase. 

I'd like to point out that the survey was of over 68,000 North American households across a broad demographic. Depending on the slice you are targeting, you may find the number of people using blogs and RSS to be much higher, particularly in tech related industries.

Read more of the report

Search engine/marketing resources big guns sold

Jupitermedia has announced it has sold ClickZ.com, SearchEngineWatch.com and it's Search Engine Strategies trade shows for $43 million to London based Incisive Media. This has caused quite a stir in the industry and there's an interesting discussion taking place on WebMasterWorld regarding the transaction.

Read the WebMasterWorld discussion.

Yahoo releases Shopping Web Services API

Yahoo! have released API services that allow developers  to create applications that generate comparison shopping and product search results. The Product Search API allows for searches by keyword with the additional functionality of filters for specific merchants, price ranges and categories. The Price Comparison Grid API allows access to a wide range of products offered by many merchants, which can then be represented in a comparison chart.

The API is available to those who are registered with the Yahoo! Search Developer Network

Learn more about Yahoo Shopping Web Services

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

August 1 2005

2/3 of Australian kids online daily

Nielsen Netratings have released some survey results detailing the online habits of Australian children. Amongst the findings:

• 40% of all 6-8 year olds have 2 years+ online experience

• 79% of 9-17 year olds have 2 years+ online experience

• 1/3 of 6-8 year olds and 2/3 of 9-17 year olds use the Internet daily

• Australian children spend an average of 6.2 hours online each week

• 15-17 year old Aussies spend an average of 15 hours per week.

Interestingly, only 1 in every 6 children views the Internet as the most essential medium. TV still outshines the web. We still have work to do :).

Read the Nielsen Netratings report (pdf)

Ask Jeeves to offer PPC?

Online Media Daily has recently reported that Ask Jeeves will soon offer it's own PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing service. Up until now, PPC listings have been powered by Google - a contract that doesn't expire until 2007. The rumor is it will be very much like Adwords, with minimum bids starting at 5c per click. 

Read the report

Learn more - beginners guide to PPC 
PPC fraud - detection and prevention strategies 
Minimizing the cost of pay-per-click advertising

Google Ig RSS feed feature

Late in May, I made mention of "Google Ig". At that point it was basically just a personalized home page feature where you could customize news and stock market snippets, get a summary of your Gmail contents, check out the weather and a few other tidbits. 

Now you can add your own RSS feeds and view them in Google's own aggregator via the "Create a section" feature. It's very simple and I was amazed at how quickly the feed was retrieved. Aside from a handy way to view rss feeds, it leaves you wondering what Google will do with the data - after all they are a search engine. Get the hint? :).

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