Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: August 21-31 2005

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August 31 2005

Online seniors hit the dating sites

In an industry that was dominated by users who were under 30, grey power is now staking it's claim.

According to a report on USA today, seniors are the fastest growing group of users of online dating sites with 18% of visitors earlier this year being over the age of 55.

Date.com memberships of people age 65 and above increased over 78% from January 04 to January this year.

Match.com visitor statistics show over 16% increase in users age 55 or older.

The increase is attributed to not only higher divorce rates, but the uptake of use of the web by age groups who up until recently were generally resistant to getting online.

So, if you're running a dating site and things are a little slow given the glut of sites that have sprung up; perhaps it's time to target this market specifically!

Read more of the report.

Learn more about marketing to seniors

August 30 2005

eBusiness customer satisfaction improves

eBusiness satisfaction in terms of the customer perspective in relation to search engines, news and information portals increased 4.7% over mid-2004 according to research released by Foresee Results. Other key points in the report:

• Top customer satisfaction ratings are tied in with good financial performance
• Out of the categories examined, satisfaction with portals was the leader, an increase of 5.6% since last year

Read more of the ACSI Annual E-Business Report 2005

August 28 2005

Article - studying web site traffic

Analysis of your traffic statistics, understanding related terminology and how visitors interact with your site are important parts of improving & marketing your web site.

Learn more in this article

Internet traffic growth slowing

According to TeleGeography's latest survey of Internet backbone providers, overall global internet traffic growth in 2005 is 49 percent, compared to 103  percent during 2004. Even the fastest growing markets - Asia (64%) and Latin America (70%), showed a drop over the previous year.

I guess what this means for all of us engaged in ecommerce over the long term is the proportion of competition over the pool of new subscribers will increase; it's just the same as any supply and demand market. 

The time to get well established is definitely now, as it will be more challenging  to become profitable in the not too distant future for newcomers and those ecommerce merchants asleep at the wheel in already established product/service sectors.

Read more of the Internet growth report.

August 26 2005

Online music subscriptions - lower prices needed

Parks Associates’ multinational consumer study, Global Digital Living™, has revealed that many owners of mp3 players have a cap of $10 as the most they wish to spend on an online music subscription per month. In comparative currency, the numbers of users in various countries with the same cap:

1/3 of MP3 player owners surveyed in these countries on average believed online music subscription services should be free. Heck, I believe that notebook computers and Internet connections should be free, as should pizza and coffee. Waiter, reality check please :).

Read more of the report

August 24 2005

Google, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Skype - it's all talk

If I here the term "IM" again today, I think I shall vomit ;). But seriously, Google has set the jaws a-flappin' of many with the launch of Google Talk, their own flavor of IM application with voice support. A good summary by Danny Sullivan of the release can be viewed on Search Engine Watch

Google is facing stiff competition; up against some well established services

• AIM - approximately 54 million users
• MSN Messenger: 23.3 million users
• Yahoo Messenger: 21.6 million users
• ICQ: 1.8 million users
• Skype: ?

... and not to be outdone, MSN has just released MSN Messenger 7.5.

In my opinion, if Google wants to get some good exposure very quickly (aside from the thousands of blog posting out there at the moment), they should jump into bed with Trillian, a multi-IM service software client with millions of users. If you use ICQ, AIM, Yahoo or MSN Messenger, or a combination of them; Trillian can save you some clutter - and it's free.

80% of US households with broadband by 2010?

According to Jupiter Research, over 43% of households in the USA have a broadband connection and that is forecast to grow to around 80% (69 million households) by 2010. Pricing of equipment and connections has dropped considerably in the last couple of years allowing a more rapid uptake. Heh, I still remember paying $500 for a 28.8k modem and $20 per hour for web access in the mid-90's. How times change.

This forecast is sure to hearten the die-hard Flash developers and rich media marketers!

Online marketing plans for holiday promotions

According to WebTrends' Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report, suggested items, gift idea pages and featured sales item pages are the 3 most popular on-site features that ecommerce merchants will use during the holiday season of 2005. Gift cards also gained popularity in 2004 and will be implemented by 33% of retailers this year. Interestingly, Live Chat has rated towards the bottom of strategies, at just 8% this year.

As for marketing promotions, out of the merchants surveyed:

Read the Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report (PDF 234kb)

Read more about Xmas marketing considerations

August 23, 2005

Browser usage statistics

The following are statistics taken from TheCounter.com, based on 73 million visitors during July:

I notice that Firefox usage has creeped up (which contradicts some other reports I've read), bypassing IE 5.x in the last two months. I tend to use TheCounter as a source for browser statistics as their network covers a broad variety of sites across a wide range of industries.

Free web traffic statistics How many visitors hit your site? How long do they stay? Try a free traffic monitoring service

August 21, 2005

The Internet's role in modern purchasing

DoubleClick have made available results of a survey of over 2,000 adult US Internet users in relation to the involvement of online media in  purchasing decisions. Among the key findings:

• Official company websites are among the top-four most frequently cited resources for “further research" in most categories examined.
• 46% of Travel purchasers stated that online media was the greatest influence in purchasing
• 27% of Auto buyers "
• 22% of Telecom buyers "
• 21% of Credit Card/Banking purchasers "
• 15% of Electronics purchasers "

Web marketing (online ads and opt-in email marketing) outranked TV ads in three categories, Travel, Banking
and Credit Cards, and Investments and Mortgages

Read more of the Doubleclick report (pdf 380kb)

Autoresponder software  & mailing list managers Get more from your email marketing - tips, reviews  & free trial software/services.

Current search engine market share

Comscore have released a report on search engine market share for July 2005, based on 

While Google still dominates, MSN again produced excellent results, gaining 30% on July last year. The Yahoo toolbar remains the most popular search toolbar with 51% of these types of searches.

Creating, submitting RSS web feeds

RSS,  aka Really Simple Syndication, is a way of publishing content which is then viewed in an aggregator. It's growing in popularity and although uptake is still a little slow at present, with major search engines spidering feeds and Internet Explorer 7 offering web feed support, now is the time to add RSS to your marketing arsenal. Our guide to RSS web feeds shows you how.

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