Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: October 11-20 2005

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October 19 2005

Noon - prime time for online advertising

Research by the Atlas Institutes states that conversion periods during the noon period generally perform 35% higher than overall averages and the period 4-5 am converts at half the day's average rate. Although early morning does display a poor conversion rate, it still accounts for approximately 10% of overall conversion volume.

Atlas also recommends that although the noon period is "prime time", advertisers should exercise caution in paying more than a 35% surcharge to secure these slots as the added cost may negate any extra return.

Read more of the Atlas Online Media Conversion Rates by Daypart report (pdf 108kb)

October 18 2005

Online coupons - growing popular with consumers

According to a report from Prosptectiv,  96% of people surveyed collect coupons (all types), with 62% of those doing so at least once a week. More importantly, over 50% actually use them.

Over 30% of coupon users show an interesting in online coupons, particularly via email with 66% using online coupons in-store and 10% using them for online purchases.

As for the most popular types of coupons - at this point in time it appears to be for groceries and household goods.

Read more of the Prospectiv coupon poll results

Does your shopping cart provide coupon functions? Read about some shopping carts that do!

October 16 2005

Free tell a friend script - version 2

Our original recommendation script was released in 2003. Since then, it's been used on hundreds of sites. Over the last couple of years I've had many requests for extra features and I've finally been able to get a bit of time to implement them. New features of the script include:

• Referral URL automatic insertion
• Personalization of subject line
• Simple popup code

Enjoy - I hope Version 2 of our free tell a friend script brings you as many new visitors as it has for us! The original script is still also available - I've made some minor updates to that version as well.

October 15 2005

Affiliate marketing - merchant survey results

Over 43% of online merchants taking part in an Internet Retailer survey stated that their affiliate programs are at least 4 years old. Just over 23% stated they have offered an affiliate program for 2-3 years, 10.5% for a year and 23.2% with affiliate programs in operation less than a year. 

Just over half stated that their programs are available to international affiliates and over 65.2% reported offering higher commissions to better-performing affiliates. Interestingly, only 16.8% rated affiliate marketing as being highly effective in comparison to other forms of promotion. Perhaps the majority just aren't doing it right :).

Read more interesting statistics in the Internet Retailer affiliate markeing report

Learn about what makes a successful affiliate.

Learn more about affiliate marketing

Video streaming consumption increasing

In June 2005, Over 94 million Americans., or 56 percent of the US Internet population, used streaming video online during June 2005, according to ComScore Networks in what they state to be the first publicly available study on the topic. During the three months to the end of June 2005, ComScore states consumers viewed 73 minutes of streaming video per month on average. 

Read more of ComScore's online video study

October 13 2005

Online shopping, offline purchasing

Online shopping doesn't necessarily equate to online purchasing according to a recent BURST! survey.  Of those who shop online, nearly half said they make the actual purchase online and the other half only use the web to browse, compare prices, features and carry out other research. 

It's not the most encouraging news if you don't have a bricks and mortar storefront. Ecommerce-only retailers need to be very aware of issues contributing to this issue in order to grab those who may otherwise spend their cash offline. 

A clean and clear site layout, free shipping, special bonuses and making the purchase process as simple and secure as possible are excellent incentives to convince these people to spend their money in your online store.

The Burst! report goes on to state that the greatest concerns for respondents in relation to online shopping are, in order of prevalence:

• Credit card information security
• Privacy of personal information
• Shipping costs
• Product quality
• Return policies
• Shipping issues
• Product availability

Read more of the Burst! report.

Learn more about minimizing shopping cart abandonment.

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

Microsoft and Yahoo join forces in IM

Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft have announced they will allow users of their respective IM (Instant Messaging) applications to communicate between the services. The companies state that the combined user base of 275 million will be the largest in the world - therefore knocking AOL's AIM service from the no.1 spot - depending on how you view it ;). Expect to see a lot more buzz in the marketing industry over the next couple of years about accessing IM users :).

Google philanthropy

Google has somewhat quietly launched Google.org - their philanthropic arm, which includes the work of the Google Foundation and other G projects. It's reported that it will kick off with around ninety million dollars and will receive over nine hundred million dollars over the next 20 years.

The Google.org site doesn't have much content on it at present, but there's a blurb about the Google Grants program towards the bottom of the page. Google Grants provides free advertising to selected non-profit organizations - and they've been quite generous in that area - 33 million dollars to date. If you belong to a non-profit group, the program may be worthwhile checking out. donated $33M

October 11 2005

Gmail/Hotmail false positive filtering increase

Hotmail’s rate of “false positive filtering” increased from 5.6 percent in Q2 2005 to 9.4 percent in the third quarter. Gmail’s false positive filtering rate jumped over 3 percent - from 4.1 percent to 7.17 percent in the third quarter. Looks like MSN and Google have some tweaking to do - as do all of us who are involved in *legitimate* email marketing :).

The article also states that inbox delivery rates are generally improving across the board in relation to US ISP's. - up 4 percent.

Read more of the DMNews report

Learn more about email delivery strategies

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

Holiday season shopping forecast

The NPD Group survey of holiday buying intentions  states that consumers intend to spend a little more than holiday season 2004 - up from $655 to $681.

Gift certificates will be extremely popular, with nearly 40 percent of consumers stating they will buy a gift card or gift certificate. According to NPD, the number of people who ending buying certificates may actually be higher since 42 percent of those surveyed said they were still undecided.

37% intend to shop for gifts online.

45 percent stated they would start holiday shopping before Thanksgiving 

Read more of NPD's holiday buying intentions report

Learn more about Xmas web marketing considerations

Google releases NewsReader

Google has launched a new web-based RSS feed reader called Google Reader - it appears to an offshoot from a suite of tools I previously reported on (Google "Ig"). It's easy to use, allows you to import feeds from existing readers and even over a slow dialup connection is quite speedy. It even has a series of keyboard shortcuts. The database it draws from when running a search is far from complete at this point it seems - it's still early days; so if you have an RSS feed, here's a hint - add yours to your Google Reader profile as soon as you can. 

Learn more about creating and submitting rss web feeds.

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