Ecommerce & Web Marketing Research: November 21 - 30 2005

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30 November 2005

Content theft on the rise?

It's been a while since we've carried out a sweep in order to catch unscrupulous parties stealing content from this site. Far too long it seems. In the first 10 hours of work, we've found over a hundred infringements - from basic stuff such as not including a link back to our site and leaving out copyright statements, to blatant plagiarism. In some cases, these people have just added their names to the article as being the author! Unbelievable. To add insult to injury, in one case so far, an unsuspecting site owner *bought* the articles from the offending party who claimed authorship. I've also found a few more cases of 302 hijacking.

Needless to say, I'm chasing down these infringements with great fervor. If you have articles of mine on your site, please ensure that the reproduction is within my guidelines. If you're not sure, ask me. If you get a copyright infringement notice from me, all I ask is that you act on it quickly - given the volume I am dealing with, the email will be short, sharp and shiny. I really can't spend too much time evaluating each case, it just needs to be addressed. I'm giving each case 7 days after notification before further action is taken. The "further action" will depend on the type of infringement.

That aside, I'm definitely not alone when it comes to this problem. In a few forums I frequent, I see many other webmasters who develop their own content in a similar position - and the level seems much worse than 12 months ago. In some cases, it's just "scraper" sites, i.e. where an automated software program copies a chunk of text from your pages and lumps them in with chunks from other sites. The "scraper" sites usually have one purpose - to attract people via search engine queries in order that they click on ads where the site owner receives revenue for each click. 

You could go absolutely nuts trying to deal with scraper sites, but the more serious issue is where entire pages/articles are copied/altered without permission or due credit. These are the infringements worth chasing.

If you have spent your valuable time creating articles and content, it's in your best interests to frequently check to see who's using it. Depending on the method used by the offending party, it *might* have an impact on rankings on some engines - such as in the case of a 302 pagejacking - learn more. Some of the methods described in that article can also be adapted for addressing "normal" content theft and other sorts of copyright infringements.

28 November 2005

59 million to shop online.... today!

Yep, you read right. According to the National Retail Federation, today, aka Cyber Monday, it's estimated that 59 million people in the USA will be online shopping today. Be interesting to watch if there's any discernible increase in US Internet traffic over the next 24 hours. 

Also according to the National Retail Federation, ecommerce merchants overall would have had a very good weekend, with just over 27% of consumers surveyed shopping online.

Total spending over the weekend was estimated at $27.8 billion, which is nearly 22% better than last year’s $22.8 billion.

Gentlemen (and ladies) - start your ecommerce engines! Good luck to all, may your online sales reflect your efforts!

Read more of the Nation Retail Federation survey

Learn more: Christmas marketing considerations

25 November 2005

Browser battles - statistics

Not a lot has changed in recent months in relation to the battle of supremacy in browser land between Internet Explorer and Firefox. It will be very interesting to watch the fallout of the release of Internet Explorer 7, whenever that will be - I can't seem to find much talk on a possible release date in recent times.

Anyway, here's how the top 7 shape up according TheCounter.com, based on nearly 80 million visitors to their network during October.

More October traffic statistics from TheCounter

Learn more about web traffic stats and terminology

24 November 2005

Cyber Monday - biggest online shopping day?

Cyber Monday, directly following the Thanksgiving weekend seems to be set to become the biggest day for online shopping in the USA. A survey carried out by BIGResearch indicates that over three quarters of ecommerce merchants 77 percent of online retailers experienced substantial increases in sales on the same day last year.

The big winners last year were in the categories of jewelry/luxury retailers, consumer electronics retailers, food, beverages and gourmet items, furniture and home décor merchants.

Online retailers' expectations are high this year with over half predicting holiday sales to increase by 30% and 20% expecting growth of 75%+ over last year.

This holiday shopping season, it is also expected that over 50 million consumers will browse and make online purchase from work. This is a prediction I'm sure won't impress many CEO's - but what goes round comes round; the people purchasing from their companies may be doing so from their own workplace :).

Read more of the BIGResearch holiday shopping survey

22 November 2005

Updated article - chromeless popup windows

Another article I've dusted off and updated in recent times is my tutorial on creating chromeless popup windows.

A chromeless popup window doesn't display the browser menu or tool bar, but does retain the title bar in most cases. They are a convenient way to present content that you don't want cluttering up pages; and very easy to implement. The examples I've given are for the manually triggered type.

Learn about creating chromeless popup windows.

52% of online households to pay bills online

Forrester research has forecast that 52% of online households in the USA will be paying their bills via the web by the end of the decade. That constitutes a 75% increase over the number at the end of last year, which was approximately 27 million households. In 2003, Forrester predicted that annual electronic bill presentation and payment growth rates would slow dramatically and the company retains this belief - that the 26%  growth rate from 2003 - 2004 will decrease to 7% in 2010.

For me, it's kind of difficult to remember a time of trudging from service to service, and store to store paying all those bills in person, or trips to the post office - and it really wasn't all that long ago. And I wonder why I've piled on the pounds :).

Read more of the Forrester report on EBPP payments.

21 November 2005

$19 billion online shopping bonanza

comScore Networks has provided their estimations of online spending for the holiday season of 2005. The company has forecast that non-travel goods purchases with US ecommerce merchants witl top 19 billion dollars between November and December, which would be a 24% increase over the previous year.

The fastest growing sectors are predicted to be:

Toys & Hobbies - +44%
Computer Software (ex. PC Games) - +37%
Apparel & Accessories - + 36% 
Home & Garden - +33% 
Jewelry & Watches - +32%

Read more of comScore's online holiday shopping predictions.

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

The British love affair with online travel 

My brother, who lives in England, has often told me that there's nothing the British love more than holidays. They are no sooner finished the last holiday before they are planning the next. I guess if I lived there, I'd be looking to get out of the place as often as I could too.. just kidding folks :).

Anyway, Nielsen Netratings seems to have backed up my brothers' observations. According to a report from the company, over half of Britons who are active online visit travel web sites - every month. That comprises 14 million people. In the over 50's slice of the Britain online population, over 85% have visited a travel site in the last 12 months. 

Read more: Britain - the land of online travellers

41% use a search engine every day 

Research provided by Pew Internet & American Life state that approximately 60 million American adults are utilizing search engines on any given day. That constitutes a rise from 31% of the population in mid 2004 to 41% in September 2005.

Using a search engine is gaining on email usage as a primary activity whilst online. On a typical day, around 52% of US online users are engaging in email related activities, an increase from 45% during June 2004

Read more of the Pew report

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