Web Design Ireland

posted by Robert on Nov 7

Now that they are here, how does a site publisher know where those visitors are going? The usual information in access logs helps build a picture of those paths.

Being able to figure out how they may have used a search to get from place to place within a site helps in a couple of ways. If a search led the visitor to a result one might expect them to find, it helped encourage a conversion. Read the rest of this entry »

posted by Robert on Oct 16

Last year, eBay signed deals to run ads from the Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. networks in order to better capitalize on the massive traffic it draws to its Web sites, primarily its core eBay.com marketplace. Read the rest of this entry »

posted by Robert on Oct 3

With an eye for greater transparency about audience numbers and demographics for publisher Web sites, Internet rating service Quantcast announced Tuesday it’s now offering free tools for its members. The public will be able to view the audience measurements. Read the rest of this entry »

posted by Robert on Aug 22

DoubleClick Performics, the marketing division of DoubleClick, has released data from a search usage study that focused on “moms” which was conducted with Microsoft and ROI Research.

 The study “Searcher Moms-A Search Behavior and Usage Study” found heavy search engine usage for online and offline purchases.

“Although we suspected much of what the study uncovered, we gained a much better understanding of just how much moms rely on search engines to accomplish a wide range of tasks, literally on a daily basis,” said Stuart Larkins, vice president of search for DoubleClick Performics.

“Of the nearly 1,000 moms surveyed, 89 percent use the Internet at least twice/day, and 90 percent have been using it for more than seven years. A whopping 86 percent of respondents said search engines are the most efficient way to find information.”

The study also found that 70 percent of moms use search engines to find information before making an online purchase and 57 percent use search engines to gather information before making an offline purchase.

When it comes to consumer-packaged goods, 72 percent of moms said they used search engines to compare prices and 71 percent said they used search engines to find retail locations.

“Manufacturers and marketers targeting this audience through any kind of advertising campaign should be sure to integrate a well planned Search campaign. Sixty-four percent of women reported using a search engine to gather more information after seeing an advertisement,” said Scott Haiges, President of ROI Research Inc.

Source: www.webpronews.com

posted by Robert on Aug 3

eBay owned PayPal has launched a new payment service called PayPal Pay Later that allows merchants to offer promotional financing.

 Buyers that use the promotional offer can defer payments for purchases on merchants Web sites that participate in the program. The PayPal Pay Later service lets online sellers offer a transactional credit account with financing options for buyers at check out. Buyers do not have to have a PayPal account.

PayPal says that financing options and deferred payments have increased sales and higher selling prices for merchants. A Northstar Research Partners study commissioned by PayPal, found that 56 percent of PayPal users are more likely to make a purchase from a retail site if deferred payment is available.

“PayPal Pay Later makes offering PayPal even more attractive to merchants because it gives them yet another way to drive sales,” said Stephanie Tilenius, vice president and general manager of PayPal Merchant Services.

“And consumers get instant purchasing power because they can buy when they want and pay for it later - all with the peace of mind that they don’t have to share credit card information over the Web.”

The PayPal Pay Later service is issued by GE Money Bank, a provider of consumer credit.

“Smart, money managing consumers will find deferred payments to be an extremely easy way to buy what they really need or want now and plan out their payments in a way that best fits with their budget,” said Margaret Keane, president and chief executive officer, GE Money - Retail Consumer Finance.

posted by Robert on Aug 1

The following chart shows the accuracy of Alexa traffic stats for websites over time:

As you can see, not only is Alexa much more inaccurate than others, their accuracy is also going down over time, and currently at just 12% overall.

Note that above statistic uses gut feeling from a selected sample group (me) as data source. I might switch to the Blogoscoped toolbar as data source in the next release, though I haven’t yet decided which is more reliable.

posted by Robert on Jul 19

Small and mid-size companies rate Google’s keyword search offering as better than Yahoo’s according to a study by Outsell that examined company’s ad budgets by business size.

 Fifty-eight percent of small and mid-size companies said Google ads are effective, compared to only 32 percent who rated Yahoo effective. Large companies did not see much difference, with 63 percent rating Google effective and 62 percent rating Yahoo keyword search effective.

“Small, medium and large companies exhibit major differences in where they allocate their ad budgets and what strategies they find most effective,” said Leigh Watson Healy, Chief Analyst, Outsell

Small companies allocate almost twice as much of their budgets to print as medium size companies. M id -size businesses rate the effectiveness of print trade magazines higher than smaller companies.

Small business’s portion of online ad spending on search engines is double the share of medium or large companies. Medium- sized companies forecast the highest growth rate of online spending.

Click fraud keeps some companies from using pay-per-click advertising. Large companies believe that close to one-fifth of clicks on their ads are fraudulent; while small companies estimate 14 percent are fraudulent.

Outsell surveyed 1,010 advertisers on a variety of topics; from budgeting for print, broadcast and online media, to the effect of click fraud on spending decisions. These advertisers control $6.5 billion in spending.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/

posted by Robert on Jun 13

eBay has announced a number of new services and platform enhancements to help developers extend eBay content. The announcement was made at the eBay Developers Conference in Boston today.

eBay’s platform extension gives its third-party developers a place to build and monetize new applications and put them anywhere from phones, blogs, televisions, Web sites and social networking platforms.

The new services include:

eBay Shopping Web Services: a suite of faster, more responsive APIs that makes searching on eBay up to 16 times faster and allows developers to easily create buying applications

eBay Bidding API: qualified developers can enable bidding on eBay from anywhere

eBay Client Alerts: lightweight, near real-time alerts about platform activity

New JavaScript and Flash Developer Centers: making it easier for JavaScript and Flash developers to access the eBay Web Services platform

New Production Call Plan: access to API calls in the production environment raised from 10,000 per month to 150,000 per month, allowing new developers to rapidly scale up their applications

“eBay’s developer community plays an important role as we pursue our mission to help people all over the world connect through commerce,” said John Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces.

“The innovative applications being created by developers help entrepreneurial sellers use our platforms to grow their businesses, thereby expanding the economic opportunity to a wider audience than ever possible.”

Other eBay companies also made announcements that extend their platform. They include:

PayPal introduced a new suite of APIs, including Mobile Checkout, which allows developers to integrate any mobile website with the PayPal checkout process.

Skype Extras: Skype Extras are plug-ins written by independent third-party developers that let users expand Skype functionality and enrich their Skype conversations

Shopping.com announced plans for a re-architected API that will be available in Q3 2007, which will have a new easy-to-use interface, detailed documentation, and tools for faster implementations.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/

posted by Robert on Jun 9

Hitwise also found that Google was the main driver of traffic for shopping and classified Web sites and is growing more rapidly as a source of shopping traffic than the search engine category as a whole.

In May of 2007, Google was responsible for 15.6 percent of shopping and classified visits, an increase of 8.7 percent since May 2006.

Single word search queries accounted for 23.7 percent of search terms driving traffic to shopping and classified Web sites in May 2007. This was an increase of 20 percent since May 2005, which revealed that search toolbars are being used more often as the main way to navigate.

The top 20 social networking Web sites also grew as a source of traffic for shopping and Classifieds Web sites, which accounted for 3.6 percent of visits in May 2007. This was an increase of 86.7 percent since May 2006.

Leading social network MySpace, accounted for 3.2 percent of visits to shopping and classified Web sites in May 2007.

“Search data provides a wealth of information about how consumers look for what they need and shop online,” said Tancer. “Marketers can leverage search data to better understand their brand and that of your competitors’ brands to make smarter business decisions moving the needle on their brand equity and associations.”

Source: www.webpronews.com

posted by Robert on Jun 9

As someone who writes frequently about Internet marketing, I think of my audience as one of professionals—folks who already understand marketing (and probably Internet marketing) who want to keep up with the latest ideas. But what about new marketers, such as college students studying marketing? How are they learning Internet marketing? I learned marketing from a textbook, but can Internet marketing be learned that way?

No, says Elaine Young, marketing professor of Champlain College. At Champlain, they’ve even diced up the senior marketing into a series of one-credit courses highlighting the latest marketing tactics. I’m sure they still use books, but Elaine emphasizes the need to use the Internet to learn Internet marketing.

But the most striking part of her post talks about how students use the Internet for fun, but are floored to get a job interview through Facebook. Unlike veteran marketers who are adapting to Internet marketing as a new tactic for accomplishing age-old marketing goals, college students are coming from the opposite perspective. They are veterans at the Internet, but are adapting to its use in marketing.

So many people talk about cross-functional teams, but maybe cross-generational teams are the next big thing. Veteran marketers can team with young Internet-savvy types who are green at marketing. Maybe it’s so obvious that everyone is doing it already, but I haven’t seen much of it. We’ve always had older marketers working with younger marketers, as in any profession, but are any companies actively recruiting college students and placing them in teams with senior people to attack Internet marketing?

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/