It's techniques like this that help us stay (proudly) techno-agnostic.

Posted by Kelly Abbott

1:43 PM 0 comments

You are now entering a commercial zone.

User Interface and Business Goals square off.

Posted by Kelly Abbott

1:41 PM 0 comments

From Adweek's Interactive Daily:

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION DRIVES ONLINE SHOPPING
While holiday shopping historically takes off around Thanksgiving weekend, Web surfers have started earlier this year driven in part by an abbreviated shopping season, according to the first installment of the 2002 eSpending report.

The report from Goldman Sachs & Company, Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings showed that the average online shopper spent nearly $72 per person during the week ending Nov. 15, a 28 percent boost over the same time a year ago. The increase in spending was partly a result of greater customer satisfaction: 22 percent of 770 online shoppers surveyed rated their e-commerce experience better than last year's.

"Boosted by higher customer satisfaction rates and a shorter shopping season, early indications show shoppers are spending more and earlier this year," said Lori Iventosch-James, director of e-commerce research at Harris Interactive. "With Thanksgiving scheduled one week later and Hanukkah beginning much sooner this year, consumers are battling against time and are taking advantage of special sales and promotions."

Posted by Reid

3:44 PM 0 comments

CBS.MW

On Monday, Hewlett-Packard opened its first store on EBay, called the HP store. The site was built with the services of Accenture, one of the service providers attempting to help EBay bring branded vendors to EBay's site to sell off their end-of-life wares.

Posted by Reid

11:02 AM 0 comments

What happens when weblogs go mobile? Searching reality for friends and information.

Posted by Kelly Abbott

9:26 AM 0 comments

An article about some of the many exciting possibilities that the Internet enables:

Monica Luechtefeld Makes the Net Click

The dedicated veteran behind OfficeDepot.com has built one of the largest retailers on the Web -- a $2 billion-a-year site that has been profitable from the start.

by Linda Tischler, Fast Company

Posted by Reid

9:58 AM 0 comments

Two recent studies tell an interesting – albeit somewhat predictable - story about the search side of online advertising. The first one, from iProspect, indicates that 48% of search engine users expect to find the answer to their query on the first page of search matches and that a vast majority, 78% of Web users, will abandon their query if the first three pages of results do not yield an answer to their question. Another 28% reported they do not scroll past even the second page of search results. Furthermore, novice search engine users make a selection after viewing just a few listings on the first page of matches. iProspect concludes that websites that have not attained top search engine rankings are effectively invisible to target online audiences.

Masha E. Geller, Editor in Chief
MediaPost Communications

Posted by Reid

9:36 AM 0 comments

From a recent IDC study about corporate analytics implementation:

The average analytics project implemented within businesses today is delivering a return on investment of 431% over five years. More than half of the implementations studied - 63% - delivered that payback in two years or less. That's a staggering return for a tech project arguably more used to abject failure. Still, that's what IDC found during its in-depth study that included interviews with 43 people that have undertaken such projects.

Posted by Reid

10:44 AM 0 comments

From ADWEEK IQ Daily Brief:

STUDY: CORPORATE WEB SITES FAIL TO SHOWCASE CEO
As revelations of corporate corruption mount, more emphasis is being placed on the credibility of chief executives. Yet, only 12 percent of large global companies dedicate a section of their Web sites to their top exec, according to a recent study conducted by WPP Group's Burson-Marsteller.

For the study, Burson-Marsteller audited Web site information from 111 companies, including Dell, Wyeth, ExxonMobiil and L'Oreal.

Research also found that the companies that feature CEO information tend to limit it to biographies and photographs, often obscurely positioned in corporate-information sections. While 64 percent of the sites posted biographical information, less than a third of the sites analyzed make available CEO statements or speeches that introduce the company's core values, directly address key stakeholders or articulate a personal vision for the corporation.

In 1997, five percent of business influentials--investors, regulators, analysts, journalists and other executives--revealed that they learned about CEOs online. Today, that number has quadrupled, according to Burson-Marsteller: 22 percent of executives, 23 percent of analysts and 38 percent of the media use the Web to access corporate information.

The study concluded that in order for business influentials to form positive perceptions of a company, corporate communicators must clearly convey information about their CEO's reputation.

Posted by Reid

4:52 PM 0 comments

2002 CANDIDATES FLUNK WEB BASICS
WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) --Priority No. 1 for candidates Tuesday was getting out the vote, and not updating their Web sites.

So said RightClick Strategies, a political consulting firm. "It seems simple enough if a campaign Web site is to be used as a communication tool, it must be updated on a daily basis," researchers wrote. "Most campaigns have failed in this effort." Larry Purpuro, managing director of the firm, said only about a fourth of 168 candidates' Web sites even indicated that Tuesday was Election Day. RightClick was also critical that only 11 of 136 Web site sent e-mail to spur people to vote.

Posted by Reid

5:02 PM 0 comments

A new study scheduled to be released today by Knowledge Networks/SRI indicates a strong affinity between online media and viewers of certain TV networks. The study indicates that households that actively use both a PC and view TV prefer different TV networks than those that just view TV. For example, 47% of households with TV and a PC have an affinity toward HBO and MTV, 45% have an affinity toward the Cartoon Network, 44% Disney... get more info on this and other great studies here.

Posted by Reid

10:16 AM 0 comments

Is Internet security at risk due to a recent accomplishment of a theoretical computer scientist from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kampur, India?
36-year old Manindra Agrawal recently developed a method to determine with certainty the primality of a number and is taking his show on the road at some of the US's top colleges.

Prime numbers are the foundation of Internet security and data encryption. In order to crack a security code, a "hacker" would need to factor the prime numbers used by the browser to encrypt information.

This is only one step closer to developing a system that would render the current method of Internet security useless, because in order to crack a one-time Internet transaction it would currently take millions of computers trillions of years to factor the result. So, right now, quick factoring is more the issue to conquer for those who wish to "bring down business on the Internet".

Posted by Reid

11:54 AM 0 comments

The average consumer pays far more attention to the "superficial aspects of a site, such as visual cues, than to its content," according to a just-released study by Consumer WebWatch and Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab. Consumer WebWatch is part of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.

"Our result among consumers about the prominence of the site design and overall look was not what we had hoped to find," the study report said. "Participants seemed to make their credibility-based decisions about the people or organization behind the site based upon the site's overall visual appeal. We had hoped to see people use more rigorous evaluation strategies while assessing sites."

Nearly half of the consumers surveyed assessed the credibility of sites based in part on the "appeal of the overall visual design."

Less than 10 percent of the comments given by those surveyed mentioned the operator of the site while less than 1 percent referred to a site's privacy policies.

Posted by Reid

11:06 AM 0 comments