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| In Today's Issue: | |
| Quote: | LeBoeuf on Problem Solving |
| News: | NextCard Announces eCommerce Index |
| Facts: | How do consumers spend their time? |
| Tip: | Evaluating Web Success |
| Biz Sites: | 1. Savvy Search |
| 2. Ask Jeeves | |
| Term: | Data Mining |
| Ripple Rock: | Archiving On the Web |
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
*** " Successful people and businesses
are good at solving problems and capitalizing on opportunities. They know
how to spot a problem or opportunity, create and evaluate their options,
and take action. Most important of all they are reality driven. They insist
on seeing the world as it is, rather than how they would like it to be.
They realize that truth, like surgery, sometimes hurts in the short run
but cures in the long run."
--LeBoeuf
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LATE BREAKING NEWS:
One of the Internet’s leading credit card issuers, NextCard, announced today the publication of the NextCard eCommerce Index. Using sophisticated data mining techniques, the index will analyze information compiled about the online activity of approximately 100,000 NextCard Internet Visa cardholders. The publication of the Next Card Index will provide a level of information that would go beyond page views, and site visits to measure and rank sites based on the actual online purchases made.
According to chief marketing officer, Dan Springer, the company developed the NextCard eCommerce Index to provide accurate and reliable information about where consumers actually purchase on the Internet.” The Index, published monthly will provide a listing of the top 25 online merchants and the top 10 movers based on the number of online purchase transactions.
Source: Next Card
http://www.nextcard.com/
CyberSisters' comments:
One of the challenges in analyzing web statistics has been the huge overflow of information about where consumers are going on the net and much less hard data about where and how consumers are actually spending online. This index should provide some good information about which sites are able to translate online traffic into online transactions most effectively.
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FACTOID OF THE WEEK:
How Do Consumers Spend Their Time?
Well, the quick answer is that they’re spending less time watching TV and more time surfing the net. In the competition for consumer attention, the Internet is gaining ground. According to a recent AOL/Nielson Media Research survey, families whose homes are connected to the Internet are watching 1 hour a day less TV than households without Internet access. That extra hour is being devoted to Internet use.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctf640.htm
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TIP:
When analyzing the value of having a web presence, make sure that you are paying attention to the ‘hierarchy of effects’ that your web presence is having. Many companies evaluate their web site strictly on the basis of how many sales are actually transacted online. That is, of course, a critical measure of success. However, to really understand the impact of the web on your business, it is important to look deeper.
Research has shown that even when consumers do not buy directly there is a ‘hierarchy of effects’ from having a eCommerce web site. The first desired effect of having your customers visit your web site may be to have them transact business online, however, there may be other levels of positive effect for your business. Consumers may visit your web site to shop, but place orders in the traditional way by phone. Or consumers may visit the site, to survey the options or to check out your company before deciding to buy. Statistically, only about 23% of U.S. adults have actually transacted online, 39% have ordered online and a hefty 63% have ‘shopped’ online.
So how does that translate into how you design your web site? Well, if you know that only one segment of your customer base is comfortable actually transacting an order online, make sure that you give them plenty of opportunity to purchase from you in other ways once they have ‘shopped’ on your web site. For this, 1-800 numbers, company contact information, fax numbers and clearly posted hours of operation are good starts. Also, you may want to consider making your order form easy to print out and fax in.
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BIZ SITES OF THE WEEK:
Search Engines
1. Savvy Search
This is my favourite meta search engine. Savvy Search takes a single search term, either a word or phrase and searches across a variety of popular search engines and then integrates and presents the results. You can even customize which search engines to use or do a second search with another combination of search engines. Check it out at:
2. Ask Jeeves
Are you new to searching the Internet but need to find information fast? Ask Jeeves lets you enter natural language search queries. If your search question is not clear it will even offer you suggestions on how to phrase the question for best results. It’s definitely worth a look. Try it out at:
CyberSisters’ Comment:
Never underestimate the value of having a good search engine when you are trying to find something on the Internet. If you have staff or colleagues who are having a difficult time using the Internet, pass on these search engines as a good starting place for navigating the web.
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TERM OF THE DAY:
"Data Mining"
Data mining is a kind of database analysis application that uncovers patterns in a collection of data. For example, data mining software could analyze data from your companies’ customer files and identify customers with common buying patterns. The term is sometimes generalized and used to describe software that presents data in new ways, but true data mining uses statistical and mathematical techniques to ‘mine’ the data for previously unknown relationships. Using these sophisticated techniques, data mining can provide managers with educated predictions of future patterns and trends based on current and historic data. Some of the ways that data mining is used by businesses include: targetting prospective customers, identifying cross-selling opportunities, and increasing sales productivity and efficiency.
CyberSisters’ Comment
Data mining offers valuable tools to help you plan your ongoing web strategy. If you are not at least tracking page views, click throughs and other data from your web site you could be missing an important opportunity down the road. Watch for an upcoming issue of The Ripple Effect where we will look at the whys and hows of tracking and ‘mining’ customer data from your web site.
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Ripple Effect "Rock"
What's a Ripple Effect Rock? Well, think of a rock thrown in a lake, and how the water ripples outward. This section of the newsletter covers developments and technologies that we think might soon cause a "ripple effect" in business or society.
Ripple Rock for Aug 23, 1999:
Storage space on the web is becoming so cheap and plentiful that some analysts are predicting that the cost for companies of deleting archived material off their web site will soon be higher than the cost of just leaving the information online. Large companies, concerned with the bottom line may decide that the time and money to clean out the ‘archives’ files and decide what to keep and what to backup is just not worth the attention. Does that mean that the web, which has been often criticized as a disposable medium, will become as well a vast repository of historic information? Well, maybe. You may already notice the effect of having cheap storage space yourself. How many of you have more than 1000 archived emails on your computer? A June 21 New York Times article noted that the average Outlook user has over 1900 emails archived on his or her machine. That is just one small example, but, the implications of having information cheaper to keep than to delete, will definitely ripple out in some interesting directions and effect how we all use the technology.
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That's it for now! Have a great
week!
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