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Feeds for Marketing/Ecommerce Research [Ecommerce, web marketing and development news and research by Michael Bloch of Taming the Beast.net ]

1. Privacy policies - a waste of time
Just about every web site has one (or should have), but privacy policies appear to be a complete waste of time - potentially up to 44.3 billion hours worth per year. Those were the findings of a recent study by Carnegie Mellon CyLab researchers Lorrie Cranor and Aleecia M. McDonald in their paper on “Cost of [...]

2. Lycos who?
Lycos Europe appears to be on the chopping block. I always get a twinge of nostalgia when these old online names crop up and it also gets me thinking on the definition of success in the online world. If you haven’t heard of Lycos, you wouldn’t be the only one - but back in the day [...]

3. Fear equals PPC conversions?
A tactic I’m seeing used increasingly in PPC ads is the cultivation of fear. I’m seeing this strategy being used in relation to business to business products such as software and also many consumer products. It’s pretty simple and goes something like this: “Don’t buy product X until you read this” “Scam alert - most product X’es [...]

4. Cyberchondria and online health info
I’m a little hesitant to dig too deep when researching health information on the web as a sniffle and a sore throat can wind up being ebola. I’m a big fan of the medical comedy/drama, House - Hugh Laurie would have to be one of the best actors around - but after watching a few [...]

5. Black Friday morons
Jeez, I *hate* this time of the year. It’s incidents like this that remind me how close we are to our prehistoric, uncivilized roots, how thin a facade civilization is.. and the sometimes fatal impact of marketing. It’s been reported that earlier today, a worker at Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, died after shoppers [...]

6. Ready for holiday shopping fraud?
While many merchants are worried about how the economy will affect this year’s holiday sales; something you can bet on is that the fraudsters will be out in force; shopping until they drop - or get caught. As technology and strategies evolve to prevent fulfilling fraudulent transactions, the fraudsters aren’t giving up; evolving their own new [...]

7. Hiding prices from online shoppers
I was out online shopping for a futon today, ready to buy, and noticed that many of the local suppliers didn’t list pricing. In my opinion, this is a fatal mistake for any merchant hoping to use the web to drive sales. Out of the ten or so I visited, I think only 4 had pricing [...]

8. Holiday shopping - crisis or opportunity?
There appears to be a bit of doom and gloom around again regarding holiday shopping forecasts for this year; but it doesn’t necessarily mean your business has to suffer - you can still thrive. According to E-marketer, based on Q3 e-commerce data released from the US Department of Commerce, e-commerce sales increased just 4.6% in [...]

9. Print magazines going purely online
In the mid-90’s I used to salivate over the prospect of the next issue of my favourite tech magazines coming out with their bonus cd’s of software goodies, but I haven’t bought a magazine of any description now for at least 5 years; preferring to get my industry news online - it’s fresher and cheaper. It’s [...]

10. Digg for Google?
I was logged into my Google account this afternoon and after running a search noticed a few icons next to all the results representing interesting new(?) features; one a “Digg” type voting function. For starters, accompanying all the listings were “promote” and “remove” buttons as displayed below (click for larger view) I haven’t been able to find [...]

11. Email marketing metrics report
MailerMailer recently released it’s bi-annual email marketing metrics report with some interesting statistics on subject line length, open and click rates. A few highlights from the report: - 32.26% people are opening their email within the first two hours of receiving it. This compares with 29.40% a year ago. About 75% of all opens occur [...]

12. Web ready graphic design
If you’re a graphic designer, how web savvy are you? Quite often I come across eye popping designs, really impressive stuff, but there’s no way known it can be used on the web without unacceptable load times and/or compatibility issues. Given it’s nearly 2009, I’m really puzzled that there are any graphic designers around that do [...]

13. Nearly 80% shop online
According to Nielsen Online, 79% of US consumers have made an online purchase in the last 6 months. I went digging back on Taming the Beast.net for reports from older studies just to see what sorts of increases have occurred. The closest set of stats I could find easily were from 2005, where 37% said they [...]

14. Host zapped, spam drops globally
It’s often said that relatively few parties are involved with the majority of the world’s spam - that is the spammers themselves and the hosting services who harbor them (where botnets aren’t involved). A US web host recently had its plug pulled for its alleged spam friendly practices - and the resulting drop in spam [...]

15. Spam conversion statistics
I’ve always been curious about spam response rates - here’s some interesting stastics from a “controlled” spam campaign. A study was carried out earlier this year by researchers at University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego who infiltrated a major zombie network (botnet) to try and track activity. A zombie is a machine that [...]

16. Thrifty Generation X shoppers
Now we’re talkin’ bout my generation (apologies to The Who); those people born between 1965 - 1981. We’re up to our eyeballs in debt it seems, so we’re looking for a bargain. Thriftiness is an admirable trait (terrible for marketers); but it appears that we’re getting this way due to other excesses. To live the dream, [...]

17. Aggressive SEO companies
“You clearly need a little more education on SEO Mr. Bloch”. I remember being told this by an overpriced SEO company a few years back. It sprang to mind recently when reading about a few site owners who have been harassed by aggressive SEO companies. In my case, it was when I was with another company [...]

18. Free shipping still a favorite
Hope springs eternal they say and many online retailers, armed with a fistful of marketing strategies, have chosen to take an optimistic view of the holiday shopping season ahead. The 2008 eHoliday Study, conducted by Shopzilla for Shop.org, found 56.1% of online retailers expect their holiday sales to be up at least 15% over last year. [...]

19. Content reproduction & nofollow
If you offer content for reproduction, what is your “nofollow” tag policy? If you don’t have one, you may be losing search engine ranking kudos. This topic sprang to mind recently after coming across a site that had reproduced a dozen of my articles and had either not linked back to me or had used the [...]

20. Search marketing statistics 2008
Looking for some interesting snippets of info to liven up your next dinner party? Nothing says Mr. (or Mrs. or Ms.) Popularity more than a hatful of search marketing facts and figures! Compiled by AdAge from some of the industry’s leading sources, the 2008 Search Marketing Fact Pack is full of all sorts of interesting [...]

21. Outbound links don?t suck
Some web site owners are very hesitant to publish links to other sites from their own - and they might be doing themselves a disservice. While some of these site owners will link out, often they’ll do so with a redirect/script or using the “nofollow” tag/attribute - anything but a nice straight-through link Their reason for not [...]

22. Online layaway service
It works well in the world of bricks and mortar, so why not online? Here’s a brief look at a layaway (or layby as we call it in Australia) service for online merchants. With credit harder to come by and consumers (hopefully) being more responsible with the credit they do have; an old concept seems to [...]

23. Australian government to censor web
While Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are moving towards safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy, the Australian government is preparing to block “undesirable” online content from reaching Australian users. The Australian government has stated the filter will be mandatory - there will be no opting out. The plan is intended to block out child pornography, but our [...]

24. Traffic to retail sites down
Is your traffic down on last year even though your search engine rankings are still solid? While it may not put bucks in the bank; if yours is a retailer site, you can rest assured you’re not alone. Visits from folks in the USA to online retailers have dropped for the eighth consecutive week according to [...]

25. Free site search
Web sites are like rabbits in the sense that pages tend to grow in numbers very quickly. For example, this site was originally just a few pages with links to resources for my clients, but over the years it’s grown to over 1300 on the main site. As web sites grow larger, the need for [...]

26. The death of blogging?
A writer for Wired recently offered some interesting advice about blogging. “Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.” According to Paul Boutin, blogging has now become “flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge”, attracting the “Net’s lowest form of life: The insult commenter”. Paul notes that Jason Calacanis of Weblogs network fame gave [...]

27. SMS vs email marketing
For years now, marketing via mobile phones has been “the next big thing”. Looks like it may remain in limbo for a while longer according to this recent survey. Marketing campaigns via email I’m very much used to. Marketing messages sent to me via SMS I’m not. Absolutely hate it. But then again, I’m not really [...]

28. Holiday shopping forecast update
In keeping with the general messages of gloom and doom, the online world is not looking as sparkly in terms of sales growth this holiday season according to forecast updates just out. But let’s keep this in perspective. Emarketer is forecasting growth of around 10.1% over 2007 and Forrester Research pegs it at around 12 percent [...]

29. Credit card fraud sting nets 56
The FBI and international law enforcement agencies recenty provided details on a sting operation that resulted in 56 arrests in relation to credit card fraud. The agency infiltrated a forum called “Dark Market”. I’ve read in various reports they actually set the forum up and it was run by an FBI agent (J. Keith Mularski AKA [...]

30. Guys and the Internet
A survey of over five hundred males aged 18‐34 who access the Internet at least once per month has found that 69% say they can’t live without the Internet. Only 69%?? I’m amazed! .. but only 31% say they can’t live without television. The results come from Break Media’s survey to help advertisers understand guys’ behavior online. Other key [...]