THE RECENTLY LAUNCHED 7 BILLION People is an intriguing application to e-commerce of the real-world psychology behind buying behaviors. As CEO Mark Nagaitis tells us, his new Web analytics system tries to discern in a site’s audience different “buying personalities” that marketers can talk with in very different ways.
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Understanding the psychology of purchase behaviors and segmenting online audiences accordingly is one of the growth areas for behavioral methods. But where is the best place to capture the behaviors that are most relevant to your company’s goals?
This week we explore yet another approach that tries to apply academic research to consumers. The two-year-old Decision Tactics method actually puts consumers into a product-specific decision matrix to discern the major purchasing segments for an item and each group’s key purchase drivers. Co-founder Shlomo Ron explains how it worked recently for Gateway Computers.
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As we look at “our” business strategies for 2008, it becomes increasingly clear we must be, not just smarter, but wiser. God has given us two ears and one mouth, this was not be accident, but by design.
Listen to what your customers and clients are saying. Learn to read between the lines. This is a time where tactical planning begins to look a lot like a tactile super bowl.
Even though markets may reduce in size, it doesn’t mean they’re going away. Tactile relationships just may save your day. (more…)
Lookout, here come Google video ads–and on Google search, no less, a development that few thought would ever happen. Google on Thursday began testing not just videos ads, but also ads with images, maps and other interactive features. Marissa Mayer, Google vice president of products and user experience, said the change marks the search engine’s evolution into a true aggregator and organizer of the Web’s information. She adds that text ads aren’t as effective on pages containing images and video, because users’ eyes naturally gravitate toward those features.
This raises the interesting question of whether video and image ads will detract from the search engine’s natural results, which will still be mostly text. However, videos will not automatically play, nor will maps automatically pop up. Video and interactive image ads will have a small button with a plus sign that users click to interact with it. For now, advertisers will bid on video ads just like they do for text ads at no extra charge. (more…)
For years, the Mobile World Congress has issued the promise that the mobile Web will one day be more like the traditional Internet that we access from our PCs. But GigaOm notes there’s too much variation in operating systems and end devices, which makes it hard for developers to build applications for a mobile phone. In other words, a shakeout needs to occur, a leader needs to emerge.
But there’s a greater problem, here: according to Wikipedia, U.S. smartphone (loosely described as a phone with PC-like functionality) penetration is only expected to hit 10 percent this year. Most of these handsets have different interfaces: touch-screen, scroll wheel, stylus or keyboard. This requires different operating systems. There are six vying for control of that market: (in order of market share) Symbian OS, Linux, Windows Mobile, RIM BlackBerry, Palm OS, and Apple’s OS X.
What we have here is a market maturity problem. For starters, smartphone penetration has a long way to grow. Once it reaches 30 or so percent, leaders will emerge in the handset and OS markets. Then software developers can create more and better programs that scale, and advertisers will have a sizable audience and quality programs to buy space on. But we’re talking years, not months. - (more…)
According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on internet shopping habits, more than 85% of the world’s online population has used the internet to make a purchase, increasing the market for online shopping by 40% in the past two years.
Bruce Paul, VP, Customized Research, Nielsen US, said “When The Nielsen Company conducted its first global survey into internet shopping trends two years ago, approximately 10% of the world’s population (627 million) had shopped online. Within two years, this number has increased by approximately 40% to 875 million.”
Globally, more than half of internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month, according to Nielsen. (more…)
By Drake Morton, (c) 2008If you are a business owner, there are two questions that you need to ask yourself.
1. What business are you in?
2. How’s business?
A business is designed to do one thing and that is to bring in customers. This is the only business of a business, everything else is an expense.
How are you doing? Do you examine and measure your performance? Do you understand what will make a difference to your business?
comScore, in a recently released report, The 2007 U.S. Internet Year in Review highlighting the major trends in U.S. Internet activity, finds that that top gaining properties and site categories featured some of the top Internet brands, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and Craigslist.
The process of doing keyword research for mobile search is different than it is for desktop search, partly because there’s far less user data for mobile queries and partly because the absolute search volume data from popular keyword research tools isn’t 100% accurate anyway. Bryson Meunier’s post offers some best practices for mobile keyword research, using an in-depth examination of the top 100 mobile search queries from AT&T’s Beyond MEdia Net search engine. According to the data, 73% of the mobile queries were navigational–meaning that almost two-thirds of the searchers already knew what they were looking for. This differs from the consensus on desktop search that the majority of queries are informational in nature. Because of this factor, Meunier says that using branded terms, competitor terms and names of known products as core keywords could be your best bet for increased mobile search visibility. Meunier adds that creating a mobile site and using the term “mobile” in the copy as a secondary keyword can also lead to increased traffic from mobile search engines, as users seem to want to make sure that they’re navigating to a site that’s accessible and optimized for their mobile browser.Â
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Sites that require users to log in to access certain information and/or purchase products add an additional layer of potential complication to the usability process. To avoid potential visitor confusion and the possibility for errors, it is important that any login process requires little or no thought on the part of the site visitor.
Once logged in, you must be sure that visitors are able to find the information they want and expect to find. My Account pages need to provide visitors with access and ability to view and change personal information, as necessary.
