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A
Search Engine Goes Beyond Google
The new search site, iLOR (www.ilor.com), began operating five weeks
ago. The site, which takes its name from "Internet lore," does not
focus on collecting relevant search results; it has left that task
to Google, whose technology it has licensed. Instead, iLOR tries
to improve the process of shuffling through results by eliminating
much of the tedious navigation.
Poor
Customer Service Hurting B-To-B
B-to-B
Web sites are not using Internet technology advantageously, and
run the risk of alienating potential buyers, according to a new
survey by Jupiter Media Metrix.
E-Tailing’s
Critical Success Factors
There
are five e-tailing success factors. They are simple, but critical.
Yet they are neglected and mismanaged, which explains why only 5
percent of e-tailers survive.
Web
Navigation Design Principles: Part 5
No matter
how good the navigation design, there will always be people who
get confused, especially on large Web sites. Here’s how to help
your site users find what they want.
WAA
Releases First Batch of Mobile Ad Standards by Christopher Saunders
In one
move to standardize creative elements across wireless media, the
New York-based WAA — an industry consortium of publishers,
agencies, ad servers, device manufacturers and technology partners
— released specifications for two types of SMS messaging over
GSM networks.
Measuring
What Matters
While
Internet advertising needs to take its rightful place next to television,
print, radio, and other media as a valuable component of a marketer’s
media mix, it’s not wise to try to force its measurement into a
model that is many years older than the Internet itself.
More
Better Content, Please
The
quality and amount of content are major factors in the success of
a site, because it’s the content — text, photos, and illustrations
— that helps customers determine whether they want to do business
with that company.
Web
Surfers Hunt Like Animals, Researchers Find
Hunters
and gathers. Right now the Web is set up, for the most part, for
hunters -- people who want to go out and catch some information
and drag its carcass back to camp. (Sorry, that analogy didn’t hold
up well.) This article is about how people find information online--
actually, it’s more about how scientists are analyzing people to
discover their process for finding things online. (This is actually
equally fascinating.) I hope they do some research into how they
can support those who are less hunters and more gatherers -- who
visit the same areas in the hopes of gleaning information a similar
topic, and who want to do things to "cultivate" the areas where
they gather their information.
Rich
Media to ’Take Over’ Where Banners Leave Off
Advertisers
that want to make an impression are abandoning the banner ad in
favor of rich media technologies that offer in-your-face, hard-to-ignore
ad units. A number of companies have developed animated "takeover"
ads — online ads that take over a Web page for a few seconds
to deliver their message -- that are increasingly being used by
companies aiming to supercharge their branding efforts online.
Email
Preferences: Let Your Customers Decide
Despite
research on frequency preferences for permission- based email, marketers
should ask customers directly how often they want to receive content
and offers. Set up a preferences page for both frequency and format
preferences.
The
Language of the Web
In the
beginning, the language of the Web was English. But the end of the
beginning is near. Today, most Internet users have a mother tongue
other than English. To avoid the beginning of the end, businesses
should offer adaptations of their sites in more languages.
Valuable
Consumers Demand Personalization
Online
purchasers are more likely to spend at Web sites offering personalization,
according to survey by Cyber Dialogue, but research by Cahners In-Stat
found a low adoption of personalization technologies.
The
Top 50 Sites
Jupiter
Media Metrix released its April findings detailing the top 50 Web
and digital media properties.
New
Net Addresses on the Way
The
Web’s governing body yesterday approved the .biz and .info suffixes
for use on the Internet. NeuLevel, the company that administers
.biz addresses, will restrict .biz to commercial businesses, while
.info addresses, managed by Afilias, will be made available to the
general public. ICANN’s approval allows NeuLevel and Afilias to
begin the process of making addresses available, which should occur
later this year. Several more extensions, such as .coop and .museum,
are expected to be approved shortly.
President
Bush Affirms Support for Banning Internet Tax
The
Bush administration has reaffirmed its support for extending a ban
on taxing goods purchased over the Internet. Bush spokesman Ari
Fleischer said yesterday that the president "favors an extension
of the moratorium on Internet taxation," adding that Bush will "continue
to work with the Congress for the exact duration of it." In a speech
Tuesday night to the Electronic Industries Alliance, Bush said he
favors a permanent ban on "Internet access taxes," meaning taxes
that would apply to Internet connections.
What’s
the Weakest Link in Your Online Campaign?
Your
campaign might LOOK strong enough to pull in scads of prospects
and turn them into paying customers. But is it really? Maybe it’s
time to suss out the weakest link. And get rid of it.
Avoiding
the Search Gap
Are
you a victim of the search gap? Well, you could easily become one
if you focus all of your efforts on getting people to your Web site
via search engines instead of considering what happens to them after
they arrive.
Online
Advertising’s Rich Future
When
it comes to advertising, Yahoo! has a reputation for being conservative,
even downright crotchety. In the interest of keeping download time
fast and the user experience clean, the company has resisted implementing
any online advertising technologies beyond the simplest animated
GIFs. That’s why Yahoo’s Web site last Friday was such a surprise.
Yahoo! effectively turned over its entire home page to an advertiser
for the day. The result was the most memorable bit of advertising
the industry has seen in a while.
Navigation
Structures: Building Your Site’s Backbone
Your
navigation system is the backbone of your information structure.
It’s also the only view of your site structure that the user will
ever see. Navigation highlights the shape of your site: deep and
narrow, wide and shallow, very structured to very unstructured.
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