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| Web
related News & Events |
| Here is the list of News as on 12th Apr
2008. |
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Multiple Domain Name Registration
There are several different reasons for buying multiple domain names, and each reason has its own set of advantages and uses.
I've written quite widely before about how to choose the best domain name for your business. It is also a good idea to secure alternate versions of your primary domain name as a means to avoid competitors from trying to squeeze in on your name and branding efforts. Buying multiple domain names is a great strategy that can be used to capture additional type-in traffic, secure other branding avenues you may wish to pursue, or simply to avoid your competitors from securing them.
Type-In Traffic
Several URLs are purchased simply to capture type in traffic. Type-in traffic is when someone goes to the address bar of their web browser and kinds in creativewebsols.com instead of performing a keyword search on a search engine. Securing domain names with a fair amount of type-in traffic can be a great boost to sales. If you sell bean bags, your main URL might be creativewebmall.com. To capture potential type-in traffic you might also secure and redirect the following:
Misspellings
It is always a good idea to secure potential misspellings of your domain name. I currently did a radio interview and at the end of the interview I provided my domain name. Unfortunately I did not take the time to actually spell it out. Upon realizing my error, I immediately went out and purchased multiple spellings of my URL to redirect to my main site.
This permitted me to capture all traffic from any listeners that may have had a different spelling of my site in mind, which increased my visitor rate from those who listened to the broadcast substantially.
Along with misspellings you must also consider purchasing plural and/or singular versions of your domain.
You're Creativewebstore.com
If you are in a highly visible industry you might want to consider getting you're creativewebstore.com. Many years ago someone put up an anti AOL website at creativewebsols.com (You can see a version of this at http://creativewebsols.com/ http://creativewebmall.com/.
Who might do such a thing? A disgruntled x-employee, a customer who had a bad experience or even a former spouse or partner. Setting up and hosting an online site is relatively easy, and often bad press travels a lot further with a little effort than good press with a lot of effort.
There are some important drawbacks from trying to capture all negative versions of your domain name. You'll have to grab all hyphenated, non-hyphenated, plural, and misspelled variations. That can be quite a bit. Take that even a step further, you'll want to buy the .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us (or your country code) variations. Don't forget your Creativewebpromotion.com or Your Domain Really Sucks either.
Is it worth trying to get all those variations? You'll have to choose. For some "any press is good press." For others, not so much. In any case, someone registering a "sucks" version of your domain name is likely to make a legal battle that perhaps neither side wants to engage in.
Hyphenated Versions
I mentioned above that you must not buy a hyphenated URL for your main site. For marketing purposes, however, there are sometimes lawful reasons to do so. My business owns Creativewebsols.com and Creativewebmall.com. I purchased the hyphenated version simply to avoid a competitor from securing it and stealing my branding. I also have the option of using the hyphenated versions for other marketing efforts, but I don't recommend doing so unless you are fully conscious of the potential ramifications.
Use Proper Redirects
When setting up multiple domains such as those stated above, it's significant that you set up each one properly. Setting up domains improperly can lead to duplicate site/matter penalties on the search engines which will eventually be bad for business.
The best way of setting up many URLs is to set up a 301 permanent redirect. The 301 redirect tells the search engine that the URL it is trying to contact has been permanently moved to a new place, presumably your main URL. The cool thing is that when a visitor types in the redirecting URL they are automatically flipped to your main site.
Several online sites employ on-page JavaScript or Meta refresh redirects, or even worse, framed pages pulling in the main site. These methods are effective from the user standpoint but not from the search engine standpoint. The 301 redirect is usually the safest method of redirecting users.
To set-up a 301 redirect you'll want to talk with your web host, as different servers need different methods if implementation. When redirecting multiple URLs there is a neat little trick that saves hosting fees that you'll want to use.
1. Take one of the forward URLs and host it on the cheap. This is the URL that will be set up with the 301 redirect to your main URL.
2. Take all your other URLs and park them to point to the URL above.
With this method, you pay for only one additional hosting account ($5 at the most) and all your URLs will automatically flip the visitor and the search engines to your main URL.
In marketing, every little bit can help. Even if a redirected domain name only results in one additional sale every few months, it may not be long until that one sale is an important one. Whenever you think of a possible domain name that might be used to drive traffic away from your site, go grab it right away. If the domain is already purchased I recommend keeping an eye on it in case the owner forgets to renew it, in which case you can buy and hold on to it for your own advantage. |
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Content Development
Matter is judged as king online, but interestingly 75% of the matter posted online is scanned by the surfer who simply hops-skips-jumps the text. Also, the web matter is difficult to retain, and the usual user is not patient enough to scroll deep. To retain a reader is a challenge!
But then why is Matter King?
Matter is judged as king online. Matter syndication services online range from designing online site matter to writing articles, blogs, forums, news-letters emails, press releases etc. for the vast variety of Internet audiences, along with arranging the preferred keywords in a particular percentage and format!
It surely is no child's play!
Search engines recognize sites through its matter and Search Engine Optimization; marketing largely depends on the matter written for getting results. Having updated its algorithm currently, Google has launched a new trend in online site writing altogether, which is termed LSI - Latent Semantic Indexing. This is designed not only to highlight the matter of a site, but also the user-friendliness.
Building on all these features, our team at ePurple Media brings for you complete syndication of matter, which include matter for web pages, articles, keyword rich pages, goods literature, knowledge banks, white papers, news, promotional emails, FAQs newsletters, blogs, press releases etc.
Services that we provide are:
- Matter writing for online sites
- Copy writing for email marketing and newsletters
- Copy editing and sub-editing
- Designing web literature and goods literature
- Articles, blogs, press releases, FAQs, knowledge banks et al
- Matter development and redevelopment
- Copywriting consultancy
For any queries on the same, please visit Content Development FAQ Section.
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Web Development
At creativewebsols.com & creativewebmall.com we offer a service called search engine optimization, which is a high return marketing strategy. A process of conditioning an online site for top search engine ranking. The marketing objective is to make new streams of traffic that are the most precious leads available - those referred by search engines.
More people discover online sites from search engines than all other online promotion sources combined. Leads are highly qualified since they are resulting by the visitor's actual requirement represented by the keywords used during the search engine process. Studies prove that this approach substantially increases revenue. Best of all, the return on investment is unmatched by any other online site marketing strategy.
In today's world of online site promotion, a business requires an effective Internet marketing strategy via an aggressive search engine optimization and search engine locating campaign and a quality, optimized online site that targets and matches your business goals with online customer require.
Search engine optimization, also known as search engine placement, search engine locating, search engine ranking or search engine marketing, can act as a 24/7 salesperson driving targeted search engine traffic to your marketing message.
Search engine optimization will help you:
* Increase traffic to your online site
* Make a gap between you and your competition
* Develop fast and measurable returns on investment
* Lower the costs of client acquisition
* Broaden your market share
An aggressive search engine strategy comprises a look into all aspects available including: pay per click campaign management, manual directory & search engine submissions, rank location, keyword marketing research and search engine promotion.
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Search Engine Marketing
Search engine optimization is the foundation stone of search marketing. It works for our consumers because, when done correctly, it delivers much targeted traffic, and targeted traffic delivers good business. Statistics show that SEO represents about 70% of all search traffic and so can create a big difference to the success of your online marketing campaigns.
Search engines choose how high to rank your site based on how related your site is to each and every keyword in your SEO strategy. The higher up on the rankings your site can be shown on each of the selected keywords, the more of this targeted traffic your site will get. So, for example, if your site talks about holidays in Marmaris, Turkey, then your site will be related for the keyword phrase "Marmaris holidays". If it also talks about "special offers in Antalya", then your site will also be related for the phrase "offers in Antalya".
Being relevant (being in the results pages) is significant but the million dollar question is how to rise from position 357,491 to the first or second page for each keyword.
There are several factors to take into consideration for a well balanced SEO program (we call it the SEO puzzle) but, unfortunately, no quick fixes or short cuts.
Whichever strategy you adopt for your SEO program, the essence of achieving good rankings is based on giving both your readers and the search engines with a good spread of informative, useful and keyword enhanced matter throughout your site.
There is a reason why good optimizers say that matter is king.
But is being at the top good for business?
Not always. Some keyword deliver just traffic and waste your call centre time without changing into sales, while other keywords tend to deliver much better conversions with less input from your staff. We believe that a good SEO program does not aim on winning every keyword battle but that budgets must be used only to fight for and win good places for keywords that deliver business.
We confess that it is a different approach but that is why our campaigns make more business sense and how we can boast such desirable results for our customers.
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Shopping Cart
Online shopping is the course consumers go through to buy goods or services over the Internet. An online shop, e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web shop, online store, or virtual store suggests the physical analogy of buying goods or services at a bricks-and-mortar retailer or in a shopping mall.
The metaphor of an online catalog is also used, by analogy with mail order catalogs. All kinds of stores have retail online sites, comprising of those that do and do not also have physical storefronts and paper catalogs.
Online shopping is a kind of electronic commerce used for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) dealings.
The term "Web shop" also refers to a place of business where web development, web hosting and other kinds of web connected activities take place (Web refers to the World Wide Web and "shop" has an informal meaning used to explain a place of business, the place where one's occupation is carried out).
Logistics
Consumers find goods of interest by visiting the online site of the retailer directly, or do a search across many different vendors using a shopping search engine.
Once exacting goods has been found on the online site of the seller, most online retailers use shopping cart software to allow the consumer to collect multiple items and to adjust quantities, by analogy with filling a physical shopping cart or basket in a conventional store. A "checkout" course follows (continuing the physical-store analogy) in which payment and delivery information is collected, if necessary. Some stores allow consumers to sign up for a permanent online account so that some or all of this information only requires to be entered once. The consumer often receives an e-mail confirmation once the dealing is complete. Less stylish stores may rely on consumers to phone or e-mail their orders (though credit card numbers are not accepted by e-mail, for security reasons).
Payment
Online shoppers commonly use their credit card for making payments, however some systems allow users to make the accounts and pay by alternative means, such as:
Some sites will not allow international credit cards and billing address and shipping address have to be in the same country in which site does its business. Other sites allow customers from anywhere to send gifts anywhere. The financial part of a deal might be processed in real time (for example, letting the consumer know their credit card was refused before they log off), or might be done later as part of the fulfillment course.
While credit cards are presently the most demanded means of paying for online products and services, alternative online payments will account for 26% of e-commerce volume by 2009 according to Celent.
Goods delivery
Once a payment has been accepted the products or services can be delivered in the following ways.
- Download: This is the method often used for digital media goods such as software, music, movies, or images.
- Shipping: The goods are shipped to the customer's address.
- Drop shipping: The order is passed to the producer or third-party distributor, who ships the item directly to the consumer, bypassing the retailer's physical place to save time, money, and space.
- In-store pickup: The customer orders online, finds a local store using locator software and picks the goods up at the closest store. This is the method often used in the bricks and clicks business model.
Shopping cart systems
Shopping cart software
- Simple systems permit the offline administration of goods and categories. The shop is then created as HTML files and graphics that can be uploaded to a web space. These systems do not use an online database.
- A high end answer can be bought or rented as a standalone program or as an addition to an Enterprise resource planning program. It is generally installed on the company's own web server and may mix very well into the existing supply chain so that ordering, payment, delivery, accounting and warehousing can be automated to a large extent.
- Other answers permit the user to register and make an online shop on a portal that hosts multiple shops at the same time.
- Open source shopping cart packages comprise eCommerce, Magneto and Zen Cart. Virtue mart is a shopping addition for the really demanded CMS Joomla.
- Commercial systems can also be tailored to ones requirements so that the shop does not have to be made from scratch. By using a framework already existing, software modules for different functionalities needed by a web shop can be adapted and combined.
Web Shop Design
Why does electronic shopping survive? For customers it is not only because of the high level of convenience, but also because of the broader selection; competitive pricing and greater access to information. For organizations it increases their customer value and the building of sustainable capabilities, next to the increased profits.
Virtual Value Chain
In the physical world, the course of making value for customers is often referred to as a series of value-adding activities, a so called value chain. More recently, executives are increasingly pushed to pay attention to how their companies make value in both the physical world (value chain) and the virtual world (virtual value chain). However, the course by which value can be made in the virtual world is not the same as in the physical world. The physical world, for instance, considers information as a supporting element of the value-adding course. By different, information in the virtual world is seen as a source of value itself.
Information Load
Designers of Web shops must think the effects of information load. Mehrabian and Russel (1974) introduced the idea of information rate (load) as the complex spatial and temporal arrangements of stimuli within a setting. The notion of information load is directly connected to concerns about whether consumers can be given too much information in virtual shopping environments. Compared with conventional retail shopping, computer shopping enriches the information environment of virtual shopping by giving additional goods information, such as comparative goods and services, as well as different alternatives and attributes of each alternative, etc.
Two major sub-dimensions have been seen for information load: complexity and novelty. Complexity refers to the number of different elements or characters of a site, which can be the result of increased information diversity. Novelty involves the unexpected, suppressing, new, or unfamiliar aspects of the site. A research by Huang (2000) showed that the novelty dimension kept consumers exploring the shopping sites, whereas the complexity dimension has the potential to comprise impulse buying.
Consumer Expectations
Designers of web shops must think research outcomes about consumer prospect. Research conducted by Elliot and Fowell (2000) bared satisfactory and unsatisfactory customer experiences.
Satisfactory:
- Increased Customization, e.g. "capability to treat customers as individuals".
- Convenience in buying "anytime, from anywhere, to anywhere".
- Responsiveness in goods delivery, e.g. "instantaneous distribution of digital goods and services".
- Cost savings through lower prices, e.g. "site aims at giving lower costs and latest information on music scene".
Unsatisfactory (unsatisfactory experiences):
- Security
- Ease of use
- Poor levels of service
- Costs
- Goods delivered did not meet expectations.
User interface
It is significant to take the country and customers into account. For example, in Japan privacy is very important and emotional involvement is more significant on a pension's site then on a shopping site. Next to that, there is a difference in experience: experienced users aims more on the variables that directly control the task, while novice users are aiming more on understanding the information.
There are many techniques for the examination of the usability. The ones used in the research of Chen & Macredie (2005) are: Heuristic estimate, cognitive walkthrough and the user testing. Every technique has its own (dis-)advantages and it is therefore significant to check per state which technique is suitable.
When the customers visited the online shop, a couple of factors decide whether they will return to the site. The most significant factors are the ease of use and the presence of user-friendly characters.
Market share
E-commerce goods sales totaled $146.4 billion in the United States in 2006, representing about 6% of retail goods sales in the country. The $18.3 billion worth of clothes sold online represented about 10% of the domestic market.
For developing countries and low-income households in developed countries, adoption of e-commerce in place of or in addition to conventional methods is limited by a lack of reasonable Internet access.
Advantages and disadvantages
Convenience
Online stores are generally available 24 hours a day, and many consumers have Internet access both at work and at home. A visit to a conventional retail store needs travel and must take place during business hours.
Searching or browsing an online catalog can be faster than browsing the aisles of a physical store. Consumers with dial-up Internet connections rather than broadband have much longer load times for comfortable-rich web sites, and have a considerably slower online shopping experience.
Some consumers prefer interacting with people rather than computers (and vice versa), sometimes because they find computers hard to use. Not all online retailers have succeeded in creating their sites easy to use or reliable.
In most cases, merchandise should be shipped to the consumer, introducing a important delay and potentially uncertainty about whether or not the item was actually in stock at the time of purchase. Bricks-and-clicks stores offer the ability to buy online but pick up in a nearby store. Many stores give the consumer the delivery company's tracking number for their package when shipped, so they can check its status online and know exactly when it will arrive. For efficiency reasons, online stores usually do not ship goods directly upon receiving an order. Orders are only filled during warehouse operating hours, and there may be a delay of anywhere from a few minutes to a few days to a few weeks before in-stock items are actually packaged and shipped. Many retailers inform customers how long they can expect to wait before receiving a package, and whether or not they usually have a fulfillment backlog. A quick response time is sometimes a significant factor in consumers' choice of merchant.
In the event of a problem with the item - it is not what the consumer ordered, or it is not what they expected - consumers are worried with the ease with which they can return an item for the correct one or for a refund. Consumers may require content the retailer, visiting the post office and paying return shipping, and then wait for a replacement or refund. Some online companies have more generous return policies to compensate for the traditional advantage of physical stores. For example, the online shoe retailer Creativewebsols.com & Creativewebmall.com comprises labels for free return shipping, and does not charge a restocking fee, even for returns which are not the result of merchant error. (Note: In the United Kingdom, Online shops are forbidden from charging a restocking fee if the consumer cancels their order in accordance with the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Act 2000.)
Information and reviews
Online stores should express goods for sale with text, photos, and multimedia files, whereas in a physical retail store, the actual goods and the producer's packaging will be available for direct inspection (which might engage a test drive, fitting, or other experimentation).
Some online stores give or link to supplemental goods information, such as instructions, safety procedures, demonstrations, or producer's specifications. Some give background information, advice, or how-to guides designed to help consumers to choose which goods to buy.
Some stores even permit customers to comment or rate their items. There are also dedicated review sites that host user reviews for different goods.
In a conventional retail store, clerks are usually available to answer questions. Some online stores have real-time chat characters, but most rely on e-mail or phone calls to handle customer questions.
Price and selection
One advantage of shopping online is being able to quickly seek out deals for items or services with many different vendors (though some local search engines do exist to help consumers locate goods for sale in nearby stores). Search engines and online price comparison services can be used to look up sellers of a particular goods or service.
Shoppers find a greater selection online in certain market segments (for example, computers and consumer electronics) and in some cases lower prices. This is due to a relaxation of certain constraints, such as the size of a "brick-and-mortar" store, lower stocking costs (or none, if drop shipping is used), and lower staffing overhead.
Shipping costs (if applicable) reduce the price advantage of online merchandise, though depending on the jurisdiction, a lack of sales tax may compensate for this.
Shipping a small number of items, particularly from another country, is much more expensive than creating the larger shipments bricks-and-mortar retailers order. Some retailers (especially those selling small, high-value items like electronics) offer free shipping on sufficiently large orders.
Fraud and security concerns
Given the lack of ability to inspect examine before buying, consumers are at higher risk of fraud on the part of the merchant than in a physical store. Merchants also risk fraudulent purchases using stolen credit cards or fraudulent repudiation of the online purchase. With a warehouse instead of a retail storefront, merchants face less risk from physical theft.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption has usually solved the problem of credit card numbers being intercepted in transit between the consumer and the merchant. Identity theft is still a concern for consumers when hackers break into a merchant's web site and steal names, addresses and credit card numbers. A number of high-profile break-ins in the 2000s have prompted some U.S. states to need disclosure to consumers when this happens. Computer security has thus become a major concern for merchants and e-commerce service providers, who deploy countermeasures such as firewalls and anti-virus software to protect their networks.
Phasing is another danger, where consumers are fooled into thinking they are transacting with a reputable retailer, when they have actually been manipulated into feeding private information to a system operated by a malicious party. On the other hand, dealing with an automated system instead of a population of store clerks reduces the risk of employees stealing consumer information, or dumpster diving of paper receipts. Denial of service attacks are a minor risk for merchants, as are server and network outages.
Quality seals can be placed on the Shop webpage if it has undergone an independent assessment and meets all needs of the company issuing the seal. The purpose of these seals is to increase the confidence of the online shoppers; the existence of many different seals, or seals unfamiliar to consumers, may foil this effort to a certain extent.
A number of resources offer advice on how consumers can protect themselves when using online retailer services. These include:
- Sticking with known stores, or trying to find independent consumer reviews of their experiences; also ensuring that there is comprehensive contact information on the online site before using the service, and noting if the retailer has enrolled in industry oversight programs such as trust mark or trust seal.
- Ensuring that the retailer has an acceptable privacy policy posted. For example note if the retailer does not explicitly state that it will not share private information with others without consent.
- Ensuring that the vendor address is protected with SSL (see above) when entering credit card information. If it does the address on the credit card information entry screen will start with "HTTPS".
Using strong passwords, without personal information. Another option is a "pass phrase," which might be something along the lines: "I shop 4 good a buy!!" These are difficult to hack, and gives a variety of upper, lower, and special features and could be site specific and easy to remember.
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