David on Dec. 7th

David Dec 7th

David lectured on Website design. How to design a website that is efficient, user friendly, and search engine useable.
He told us that in designing websites, not only the look of it is in concern, but more importantly the user friendliness is important. He told us what we needed to use tricks to have our site come up on the searches in first few pages.
He showed us a few sites and the differences on the design where one would get high rate and the other would get low.
He also told us that web changes every day. If a site is on tope ranking does not mean that it will be at the same ranking the day after.
He showed us the Dos and the DON’Ts list in order to have a useful website.

What was surprising to me was that some of my knowledge that I had gained on the HTML class was being avoided by David’s lecture. So later he explained to me how search engines would rate the sites. What to avoid and what to look for in making a websites.
He showed us the WHITE HAT tricks to make the websites.

Other than these he talked about how to monetize a search engine. He also showed us the sponsored links on the right when we do a search about anything. How search engine would make money on those and what to do to be on that list.

We then went to the lab to work on our website project.
Thank you David for your time.

100 Million Websites

100 Million Websites

Jacob on this essay talks about the quantity of domain registered and how it has grown through out the past 15 years.

He divides this enormous growth into three section, Explosive, Rapid, and Maturity.
He explains how this division is being done and the growth rate has been changed. The first section, explosion, has an average growth rate of 850% per year. In this section changes are inevitable. There is no such thing as “the web user experience” since there is something new being added to the web industry. New stuff is being talked about every week on Jacob’s meetings during this period.
Second section is the Rapid section where the growth rates slows down a little and becomes 150% per year. This rate is a slower paste than the explosion section, however it is a huge growth compared to any other industries. Changes are fewer in number.
Last period is the Maturity state where the growth rate falls down to 25% per year. This is the main section that he is concerned about. It is the stage that we are currently in. By now our eyes are familiar to what to look at when they look at a website, what to look for when they try to search for an item. He argues that through out this short history of web industry, users learned to look for better content and not better look of a web site. To prove his point he compares it to history of book writing and how it has change to become important for its content and not for its look of a book. A book is important because of its content so should a website be.
I do agree with Jacob. We feel the increase in number of existing website by doing a search on any given subject on google or yahoo or … we have pages and pages of the results. Once the market is saturated, it is time for the selection. Now it is time for us, users, to select the type of website we want to see or use. Personally I would just skip any websites that are not with as a regular website format or they have too many big pictures that would take a long time to be downloaded. I am moving towards being content oriented vs. looking for a website with better pictures or more graphic. I use the simplest website with the most reliable content. This is now possible by having the number of websites increased to passed its peek!

Amir

clickz.com

"Free Shipping and Handling Aren't Free" by Heidi Cohen

This article is great for evey one who is running an on-line store! It talked about Free Shipping and Handling incentives. Would it be beneficial to give our customers this incentive or would it be harmful to our business if we did that.
Heidi Cohen, explains how on-line customers are looking for cheaper material on-line. How they compare the total price to what they would have paid in store and she also talks about any shipping fee would be more than what customer would have been paying to an actual retail store, since they would go there and pick it up.
In this article we learn we need to make our site attractive for the customer to come and place an order. We have to make sure that our customers feel tat what they are paying is not more than a store (since brand loyalty is much less effective on-line). At the same time, we need to make sure that we will still make money by giving out prepaid freight or $0.0 Handling.
Heidi gives out five rules in order to have a successful selling by giving out free shipping. They are: Set a minimum order size that ensures profitability. Include offers for related products in the shipment. Add an offer to your bill. Give recipients a reason to register on your Web site. Back-test free shipping offers.
Mrs. Cohen also gave out a formula to test the result of the changes that was made in revenue by giving prepaid freight in great details.
Here are the formulas:

Forgone revenue = initial revenue projection - revenue without shipping = projected shipping revenueGross margin per order without shipping = revenue per order without shipping - [cost of goods sold per order + fulfillment costs per order]Incremental number of orders needed to breakeven without shipping = forgone revenue/gross margin per order without shipping

I chose this article because I am working on opening a retail store that targets Telecommunication contractors by June 2006 and need all the help I can get. This is an article that goes line by line to what I am planning to do except for the fact that this article is more useful to smaller type product than my product, but still it is a good way of understanding how to calculate the effects of a policy in revenue. This Article was very fresh and useful especially when I know a couple of my customers are so concerned about the freight policies…

Its importance to ecommerce is that it illustrates how ecommerce has to compete with retailers that have a shop. How people do not think of their own time to go and pick up a material and how to fight that. How to give free shipping without loosing money. Ecommerce based companies need to know their competitions and how to overcome their capabilities without reducing their revenues.

David and Aron

What we learned in class last Thursday was the following

We reviewed the four Ps that we had learned in marketing 300. They added three more and made it interesting. (People, Process, and Physical evidence)
They also talked about Product life cycle that we had learned in management class.

What I really enjoyed on that class was the websites that they introduced us.
Sites such Experian.com, bizinsight.com, local.com, infousa.com, verticalresponse.com, and many more.
I truly loved Local.com as I had been looking for such a site so I can target contractors for my price compatitive products...
There was another site that they introduced and I will give to my family members who are in real estate market and that was realtytrac.com. I am sure my family members will be really thankful for that!

I did get a chance to thank both of them via e-mail on theit class website (marketing437.com)
and now I thank you for having them at our class.

Amir

Assignment #2 (Consumer prod. Reviews)

1) PUMA Speed Cat SD US $78.95
SKU #7202262

2) Found out that the shoe looks great on their feet, some people love it since it does not have a big hill, Does have narrow bottom therefore it could get unconfortable for people who have wide feet. having small hill has made it very Sporty and "does not feel like forigner shoes"; it has got a smal ankel support, and in many cases they thought we should order a 1/2 size bigger (it is a tight shoe)

3)Less likely to buy it. Since the size appear to be a problem, I would definitly want to try it before buying.

4)Consumers could easily choose the best fit on what they like and what they should buy. When reading many reveiws,consumers get the feeling about the shoes (that sometimes could be bies, but as the No of reveiws increases the chance of reading bogus info. would be slim.)

5) a-Advantage to Zappers is that they no longer need to have store for customers to get a feeling about the shoes
b- the return cost would decrease, because customers would know more about the shoes prior to receiving the shoes

6)I extremely urge any online company that sells a good or service to consumers, have customer reveiws. This would increase their quality of product and therefore increase in sales and a growing company

7)The way that I have done it so far is when I want to buy anything from 'ebay' I make sure that the seller has good reveiws. If he or she does not have good reveiws, then I try not to purchase from him or her.

8)I think any site that sales on line should have reveiws. in addition to the information that the reveiws give prospects, it makes the company have a better image. It shows that the company has many customers and that it is a valid company. Increasing sales and reducing return rate (as explained above) are the other benefits to the company.

Int. Marketing - blogging

Potential Biz Using Blog
I can not think of any industry that can not be benefited from blog. A list with reasoning is as follows:

- Electronic Consumer driven industry (Such as Electronic Products):
New products could be introduced, benefits of that prod. could be outspoken, and desire to get the prod. once it is available could be created well before the prod. is out for sale.
- Entertainment industry:
New movies, CDs, and entertainment events could be introduced. Producers could know what type of prod. are the "hottest", and which type is the least interesting at the time. They also could learn about their audience's opinion about specific product (such as specific movie,...)
- Biz could also know what in general are people interested in, how they could introduce a new product that makes buyers interested. And how could they go by selling to them.

Web site engadget.com had a direct advertising link after each blog. This would make the blog be functioning as an internet word of mouth advertising, it also enables the users to step further by clicking on the ad's link. (In The BMW Case the ads would take users to BMW dealers...)
By doing so this blog would be advertising directly so it is traditional advertising and using the blog to introduce their BMW's new prod. by talking about it and going over its functionality.

Even though belogging is a good way of indirect advertising but its impact should not be significant. This is due to its basis. Since it is opinion based information, should not be reliable, especially when it is accessible to everyone in a matter of a few clicks.

I would like to see IS Dep. having a blog to introduce new electronic products.

Test Test Marketing Amir

This is a test for Amir