 WebProWorld
eCommerce Forum |
Online shopping mall with OSC?
Has anybody used OSC in connection with some kind of "superstore" or "mall"? What we want to do is take a bunch of shops and unite them under the hood of a "virtual mall"
Do customers FLEE at the sight of Paypal?
I've heard lots of talk from webmasters claiming that once they switched from Paypal (for shopping cart and credit card acceptance) to a regular, customizable merchant account with another company that their sales increased significantly.
Track abandoned shopping carts?
I use Paypal's shopping cart. It has worked well for me. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to track aborted sales and abandoned shopping carts. Thanks for all replies.
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| Recent Articles |
Two Surveys About RSS
RSS services company Nooked is sponsoring two new surveys asking questions related to RSS. The first, for analysts, journalists and bloggers, aims to learn more about how these groups of influencers use RSS.
Dude, Where's My Blog?
Portland Oregonian Public Editor Michael Arrieta-Walden tells Cyberjournalist his readers routinely call or write "to cite stories they've seen blazing the Web ...
Observer Blog Is Just The Start
The Observer newspaper in the UK started a blog last weekend, as I commented on earlier this week. Interesting snippet about what may be coming next (and probably for The Guardian, too
Nick Denton's On To a Killer Idea
He is guest blogging this week on his company's travel blog and he is asking readers to send him links via del.icio.us. Meanwhile, I am getting overwhelmed with reader mail. Don't get me wrong, I love hearing from you, but many of these are just link/PR pitches.
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| 03.14.05
To Portal Or Not To Portal? Wrong Question
 By Jeremy D. Zawodny
It seems that the portalization of Google comes up now and then. I just ran across ...
this quote on Technosailor:
It seems Google is trying to experiment with elements of portal sites like My Yahoo! but still trying to remain in the business of purely search and rejecting the elements of portalhood that it doesn't like. I'm not so sure you can be on both sides of the fence.
Yeah, I'd agree with that. You can't be on the fence and Google is headed to portaldom. But I think people are focusing on the wrong question, really. The question they should be asking is this:
What will the next generation portal look like?
If their current products are any indication, most things fit into a "one box" view of the world. By that I mean that each of their major properties have an obvious text input box and one or two buttons. The interaction is in one of two modes:
- Type into the box and hit the button. Look at results.
- Use other navigation to browse. Repeat.
It seems that Froogle, Logal/Maps, and Search (Web, Image, Transcript Video) are clearly in mode #1. While Mail and Groups are unevenly split between #1 and #2. That's not terribly surprising, since those two are more about communication and interaction.
In other words, you may or may not begin by "searching" but will likely end up navigating content that may have ads nearby. But I suspect that 95% or more of their current "sessions" begin with a search of some sort. After all, Google is a advertising search company.
I'm not convinced that the "one box" view of the world is going to be the primary mode of interaction over the next few years. Are you?
Blog Readers Surveyed
 By Steve Rubel
BlogAds surveyed 30,079 blog readers and posted its findings today. Here are the most interesting results...
From BlogAds:
- 79.3% of respondents don't have their own blogs. In addition, 75.5% are men.
- A mere 2% of blog readers work in marketing, advertising or PR. That's just sad. We have a lot more evangelizing to do. Meanwhile the lawyers get the importance of the blogosphere more than we do - 7.1% of those surveyed work in law. Another 1.7% are CEOs
- 75.3% read blogs for "news I can't find elsewhere." That smells like a big opportunity for the PR industry to secure placements in the blogosphere
- 72.4% do not read blogs via RSS. This is understandable since it is not a snap for the less technically inclined. As one-click RSS subscribing becomes the norm and awareness broadens, reading habits will change
- 92.1% of blog readers have never listened to a podcast. Be patient, it's new
Follow what others are saying as well for different POV.
About the Author:
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 15 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as Vice President, Client Services at CooperKatz & Company, a mid-size PR firm in midtown New York City. Rubel evangelizes the application of Weblogs and RSS in traditional public relations campaigns.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice. |
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