Question 1
Brokerage
A brokerage business model is one where the broker’s role is to allow buyers and sellers to meet and transact. This business model will allow both parties to get what they want with some ease and in return, they will charge a commission which is called a brokerage fee. In the e-business world, the various type of brokerage model that exists includes marketplace exchange, buy/sell fulfillment, demand collection system, auction broker, transaction broker, distributor search agent and/or virtual marketplace. A very good example of a real world brokerage model is Betfair 365 which allows gamblers to bet or lay bets.
Advertising
The advertising model is one where businesses advertise on some website to target a maximum number of customers who use those websites. The website thus generates revenue by charging fees to these businesses who advertise. The advertising normally takes place as banner ads or pop-ups that accompany some website. These advertising will aim to reach the maximum number of potential clients and thus will be more common on very popular websites that have high traffic. Real world examples include Google or yahoo.
Infomediary
Data about consumers and their consumption habits are valuable, especially when that information is carefully analyzed and used to target marketing campaigns. Independently collected data about producers and their products are useful to consumers when considering a purchase. Some firms function as infomediaries (information intermediaries) assisting buyers and/or sellers understand a given market. These websites attempt to get customers to subscribe and give information about their tastes and preferences and later on will have matching advertisement. A good example is scribd.com.
Merchant
The merchant model relates to websites that are involved in the wholesaling and retailing business selling to the customers directly. Therefore, in the e-business context, this relates to websites that serve the only purpose of selling goods and services directly to the customer. An example includes the site a1supplement.com.au.
Manufacturer (Direct)
This business model is one that allows the manufacturer to sell its products directly to customers, therefore bypassing all middlemen in the process. This website allows for substantial cost reduction for both buyers and sellers. A good example is Dell computers.
Affiliate
The affiliate model provides purchase opportunities wherever people may be surfing. It does this by offering financial incentives (in the form of a percentage of revenue) to affiliated partner sites. The affiliates provide purchase-point click-through to the merchant. It is a pay-for-performance model -- if an affiliate does not generate sales, it represents no cost to the merchant. The affiliate model is inherently well-suited to the web, which explains its popularity. Variations include banner exchange, pay-per-click, and revenue sharing programs. Example of such a website is Amazon.com.
Community
The viability of the community model is based on user loyalty. Users have a high investment in both time and emotion. Revenue can be based on the sale of ancillary products and services or voluntary contributions; or revenue may be tied to contextual advertising and subscriptions for premium services. This model is nowadays very popular with websites such as facebook which has networks from all kind of communities who get together. In the meantime, businesses seize the opportunity to advertise and boost their sales on such platforms.
Subscription
The subscription model is one where the customers join the website by paying subscription in order to use the content of the website. Real world examples of such websites include many electronic academic research websites or download websites such as rapidshare.com.
Utility
The utility method is one business model that generates its funds from the client’s usage of the website. It is just like a utility (water, gas, electricity or internet) company would charge a customer. A good example of such website would be those that offer pay per view of sports coverage.
Question 2
What is the business model for TWITTER?
Twitter is a global social network that gathers millions of people around the globe and allows them to interact with each other. This website is so popular that it has been a platform for its inventors to make lots of money due to the amount of potential customers that are on the website each day. This is why the site can fit several business models at the same time; however the business model that stands out for Twitter is the advertising model. Being a website that gathers so many potential customers, Twitter is an immense marketing platform for any business and thus advertising on Twitter is worth paying for. This is how Twitter generates a major part of its revenue.
Question 3:
1) What is the Mobile phone use /100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India, Your Country
USA: 86.79/100
Australia: 104.96/100
China: 47.95/100
India: 29.36/100
Saudi Arabia: 142.85/100
2) Internet use / 100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India, Your Country
USA: 74/100
Australia: 71.98/100
China: 22.28/100
India: 4.38/100
Saudi Arabia: 30.8/100
3) Compare main strengths and weaknesses of Australia or your home country in the survey
The strengths of Australia include:
Level of competition, e-Participation, time required to start a business, number of procedures required to start a business, effectiveness of law-making bodies, secure internet servers (hard data), government online service index (hard data), laws relating to ICT, venture capital availability
The strengths of Saudi Arabia include:
Level of competition, computer, total tax rate, education expenditure, and time required to start a business
The weaknesses of Australia include:
Business monthly telephone subscription, total tax rate, fixed telephone tariffs, mobile cellular tariffs, residential monthly telephone subscription, extent and effect of taxation, burden of government regulation, availability of new telephone line, high tech exports, computers.
The weaknesses of Saudi Arabia include:
High-tech exports, freedom of the press, e-participation index, time to enforce a contract, number of procedures to enforce a contract
4) What does the survey suggest to you about the Information Technology readiness of Australian business compared to Australian consumers?
According the survey, Australia’s business readiness is 21st globally. In contrast, the individual’s readiness is ranked in 31st place, meaning that in comparison to other countries Australia’s businesses are more technologically ready than the customers. This would be good news if the country is to move towards computerizing its economy.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Web Analytics
1) Looking at the site usage, what do the terms visits, page views and pages/visit mean? What does the bounce rate mean and does it vary
much from day to day?
Visits:
The term visit refers to when someone enters a website to view its contents. A visit may consist of viewing several pages or a single one. Within a visit, a person can opt to view a single page or multiple pages, however within a single visit; there must not be any 30 minute gap between different pages.
Page views:
A page view happens when someone visits a page which is found on a website. A page view can concern any page that is found on the website and can be accessed by clicking on a link and the page itself can have other links as part of its contents.
Pages/Visit:
This is the statistics that describes the number of pages that are being viewed for each visit.
Bounce rate:
The bounce rate refers to the proportion of users that exit the website to go to different ones rather than continue browsing the same one. It varies fairly because it is a statistic affected by each visit made on the website.
2) Now look at the traffic sources report. What are the three sources of traffic and where has most of the traffic come from?
The three sources of traffic as at 04.09.10 are as follows:
1) Search engine 42.51%
2) Direct traffic 39.27%
3) Referring sites 18.21%
The most popular source of traffic is search engine with 42.51%
3) What was the most popular web browser used to access the site?
The most popular web browser used to access the site is Internet explorer with 46.51%
4) How many countries did visitors to Foliospaces come from and what were the top four countries?
The visitors to folio space came from 55 countries and the top four countries are Australia, United States, United Kingdom and Phillipine.
5) Having clicked every possible link on my analytics, make a few comments on (a) What you can track, (b) What you can track over time and (c) What you can’t track.
a) The items that can be tracked can be subdivided into five categories namely statistics for visitors, traffic source, content, site search, event tracking and goals. The table below shows the statistics that can be tracked.
Visitors: Benchmarking, Map Overlay, New vs. Returning, Languages, Visitor Trending, Visitor Loyalty, Browser Capabilities, Network Properties
Traffic: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, Search Engines, All Traffic Sources, Keywords, AdWords
Content: Top Content,Content by Title, Content Drilldown,Top Landing Pages, Top Exit Pages, Site Overlay
Site search: Usage, Search Terms, Start Pages, Destination Pages, Categories, Trending
Event Tracking: Categories, Actions, Labels, Trending, Hostnames
Goals: Total Conversions, Conversion Rate, Goal Abandoned Funnels, Goal Value, Funnel Visualization
b) In relation to the statistics measuring the statistics over time, almost all of the above offer these facilities.
c) We cannot track the actual goal of the customers visiting the website and the demography of the users going on the website.
6) What do the following terms mean? These are just a few, you may like to add some more and perhaps include them on the Moodle glossary.
High bounce rate
This refers to a high proportion of people navigating away from the website without going to visit any additional pages on the website.
Key words
Key words are the words used on search engine that are helpful for accessing a website.
Average Page Depth
It is an analytics statistic which denotes how far internet users go in a certain website.
Click through rate
This refers to the statistic that shows the rate of users that have accessed the website by clicking through links from other website.
Click
A click refers to the act of using the mouse in order to follow a link that is found on a website. With a click, someone can navigate through the different options that are given to him/her on a website.
Cookie
Cookie refers to the data from a website that is kept in the computer’s memory via the web browser so that it can be used later on to access the website.
Impression
It is a statistics measuring the views of the advertising pop ups that are included on a particular website.
Hyperlink
A hyperlink refers to ‘a link from a hypertext file to another location or file; typically activated by clicking on a highlighted word or icon at a particular location on the screen’ (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=hyperlink)
Navigation
It refers to the process of browsing among websites on the internet. It can also refer to a single site only.
Pageview
A Pageview refers to ‘accessing or merely seeing a Web page as opposed to other methods that count many elements per page’. (www.wnd.com/mediakit/glossary.asp)
Session
The term session refers to the time someone spends on a website to view its contents. A session may consist of viewing several pages or a single one up to the time that the person decides to end his visit by exiting the website, stop using the internet or computer or inactivity lasting more than half an hour.
Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors)
It is a statistic that is used to provide an identity to a user that visits the website over a certain specific time period. Each visitor will have one of these during a certain time period.
URL
URL which stands for Uniform Resource Locator refers to the address for a website or any other item on the internet.
Visitor
A visitor refers to the user that enters and browses through a website. This is the term that identifies each website user from each other.
Visitor Session
It refers to the ‘interaction by a site visitor. The session ends when the visitor leaves the site’. (www.formicmedia.com/sem-glossary.htm)
Comparison shopping
It refers to the act of comparing different product or service according to their price and quality before purchasing the latter.
much from day to day?
Visits:
The term visit refers to when someone enters a website to view its contents. A visit may consist of viewing several pages or a single one. Within a visit, a person can opt to view a single page or multiple pages, however within a single visit; there must not be any 30 minute gap between different pages.
Page views:
A page view happens when someone visits a page which is found on a website. A page view can concern any page that is found on the website and can be accessed by clicking on a link and the page itself can have other links as part of its contents.
Pages/Visit:
This is the statistics that describes the number of pages that are being viewed for each visit.
Bounce rate:
The bounce rate refers to the proportion of users that exit the website to go to different ones rather than continue browsing the same one. It varies fairly because it is a statistic affected by each visit made on the website.
2) Now look at the traffic sources report. What are the three sources of traffic and where has most of the traffic come from?
The three sources of traffic as at 04.09.10 are as follows:
1) Search engine 42.51%
2) Direct traffic 39.27%
3) Referring sites 18.21%
The most popular source of traffic is search engine with 42.51%
3) What was the most popular web browser used to access the site?
The most popular web browser used to access the site is Internet explorer with 46.51%
4) How many countries did visitors to Foliospaces come from and what were the top four countries?
The visitors to folio space came from 55 countries and the top four countries are Australia, United States, United Kingdom and Phillipine.
5) Having clicked every possible link on my analytics, make a few comments on (a) What you can track, (b) What you can track over time and (c) What you can’t track.
a) The items that can be tracked can be subdivided into five categories namely statistics for visitors, traffic source, content, site search, event tracking and goals. The table below shows the statistics that can be tracked.
Visitors: Benchmarking, Map Overlay, New vs. Returning, Languages, Visitor Trending, Visitor Loyalty, Browser Capabilities, Network Properties
Traffic: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, Search Engines, All Traffic Sources, Keywords, AdWords
Content: Top Content,Content by Title, Content Drilldown,Top Landing Pages, Top Exit Pages, Site Overlay
Site search: Usage, Search Terms, Start Pages, Destination Pages, Categories, Trending
Event Tracking: Categories, Actions, Labels, Trending, Hostnames
Goals: Total Conversions, Conversion Rate, Goal Abandoned Funnels, Goal Value, Funnel Visualization
b) In relation to the statistics measuring the statistics over time, almost all of the above offer these facilities.
c) We cannot track the actual goal of the customers visiting the website and the demography of the users going on the website.
6) What do the following terms mean? These are just a few, you may like to add some more and perhaps include them on the Moodle glossary.
High bounce rate
This refers to a high proportion of people navigating away from the website without going to visit any additional pages on the website.
Key words
Key words are the words used on search engine that are helpful for accessing a website.
Average Page Depth
It is an analytics statistic which denotes how far internet users go in a certain website.
Click through rate
This refers to the statistic that shows the rate of users that have accessed the website by clicking through links from other website.
Click
A click refers to the act of using the mouse in order to follow a link that is found on a website. With a click, someone can navigate through the different options that are given to him/her on a website.
Cookie
Cookie refers to the data from a website that is kept in the computer’s memory via the web browser so that it can be used later on to access the website.
Impression
It is a statistics measuring the views of the advertising pop ups that are included on a particular website.
Hyperlink
A hyperlink refers to ‘a link from a hypertext file to another location or file; typically activated by clicking on a highlighted word or icon at a particular location on the screen’ (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=hyperlink)
Navigation
It refers to the process of browsing among websites on the internet. It can also refer to a single site only.
Pageview
A Pageview refers to ‘accessing or merely seeing a Web page as opposed to other methods that count many elements per page’. (www.wnd.com/mediakit/glossary.asp)
Session
The term session refers to the time someone spends on a website to view its contents. A session may consist of viewing several pages or a single one up to the time that the person decides to end his visit by exiting the website, stop using the internet or computer or inactivity lasting more than half an hour.
Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors)
It is a statistic that is used to provide an identity to a user that visits the website over a certain specific time period. Each visitor will have one of these during a certain time period.
URL
URL which stands for Uniform Resource Locator refers to the address for a website or any other item on the internet.
Visitor
A visitor refers to the user that enters and browses through a website. This is the term that identifies each website user from each other.
Visitor Session
It refers to the ‘interaction by a site visitor. The session ends when the visitor leaves the site’. (www.formicmedia.com/sem-glossary.htm)
Comparison shopping
It refers to the act of comparing different product or service according to their price and quality before purchasing the latter.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Digital design
1. In two paragraphs explain why a customer centric Web site design is so important, yet so difficult to accomplish
Business strive to get a customer centric website because such a website can be most beneficial to their turnover and hence profitability. A customer centric website is one that is aimed at fulfilling all the requirements that clients can have from such a site, whilst offering them the best possible navigation experience. It is widely believed that such a website is a key to promoting sales, profitability, and market value and even be the basis of becoming a popular trademark.
Despite all the potential benefits that such a type of website can provide, its setting up and its maintenance are big barriers to its existence. The main challenges that are derived from the website include the following:
There is a conflict of interest when a website has to offer the maximum amount of information while it should remain easy to navigate through.
Every client is a different individual and in order to cater for the needs of all of them, the website will need to be huge. Since this is not possible for it to remain customer centric, this concept is hard to materialize.
Such a website needs heavy maintenance due to the ever changing nature of business and demand from clients and potential clients. Thus in order to build such a type of web, the logistic support will have to be immense.
2. Define the term 'presence'. Write an additional paragraph that describes why firms that do business on the Web should be more concerned about presence than firms that operate in the physical world.
The term presence can be defined as ‘a theoretical concept describing the effect that people experience when they interact with a computer-mediated or computer-generated environment.’ (Sheridan
Sheridan, T. B. (1994). Further musings on the psychophysics of presence, 5, 241-246
3. Write three paragraphs to briefly describe the things that Real Estate Agents can best accomplish through (1) their web sites (2) Mass media advertising (3) Personal contact
In the real estate market, the products that are for sale are a basic necessity for everyone, which is housing. The real estate business is involved in two segments of the housing markets which are namely the sale of properties or their rental. This is a very active and busy industry due to the lucrative nature of the business which has led to a high level of competition. For this reason, real estate agents attempt to reach their customers by a maximum range of means possible and the internet is one way to do so.
With the use of websites, the real estate agents are able to advertise their products, update them and extend their reach to the customers’ house, office or even portable devices. Thus the opportunities that a website offers to real estate agents are diverse and if implemented properly, they can be very effective. The use of website can allow customers to get involved very actively by allowing them to book their own appointments and even view the location and it’s surrounding on maps for instance.
Mass media channels are other very good options that real estate agents can use to attract clients. Mass media channels include the radio, television and newspapers that can be use to show their products to the customers. By using these means, the real estate agents can portray the product like any other company would advertise its product. It must be noted however in today’s world, the only mass media channel commonly used by real estate agents are newspapers where they advertise substantially.
Another popular option available to real estate agents is the use of personal contact to reach potential clients. By this method, the real estate agent directly approaches the client and is able to get a first hand idea of what is required by the client. This approach is a very tedious one for the agents, however, due to the personal touch given to the service; this is a very common one. This is why many real estate businesses attempt to create appointments with clients and rely on the personal contact with them to sell their products. The direct approach is one that is deemed to have the most probability to convert into a sale.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)