Smart e-Commerce: e-Retailing, e-Business, e-Marketing Information

Twitter Partnership Finalized with Google, Bing

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:33:00 +0530

Popular micro blogging service website Twitter earlier this week announced that it had reached agreements with Microsoft and Google to integrate users' tweets into search results, creating a considerably changed situationfor search engine optimization (SEO).

The battling search giants will both Google and Microsoft Bing have access to Twitter's vast store of public data in real time, enabling the users to track trends with a high degree of accuracy. AFP reports that, under the terms of a recently signed deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will also gain access to the real-time data.

Microsoft has signed an additional deal that will give Bing and, presumably, Yahoo access to user status updates on Facebook. This will provide SEO professionals with an additional analysis tool to help them more carefully craft site content for improved search rankings.

Rumors about the Twitter deal had circulated for weeks, fed by sources inside that company who said that a deal was close. Experts say that effective SEO will have to become more responsive and more content-based in order to fully take advantage of the new opportunity.

UK Online Retail Sales Growth Slows Decreased in September, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:31:00 +0530

Online spending in Britain rose at its slowest annual pace in September, 2009 since records began in 2000, hit by promotions from store groups, warm weather and disruption to postal services.

The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail sales index showed online sales rose a lower-than-normal 1.9 percent month-on-month in September to 3.9 billion pounds ($6.4 billion) and were up 7.6 percent on the year. "The results for September show a slowdown in the growth of online spending but we view this as a temporary blip and expect growth rates to return to the 15 percent year on year trend we have seen over the last year," said Mike Petevinos, head of consulting for retail at Capgemini UK.

Growth in online sales of clothing, footwear and accessories slowed to an annual rate of 10 percent from a recent average of 20 percent due to a step in promotions from store groups and warm weather, which encouraged shoppers to leave their homes. "Postal strikes have also acted as a deterrent for online shoppers, and will continue to be a key concern for e-retailers in the lead up to Christmas," IMRG Capgemini said.

Workers at Britain's state-owned Royal mail postal service are planning a series of one-day strikes from October 22 in a long-running dispute over pay, jobs and modernization.

(Reporting by Mark Potter; editing by Elaine Hardcastle : Source: bnet.com)

5 Important Steps to Design a Proper Contact Form

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:37:00 +0530

A contact form is a seemingly simple feature that most websites mess up. While a broken or poorly designed contact form may not be the end-all problem with a website, there’s no reason that it shouldn’t work correctly.

What a contact for must contain:

1. Name, email, (optional: phone), and message fields

2. Shouldn’t Contain… A ridiculous captcha verification script

3. Confirmation / feedback that the form was properly submitted

4. An email response that the form was successfully received

5. Finally… A response from someone that read the form (If necessary)

1.) Name, email, and message fields:

This is the one part that is rarely messed up, but often far overdone. A phone field is often useful but you will rarely need an address or any anything more personal than a person’s name, email, phone, and whatever they want to tell you. This is not a application form, it is a contact form! You shouldn’t be trying to qualify your customer in some way with a contact form.

The more fields a customer has to fill out, the less likely they will use your contact form, and the more likely they will call you for something that can be handled over email.

2.) Shouldn’t Contain… A ridiculous captcha verification script!:

Captcha scripts can help reduce email spam from bots and automated programs designed to spam you. They also make it a complete pain to get through. Captcha itself is virtually impossible to get through at this point.

Use alternatives that are actually readable or ones that make a user solve a simple math problem to proceed, or use nothing if spam isn’t a huge problem.

USE THIS:

NOT THIS:

Requiring anyone to decipher an unreadable image of text is not a proactive customer service approach and will undoubtedly end with frustrated and confused customers.

3.) Confirmation / feedback that the form was properly submitted:

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT simply dump your customer into another page or refresh the form itself without a clear message that the form was submitted. This is a sure way to get multiple emails from your customer, each successive one showing more frustration than its predecessor.

Ideally, you should have a dedicated thank you, or confirmation page that the user is redirected to once the form is submitted. This is a better method than displaying an in-line message on the same page because there is no question that the form was properly submitted. This is one area where Web 2.0 is killing usability, because on-page changes are very often hard to detect and are not what a user is expecting.

It’s also a good idea to include links to informational pages, FAQ’s, and other areas of your website that could answer a question that a customer might have.

4.) An email response that the form was successfully received:

More than half the sites that I ever have contacted do not provide immediate email response when using their contact form.

You should always provide an immediate confirmation email that the message has been received. This will reiterate the response in the previous step, and makes your business look much more professional. Even a generic message is much better than no message. The message is a great time to provide alternate / emergency contact information in case they really need to get a hold of you, or provide links to FAQ and informational pages about your services or website.

You can setup a automated email response on just about any web server. It’s free and takes no human interaction to send an automated response email. There’s simply no reason not to send one.

5.) Finally… A response from someone that read the form (If necessary):

I put this on here because a huge number of customer inquiries are never responded to. Actually get back to your customer, by email, phone or whatever method you can. You don’t need to reply to spam, but you’re probably in business because you have customers.Providing unmatched response times is one of the best ways to set yourself apart from your competitors. Seriously, shoot for five or ten minutes during normal working hours.

Only when you customers reply with “wow that was fast”, is your response time prefect!

Contact forms are a cornerstone of online customer service and there’s absolutely no reason to mess them up. Stick with these steps and you can’t go wrong.

Source: ecommerce-blog.org

Benefits of e-Retailing

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:35:00 +0530

To the Customer

· Convenience

· Better information

· Competitive pricing

· Customization

· Shopping anywhere, anytime

To the Business

· Global reach

· Better customer service

· Low capital cost

· Mass customization

· Targeted marketing

· More value added services

· New forms of specialized stores and niche marketing

Google Strength in India

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Mon, 5 Oct 2009 18:26:00 +0530

The Google brand has extended to success across most of the categories in which it plays in India. In some categories, Google is the only player of consequence, commanding considerably high market shares. Google Sites accounted for 88.4 % of all searches conducted, and had commanding share of time spent in social networking with Orkut (68.2 %), maps with Google Maps (63.9 %), multimedia with YouTube (82.8 %) in India. It also commanded slightly less than half of all time spent in the blogs category with Blogger (47.6 %) and email with Gmail (46.8 %).

Top Ten Global Internet Markets by Google Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Fri, 2 Oct 2009 03:24:00 +0530

comScore a leader in measuring the digital world today released a study focusing on Google’s strong relative position in the emerging Internet market of India. Google Sites ranked as the most visited Internet property worldwide with 854 million unique visitors age 15 and older in July, an increase of 18-percent during the past year.

Google usage is more prevalent in certain global markets than others. Two particular markets stand apart from the rest in terms of their dependence on Google: Brazil and India. In July, 29.8 percent of total time spent online in Brazil was spent on Google Sites, with India only slightly lower at 28.9 percent. The next highest global market was Ireland at 15.9 percent. Notably, despite Google’s high relative share of time spent in Brazil, it slightly trailed Microsoft Sites’ 30.1 percent share of time spent in the market.

Invitation for Social Media Webinar at Embitel

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:23:00 +0530

After an overwhelming response of our webinars on Retail e-Commerce Series, Embitel is conducting its 4^th Webinar on: “How to Succeed in Business using Social Media?”

Webinar Agenda:

Ø What the heck is Social Media?

Ø Benefits of Social Media

Ø How it drives business growth?

Ø Latest trends in Social Media

Ø Do’s & Don’ts

Ø Case Study

Reasons to attend this Webinar:

Because 2 /3rd of the global internet population visit social networks.
Because visiting social networks is now the 4th most popular online activity- ahead of personal mail.
Because time spent on social networks is growing at 3 times the overall internet rate, accounting for approx 10% of all internet time.

Generate more Leads, Customers, Fans, Followers and Business, Know how from this Webinar with Mr. Daniel Reborn.

Henceforth, social media is indispensible for your business in this increasingly consumer-driven economy and one cannot afford to stay out of it.

Speaker: Mr. Daniel Rebhorn

- Industry expert with more than 14 years of experience in retail e-Commerce and e-Marketing

- Founder, dmc GmbH Germany and Chairman, Embitel India

When: 8^th Oct’09

Time: 4:00pm to 5:00pm Indian Time

Venue: Just stay in front of your PC

Cost: Complementary (Free)

Click here for Quick RegistrationOR https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/554503555

Note: After registration you will get a thank you mail with a link, which need to be clicked during the time of webinar. We look forward to your participation. Please feel free to contact us at e.seminar@embitel.com or call us at +91-80-41694213.

Minimum system requirement: PC with internet connection and Headphone.

Social Media Marketing and its Advantages to your Business

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:21:00 +0530

Social Media Marketing: Social media marketing is the procedure of promoting your site or business through social media channels. Social Media Marketing is an influential approach that will get you links, awareness and huge amounts of traffic.

There is no other low cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.

Advantages with Social Media Marketing

In Present Scenario Social Media Marketing is becoming a major tool for Search Engine Optimization.

Primary and Secondary Traffic: Though the primary traffic, which comes directly from the social media websites ,may not be so useful, the secondary traffic ,which is referral traffic from websites which link to and send you visitors after they come across your content through the social sites, are very targeted and useful for your websites.

High Quality Links: When a website receives a large number of natural, permanent links from trusted domains, it develops ability. Search engines trust it. It will help enormously in Search engine ranking as well. In a sense, you are obtaining these quality links through borrowed trust.

Social Media Marketing – How it will helpful to your business?

Natural: Not only do you get natural links without any visible pattern, your website is exposed to large groups of people in an impulsive fashion. This differs from paid advertising which has overt commercial overtones.

Defensible: Once successfully mastered, social communities can be a great source of web traffic on top of any traffic you are already receiving from search engines. While you can’t easily increase your search engine traffic, social media traffic can be very easily controlled through strategic marketing.

Low-cost/High returns: If the social media marketing is done by yourself, costs are limited to only time and possibly the expenses involved in hiring an expert. It would take you thousands of dollars to buy many links; social media has the ability to give you that for free.

Complement Other Efforts: Social media optimization and marketing is usually community specific. It doesn’t interfere with any other methods of getting traffic to your website. It can and will fit perfectly with an advertising campaign targeting other websites or search engines.

Social Networking Usage in Australia

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:18:00 +0530

In August, 2009 ComScore has released a study on social network usage in Australia. ComScore found that more than 70% of internet users visited social networking websites as compare to 2008 year only 29% of total internet users visited social networking websites.Facebook is most visited social networking websites followed byMySpace, Windows Live, Bebo and Twitter.

Nearly 9 million Australians visited a social networking site in June, 2009, making it one of the most popular content categories on the Web. Facebook led as the most visited social networking intention with more than 6 million visitors and growing 95 percent from the previous year. MySpace Sites ranked second with 3.5 million visitors, up 5 percent, followed by Windows Live Profile with nearly 2 million visitors.Twitter witnessed the most substantial growth, surging to 8, 00,000 visitors in June, 2009, up from just 13,000 visitors in 2008. Orkut also achieved significant growth reaching 2, 52,000 visitors, up 607 percent.

Install Google Analytics on Your Website to Track the Traffic Results

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Fri, 4 Sep 2009 15:09:00 +0530

What are the Advantages with Google Analytics?

Now that you have a website or a blog wouldn’t it be nice to know where visitors come from, what pages on your site are viewed most often and which ones aren’t? Would you like to be able to measure results before making changes?

Having that information and much more is as simple as installing a small snippet of script on your website or blog and best of all there is no charge for this service. Hard to believe but it is true. Our good friends at Google have, for sometime now, made this available to all website owners. They provide the code, you install it on your website or blog and within 24 to 48 hours data collected about the traffic on your site is available in various reports in your Google Analytic account. This information will provide you with a good starting point to understanding how your content is performing and where changes are needed.

Installing Google Analytics to Your Blog

Type Google Analytics in your search bar. Once there, if you have a Gmail account you may simply use it to sign up. Otherwise in the center of the page use the ‘Sign up now’ link. Create your account.
After creating your account Google sends you an email to verify your address. Go to your email, click on the link provided in the email you just received from Google and you will be taken to their webpage. On the right hand side of the page select Analytics.
You will be asked for your website URL. They have ‘http:’ already selected so just type in www.yourdomainname.com (or .net or .info – whatever is correct for your address). Your Account Name should automatically become www.yourdomainname.com. Select the Country/Territory and the Time Zone and click Continue.
On the next page you will be asked for your Name, Phone and Country then click Continue.
Read through the Terms of Service and if you agree select Yesand then click on Create New Account.
You now arrive at the page with the tracking code and are given a choice of installing the Legacy Tracking Code (urchin.js) or the New Tracking Code (ga.js). The choice is yours but I would opt for the New Tracking Code.
Without closing the Google Tracking Code page, open a new browser window or tab and log in to your blog. Navigate to Presentation à Theme Editor. Once at your Theme Editor select ‘Footer’ from the list of Theme files on the right hand side. When selected the code for the ‘Footer’ now becomes visible in the editor. Scroll down through the code and look for the closing tag.
Copy the tracking code from the Google Analytic page and paste it right above the tag, just as I have in the above illustration. Notice that the Analytic code starts with the tag tag.
Look at the code closely to make sure you copied and pasted all of it. When done, select Update File, log out of your blog and close the window or tab. (Reminder: If you don’t click on Update File your code will not be saved.) The installation is finished but we need to complete the process and let Google know.
Go back to the Google Analytics window and selectContinue. You will be taken to the dashboard of your Google Analytics Account. Notice the Check Status link, click on the button and you will return to the Tracking code page where you will see the status. It should give your Profile Name, Website URL and indicate that it is ‘Waiting for Data and that Analytics has been successfully installed and data is being gathered now’. At the bottom of this page ‘clicks’ on Finish to complete your installation. Congratulations! You have successfully installed Google Analytics. You are now taken to the dashboard where you can learn more about the reports that will soon be generated for you.

Installing Google Analytics a Static Website

If you have a static website rather than a blog the process is very similar but the Analytic code needs to be placed on each page you want tracked.

Follow the instructions above for signing up for your Google Analytics Account. Then open your website files in your favorite text editor. Copy and paste the Tracking code on each page you want tracked. Insert the code just above the tag.
After you have finished inserting the code, upload the files to your server via your favorite FTP program and you are set.
Complete the process of checking the status. Follow through the directions above and finish your installation.

Resources:

Google Analytics by Mary E. Tyler and Jerri L. Ledford
Web Analytics an Hour A Day by Avinash Kaushik

Yahoo Search Marketing – Benefits of Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:23:00 +0530

Yahoo Search Marketing

By using the Yahoo Search Marketing account, we can advertise online, where more and more customers are going every day to learn about, shop for and buy products and services. Signing up for an account allows us to advertise our business in search results on Yahoo! and other popular sites in the Yahoo! distribution network.

Even if our business is a traditional brick-and-mortar store and we don’t sell anything online, we can still use our advertising distribution tactics, Sponsored Search and Content Match to attract potential customers to our business. Yahoo Search Marketing can be beneficial to most businesses, whether we are selling online products, promoting business services or providing media and information on our website.

Our Ads Can Display in Search Results with Sponsored Search

When we sign up for a Yahoo Search Marketing account, we can use Sponsored Search to create ads containing keywords or phrases related to our business that we think users might enter when searching on the Internet. When there is a match between user’s entry and our business-related keywords, our ads can display in search results. The user can then click on our ad and be transferred to your website to learn more about our products/services and complete a transaction. We pay only when our ad is clicked.

Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say we own a company selling the electronic products and our company’s website is www.electronics-planet.com:

We create an ad using the keyword “digital cameras.” The ad contains a link to a page within our website related to digital cameras.
Our ad can display in search results when someone types the term, “digital cameras,” or we can choose to match the term “digital cameras” to similar terms that a user may enter, such as “discount digital camera” or “digital photo.”
Potential customers who click on our ads will be transferred to our website www.electronics-planet.com.

Benefits of Sponsored Search

With Sponsored Search, We can:

Put our business on the Yahoo distribution network and the most popular destinations on the Web.
Get targeted leads for our business.
Target our ads so that they appeal to potential customers who are searching for what we offer.
Utilize numerous account tools that can help us to manage our advertising campaigns.
Utilize account features to tailor our ad copy to user search terms with our Insert Keyword and Match Type features.
Set spending limits for our advertising and marketing campaigns, as well as set spending limits and pay only when our ad is clicked.

Germany is the World Leader in B2C e-Commerce Sales in the World

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:21:00 +0530

In 2008 German B2C e-commerce sales calculated as € 75 billion, on behalf of a market share of 31 percent in Western Europe. On a global scale, this amount stands for approximately 10% of all B2C online sales.

This makes Germany the world leader in per-capita B2C turnover with € 913, accordingly higher than in the United States (€ 906), UK (€ 737) & Japan (€ 681). According to estimates by TNS Infratest, German online sales will achieve € 145 billion in 2010.

Important Tips about Social Bookmarking

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:18:00 +0530

Social Bookmarking Definition

Social bookmarking is used in the same way that we would bookmark our favorite website; instead users store a catalog of bookmarks via a Social Bookmarking service. Social bookmarking allows other individuals with compatible interests to hook up browse and comment on bookmarks creating a basic but influential display place.

Important Tips for Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking generates traffic from users actively looking for a particular product, service or a solution. The addition of several key techniques ensures that our website gains the optimize amount of visits, reinforcing our business brand and eventually spawn new sales.

Top 5 tips in optimizing social bookmarking to generate more traffic to our web site

A well structured marketing strategy to promote our site and the goods or services what we are looking to sell. Bookmarking links to our website will drive more traffic to our site from our objective market.
Creating and maintaining interest is extremely important in attracting users to our site. We need to make the right connection with our target demographic in order to continue the interest. This means generating an imaginary profile of our target customer base and including information and features that would request to them.
SEO techniques, such as using highly searched key words, are crucial in allowing search engines to acknowledge our links when it hunts for specific phrases.
Combine SEO techniques with well written web copy. It can make a spectacular difference in generating traffic to our web site.
The bookmarking service which we can choose ultimately increases the odds of our web site being sighted. Links to and from popular bookmarking sites and the use of highly resourceful bookmarking tools can make a spectacular different in our online traffic.

Web 2.0 Technologies for Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:16:00 +0530

"Web 2.0" refers to the second generation of web development and web design that facilitates information sharing, interoperability, user centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. The beginning of Web 2.0 leads to the development and growth of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications.

Web 2.0 Services and Applications:

Blog Marketing
Wiki Creation
Social Bookmarking and Tagging
Social Networking Creation
Video / Multimedia Sharing
Audio Blogging and Podcasting
RSS Feeds and Syndication
Mashup Creation
Folksonomy / Collaborative Tagging

Growth of Retail e-Commerce in India & World Wide

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:14:00 +0530

Growth of Retail ECommerce Worldwide

More than 85 percent of the worldwide respondents to a poll had purchased something online. Growing middle class is spurring online commerce in China and India. The growth of retail e-commerce since 2006 and projected till 2010 is provided below:

2006 : $335 billion
2007 : $419 billion
2008 : $517 billion
2009 : $608 billion
2010 : $711 billion

Growth of Retail ECommerce in India

India’s share of online commerce is projected to grow from 1.3 percent of Asia-Pacific in 2006 to 3.3 percent by 2011. The projected value of the market over the years and projected for the upcoming years are:

2006 : $800 million
2007 : $1.2 billion
2008 : $1.9 billion
2009 : $2.8 billion
2010 : $4.1 billion
2011 : $5.6 billion

Source: techcrunchies.com

BING Search Engine Optimization Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:13:00 +0530

Bing is gaining popularity and within a short period of time this search engine has surpassed Yahoo and almost giving tough competition to Google.

There are more users logging into Bing every single day. Some of the cool things about Bing is that it is QUICK and has a better USER INTERFACE.

However, there is a significant different in the way Google and Bing rank websites. If you are planning to optimize your website for Bing then you need to consider these following tips.

1. Domain Age – Bing gives preference to your domain’s age. Google on the other also gives preference to domains which are old.

2.On-Page Optimization/Off-Page Optimization – Google gives more preference to Off-Page optimization rather than on-page optimization. Bing on the other hand gives more preference to On-Page SEO optimization rather than Off-page optimization

3.Text Density – Bing gives preference to keyword density of your content. If you are targeting a particular keyword and your keyword density for that keyword is abysmally low then you wont be able to rank too high on Bing.

4.TITLE is more important – Although Google does gives preference to keywords in TITLE, Bing entirely focuses on TITLE of any given webpage to decide whether it should be ranking at page 1 or Page 8. Therefore make sure to add your important keywords in the TITLE. Also you should abstain from artificial keyword stuffing. Several keywords are semantically considered as same. Take for example, Search engine optimization company, and SEO marketing company are semantically connected with each other. If you are ranking high for one combination, you will also rank for other combination.

Source: webhostingtalk.com

Facebook Fan Page Information

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Thu, 6 Aug 2009 23:11:00 +0530

Facebook Fan Pages are a great option for brands – including e-commerce sites – that plan on posting information at least once a week.

Facebook Fan Page Advantages:

Looks polished; closely resembles an individual profile page
Can include videos, photos, links, events, etc.
Can be fed into “fans’” update stream similar to an individual profile update
Can be given a customized url similar to an individual profile
Hides the name and address of the page creator
Offers options to add applications such as a Twitter feed
Includes a “wall” similar to individual profiles that people can post comments on
Can be paired with a Facebook Fan Page Widget on your site

Facebook Fan Page Disadvantages:

More difficult to manage conversations between fans
Conversations are on display for the public to see
Unable to convert Facebook Groups to Fan Pages if you’ve already got a Group page set up
Until you have an adequate number of fans, you’ll be posting a lot
A dismal Fan Page linked to your site can hurt your inbound links in SEO

Source: Zen Cart

Black Hat SEO Vs White Hat SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:07:00 +0530

When we are selecting an SEO expert agency, it is important to review how they balance ethical SEO with the need to maximize search rankings, mainly for competitive keyphrases, through exploiting considerate of how the search engine ranks position.

Black hat SEO is about getting higher search rankings in an unethical manner. Black Hat SEO involves in questionable and sometimes illegal search engine techniques. Black hat SEO is about spamming. Black hat SEO focuses on earning money without even trying to provide any value to the visitors. Black hat SEO is primarily about cheating/manipulating the search engines with non ethical search engine techniques. It is also about misrepresenting content to search engines.

White Hat SEO refers to the usage of SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and strategies. White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, backlinking, link building to improve link popularity, and writing content for human readers. White hat SEO is also called as Ethical SEO in SEO terminology.

Advantages with WHITE HAT SEO

White hat SEO work refers to legitimate and proper way of increasing traffic
White hat SEO work has been proved very effective in long run
White hat SEO work always focuses upon quality of web content
White hat SEO work includes regular tracking of visitors and always keeps them prepared for any sorts of challenging task
Most popular white hat SEO techniques are original & relevant content creation, article submission, director submission, request site feedback, create back links, prepare business blogs, create site mappings, RSS feed, forum contribution and so on.

e-Commerce Industry Opposes New Indian Online Security Rules

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:39:00 +0530

A decision by India's central bank to mandate another level of authentication for card use for online transactions will deter such transactions in the country, according to an association of India's e-commerce industry. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) told banks in February that it would require that online credit and debit card transactions have an additional level of authentication using information that is not visible on the card. The new rules come into force on Aug. 1.

To make a transaction, a user is currently required to enter his name, card number, card expiry date and card verification value (CVV), the three digits printed on the signature strip on the back of the card. Banks are also required to have a system of online alerts to the card holder for online card transactions for a value of 5,000 Indian rupees (US$102) or above, the RBI said.

The addition of a new security password will add a new layer of complexity for people wanting to do business online, Mehul Gupta, associate vice president of IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India) said on Wednesday. Card holders have not been informed by their banks about the requirement for another level of authentication, which will lead to fewer transactions getting completed online once the new rules come into force, Gupta said.

Customers are already finding it difficult to complete transactions, because of the poor Internet connectivity in India, and the inadequate infrastructure of payment gateways, IAMAI said in a paper. Additional authentication requirements will result in a high failure rate of transactions, and increase customer inconvenience, IAMAI added.

Online card fraud accounts for only 0.16 percent of the country's 92 billion rupees e-commerce industry in India, according to IAMAI estimates. Most of that fraud is through cards that were not issued in India, and which are not covered under the new rules, Gupta said.

IAMAI has asked the RBI to delay implementation of its order, to give time to merchants and banks to improve their capabilities to handle the new authentication mechanism, and also to give customers sufficient time to get acquainted with it.

"Online card fraud, given its current miniscule scale, should ideally be seen as a business risk that merchants are free to take or not to take," IAMAI said. In the e-commerce environment in India, the risk arising from non-payment or fraud is borne by the merchant site and not the banks or the card companies, it added.

Article Source: www.networkworld.com

Top Social Networking Websites in India

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:36:00 +0530

E-Commerce Industry in India

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Sun, 5 Jul 2009 00:40:00 +0530

E-commerce industry has touched 9210 crore, online classifieds: 820 crores, online travel: 7000 crores (30% jump from Rs 7,080 crore in ’07) as per the survey conducted by the IAMAI and IMRB

Online Travel Industry: growth rate of 30% to Rs 7,000 crore by end FY08 (from 5500 crores in ‘07)
Online Classifieds: reached Rs 820 crore by end FY08
Online retailing/auction (eTailing): Rs 1,105 crore industries by end FY08 (from Rs 850 crore in FY07.
Digital downloads (i.e. downloading from Internet to mobiles using wap phones or web) and paid content (research/exclusive videos/articles etc) for the rest of 285 crores.

Source: IAMAI and IMRB Analysis Report

The major triggers of e-commerce in India were:

Saves time and efforts
Convenience of shopping at home
Wide variety / range of products are available
Good discounts / lower prices
Get detailed information of the product
You can compare various models / brands

Some of the major barriers at present were:

Not sure of product quality
Cannot bargain/Negotiate
Not sure of security of transactions / Credit card misuse
Need to touch and feel the product
Significant discounts are not there
Have to wait for delivery

Article Source: www.pluggd.in

Latest SEO Trends in e-Business

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Wed, 1 Jul 2009 09:34:00 +0530

Now a day’s SEO is compulsory for each and every business website. People were following new techniques and ideas to increase their sales and online rankings in search engines like google, yahoo, Rediff, sify and MSN.

Here I am including some of the latest trends in SEO which will give some good rankings in the search engines:

Latest trends in SEO

Professional SEO Copywriting
Image Optimization
Content Optimization
Flash Optimization
Geographic optimization
Blogging & Posting lot of Content
Social bookmarking
Article Marketing
Getting Inbound links with targeted Keywords
Video Optimization & Marketing
Micro blogging like Twitter

Important Tips to e-Retailers Who is Looking to Increase the Online Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:32:00 +0530

Product Optimization: Make sure your product copy is optimized, which Includes links to brochures, technical descriptions and buying guides etc.

Product Images/Gallery: unfortunate images do not motivate assurance so don’t use them. Use multiple images/views and reflect on the use of video to help sell the product.

User Product Reviews/Comments: Research shows that these work, increasing conversions by as much as 20%, make sure you use customer feedback to help sell your products.

Cross Sell: Take every opportunity to up sell and cross-sell by linking associated products, accessories/add-ons, ‘people, who bought this, also bought that’ and promotional bundles.

Delivery Charges and Profits: Don’t make customers wait until the checkout to find out the release charge. Make sure that these are crystal clear and without difficulty located.

Contact Information: Make it easy for customers to get in touch and always include a phone number and other contact details on contact page or any of other pages. This can be the variation between making and losing the sale.

Registration: In order to reduce shopping cart rejection, we should have procedure to checkout without registration option.

Customer Assurance: Ensure that you display your secure SSL server certifications for customer data and payment processing.

Advertising: Evaluation your ecommerce website to make sure it is optimized for purchaser conscription via the search engines. Use email marketing to build customer loyalty and engage in social media marketing via blogs, forums and networks.

Link Building Tips, Strategies & Advantages

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:30:00 +0530

Link Building Program is the acquisition of incoming links to the website from other relevant web sites and directories. Link Building is an important strategy to help improve search engine positions as part of a search engine optimization campaign.

Link Building Tips

Try to link to your most relevant page when getting links
Create the Anchor text with relevant keywords
Don’t be afraid to link out to relevant high quality resources
Use deep linking strategies i.e. try to get the links with your inner page URL’s

Link Building Strategies

Submit website to general directories like DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory and Business.com
Submit your site to relevant niche directories
If you have a local site submit to relevant local sites
Join trade organizations
Get links from industry hub sites
Submit your website Content in Press Releases
Submit Article Directories
Exchange the links with relevant theme based websites

Link Building Advantages

Increasing Link Popularity
Driving Relevant Traffic
Brand Building
Improves website visibility in the search engines
Website will get a higher ranking on search engines
Get highly targeted visitors to your web site
Google Page rank will increase
Receive return visitors

Latent Semantic Indexing and Strategies

noreply@blogger.com (Smart E-Commerce) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:25:00 +0530

Latent Semantic Indexing

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a way for search engines to view and rank web site pages for natural rankings. In behind the scenes the LSI algorithms analyze pages not only for keywords, but also for synonyms and other related words which might be expected to be present on the web page of the site.

How LSI was introduced into Online Marketing

Google Search engine bought a company called Applied Semantics whose software technology was used to extract and organize information from websites in a manner similar to the way that humans might act in the year 2003. The purpose was to help Google match advertisers of Adsense ads with the appropriate web pages where the ads would be shown.

Initially Google Adsense matched keywords on the pages to keywords in the ads and a website owner earned money for every click he received from an ad shown on his site. However, the problem soon arose that millions of pages were being generated simply to contain relevant long-tailed keyword phrases to capture traffic from Google and the resulting profitable clicks on the ads. Content on these machine-generated pages was virtually non-existent and it was a frustrating experience for the person doing a search to only find spam. The problem for Google at this time was that they could not differentiate between these generated pages and the sites which actually contained valuable content.

More techniques, such as stuffing a page with keywords and using reciprocal linking strategies to increase search engine rankings, appeared on the scene which compounded the problem. However, reciprocal linking was soon discounted by Google and partially by Yahoo and MSN when one-way inbound links became more important in rankings than before.

Present SEO strategies in Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

Develop themed sites on a broad scale rather than centering around one keyword.
Instead of keyword padding struggle for more naturally worded and written pages.
While you are adding the keywords try to include synonyms, related words, plurals, and a variety of tenses whenever probable right through your site.
When establishing inbound links be sure that they do not all go to the same keyword; have inbound links go to a number of different keywords and applicable terms within your site.
Do not bother seeking reciprocal links; inbound links are the key to LSI.