Marketing/Ecommerce Research

Murdoch may ban Googlebot

Michael Bloch — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:49:23 +0000

Media baron Rupert Murdoch doesn’t seem to like Google. That may be somewhat of an understatement. Earlier this year Mr. Murdoch accused Google of stealing content it doesn’t own and urged media outlets to fight back. “Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights? Thanks, but no thanks.” Rupert plans to have people pay for [...]

Socially conscious outsourcing

Michael Bloch — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:44:51 +0000

Outsourcing is very prevalent among online businesses and there’s now a way to be a bit more socially conscious in the way we go about it. Sweat shops are by no means confined to the physical world of goods production. Web workers, be they programmers or marketing help chasing inbound links, are often paid miserable wages. [...]

Ecommerce sales go backwards

Michael Bloch — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:33:47 +0000

Retail ecommerce sales figures are gloomy, but the light at the end of the tunnel may not be an oncoming train. comScore, Inc. recently released its Q3 2009 retail ecommerce sales estimates - U.S. online retail spending came to $29.6 billion, *down* 2 percent versus year ago. Q3 2009 is the first time on record according [...]

Ecommerce conversion barrier survey

Michael Bloch — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:26:28 +0000

I often write on various surveys about shopping cart abandonment, but it’s often overlooked that not every person browsing our sites and using our shopping carts is at the point of being ready to purchase. iPerceptions’ “Retail/E-Commerce Industry Report Q2 2009″ found that well over a third of visitors to the sites they surveyed are in [...]

Google page preview

Michael Bloch — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:40:47 +0000

An interesting new feature from Google is called “page preview” As you may have guessed, it provides a thumbnail shot of a web site next to the relevant listing. The accompanying snippet is quite a bit longer too:

Ad buying scams

Michael Bloch — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:44:14 +0000

Phoney ad buyers are causing havoc around the web by getting unwitting publishers to help them spread malware. This is an important issue for all site owners who make their money from ad revenue to be aware of. The scam usually operates in this way: A party claiming to be an ad executive or marketer approaches a [...]

Click fraud and ROI

Michael Bloch — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:28:30 +0000

A recent report says that click fraud is down on the same quarter last year. It’s good news, but something that hasn’t changed…. .. click fraud is still way too high and many merchants aren’t aware of the impact on their bottom line. Click Forensics last week released what it calls “advertising audience quality” figures for the [...]

eBay’s Top Rated Seller program

Michael Bloch — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:45:30 +0000

In case you missed the rollout (as I did) - in a strategy to woo shoppers back to eBay, the company changed qualification criteria on discounts for US merchants at the beginning of this month. Sellers will now need to work even harder to avoid low feedback scores; but will reap the rewards in [...]

Virtual goods - money for nothing

Michael Bloch — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:43:42 +0000

The virtual goods industry is set to become a $1 billion business this year in the USA, and is expected to grow 60% in 2010. The information comes from Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market, 2009 - 2010, a new research report that focused on the size and future of the virtual goods [...]

15 years of banner ads

Michael Bloch — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:25:08 +0000

It was October 27, 1994 when banner ads first made their appearance. It’s hard to believe there was a time when they weren’t around. It seems the first banner appeared on Hotwired.com and the site was also the first commercial web magazine to attract high profile corporate sponsorships dollars on the web. Here’s how the banner looked [...]

Treading carefully

Michael Bloch — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:02:21 +0000

User generated content, be it in the form of comments, forum posts, profiles, article contributions or otherwise, can really enrich a site.. and cause their share of headaches too. In one project I worked on, I had occasion to gently tap a community member on the shoulder who had decided to do his own thing, [...]

Toilet roll style sales page record

Michael Bloch — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:14:30 +0000

I believe I’ve just seen the longest “toilet roll” style sales letter page ever. From the top of the sales page to the first call to action was an incredible 37 screens long. I’ve written on the topic of (what I call) toilet roll sales letter pages before and detailed the formula - the concept can [...]

2009 holiday online shopping survey

Michael Bloch — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:56:37 +0000

With the silly.. er.. holiday shopping season approaching, merchants increasingly turn their thoughts to grabbing a slice of the action. A recent survey by MarketLive polled more than 1,000 consumers about their shopping habits for the 09 holiday season. Among the key findings: - 55 percent of surveyed shoppers plan to do their holiday shopping online this [...]

The half million dollar banner ad

Michael Bloch — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:56:46 +0000

Imagine you owned Twitter. How much would someone have to offer you to have a banner ad for their business displayed across the Twitter network for just 24 hours? Does half a million bucks sit ok with you? According to Marketing Vox, marketing company uSocial.net recently offered Twitter $500,000 to place a banner ad on the [...]

Monetizing your Twitter stream

Michael Bloch — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:13:10 +0000

Want to generate some cash from your Twitter account? This might be a goer- a new ad network for Twitter publishers that has already attracted some big names. I’m not overly into Twitter, although I use it for a couple of projects a couple of minutes a day and it does send quite a few visitors. [...]

The most expensive keywords

Michael Bloch — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:34:54 +0000

A recent report from AdGooroo highlights some of the most expensive (or highest paying - depends on which end you’re working) keywords around. If you’re an AdSense publisher with a high ranking site on any of these terms, good luck to you! If you’re an Adwords advertiser targeting these terms, all I can say is [...]

The death of PageRank?

Michael Bloch — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:26:13 +0000

The PageRank feature in Google Webmaster tools was recently removed. It seems that Google wants webmasters focusing more on other issues rather than being fixated on PageRank scores. Whether it will be removed from the Google toolbar and when is unknown. Nowadays Google is only updating the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a [...]

Who are you?

Michael Bloch — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:05:33 +0000

I really want to know. (Apologies to Pete Townshend.) Actually, the thing is I may not really, really want to know. I may not bother to open an email with a vague “from” and/or subject line; or accept a invitation from someone I don’t recognize. Today I received an invitation via LinkedIn from someone whose name doesn’t [...]

Search engine wars - October update

Michael Bloch — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:22:17 +0000

Is the honeymoon over for Bing? I feel it’s a little early to be making those sorts of predictions - although some already are - but Bing has lost some market share this month after a promising upwards trend in previous months. According to Hitwise, after having 9.48% of U.S. market share in August, Bing dropped [...]

Herd behavior and scarcity

Michael Bloch — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:26:58 +0000

Most of us like to think we’re individuals and not sheep, but the herd mentality runs deep, often operating on a subconscious level. Most of us who have worked an online business probably already know this, but a recent study has confirmed people are inclined to purchase a product if they are told that another item [...]

M-commerce has (finally) arrived

Michael Bloch — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:39:43 +0000

It seems like I’ve been reading about M-Commerce (ecommerce via mobile phone) being the Next Big Thing for years and the prediction has been repeated for so long, I had pretty much tuned out. But it looks like Amazon have made it a reality for the masses. Amazon has launched their Mobile Payments Service (AMPS), a [...]

Affiliate marketing - patience, persistence

Michael Bloch — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:33:03 +0000

I’ve been affiliate marketing for getting on close to a decade now and aside from a little luck; patience and persistence seems to have paid off for me more times than not. Have you ever promoted a product that should have seen commissions roll in, but nothing has eventuated? It happens to all of us. Often, [...]

Google tweaking site search listings

Michael Bloch — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:16:08 +0000

Usually when you run a search on certain keywords followed by a domain name (I don’t mean a site:www type search), Google spits back a page or two and then a “Show more results from www.whatever” link. A search I ran tonight shows something completely different. Here’s the result: .. so an additional 3 listings - and [...]

Growth for growth’s sake

Michael Bloch — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:02:06 +0000

You want to grow your online business? How much do you want to grow it? What’s your goal? Everyone gets so stuck on growth these days and in a small online business, it can be a real trap. You don’t *have* to grow forever and a day. Don’t let the multi-nationals be your role models if [...]

Keeping in touch boosts sales

Michael Bloch — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:41:21 +0000

Early last year I purchased a few antennas from a company and was really pleased with the products and service. I now need to buy some more related equipment, but the problem is, I can’t remember who I bought the first lot off. I’ve searched for about half an hour trying to locate the site; but [...]

Content vs. community sites

Michael Bloch — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:29:41 +0000

Where does Joe/Joeline Surfer spend most of their time on the web - is it on content sites or around online communities? According to a survey by the Online Publishers Association (OPA), content sites still have the edge. According to the OPA, users continue to spend a majority of their time with content sites. Not only [...]

Official: Google on the keywords meta tag

Michael Bloch — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:03:44 +0000

Google put paid to another hot topic in terms of SEO recently - whether or not they use the keywords meta tag in ranking pages Last week, Google confirmed a long suspected yet still hotly debated issue - that it doesn’t give ranking preference to pages that abide by W3C standards. The newest revelation is, according to [...]

Abandoned shopping carts - or not?

Michael Bloch — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:22:18 +0000

A study by McAfee has found that shopping cart abandonment rates, which are often reported as being high across most categories, may be a little misleading. Some studies peg a figure of around 57% of all shopping cart sessions being abandoned. McAfee studied the behavior of 163 million shoppers and found that 65% of all shoppers [...]

Google rankings and W3C validation

Michael Bloch — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:08:18 +0000

Ah, finally! I’ve been having this argument with people since 2001 and now, the official word from Google on whether or not having the source code of your web pages validate according to W3C standards gives you an edge in rankings. In a nutshell - no it doesn’t.. and it never has. Heck, even Google’s own pages [...]

Twitter gearing up for ads

Michael Bloch — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:01:05 +0000

Twitter’s recent TOS update leaves the door well and truly open for the service to start delivering advertising. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, Inc. made the announcement about the TOS update yesterday. The revised terms state that Twitter may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the content or information under a Twitter profile; i.e., contextual advertising. [...]