University of Virginia 1 Business Topics and E-commerce Some on-line resources on topics… Business...

University of Virginia1

Business Topicsand E-commerce

• Some on-line resources on topics…

• Business Plans

• Someone’s site on E-commerce techniques

• Startup Case Studies website

• Marketing and E-Commerce

University of Virginia

Business Plans US Small Business Administration

Free on-line short courses:http://www.sba.gov/services/training/onlinecourses/index.html

In general, the courses are all self-paced and should take about 30 minutes to complete. Most of the courses require a brief online registration.

Small Business Primer: Guide to Starting a Business How to Prepare a Business Plan Technology 101: A Small Business Guide

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Business Plans website US SBA site (previous slide)

Commercial website: http://www.bplans.com Ecommerce sample business plan:

http://www.bplans.com/e-commerce_start-up_business_plan/executive_summary_fc.cfm

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Palmer Web Marketing http://www.palmerwebmarketing.com Some interesting resources

But caveat surfer!

Handout for discussion: Top 10 eCommerce Startup Mistakes

Free e-book (79 pages, lots of whitespace) eCommerce Roadmap

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eCommerce Roadmap contents Palmer Webmarketing has a free e-book

http://www.palmerwebmarketing.com/e-commerce-ebooks/e-commerce-tips-ebook.php

Contents are: Landing Page Optimization Site Navigation Optimization Site Search Optimization Category Page Optimization Product Page Optimization Shopping Cart Optimization Checkout Process Optimization Customer Service eCommerce SEO Tactics

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Startup Review: Case Studies http://www.startup-review.com/blog/about/

a blog that profiles successful Internet start-ups in a case study format

Created through interviews with early employees at the companies profiled and industry experts

Advertising.com, Betfair.com, Craigslist, Digg.com, eCRUSH Network, eHarmony, Facebook, Flektor, Flickr, Greenfield Online, Grouper Networks, Homegain, HotJobs, HOTorNOT.com, iStockphoto, Jumpcut, Jumpstart Automotive, Linkshare, LoopNet, LowerMyBills.com, Marchex, MyBlogLog, MySpace, Newegg, Reddit, Rent.com, Rotten Tomatoes, StepUp Commerce, Userplane, Wallstrip, Xfire, YouTube, Zappos.com

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Marketing A definition of marketing:

strategies and actions a firm takes… to establish a relationship with a consumer… and encourage purchases of its products or services.

Marketing issues include: Understanding customers Products and brands (branding) Segments, targets, positioning And more…

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Knowing About your Customers community, culture, lifestyle how they shop frequency, barriers (e.g. trust), facilitators where they get information about products behavior on-line behavior once on a site

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Internet Marketing Techniques An e-business has new ways to learn about

customers and behaviors. Examples: Analyzing behavior of customers on your website Storing shopping cart info, orders, etc in databases

Datamining

Customer registration info

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Analyzing Behavior on Website Let’s look at

Analyzing weblogs Web bugs

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Web servers log access Web logs can record:

IP address of visitor Time-stamp URL requested (page, image, script) Servers response URL from which visitor came to this site Browser and OS info

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From Logs We Can Analyze: Day, time and time-of-year info What people requested The "clickstream" -- a trace of pages they went

through Where they came from What kind of computers they use

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Companies and Technologies WebTrends (www.webtrends.com)

"Analytics" product: http://www.webtrends.com/Products/WebtrendsAnalytics8/Datasheet.aspx

They say: "Analytics allows you to measure all aspects of your organization's online presence, from static site content to what customers are doing on your blogs. Enhanced support for open standards lets you connect aggregate online data with purchasing, sales and other enterprise systems to get one view of your customers and data."

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Companies and Technologies Google Analytics Free Service, http://www.google.com/analytics/ They say: “[GA] is the enterprise-class web

analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you're more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.”

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Google Analytics GA can track visitors from all referrers, including

search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

How's it work: A "page-tag" included on each web page. A bit of Javascript Collects visitor data, sends it to Google data collection

servers. Reports done hourly (with some lag)

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More User Info In addition to logs, there are:

Cookies You know about these. Can identify a returning customer (new or repeat visitor) Can say how long since they were here, etc. Not completely accurate. (why?)

Web bugs

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What’s a Web Bug? A graphic image on a Web page or in an Email

message A link to an external site, not an image

embedded in your message Designed to monitor who is reading the Web

page or Email message May be invisible (size 1 pixel by 1 pixel) or not Sometimes knowns as a "clear GIFs", "1-by-1

GIFs" or "invisible GIFs“ (More info:

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Marketing/web_bug.html)


How’s This Work? Web bug: on some other server Remember: when a server delivers a HTML file

or an image file, it logs this A page or an email can have an image that’s stored

on some external site Thus the server there logs delivery of that image

(even if it’s invisible to you)


Examples (in HTML) <img

src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/pixel.quicken/NEW" width=1 height=1 border=0>

<img width='1' height='1' src="http://www.m0.net/m/logopen02.asp? vid=3&catid=370153037&email=SMITHS%40tiac.net" alt=" ">


What Info Can Be Gathered? Again, the server where the bug lives will log:

The IP address of your computer The URL of the page that the Web Bug is located on The URL of the Web Bug image The time the Web Bug was viewed The type of browser that fetched the Web Bug image

Also possible: Info from any cookie that's on your machine


Web Bugs on a Web Page Using personal info in a cookie, ad companies

can track what pages you view over time Stores this info in a database Later used to target specific banners ads for you

How many people view a website


Web Bugs Used in an Email Tells if and when a message was read Links email address with the IP address of

machine you read mail on Within an organization, can tell how often a

message is forwarded and read In spam:

How many users have seen the spam message Allows spammers to detect valid email addresses


Web Bugs: Legal, Ethical? Controversial! Attempt to monitor you without

your knowledge Legal? Not clearly illegal They are used on the websites of legitimate

companies Privacy policies for websites generally don't

mention these


Web Bugs: What can you do?

You can't easily identify web bugs Firebug can help you find them!

New email clients (e.g. Mozilla Thunderbird) do not display images in email that are links to files on external sites (see next slide) (Images embedded as part of email message are OK) You can click "Show Images" button Also nice not to see some images in spam

Helps to disable and delete cookies


An Email Client Blocks Remote Images


Advertising Establishing a relationship with your customer

means: attracting and getting customers Therefore, ads!

Previously: TV, radio, newspaper, magazines, direct mail

Now also: advertising networks (e.g. DoubleClick), affiliate marketing, blog marketing,…

Search engines: SEO; pay for placement and rank

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Ads Moving On-line On-line advertising growing 20% per year Intel:

has moved 50% of its marketing budget to the online channel

Proctor and Gamble (world's largest advertiser) 35% now on-line

Nike: only 35% in traditional channels the rest on-line and events

(Numbers reported as of 2007.)

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Advertising Networks Participating sites (publishers) agree to display ads Thus the Advertising Network has an inventory of

available slots Database info, customer info, etc. used to sell slots

to those who match the site Also, customer movement tracked from site to site

to discover customer interest Also, you identity may be known (from some site’s

registration), so ads matching your demographic are shown

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Big Business DoubleClick

First SW released in 1996 Bought by Google in April 2007 for $3.1 billion

24/7 Real Media’s Open AdStream Bought by WPP for in June 2007 for $649 million

Aquantive Bought by Microsoft in May 2007 for $6.1 billion

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Big Business: E.g. DoubleClick 60 billion ads per month

About 24,000 a second

100 million user-profiles Relies on databases, servers, cookies, web

bugs

See diagram

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Other Marketing Approaches Web 2.0 leads to marketing on…

Blogs, social networks, viral marketing

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Most major search engines allow companies to pay

for their ads to be shown in response to specific searches

But steps you can take may help Register with search engines (if allowed) Make sure your keywords match common queries

Especially in title, headings, meta, top-level pages

Links: links to your pages, links to other pages Increasing in-links? Affiliate relationships, ads, dummy websites

Hire a pro (PalmerWebMarketing’s e-book has some suggestions too.)

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Much much more… Handout from textbook:

E-commerce: Business, Technology, Societyby Kenneth C. Laudon and Carol Guercio Traver

Covers: Ads (on-line, banner, video) Costs, effectiveness Email, spam Terminology for ads/on-line marketing Etc.

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