Week 12 - Web 2.0

Select five applications that you have not heard of before from Popular URL's Web 2.0 awards or the webware awards and describe on your blog page how they could be useful to a business.

1) http://www.digg.com/

Digg is a website for people to discover and share content such as news, videos and images, from anywhere on the web. It is a promotion tool.

2) http://www.delicious.com/

Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages. Delicious improves how people discover, remember and share on the internet.

3) http://www.flickr.com/

Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application. The site helps people make their content available to the people who matter to them and also enables new ways of organizing photos and video.

4) http://www.fark.com/

This website is a news aggregator and an edited social networking news site.

5) http://www.lifehacker.com/ Lifehacker is a technology blog which looks at products, software or gadgets and look at how they make the work or play faster, more efficient and more fun.

Trust

Question 1:

What do the following statements mean?

Trust is not associative (non-symmetric) - this statement means that trust is not always equal on each side of the relationship. For example the buyer may provide a lot of trust towards the seller but the seller may not have the same amount of trust for the buyer and vice versa.

Trust is not transitive - this means that trust is only developed first hand and not in the form of second hand. In other words, trust cannot be transferred from person to person. 

Trust is always between exactly 2 parties - trust does need to involve two parties. For trust to exist between the parties, you need to trust them and they need to trust you back.

Trust will involve either direct trust or recommender trust - direct trust is when you decide yourself whether to trust the person or not. Recommender trust is when trust has been recommended by another person.

Question 2:

What are some of the elements that have been incorporated to increase your trust in the following sites:

http://www.eBay.com.au
http://www.anz.com.au
http://www.ozrural.com
http://www.paypal.com.au

Topic 8 - Online Auctions

Question 1 

eBay is one of the only major Internet "pure plays" to consistently make a profit from its inception. What is eBay's business model? Why has it been so successful?

eBay's business model is the brokerage model. eBay has been successull for many reasons. eBay allows customers to buy items without leaving their home, it allows customers to easily compare different brands, prices etc. and eBay is known as a very trusted site.

Question 2 

Other major web sites, like Amazon.com and Yahoo!, have entered the auction marketplace with far less success than eBay. How has eBay been able to maintain its dominant position?

eBay has been able to maintain its dominant position partly due to the fact that people know its a reliable and trustworthy service. eBay is easy to use and has a high brand name awareness. 

Question 3 

What method does eBay use to reduce the potential for fraud among traders on its site? What kinds of fraud, if any, are eBay users most susceptible?

In order to reduce potential freud among traders, eBay has developed the 'security centre' which gives tools and information needed to trade safely on eBay and ensure protection against online fraud. Some examples of online fraud include fraudelent emails and fraud involving credit cards.

Source: www.pages.ebay.com.au/securitycentre

Question 4 

eBay makes every effort to conceptualize its users as a community (as opposed to, say "customers" or "clients"). What is the purpose of this conceptual twist and does eBay gain something by doing it?

By conceptualizing its users as a community this creates a sense of safety to users. By referring to users as a community this attempts to create a positive relationship between the buyer and seller.

Question 5 

eBay has long been a marketplace for used goods and collectibles. Today, it is increasingly a place where major businesses come to auction their wares. Why would a brand name vendor set-up shop on eBay?

Week 6 - Digital Markets

Question 1

a) What experiences have you had with shopping online?

I have looked around on sites such as ebay but never actually bought anything. The only thing I have bought online is concert tickets and AFL tickets. I have also looked at online car sales websites such as carsales.com to compare prices when I was looking for a car. 

b) Describe a good experience.

Buying AFL tickets off ticketmaster is quick and easy and you just print off the ticket when you're done.

c) What did you like about the online store you used?

Simple to use and the transaction was quick and easy.

d) Describe a bad experience.

No bad experiences 

e) What problems did you have with the online store?

No problems

f) What features make an online store more appealing?

A website that is easy to find what you're looking for.

g) What features make an online store less appealing?

Difficult to find what your looking for, lack of information about the products, limited payment options.

h) Should we expect to see the prices of goods and services rise or fall due to the migration of consumers online?

The prices should fall as the competition increases. 

Question 2

a) The dispersion of prices (that is, the spread between the lowest and highest price for a particular product) will narrow.

I agree with this statement. The price difference between the lowest and highest price for a particular good will narrow.

b) The importance of brand names will decrease.

I disagree, I believe brand names are very important and customers will stick with the brands they know and trust.

c) Price competition will make all products cheaper.

Price competition will make most products cheaper.

d) Digital markets will become dominated by a handful of mega-sites, like Amazon.com.

I agree that smaller sites will be dominated by mega-sties like Amazon.com.

e) How do you think the balance of power between buyer’s and seller’s will change?

This will change alot but mostly power will be with the buyer.

f) Prices are clustered online.

Consumers are easily able to compare prices online and same with suppliers so prices are more likely to be clustered online.

g) Online prices are elastic. ( i.e. immune to change up and down with demand)

I disagree

h) Online prices are generally transparent (the extent to which prices for a given product or service are known by buyers in the marketplace.).

I agree

Question 3

a) What types of m-commerce services does your cell phone provider offer?

My cell phone provider offers internet service, GPS services and games and entertainment.

b) Which of these services do you use?

I don't use the internet or any of these services on my phone at all.

c) What types of transactions do you perform through your cell phone or other wireless device?

I don't do transactions on my mobile phone.

d) What types of transactions would you like to perform, but are currently unable to?

None

e) What is your opinion of wireless advertising/mobile marketing?

I really don't like mobile marketing/advertising. The text messages can be very annoying even more so are the phone calls.

Week 5 - Business Models

Brokerage - Brokers are market-makers: they bring buyers and sellers together and facilitate transactions. Brokers play a frequent role in business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), or consumer-to-consumer (C2C) markets. Usually a broker charges a fee or commission for each transaction it enables. Brokerage models include marketplace exchange, buy/sell fulfillment, demand collection system, auction broker, transaction broker, distributor, search agent and virtual marketplace. An example of brokerage model is eBay which is an auction broker.

Advertising - The web advertising model is an extension of the traditional media broadcast model. The broadcaster, in this case, a web site, provides content and services (like email, IM, blogs) mixed with advertising messages in the form of banner ads. The banner ads may be the major or sole source of revenue for the broadcaster. The broadcaster may be a content creator or a distributor of content created elsewhere. The advertising model works best when the volume of viewer traffic is large or highly specialized. Example: 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. Example: DoubleClick

Merchant - Wholesalers and retailers of goods and services. Sales may be made based on list prices or through auction. Example: Apple iTunes Music Store

Manufacturer (Direct) - The manufacturer or "direct model", it is predicated on the power of the web to allow a manufacturer (i.e., a company that creates a product or service) to reach buyers directly and thereby compress the distribution channel. The manufacturer model can be based on efficiency, improved customer service, and a better understanding of customer preferences. Example: Dell Computers

Affiliate - In contrast to the generalized portal, which seeks to drive a high volume of traffic to one site, 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: Amazon

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. The Internet is inherently suited to community business models and today this is one of the more fertile areas of development, as seen in rise of social networking. Example: Wikipedia

Subscription - Users are charged a periodic -- daily, monthly or annual -- fee to subscribe to a service. It is not uncommon for sites to combine free content with "premium" (i.e., subscriber- or member-only) content. Subscription fees are incurred irrespective of actual usage rates. Subscription and advertising models are frequently combined. Example: Netflix

Utility - The utility or "on-demand" model is based on metering usage, or a "pay as you go" approach. Unlike subscriber services, metered services are based on actual usage rates. Traditionally, metering has been used for essential services (e.g., electricity water, long-distance telephone services). Internet service providers (ISPs) in some parts of the world operate as utilities, charging customers for connection minutes, as opposed to the subscriber model common in the U.S. Example: Slashdot

Information retrieved from http://digitalenterprise.org/models/models.html

Technology Report:

1) What is the Mobile phone use /100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India, Your Country

Australia - 102.49

USA - 83.51

China - 41.19

India - 19.98

2) Internet use / 100 population - compare Australia, USA, China, India, Your Country

Australia - 54.19 

USA - 71.94

China - 15.81

India - 6.93

3) Compare main strengths and weaknesses of Australia or your home country in the survey

4) What does the survey suggest to you about the Information Technology readiness of Australian business compared to Australian consumers?

Week 4 -Web Analytics

1) Looking at the site useage, what doe the terms visits, page views and pages/visit mean? What does the bounce rate mean and does it vary much from day to day?

The term visits means how many people have looked at the website. Page views means how many pages of the website people have gone to. The term pages/visit refers to the average page views for visitors of the site. The bounce rate refers to the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. The bounce rate does vary a lot from day to day according to whether visitors find what they are looking for 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? 

search engines, direct traffic and referring sites

3) What was the most popular web browser used to access the site?

Internet explorer

4) How many countries did visitors to OZRURAL come from and what were the top three countries?

OZRURAL visitors came from 24 countries. The top three countries were Australia, United States and United Kingdom

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. 

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.

These definitions came from Analytics Help Glossary: 

www.google.com.na/support/googleanalytics/bin/topic.

high bounce rate - bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.

key words - A significant word or phrase, relevant to the web page or document in question

Average Page Depth - the average number of pages on a site that visitors view during a single session. 

click through rate - (CTR) The number of times an ad is clicked on, divided by the number of impressions it receives.

click - In Google Analytics reports, a 'Click' refers to a single instance of a user following a hyperlink from one page in a site to another.

Cookie - A small amount of text data given to a web browser by a web server. The data is stored on a user's hard drive and is returned to the specific web server each time the browser requests a page from that server.

Impression - A display of a referral link or advertisement on a web page.

Hyperlink - A text reference in a web page that, when clicked, directs the user's browser to another page or document. Hyperlinks are integral to the World Wide Web, allowing every page to be linked to any other page.

Navigation - Describes the movement of a user through a website or other application interface. This term also indicates the system of available links and buttons that the user can use to navigate through the website.

Pageview - A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser.

Session - A period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular website, ending when the browser is closed or shut down, or when the user has been inactive on that site for a specified period of time.

Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors) - Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.

URL - A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a means of identifying an exact location on the Internet.

Visitor - A Visitor is a construct designed to come as close as possible to defining the number of actual, distinct people who visited a website. There is of course no way to know if two people are sharing a computer from the website's perspective, but a good visitor-tracking system can come close to the actual number. The most accurate visitor-tracking systems generally employ cookies to maintain tallies of distinct visitors.

Visitor Session - A Visitor Session is a defined period of interaction between a Visitor (both unique and untrackable visitor types) and a website.

Week 3 - Digital Design

1. In two paragraphs explain why a customer centric Web site design is so important, yet so difficult to accomplish.

If a website is confusing or difficult to navigate it is common for customers to abandon their shopping carts and not use the web site again. Creating a web site that is simple and easy to navigate can mean the difference between success and failure for that business. The website design should be based on the needs of their customers.

Progress in making the web site visually compelling and perhaps too visually compelling has lead to some organisations to spend too much time on the visual and not enough time on the actual business process and this can lead to enormous frustration among customers. A common mistake made in website designs is that the organisation will model their web site around their organisations structure. This may make sense to its creators within the organisation, but generally will create a frustrating experience for visitors to the site as it does not anticipate or attempt to meet their needs. To design a customer centric web site the design must meet the needs of the customers, such that it must be simple, self explanatory and have all the information the customers needs to know about the product and purchasing the product etc.

 

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.

 

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