Year: 2007

Internet shopping may be harming the environment

Readers of The Times woke up this morning to discover that many of them were not as “green” as they thought they were. According to the newspaper, Internet shoppers could be doing more harm to the environment than good. That’s because of a two fold effect Internet shopping has had.

Modern messaging needs reciprocation

Mobile phone users are split between those who use text messaging (SMS) and those who find it too fiddly. Similarly, online, people are split between those who love email and those who prefer instant messaging services. Increasingly, younger people appear to prefer the speed of SMS and instant messaging over

Just what kind of people really use the internet?

Wherever you look for information on marketing your business online you’ll find advice suggesting that you should target a specific sector. One report out this week shows that it is women you should be aiming at. Another study points you towards so-called “silver surfers”. Yet another report suggests it’s teenagers

Get other people blogging about you

Business people spend millions – no billions – on advertising and promotions each year. For years though, no-one has been sure of the true impact of the advertising. For instance, someone who advertises on TV has no real way of measuring its impact on sales. There is that famous line

Forget SEO just focus on real people

Owners of online businesses are spending more cash on “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) than ever. Indeed, a search for the term will find you nearly 10m pages indexed on Google, indicating what a big topic this subject has become. You can buy several programs and services which help you optimize

Internet footprints soon get washed away

Terrorists clearly use the Internet to set up their atrocities. No doubt the latest critical threat alert in the UK has been informed by research conducted by the security services online. They will have found evidence of terrorist activity in forums, emails and in increased readership of sites that detail

Music buyers have stopped shopping

Music buyers have stopped buying CDs forcing retailers into drastic action. Fopp, for instance, has closed down all 105 of its High Street stores. At the same time, music giant HMV has seen its profits halve in the past 12 months. At the same time digital music sales have doubled

Hardly anyone is social networking

People all over the world are logging onto to social networks. At least that’s what you would believe if you looked at the media coverage of things like MySpace and Facebook. However, new research from Nielsen NetRatings suggests something altogether different. According to their latest analysis less than one in

Women prefer web sites to advise them

Women prefer web sites to help advise them in making purchasing decisions. New research shows that over half of women will take the advice of a web site over the information provided by friends or family. In the past people generally took the advice of friends, family and colleagues first,

How Gordon Brown got his job

Gordon Brown becomes the Prime Minister of the UK today. In a much heralded move, after ten years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he gets the job he really wanted in the first place – the boss. How Dr Brown achieved this is a tale that anyone marketing on the

How to back up your blog

Blogging can contribute a great deal to your web site. But if you don’t back up your blog and your blog server breaks down, there’s a chance you will lose everything. Even if you only write around 150 words a day, that would be 55,000 words over the year. If

Business bloggers are in the minority

Bloggers are rare. Strange as it may seem with millions of blogs being posted every day, blogging is a minority activity. Yet as anyone who knows anything about Search Engine Optimisation will tell you, blogging is a sure-fire way to get attention. So it’s a surprise that so few businesses

Criminals given golden opportunities by online businesses

Criminals are having fine old time online. Indeed, yesterday The Pentagon had to shut down its entire email system because it had been broken into by hackers. This news comes less than a week after a study showed that almost half of online businesses are victims of cybercrime. The editor

Future Internet users won’t concentrate on your web page

Internet users of the future are unlikely to have full concentration on your web page. New research on teenagers shows that they are significant “multitaskers”. In other words, unlike the average Internet user (aged in their mid-40s) the future Internet users will not only be looking at your web page

How much choice is too much for internet shoppers?

Researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire have discovered some interesting new information on the effect of choice in buyer behaviour. According to the study published in Psychological Science, choice of available options has a varied effect on buyer behaviour. Previous research suggested that choice actually prevented buyers from making

Social networking set to boom worldwide

Readers of the Financial Times are a canny lot. After all, you don’t get to be concerned with the financing of the country unless you know a thing or two. So it was interesting to read in yesterday’s newspaper that the City believes that social networking on the Internet is

Internet will halt new education plans

Gordon Brown plans to “revolutionise” the British education system. According to his Mansion House speech last night when he becomes Prime Minister he wants a world class education system. At least that’s what he told us. However, he is either missing the point, doesn’t understand what is happening in the