E-Commerce

[dungdm006]

Is E-commerce In Your Future?

“Unbelievable, only one California distributor had a link!” In my recent opening keynote presentation for a group of industrial distributors, I mentioned that I was alarmed. Upon visiting a major manufacturer’s web site, I conducted a distributor search for California. When the list appeared on my screen, only one distributor listed had a link to their site from the manufacture’s site. It’s unfortunate that so many distributors are slow to partner with their principal suppliers. For some distributors it is because they do not yet have a web site, hard as that is to believe. And for others it is a trust issue. Some distributors still believe that by sharing information, they will loose customers. How wrong they are.

Your customers might not be getting any younger, but their purchasing staff most certainly is. With this youth, also comes new ways of doing business. Younger people are quite comfortable with the Internet and many prefer e-commerce to “bothersome” visits from your reps. Just the other day upon leaving for school, my nine-year-old son asked my wife to find him some pictures of jellyfish for a school project. He proceeded to explain to her how to go to Yahoo! and so forth to find the pictures he needed. She thought it was so cute. For technophobes, it’s a wake up call!

E-commerce is taking on several forms from the straightforward Amazon.com style of giving your credit card number, selecting the items you want and receiving your purchase a couple days later via a delivery company to more sophisticated arrangements similar to what the automotive industry is putting together. I personally find CheapTickets.com both a convenience and a time saver, giving me a wonderful choice on my air travel needs. I might not have ever considered that as a possibility. But, a while back my travel agent started tacking on a $10 per ticket booking fee. Their new business strategy did not add value to our relationship in my eyes. Needless to say, I am no longer their client.

Back to the younger purchasing agent trying to work their way up the corporate latter. They are putting in extra hours, working late. Since it is late and manufacturers are closed, they go to ThomasRegister.com looking for a particular product supplier and find what they need. The manufacturer is a real partner in distribution and has distributor search capability at their web site. As with the earlier mentioned example, if there is only one distributor with a link that is where the purchaser goes. Will that be you?

Ford Motor Company is unleashing the power of the Internet for their employees around the world. It’s taking a step forward to reach its vision of being on the leading edge of technology and connect more closely with its customers. In support of this vision, the company announced on February 3, 2000 that eligible employees worldwide would be provided a computer, printer and Internet usage at home for a nominal fee ($5 a month).

Ford Chief Executive Officer and President Jac Nasser said, "This program keeps Ford Motor Company and our worldwide team at the leading edge of e-business technology and skills. We're committed to serving consumers better by understanding how they think and act. Having a computer and Internet access in the home will accelerate the development of these skills, provide information across our business and offer opportunities to streamline our processes."

Ford Chairman Bill Ford added, "It is clear that individuals and companies that want to be successful in the 21st century will need to be leaders in using the Internet and related technology. That's what this program is all about.”

Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO at Dell Computer weighed in telling business leaders attending the Windows 2000 Deployment Conference in San Francisco (February 15, 2000) for the new computer operating system by Microsoft Corp. He said, "The Internet will become as fundamental to your business as electricity. Businesses will need an information technology infrastructure that possesses the same attributes of systems that provide electricity whenever and wherever needed, at the click of a switch, to power anything from a small store to an entire city.”

Dell mentioned that industry researchers forecast that 38 percent of U.S. households will have two or more personal computers by the end of this year and that by the year 2003, high-speed broadband Internet connections will be used in 33 percent of U.S. households. "In a world where every business is an e-business, Internet systems technology will no longer be just the concern of the information technology department. It will be critical to your customers' satisfaction and ultimately to your bottom line," said Dell.

To put Michael Dell’s comments in perspective, Dell Computer Corporation is the world's leading direct computer systems company. This is based on revenues of $25.3 billion for the past four quarters (as of 2/15/00). Dell ranks No. 78 on the Fortune 500, No. 210 on the Fortune Global 500 and No. 3 on the Fortune "most admired" lists of companies.

This is just in from WALLY BOCK'S MONDAY MEMO -- 1 May 2000 (weekly e-newsletter). Bock states, “There were lots of studies and surveys out last week that give us some insight into how we're moving along the adoption curve of digital technology. Here is a couple. Net Portrait found that almost 60% of US households have a computer and that 47% of households have Internet access. Some of the others just stay late at work, where Greenfield Online found that 10% of workers stay late so they can access the Internet.”

I recently listened to Tim Underhill explain to a group of distributors how their customers frequently pay three times for the same shipping and handling services in a discussion on the value of integrated supply. I sure do not want to pay thrice for a product or service, nor do your customers. In distribution today the game is adding value and streamlining costs in the distribution chain, not simply adding cost. While we are still at the early stage of e-commerce, sooner than you think, your customers will be demanding the capability of you. Will you be left in the cold?

When I started my career in outside sales in the mid 1970s, my boss, Ray Kahn told me that if I lost a major customer while paying attention and doing everything I could to keep them happy, that he could live with it. But, if I lost a major customer because of not paying attention, that he’d fire me. Was he serious? Absolutely—Mike, one of my colleagues, got the axe for just that reason. If you lose customers because you are asleep at the wheel in regards to the Internet and e-commerce, should your suppliers fire you?

Ed Rigsbee, CSP is the author of PartnerShift, Developing Strategic Alliances and The Art of Partnering. Rigsbee has over 1,000 published articles to his credit and is a regular keynote presenter at corporate and trade association conferences across North America. He can be reached at 800-839-1520 or EdRigsbee@aol.com. For a treasure trove of additional information and ideas, visit his Partnering University Web Site at Business Growth Through Smart Strategic Alliances, Business growth help from Ed Rigsbee, the Collaboration Expert, connections, relationships and strategic alliance implementation, Your collaborative advantage.

[dungdm006]

Many small business owners will find the need to accept credit card payments for products and services offered on their website.

When I set up my first ecommerce website I found the information surrounding online credit card purchases to be more confusing than any other aspect of marketing on the Internet.

The reason as it turns out is that the various organizations offering to advise you on how to set online payment systems up have conflicting interests and, in some cases, no idea how the systems work together.

The other potentially confusing aspect of online payments is that the entire system involves a number of service suppliers each providing one element of the entire chain. The real trick is getting them all working together.

So let me outline the parts and then give you a couple of suggestions for how you might approach an ecommerce system for your business. (There are dozens of ways to get the same thing done!)

Internet Merchant Account - In order to take online payments, when you don't physically swipe a credit card, you need an Internet merchant account. This account can be issued by your bank or by a host of companies, such as Merchant Warehouse, that offer Internet merchant accounts. It's important to note that if you already have a merchant account for your store or business, you will need to get an Internet account as they are different. This account will include a set-up fee and some % per transaction fee.

Most banks only provide merchant accounts for Visa and MasterCard. It is a very good idea to offer American Express and Discover card payment options. In order to do this you need to contact American Express and Discover and activate accounts. Once you have this information you can provide it to your merchant account provider's payment processor to process all four cards in the same account.

Virtual Terminal - A virtual terminal is an add-on service that comes with your Internet merchant account. This allows you to take phone orders or in-person workshop orders and then go to a secure Internet based site and process the orders into your account.

Secure Payment Gateway - Since Internet traffic is susceptible to eavesdropping you will need a secure payment gateway that allows your customer's credit card data to be secure as they place orders. This is yet another service provider that specializes in secure transaction and takes the secure data and passes it through a secure gateway to your payment processor. You want to make sure that this part of the process works with your merchant account and your shopping cart. I would stick with one of the leading gateway providers. This would include Authorize.net, VeriSign and SkipJack There is a fee for this service as well. It is important that you communicate who your gateway provider is to your merchant account provider.

If you are selling goods that are available to download immediately you will also need what is known as real time processing from your secure processor. This is simply a connection that gets a credit card transaction approved or declined in real time as a customer places an order. There is an additional charge for this service.

Shopping Cart - shopping carts come in software and hosted service based versions that allow your customers to shop for multiple items and then pass the order to your payment system by way of checkout. This service is very important if you have multiple products available on your web site. There are some very stable, fully functioning shopping carts that are free or very low cost. Some leading cart systems include osCommerce, zencart, and 1ShoppingCart. I must repeat that you need to make sure that your shopping cart is supported by your payment gateway and vice versa - just ask.

Third Party Processing - There is an alternative solution to the entire puzzle known as a third party processor. In this approach, the third party provider may offer all of the processing and no merchant account is required. The drawback to this approach is that you generally pay a higher overall fee per transaction and have limited ability to customize your customer's check out experience to match your website. PayPal, an eBay company, is the largest provider of this approach and is a very acceptable option.

A Few Words of Advice

Each piece of the ecommerce puzzle comes with a fee, either as a monthly set price or on a per transaction basis. Make sure that you understand what the fees are. Online merchant account providers are notorious for charging very high application and set-up fees. Start with your bank, but shop this aspect around. Most small business owners should be able to set-up a fully functioning, real time processed site with a shopping cart for less that $150/mo (not including per transaction fees)

Make sure that you find out which parts work well with each other. In other words, when you are looking for a shopping cart or payment processors make sure that they integrate with your real time payment gateway and vice versa. If you stick with the big names in each category you shouldn't have any problems.

John Jantsch is a marketing coach, author and creator of the Duct Tape Marketing System. You can get more information about the Duct Tape System and download your free copy of How To Grow Your Small Business Like Crazy by visiting Small business marketing ideas and strategies | Duct Tape Marketing

[dungdm006]

The first article of this series discussed page views per session as a kind of early warning system key performance indicator (KPI) for your website. The second discussed time on site as another warning flag. Both of these articles show specific measurements used to forecast site problems. There are lots of KPI’s you can set up to warn you of impending doom or better show your successes but to go through each one would take me till the end of next year. So to wrap up this series, this article will discuss the general metrics you should be looking at as an ‘e’ business and more importantly why you should be looking at them.

‘e’ Business metrics

The term ‘e’ business was coined by Ogilvy and Mather for IBM in November of 1997 and has stuck around ever since. Great advertising, of course it came from e-commerce which was a general term, but I can still remember the IBM jingle and the ads showing IBM’s vision of networked computing. There was nothing wrong with the IBM idea or their adverts. However, one problem with this ‘e’ part is that for some reason people decided that the Internet was not like other marketing mediums.

Everything became “e or i something”, it became associated with the brave new world of fast moving VC led consortiums buying and selling companies based on their business plans and little else. No-one measured success by ordinary standards any more, you didn’t need to pay rents, have credit history, loyal customers or reliable revenue, just a great idea and guts.

Great ideas aren’t measurable and neither are guts!

We all know what happened next of course. The normally cautious VC’s realized they had made some really stupid moves and pulled their money out before they went bankrupt. This starved the companies that they actually helped to mismanage and put a lot of otherwise talented individuals on the dole (sent them down the river, took away their jobs, you get the picture!).

So why did ordinarily savvy business men and women jump on this particular bandwagon? And why did IBM, Dell and other notable bricks and mortar businesses survive the dot bomb where so many failed?

Survival was down to ‘e’ business as usual

IBM, Dell and the likes simply developed their businesses by doing what they already knew worked and applied what new business intelligence they could glean from the Internet to help them with their existing strategies. In other words they used new information from web analytics in combination with real business metrics to develop online business plans. There wasn’t anything particularly clever about it, it was common sense and all the metrics had one thing in common, they were controllable.

Web business metrics you can control

There are hundreds of reports you can get from web analytic systems and if you know what you’re doing they can really help you. Things like bounce rates, entry and exit pages, scenario analysis, first time versus repeat buyers etc. are all extremely important to measure and build upon. They are individual KPI’s I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

However the only metrics which you as an e-business can directly control are average sale price, profit margin, overhead, conversion rate and visitors. You probably won’t see 2 or 3 of those 5 metrics reported in most web analytic systems, simply because it’s not down to a web measurement system to tell you what your profit margin or overhead is, though most good ones can manage average sale price, conversion rate and visitors.

Why these 5 metrics?

Let’s take a look at these 5 metrics and explain how you can affect them.

Average sale price – You can directly alter your product prices to be higher or lower thus affecting the average sale price.

Profit margin – You can reduce overheads or increase sales prices to improve profit margins. You can also reduce your margin if it’s strategically a good idea to reduce sales prices and you have no other way to reduce price other than eat into your margin. The idea being that more of your visitors will buy due to a lower price meaning overall you have a higher net profit.

Overhead – By reducing overheads you can improve profit margins, or affect the product sales price. One of our clients has sold a lot of one kind of product. Now he has a very low overhead for that product range meaning he can reduce the average sale price of the product while retaining the same profit margin. Because his overheads are low his prices are very competitive and he continues to do well with this product category.

Conversion rate – Believe it or not it is possible to control your conversion rate! By measuring other KPI’s mentioned using good web analytics tools you can see how people are behaving on your website. In a nutshell if you then fix the problems you will undoubtedly find, you improve the chances that people will buy your products. It’s not really that simple but that's the way it generally starts.

Visitors – The level of visitors you get is down to your marketing efforts whether that is paid or unpaid. You can engage in search optimization for critical keywords or PPC marketing to drive traffic for keywords you can’t rank for organically. You can pay affiliates to send you traffic that buy your products. You can put out press releases. You can engage in banner advertising or behavioral marketing. Or you can do nothing and hope that your content alone provides enough traffic from websites that point to you. All of these methods affect the levels of traffic. The key is getting relevant traffic rather than traffic that isn’t interested in your product range.

In Summary

I hope to have shown 2 uses of web analytics, using KPI’s to serve as warnings when things are going wrong and using web analytics in conjunction with metrics to help you start thinking of your web commerce as a business. By using the warning flags as indicators of where things might go wrong you can identify problems and figure out whether your website is visitor centric enough. By exercising control over the five metrics discussed here you can improve your bottom line.

Author: Steve Jackson, Editor - Conversion Chronicles
Steve Jackson is CEO of Aboavista, editor of The Conversion Chronicles and a published writer. You can get a free copy of his e-book sent to you upon subscription to the Chronicles web site (Conversion Chronicles - Resources for improving website conversion, increasing web conversion rates and web conversion tips and tricks to help drive up your numbers).

[dungdm006]

The first article of this series discussed page views per session as a kind of early warning system key performance indicator (KPI) for your website. This article will discuss another KPI and why this is an important metric, the time your visitors spend on your website.

Why time spent on your site is important

All websites regardless of type should measure this KPI, simply because all websites can use it as a gauge to see how compelling their offers are as well as check web site performance. It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a content portal or an e-commerce sales operation, time spent on your pages is an important metric to measure. If you have for instance a commerce site you need to know how long your offers hold your audience.

Time spent on site is also another KPI that warns you when things aren’t going well.

Why you need warning signals

Life is full of warnings. Your body warns you with pain when there is something you shouldn’t be doing. If you don’t exercise enough and sit in front of a computer screen for too long you get muscle aches and pains, or a repetitive strain injury. That’s your body telling you to do more physical stuff or else!

Similarly if you twist or turn too quickly and strain a muscle, it’s your body giving you a not so gentle reminder that you should either stop overextending yourself or feel pain.

You begin to naturally learn that doing something you shouldn’t equates to pain, therefore you do your best to steer clear from the discomfort. Notice how the body gives you a taster? If you have been sitting too long in one position you get tired and achy? It’s your bodies natural “kick up the backside” to suggest that you get up and move around for a bit or you’ll really get yours later on!

Look at web site KPI’s as a potential taster of some real pain, the signals that you use to guide your thinking about getting out of your chair and doing something.

What is the real pain?

The real pain is when you spend thousands on advertising to drive website traffic and convert very few of them to your goal. Or you spend countless hours modifying pages and don’t have a clue whether any of the changes you’re making have any effect. When all you do is look at the bottom line improvement this is quite often what happens.

In all business websites you should want to identify advertising, products, and areas of your site that generate the highest value visitors or interest over the long term. If the time spent on your is too short, your copy, graphics, or usability likely needs to be re-written or re-designed to be more compelling.

When is the time spent on the site too short?

Initially you need to figure this out before setting a base KPI. What we have done in some cases is time how long it takes to complete an action.

If you want someone to subscribe to your site how long does it take to do that in seconds? This then becomes your base KPI. If the majority of people stay on your site for longer than that period, then you’re happy and your KPI is telling you that you’re doing a good job. If the majority of people aren’t sticking around long enough to actually subscribe then it’s a warning signal that something is wrong and you could be headed for pain. Your KPI will depend on the main action you wanted them to take. You could use these guidelines for each kind of website;

Lead Generation/Subscription, how long it takes in seconds to complete the sign up form.

E-commerce/Sales, how long it takes in seconds to purchase the product.

Content/B2B advertising, how long it takes in seconds to find and read an article.

Customer Service, how long it takes to satisfy the customer query.

We typically advise getting someone not connected to the website to do a short usability test and the average time taken be set as a KPI if the result was good.

What if the average time taken is too long?

When you have determined the minimum time spent on the site you should also pay attention to whether people are taking too long reading your pages. It could be that your users are becoming frustrated and can’t find what they need on your site. Time spent on site in combination with page views per session gives you a more complete picture of whether people are finding what they need. Summary - The Complete Picture

Putting the KPI’s together and understanding why you’re doing it is the key to defining metrics which you can use to help you make decisions. If you start to think about what a good visit is, what a bad visit is and determine which metrics define a good and bad visitor you’re half way to getting the KPI’s you need. By defining the KPI’s before you start you can begin to get a more complete understanding of what works and armed with this information can improve your website based on what your visitors are telling you.

Author: Steve Jackson, Editor - Conversion Chronicles
Steve Jackson is CEO of Aboavista, editor of The Conversion Chronicles and a published writer. You can get a free copy of his e-book sent to you upon subscription to the Chronicles web site (Conversion Chronicles - Resources for improving website conversion, increasing web conversion rates and web conversion tips and tricks to help drive up your numbers).

[dungdm006]

The problem with most e-commerce marketing strategy today is that companies don’t understand how they use things like web analytics. Most e-commerce directors or web marketers are given a budget and told to stick to it, and good analytics don’t usually come cheap. Without web analytics you can’t even begin to measure key performance indicators (KPI’s), which should be a part of any good e-commerce strategy. We often see that marketers face a problem in that they know they need Web Analytics, they just don’t know why they should pay for it and don’t know what to measure. This three part series of articles will hopefully help clear up some of the things that marketers should measure as key performance indicators concentrating on one KPI per article.

What is a key performance indicator?

In website measurement terms a key performance indicator is a metric which will help your organization define and measure progress toward your websites business objective. Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable web site measurements that reflect whether you are successfully meeting or falling short of your websites business goals.

That’s quite a boring definition of a KPI even if it is important, so in a last ditch attempt to keep you from falling asleep lets talk about Formula 1 (or the Indy 500) and the KPI’s they use.

What has Formula 1 got to do with KPI’s? There are many minute factors in formula one that constitute being a winner. Everything down to the performance of the fuel, the tires, the speed of the pit stops, the quality of engine parts, the weight of the car, it’s aerodynamic ability, everything is measured and tested, long before the driver even gets into the car. The difference between the winner of a formula one race and second place can be as little as a hundredth of a second.

That extra hundredth of a second could be because the fuel used on that particular race day allowed the driver to get more out of his car than the guy in second place.

How did the race team know which fuel to use? Because before hand they had tested maybe 50 different types, each one tuned for the demands of different circuits - or even different weather conditions.

They got that extra performance by knowing the key performance metrics of the fuel, so they could say with confidence that ‘fuel a’ was better for their car if ‘condition a’ was satisfied.

Condition ‘a’ might have been the cars weight that day the type of road surface and the weather. When all matched together it meant that the race team had a particular choice to make when selecting the fuel for the car. The web site KPI I’m about to discuss is the fuel that powers your e commerce sales and lead generation strategies. Both are measured by practically all web analytics systems, but both not commonly measured to their full potential.

Page views per session, the fuel behind your web business objectives

For those of you that know why page views and sessions are important bear with me for a paragraph or two. For those of you that don’t here we go.

Why are page views and sessions important?

Page views are a metric that represents the amount of times your pages are viewed by the people that visit your website. On it’s own it might be an important measurement if you’re a very well trafficked content website looking to sell B2B advertising in the form of some kind of ad (banners for instance).

If you can accurately say to an advertiser that you have 10 million page views per week, it’s very likely that this alone will be one of your KPI’s, simply because if it goes down, your advertisers will most likely not want to pay you as much to advertise with you. It would be important in this case that you keep the page view count at least to the same level every week in order to keep the same level of banner revenue for example.

Sessions represent the amount of users (people) visiting the website over a given period. Again it’s a very important metric to know, the general idea being that more of the right kind of people visiting your pages will eventually mean your bottom line improves.

By combining these two metrics however we get a much more powerful way to use the figures.

Combining the two metrics as one KPI is done by taking a ratio of page views per session as an average. So if 1000 visitors viewed 2,000 pages the mean page views per visit KPI is 2, (2,000 / 1000 = 2).

Why is this combination important?

If your website e-store system required that you need to view 5 pages in order buy a product and your KPI is telling you that your site gets an average of 2 page views per session, then the site is under performing badly. If it takes 5 pages for your visitors to buy something then your goal should be to get an average KPI of at least 5 page views per session. Otherwise it means that the vast majority of your visitors aren’t going deep enough into the process.

Much more importantly deciding on a KPI like this is giving you a measurable objective to work towards. If you know that the vast majority of people are abandoning your website after only viewing one or two pages there is a problem which you need to work hard to solve.

It means you know that somewhere within your web analytics you will be able to detect the areas of abandonment that are the problem. The simple fact of the matter is, if you have a low page views per session KPI then your analytics system (if it’s any good), WILL be able to show you where the problem lies. Once you have found the problem areas, congratulations, you’re becoming a web analytics expert. Now you know which pages have the problem and you just need to figure out the why.

Figuring out why is the real secret It may be that you’re driving the wrong kind of visitors, such as people who aren’t interested in your offer. It may be that you don’t have enough compelling content to keep visitors interested. It may be that your shopping cart has a problem with abandonment or your lead generation process is too long or has a scary form to fill in. In all cases your page views per session KPI is the first warning signal and you can monitor it quite easily.

Other warning signals

The other side of the coin is if this KPI is too high. What if you have a 1000 people viewing 20,000 pages? Unless you have incredibly compelling content there is a problem. It probably means that people are very interested in something but can’t find it on your site. So having this KPI be too high is also a warning flag that means you need to analyze your web analytics and see where the problems are. Are people skipping around pages? How long do they stay on your site? (another KPI we’ll come to in the next article of this series), have you got site architectural problems with navigation?

Too high or too low, it’s all useful measurement

The point is to find out how to use the fuel remember? If you start measuring page views per session as a KPI, you will begin to see if you have a problem or not. You can get as deep and as sophisticated as you like, I’m just trying to show you the idea with this article.

For instance you could measure page views per session of visitors only hitting your shopping cart, or lead generation system. Content websites could use page views per session in particular content groups to work out how compelling particular kinds of content are. It all depends on the web site business objective.

To summarize

Developing KPI’s allow you to measure things on your website which directly effect your business objectives. In the example I’ve demonstrated by finding ways to improve the number of pages people view per session there is more chance that those users will complete your calls to action (buy, register, subscribe, whatever web business objective you may have). This first KPI that I’m suggesting you consider is an early warning signal that something is wrong and it’s very easy to determine how to set a measurement. The next KPI I’ll discuss is time spent on site and why it is also important as well as how you can use this in combination with page views per session.

Till then….

Author: Steve Jackson, Editor - Conversion Chronicles
Steve Jackson is CEO of Aboavista, editor of The Conversion Chronicles and a published writer. You can get a free copy of his e-book sent to you upon subscription to the Chronicles web site (Conversion Chronicles - Resources for improving website conversion, increasing web conversion rates and web conversion tips and tricks to help drive up your numbers).

[dungdm006]

Do you even know what M-Commerce is?

Well you better learn fast. Predictions in Europe for M-Commerce, the second largest market behind Asia, are for a spend of €7.4 Billion in 2006 that's over $8 Billion. That's twice the predicted spend of traditional web services!

So what is M-Commerce?
It's very simple, mobile / cell phone based sales. Usually relating to content such as games, wallpaper, ringtones etc. But there's much more to it than that. Keep reading.

What's the big deal?
More people own a mobile phone than a PC, they're better integrated in to daily life. People are very comfortable using them. They are now in fact heavily relied upon, as the phone feature is only a small part of what can be perceived as a miniature multi-purpose multi-capable portable computer.

Mobile Growth
Mobile growth already outstrips all other communication channels. Half of all Americans are mobile phone subscribers. In the UK the ownership of a mobile phone is equivalent to 1.5 phones per head of population. According to research, mobile content services will be worth $121 Billion worldwide by 2008. White label distribution of ringtones, images, games and other promotions will drive up to 1/5th of the revenue generated. It's estimated 1.5 Billion people worldwide own a mobile phone.

With more and more technology add-ons to tempt the consumer these devices are now Cameras, MP3 players, game consoles, voice notepads, picture albums, diary organiser, PDF readers etc etc.

In fact I'm writing this article on my PDA / Phone whilst sat in the sunshine in the garden. With two taps on the screen I can hook up to my home wireless network and check my emails, browse the net, update my Blog or edit and publish article submissions on one of my sites all via broadband.

We are not that far away from always on Net connections. Once this arrives it will allow anyone to do this almost wherever they are. Certainly in the major cities around the world. When this happens there will be a third Internet boom as Joe public try's out the Net connection again that was always too shoddy to use in the past.

And what will they want? Content! ringtones, wallpaper, games, MP3's etc

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The real money isn't even going to be made via a Net sale. The real money will be made via SMS(Short Message Service), MMS(Multimedia Messaging System) and this ones a goldmine...Micro payments.

Recent research has shown a doubling of worldwide revenue from streaming TV and sports bulletin subscriptions. 380 million people worldwide are expected to subscribe to similar services in 2005. Including TV show bulletins particularly from 'reality TV' shows, News bulletins or Soap updates.

Big deal you're not a TV network how can you make some money out of this boom? I'll go into that in a second but first I want to go back to those Micro payments I mentioned earlier. The real gold dust.

Micro Payment Profits
Micro payments have been around for a while here in the UK. A smaller land mass has allowed for a quicker rollout of mobile technologies here. Nationwide Network coverage is easier to achieve. I believe the first example in the US to take it mainstream was by the 'American Idol' show. Viewers voted for the acts on the show via their mobile phone. They where then charged a small premium for their vote on top of their networks regular SMS charge. Think of the millions of votes that the show attracted and the revenue generated.

That's micro payments in action.

The beauty of this is that people don't feel like they're spending money because they don't need to whip out their credit card, it's an easier payment method, usually involving a simple text to a small number and the payment is small. They also trust their mobile for making payments unlike an online transaction.

Any payments made will appear on their next phone bill. People are already used to paying in this way, they're comfortable with it. Whether it's to vote for an act on a TV show, for a game download or to grab the latest ringtone.

What have you got that you could take micro payments for? You should be considering how you can utilise your current website network to tap into this market. Do you offer subscriptions? Is there a service you offer that you could convert to subscriptions.

How Can You Make Some Money?
Here's a quick example. Your newsletter. Would your subscribers be willing to pay a small premium to have your newsletter delivered directly to their mobile? Wherever they are, without the need to be sat in front of a PC. Thus bypassing the SPAM filter problem and guaranteeing they receive your valuable content. You could sell it as valuable service for your customers with added content not available on your site or via your regular newsletter.

Or offer them up to the minute breaking news in their industry, which they receive as it breaks and not when they check their email five hours later when it's to late to take action.

Digital artists sell your wallpaper designs direct to the consumer via the mobile phone. New bands forget the record company contract sell your music via MP3's direct to the consumer. Investment advisors get subscribers to your 'Hot Tips' bulletins. Store owners offer a sale bulletin service etc etc

The Future
The omnipresent Google are moving forward with major mobile initiatives. Spending vast amounts of money to stake a claim in this fledgling market. There's the mobile version of Froogle for one and they've also developed mobile business listings specifically for the potentially huge 'local search' market. They also offer a free SMS based information service Google SMS and Google SMS

Another major company Real Networks, creators of Real media Player, recently bought Finnish mobile phone game developers Mr Goodliving for $15M. Essentially buying a back catalogue of high profile mobile games.

NTL a cable TV company here in the UK recently streamed the Grand National, the biggest race horse meet here in the UK, live to Nokia owning subscribers.

This is early days and that's a small glimpse of the future.

The M-Commerce Market is very different from the online market in terms of what content consumers are currently paying for. The biggest revenue generators online, 70%, are porn and dating sites. A similar percentage via mobile is for games, music and video. Films, that's another one, Nokia are now distributing Hollywood movies via memory card!

The technology specifically 3G, an always on network with transfer rates of 384kbs a second, is here and trickling into mainstream culture. These devices are in fact capable of 1920kbs. Compare that to GPRS at 56kbs. You don't need these speeds to take advantage of this market but you should keep them in mind to realise the full potential of where mobile communication is going.

Here's a brief, eye opening, wish list from consumers for future mobile phone payment abilities:-

10 Use your mobile as a key
9 Marketing communications
8 Retail checkout payments
7 Vending machine payments
6 Flight check in
5 Credit / debit cards
4 Season tickets
3 Loyalty cards
2 Parking Meter payments
1 Mobile Coupon redemption

Getting Started How do you Accept Payments?
Reverse SMS is very popular at the moment. It provides the ability for you to direct consumers to secret download links on your site whilst taking payment through a premium SMS message. Another method known as 'WAP Push' sends a link via SMS that automatically launches when the message is opened. You will need to set up your own WAP / SMS Gateway on your server which will require server administrator access to use both these solutions.

But there are other easier solutions a number of websites are springing up that allow you to upload your content available for download, games, video, wallpaper, MP3's etc . A small fee is taken from each paid download by the SMS Gateway company.

I've compiled a list of useful links to a number of the above solutions and I've also thrown in a couple of links to 'mobaphile' websites were you will find some interesting predictions for the future development of mobile phones along with some real off the wall ideas for making money with mobiles. How to make money online - M-Commerce Resources

To paraphrase a strap line 'The future's bright the future's mobile'.

Darren Yates is owner and manager of How To Make Money Online a site all about making money online, Internet Marketing techniques and business opportunities. Featuring thousands of Internet marketing articles and useful links.

[dungdm006]

Because of this encouraging surge in activity, many individuals are now interested in becoming e-commerce merchants. To profit from your online business, you must first produce a unique website that will intrigue visitors and interest them in your items.

In reality, the e-commerce business is not much different than your average offline retail venture. Both vendors have products that he aims to sell, and each retailer must discover the appropriate avenue to market these items. Online shoppers crave the same things that traditional shoppers demand: a pleasant shopping experience, in-stock merchandise, and a courteous vendor. If you seek to please the customer, your e-commerce business shall prosper.

Almost every e-commerce website that is currently profiting has a clean, crisp layout, and effortless navigation. It is essential for you to have several categories featuring your products that are easy to browse. Clear, detailed images should also be readily available. Customers should have the opportunity to examine your products and compare them with others.

An ideal e-commerce store will have many WebPages. These pages will be organized into various categories, with searchable properties, and will use thumbnail pictures for faster loading time. Each picture should also have a detailed description of the product. The easier the site is to access, the more likely it is the visitor will purchase a product.

Website security has become a major issue in cyberspace. It is up to you as an e-commerce vendor to make each one of your customers feel at ease shopping at your online store. It is crucial for you to have Secure Socket Layering (SSL) on your online payment pages, so you have the capacity to handle encrypted transactions, such as credit card processing. Outwardly demonstrating to your customers that your website is secure will make them more comfortable shopping with you.

Customer service information should be an eminent characteristic on your e-commerce website. It is essential that you have a Contact Us link on your site's menu, and on every page of your website. This link should be directed to another page, which lists an e-mail address, phone number, and mailing address. Customers need to feel that they can contact you at any time if they have any questions or problems. It is also wise to have a Frequently Asked Questions section to your site, which provides answers to common queries.

With the e-commerce business leading the way in the web of money-making ventures, many are racing to join the masses. While building and eventually increasing sales to your e-commerce site may not come easily at first, in time, the rewards will be plentiful.

Dr. J. E. Burke, an educator and entrepreneur, has been involved in various business enterprises. Dr. Burke is an educator, writer and motivational speaker on a variety of topics. Dr. Burke can be contacted at J.E.B. Resume ServiceManna Success Newsletter or jeb@burkepublications.com.

[dungdm006]

In a recent article I talked about Google AdSense placement based on eye-tracking research. However, research by The Poynter Institute, Eyetools and the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media has a lot to say about more than where to put an AdSense block.

Designing an eCommerce site is more than making it pretty. You have certain desired actions you're looking for from your visitors. You have specific things you want to be sure they see and hopefully act on. Now, there's some research that can guide your design. Certainly you want your site to look professional, but you want it to do its job as effectively as possible too.

People are surprisingly alike in some of their basic visual behavior. It's been argued that our evolution as hunter-gatherers has shaped much of our ingrained visual patterns. Whether you buy that particular argument or not there are still important commonalities.

Typical behavior on initially viewing a site is to do a fast scan of the entire visible screen with short focusing periods around the areas that attract attention. First pass tends to include headlines, the page logo, photo captions, subheads, links and menu items. And the big hot spot is the upper left corner of the screen. I haven't seen any definitive research on whether these patterns also hold for users with native languages that read any way except left to right, but I'm assuming most of you are building sites for left-to-right readers.

The clear message is that your most important real estate is in that upper left area and that the lower right (particularly if it's below the fold) is the least likely to receive much attention.

How you use your words in a headline, paragraph or link can make a huge difference in your success at capturing a visitor's attention. The concept is called frontloading. Wherever you can make sure your critical terms appear at the very beginning of headlines, links and other text. It's still got to make sense, but the first few words are far more likely to be at least scanned then the middle or end of a headline or link or the inside of a paragraph.

The exact same words can have drastically different capture rates depending on their order. You want to maximize the probability that the visitor will read a whole headline or link and then act on it. So put the most significant, enticing words first - the ones that are the best grabbers and convey the subject immediately.

You don't have a lot of time to mess about. It's been reported that a typical surfer may be off your page in well under 14 seconds unless something grabs his or her attention fast. Remember the upper-left? You want to do an especially good job with headlines, link and text in that area.

Dropcaps (where the first capitalized letter in a line is in a different, often unusual, font and extends below the normal text base-line), bolding, font changes and color changes can also serve as strong eye-attractors. If you try these techniques you need to be careful that you don't overuse them (your page will look like a mess), and it's extremely important that you test whether or not they're actually doing what you want. Annoying as it may be, running tests is the only way to make sure it's an improvement.

Do you use lists? Have you made sure that they're in-line and as close to the left margin as possible? Don't ever use an outline format with multiple indents. People scan down, not across and they tend to scan close to the left margin. Indent too much and it might as well be invisible.

An interesting testing result that I read somewhere said that somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of site visitors don't even see centered headlines. Sure they look nice and a lot of sites use them, but if they're totally missed by even 3 percent of your visitors, you're paying a major price to look good. Suggestion? Put those headlines up against your left margin.

This also applies to links. Put those links up against the left margin, not inside a paragraph, centered or off to the right. And if you want any clicks on a link, never put it in that nearly unseen lower right area. Might as well just leave it off your page.

How about indented paragraphs? Now there's a great way to start an argument. Some argue that it attracts the eye, it's different, few sites use it so you stand out. Others insist that you're far better off staying left justified and frontloading each paragraph. There's only one way to resolve it for yourself, yeah, run some tests and see what works with your visitors on your site.

The bottom line is that once you get beyond the basics of placement, frontloading, and left-justified links and headlines, you need to test if you want to fully maximize the effectiveness of your website design. I wish there were a simpler answer too, but in the end only testing will tell you what works best for your site.

Richard writes, teaches, trains and consults on business and professional presentations and eCommerce related matters. Visit building-ecommerce-websites.com for more information on eCommerce sites and eCommerce site building - and Web Hosting and Web Services Article Index for more eCommerce articles.