 |
BeOnTheNet's
Electronic Commerce |
Volume 1 Number 7 September 1998
ISSN: 1520-8095
As a reminder, you subscribed to this newsletter about Internet Electronic Commerce at the www.beonthenet.com site. It will be published monthly with occasional extra short bulletins about E-commerce.
If you find it useful and/or would like us to cover some additional topics please email us at
Please forward it to a friend if you find it useful. Your friends can subscribe to it at:
http://www.beonthenet.com/ecsubscribe.html
You may unsubscribe from this list by sending an email to:
The Subject line of the message should be "remove".
If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter please send your contribution to:
In This Issue:
Why Good Positioning in Search engines is important for E-Commerce
New Nielsen Study shows there are now 48 million Web Shoppers!
What does the Starr Report On the Web mean??
Short Notes - A collection of interesting Internet E-Commerce quotes
Why Good Positioning in Search engines is important for E-Commerce
Most people go to websites from search engines. Major search engines get millions of visitore per day. Yahoo routinely boasts over 50 million page views per day. And the competition between search engines is heating up. As search engines migrate from mere search vehicles to Portals which become the major starting point for peoples Internet excursions, I expect that peoples use of these sites will only increase.
Other forms of online advertising such as banner ads, cost money. Just a few good positions under a few important keywords can deliver the same or better results for FREE. In search engines, the higher you rank under important keywords, the more traffic you'll get. If you don't show up within the first two or three pages when someone searches on a particular keyword they will probably never find your listing.
The past several WWW User surveys conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology show that close to 90% of traffic to most Web sites comes from search engines. And those numbers have remained fairly constant over the past two years.
Other surveys which we have reported on in the past show that over 75% of Internet shoppers start their shopping excursion by looking for the product via a search engine
New Nielsen Study shows there are now 48 million Web Shoppers!
The following are highlights of the Nielsen Media Research and CommerceNet study
(http://www.nielsenmedia.com/news/commnet2.html )
on the U.S. and Canada Internet population 16 years and older. This study was conducted during June of 1998:
- The top findings will show you that the Internet is still growing at an unprecedented pace. The survey showed that the Internet added 21 million new North American users aged 16+ since last September, bringing the U.S. and Canada total to 79 million.
- More impressive is the growth of e-commerce -- the number of people who have transacted or purchased something on-line has doubled in the past 9 months. The number of people buying products and services via the Web has hit 20 million. From September through June 1998, the growth in on-line buyers accelerated to 8 percent a month.
- The study also shows that the number of Web shoppers -- people checking out or comparing products and services on the Web -- is now 48 million.
- For the first time, more than 50 percent of the population between the ages of 16 and 34 are Internet users -- i.e. 40 million persons.
- Seventeen percent of people of age 50 or greater -- 13 million persons -- are Internet users. The number of users in this age group is growing at about the same pace as the overall Internet population 16 and over. However, the proportion of Internet users among people of age 50 or greater is still only half that of the overall population.
- Approximately 43 percent of Internet users -- 34 million persons -- are women.
- Most on-line shoppers (64 percent) and purchasers (71 percent) are men.
What does the Starr Report On the Web mean??
No matter what your position is on President Bill Clinton's current problems, there are few things of great importance to be realized from the last couple of weeks goings on. By releasing the Starr Report onto the Internet, that information was available to Millions of Americans virtually instantly in its original form. Citizen's could be their own Newsgatherers without depending upon the press to "interpret" events for them.
We saw a tremendous synergy between TV and the Internet. TV News broadcasts were presenting highlites and then directing you to their internet sites for the full detail. You virtually cannot watch or hear a newscastwithoutbeing directed to www.something.com for further details.
It was once said that it is impossible to maintain a dictatorial form of government when the ratio of telephones to people reached 1 to 10. Communication between people just became to easy to keep a tyranny in place. If you look at the fall of communism worldwide and compare it to the growth of tele-communications in those countries you will see that that statement holds up pretty well. The government can easily control TV, Radio stations and newspapers to see that only their message gets out, but how can they control all of the phones, fax machines, and now email and the Internet?
When students protested in Communist China in Tianemen Square the story was faxed around the world . When Boris Yeltsin was holed up in the Russian Parliament and surrounded by troops with his communications being strangled a technocrat walked in with a notebook computer and showed him how he could communicate with the outside world via the Internet which the KGB did not or could not shut down.
What will the explosive growth of the Internet mean to politics and government in the near and distant future? Well for one thing perhaps it will mean the passing of the "sound bite" decision. People making decisions on candidates and proposals based upon a 10 second clip on TV.
Nielsen Media research estimates that 70.2 million Americans over the age of 16 are now using the Internet. That's more than one third of the population! And they predict that 50% of the adults in the US and Canada will be using the Net by late 1999 or early 2000.. Their studies already show that Internet users spend 15% less time watching TV.
Internet users already know how convenient the net makes things. Just a couple of years ago all you could buy online was computer stuff now you can buy concert tickets, flowers, stocks, Teddy Bears and salamis! How long do you think it will be before we can vote for our elected representatives via the Internet?
Short Notes - A collection of interesting Internet E-Commerce quotes
Internet Continues to grow by leaps and bounds!
In the first six months of 1998 the Number of Internet domains worldwide grew from 29,670,000 to 36,739,000 an increase of 24%. IN the US the number of business domains grew by 28.7% from 13,850,000 to 17,356,000. No form of media newspapers, radio, or television has ever experienced such a monumental growth as the Internet. If your business doesn't have a Web Site - act now before you get left behind.
Are you online yet? Visit us at beonthenet.com and get a free consultation.
That's it for this month. -Gene McMahon
