The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a corporative effort between merchant and an affiliate’s website(http://ezinearticles.com/?What-are-the-Benefits-of-Affiliate-Marketing?&id=41437). When customers use searching websites such as Keycode.com and Google to search key words what they want to buy, they fill find direct links of those online stores which use affiliate marketing with these searching websites. Affiliate marketing becomes very popular because it gives many benefits to merchant. The main benefits of using affiliate marketing are that it can increase numbers of target markets and it is low risk.

First of all, it can increase numbers of target markets by using affiliate marketing. According to Mgnum, more sites will naturally create more sales, if the sites merchant have chosen to use are in their niche marketing (http://ezinearticles.com/?What-are-the-Benefits-of-Affiliate-Marketing?&id=41437). For example, when customers go to Keycode.com to search “bed”, Keycode.com will give them many direct links to the stores which sell things related bed. If particular furniture joins to affiliates’ websites, it could give the store a chance to reach people who are not in their target market because not only one demographic group goes to affiliate websites to search. Therefore, the total number of target markets for the merchant which use affiliate marketing can be increased, and sales revenue can be increased.

   In addition, affiliate marketing is very low risks for marketers. For example, if marketers use Keycode.com to do their online marketing. They don’t need pay any fee to join. Also, the paying system of Kyecode.com is pay-per-sale model. Since Keycode.com does not require any up-front fees, clients pay nothing until a keycode.com offer is actually used by a shopper

(http://www.keycode.com/company_aboutus.asp). Compare to pay-per-click, pay-per-sale have lower risk because marketer only need to pay when customers exactly purchase products through affiliates’ websites. Moreover, because there is no joining fee for most affiliate websites, marketer don’t need to worry about if they get fraud from affiliates’ websites .

To sum up, affiliate marketing does not only help marketers increase their target markets’ number but also give them a low risk advertising opportunity. As the Internet Beginner Guide said, these benefits of affiliate marketing demonstrate that affiliate marketing has the potential to be a powerful form of online income generation. (http://www.netuser.cc/online-business-ideas-benefits-of-affiliate-marketing-4127/) Affiliate Marketing should be considered to use by marketer. 

Big Advantages of Online Interactive Advertisement

     There are many different ways to promote products or services. Marketers can choose TV, print, radio and direct mail advertising, but if they choose online interactive advertisement it give the more advantages than choosing the other ones. According to Li and Leckenby, the internet including the Web is an interactive medium which provides for the possibility of interactive communication with messages. (http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:WUPv4k2cc5UJ

:www.ciadvertising.org/studies/reports/measurement/ad_format_print.pdf+benefit+of+online+interactive+advertising&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=26&gl=ca) The two main advantages of online interactive advertisement are low cost, increasing brand awareness.

First of all, online interactive advertising is low cost. For example, marketers can use Facebook to create their own product pages totally free. As soon as they create the pages, they can update their brand information and images even videos whatever they think it’s good for their products. As Trent said, “When you click the “public” button on these sites, you are open to the billions of people in the world“(http://trentadams.ca/2008/04/17/social-networking

-cost-benefit-relationship). When marketers use social networking such as Facebook and My Space, they can target much more people rather than other media advertising and they don’t need to spend any money by using them to advertise.

   In addition, online interactive advertising can increase brand awareness. Let’s still use the Facebook example. Facebook is becoming very popular among different ages of groups and can be a create interception point for building relationships between companies and their customers

(http://seo-space.blogspot.com/2007/09/11-business-benefits-of-using-facebook.html). Because marketers can use the interactive advertising by putting brand names and benefits on website, people can view the products in a more positive way. The positive brand massages are more directly delivered to customers when customers come to visit the websites.

   In conclusion, interactive advertising give benefits to marketers that they can save their money on advertising as well as they can strengthen their brand awareness to consumers.

Click Fraud

   Pay per click is the classic search engine pricing model that online marketers need to pay an amount of cost every time advertisings are clicked by online users. Even though some one says that pay per click model is effective to online advertisers and less cost, there is big problem for this pricing model:  click fraud. Click fraud is defined as clicking on a paid advertisement for a fraudulent or non-legitimate purpose.

   First of all, click fraud is hard to solve. Search engines don’t have the exactly way to tell online advertisers how they determine the fraud. Even though search engines such as Google and Yahoo say they can save the problem of click fraud and do have refund to their customers about bogus charges, it is really hard for them to say how they determine what’s fake.  (http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/

detail?vid=1&hid=107&sid=536a5651-cebb-4717-ab2333baeb57187f%40sessionmgr103&b

data=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=19953651) That makes advertisers concern if search engines can really solve the problem of fraud. 

In addition, click fraud does not only give cost disadvantage to online marketers but also to search engines. Firstly, some marketing executives estimate that up to 20 percent of fees in certain advertising categories continue to be based on nonexistent consumers in today’s search industry.

(http://news.cnet.com/Exposing-click-fraud/2100-1024_3-5273078.html) Online marketers had to pay a lot of money which they actually don’t need to. More over, according to Jared, “An Arkansas judge has given final approval to a $90 million click-fraud settlement, in which Google will pay one-third of the settlement in cash, all for the advertisers’ attorneys’ fees. The remainder of the settlement will be paid out in advertising credits worth the equivalent of a $3.80 refund on every $1,000 spent in its advertising network over the past four and one-half years” (http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=107&sid=6d0805c4-97d8-42ac-838a965160846a18%40sessionmgr102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=22452257). It is a huge number of money that Google had to pay for.  

  In conclusion, click fraud is a serious problem that not only disadvantages to online marketers but also to search engines. Either of them has to pay for click fraud. Search engines should find the way how to exactlly ditermine frake.

 

 

Benefits of Using Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a very useful tool for online marketers. It focuses on three major things: design web pages that are friendly to search engine spiders; make sure that the elements that are indexed by search engines are all optimal; get indexed and listed by the major search engines. Using SEO can give online marketers two main advantages that it not only helps marketers save money but also makes websites more visibility.

First of all, using SEO can helps online marketers cut their costs. SEO is a less expensive tool for marketers, even sometimes it is free. As Derek mentioned that it is very expensive to pay per click advertising and is not as effective as the free variety although it can get traffic to your site quickly (http://ezinearticles.com/?Benefits-of-Using-Search-Engine-Optimisation&id=931075). It is much better to SEO which can help marketers generate free engine traffic to their websites. As marketers use SEO they can easily “optimise their sites to maximize free traffic that has already shown an interest by searching for related terms”, Derek also said (http://ezinearticles.com/?Benefits-of-Using-Search-Engine-Optimisation&id=931075).  SEO can save money for marketers when they are doing online advertising.

In addition, SEO helps websites more visibility. When customers search some key words on through searching websites such as Google and Yahoo, if these key words are related the ones of marketers’ websites, customers will see the website links as results and they may actually visit particular websites.  For example, if a marketer choose “Green Tea” as a key words for the website, whenever customer search “green tea” online SEO will gibe the link of that website to the customer as a result. Marc once mentioned that the more visible websites are the more chances of being seen and chosen (http://www.isnare.com/?aid=303485&ca=Internet). SEO do help customers get into visit websites easily and make websites have more chance to be chosen.  

In conclusion, Search Engine Optimisation can benefit website owners.  “A higher search ranking is the dream of many Website owners” said by Trenton (http://www.sitepoint.com/article/increased-usability/). As soon as online marketers use SEO, they can get the dream become real.

Great Opportunity for Online Marketing

      Facebook is one of the social network sites, which allows users to present themselves, publish their photos and articles and built connections with other users.  According to Nail Kennedy, the website technologist in San Francisco, “Facebook is the most talked about social network of 2007, connecting over 30 million members daily” (http://www.niallkennedy.com/podcast/2007/09/facebook-usage-marketing.html), Facebook has become a very popular community tool among young generations. Facebook offers marketers opportunity to do online marketing.

      First of all, not like traditional websites advertising marketers can build their products page under the Facebook system.  Catherine once mentioned that marketers who use brand pages on Facebook are like brand ambassadors (http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=8&sid=8b071c2b-f329-4ac1-8319-8a2f369843ba%40sessionmgr9&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=27486440).  Every interaction a user has with a brand can then be turned into an advertisement — complete with a user’s picture, what they did, and an image of the brand — and fed to that person’s Facebook friends via news feeds that update members on friends’ recent activities”(http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=8&sid=8b071c2b-f329-4ac1-8319-8a2f369843ba%40sessionmgr9&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=27486440). If users liked the brands, they could become friends even fans to the brand and then other friends of these users could also view the brand pages as a result. Creating brand website gives marketers more chance to get more customers.

       In addition, when marketers use brand pages to advertise their products on Facebook, it raise the brand credibility for new customers.  As George Schweitzer, president of the CBS Marketing Group, pointed, “Word of mouth has always been very important in entertainment marketing, but now, because digital media has fractionalized the audience so much, we see this Facebook [move] as kind of tying it back together” (http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=21&sid=9efd41cc-5e26-4c2d-bdd2-d74cbc7e86e5%40SRCSM1&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=27600298). As individuals become friends or fans of particular brand on Facebook, it will show to other friends of these individuals. It is more credible to listen to friends about brand promotions rather than just look at the brand advertisements on websites.

      To sum up, as Facebook become more and more popular all over the world, Facebook offers a great opportunity to marketers.  Facebook is not only the place where offers marketers sell their products or services more easily, but also is the place where give marketers build their credibility.

Big Advatages of Using Viral Marketing

       Viral marketing is defined as a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people pass commercial messages, which is in such a way that it spreads like virus. (http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/viral_marketing/) Viral marketing give big advantages to marketers not only saving their money but also making their brand well known.

First of all, because viral marketing is typically web based, it helps marketers save their money. To do viral marketing campaign, marketers just need to update their video or image advertisements on the free websites such as Youtube, Myspace and Facebook. As Anthony mentioned that marketers don’t need a six-figure budget to construct a viral marketing campaign. All they need is a mailing list of their core demographic, and an idea of what the customers might like to pass along.(http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com/articledetail.php?artid=20565&catid=308) Compared with the traditional marketing which costs millions of dollar, viral marketing is much less expenses.

In addition, marketers can make their brands much better known through doing viral marketing. When people find something really interesting or cool, they always share these things with other persons. For instant, a few years ago, Lee tapped into that impulse to generate buzz for its jeans. Lee built a promotion around its mascot, Buddy Lee, who looks like a kewpie doll in blue jeans. There were Buddy Lee for President Websites that looked as if they had been built by amateur kooks. There were fake home pages for Buddy’s foes, including a cheesy racecar driver called Curry, with photos, testimonials, and a video of Curry seductively rubbing his chest hair. Lee’s target audience, 17- to 24-year-olds, was supposed to stumble across the Websites and pass them on to friends.(http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=17&sid=2a274b3d-19ed-4830-875f-110dbdf91592%40SRCSM1&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=3783999) Customers of Lee past the commercial message because they liked the website advertising and would like to share the nice advertisement with more people. This successful viral marketing made the sales of Lee jeans jump 125 percentage. (http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=17&sid=2a274b3d-19ed-4830-875f-110dbdf91592%40SRCSM1&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=3783999) From this real case it is easy to see that viral marketing help marketers get higher profit and make their brands much better known.

      To sum up, viral marketing is very helpful for marketers. Viral marketing help marketers do their marketing within less expense but higher profit. It also makes brands well known. The viral marketing is the only virus that marketers would like to use and spread.

Impact of Media Mix on Website

     More and more ecommerce websites have been used media mix since more and more customers go to online shopping. Media mix of websites is defined as multimedia including video, music or pictures which are used on websites. Using media mix has an active impact on ecommerce website.

    First of all, media mix can attract more customers in different groups. “How do you get the maximum number of buyer inquiries in the shortest space of time?” Yvvone once said, “Sell for More, by former real estate agent Gil Davis, provides interesting research that measures success in terms of price achieved and the length of time taken to sell, using different media.”(http://frankston-leader.whereilive.com.au/real-estate/story/media-mix-offers-best-results/) If websites create advertisings about their products or service by different media, they can attract more different customers. The reason of that is because different people always have different interesting about media types. Some people may like to see video advertisings but some others may prefer to see print advertisements.

    Therefore, it is an effective way to use several different types of media on ecommerce websites. Moreover, media mix motive customer to actually buy products from ecommerce websites. Even though great massage writing may give customers feelings about the products which the ecommerce webs provide, it is not direct. However, using media such as pictures and videos with some text massage can give consumers very visual feelings, which can motive customers directly. As customers actually see the benefits from pictures or videos, it will have more probability that consumers go to buy the products rather than they just read explanations about products. 

   In conclusion, media mix is very effective on ecommerce websites. It can help websites to attract more consumers to view the websites and motive customers to have actually buying behaviors on products. However, websites designers have to pay attention when they put too much different types of media, because it can make websites clutter and confuse customers.

Importance of Information Architecture

Rosenfeld and Morville once mentioned “Information architecture involves the design of organization, labeling, navigation, and searching systems to help people find and manage information more successfully.” (Rosenfeld and Morville) Information architecture defined as term used to describe the structure of a system (Barker, 2005) is very important to on online marketers because effective information architecture helps marketers make search and navigation effective and support user goals.

First of all, effective information architecture helps marketers make search and navigation effective. For example, if customers go to air line website, they probably want to search information such as flight schedule, tickets information and connect information. If the airline has built the links to customers, customers can find the information much easier and more quickly. As Mnfrancis said that as long as there is an apparent progress from one link to the next, and the indication is that they are still on track to reach their end goal, users will tend to continue through a site. (Mnfrancis, 2008) When information architecture has been built, customers can search the information they want without thinking and like to use the website more.

In addition, effective information architecture (IA) websites support user goals, which can make websites usable. Vivian Biss, as a knowledge management analyst at Microsoft Library mentioned “IA encompasses all the design and structure from the back-end to through the content to the resulting representation necessary to create an information system useful to end-users.”(Biss, 2000) Website users always have particular goals to visit the websites. For instance, when customers go to online shop websites, they may have the goal to buy something. As information architecture is built on websites, it provides useful information to users and let customers finally achieve their goals.

In conclusion, effective information architecture is extremely useful and important on building website. It not only makes search and navigation effective but also supports user goals which can make websites useful. To make websites more useful and effective to user, online marketers should build information architecture.

Renrence:

Biss, Vivian 2000, “What is Information 

    Architecutre”   http://www2.hawaii.edu/~mwhang/SGIA/ia/index.html

Barker, Lain 2005, “What Is Information Architecture”

     http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_whatisinfoarch/

Mnfrancis 2008, “What Does A Website Need?”

    http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/7-what-does-a-good-web-page-need/

Importance of Measuring Web Site

“The customer has a different perception of the web channel level of service from that of the service provider. The service provider measures what matters for infrastructure management, diagnosis and troubleshooting”, said in “The Web Channel Customer Experience – Measuring What Matters”. (http://209.85.173.104

/search?q=cache:nltSZPVkKjAJ:pfwebmon.com/Cyclik%2520Whitepaper%2520-%2520Customer%2520Experience%2520Measure%2520What%2520Matters.pdf+Measure+Web+Channel&hl=zh-CN&ct=clnk&cd=2) To understand customers more and how well websites work, it is very important for marketers to measure their website.

      The website analysis helps marketers to know how worth they spend their money on their website. As Roger mentioned on the video clip, “Web Analytics Reports and How They Help a Website Grow”, website analytics reports such as google analytics make marketers be able to track different situations like which pages people are coming in on their website; which products customers are searching for; which pages customers are leaving from. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=VxCFpmzof5c&feature=related) All these surveys help marketers know whether their websites achieve their goals that they build the websites. When they track and measure their websites, they can fix their websites as soon as website analytics reports show that their goals are not achieved through data.

In addition, website analysis also helps marketers develop their websites. In the report “Website Analyst, Meeting Your Needs with Excellence”, the author reports that the commercial and non-profit successful websites have seven characteristics which are usefulness of information, ease of surfing on the site, quick response time, excellent product information flow, readability and originality, friendly layout and good listing on major search engines. (http://www.website-analyst.co.il/) Surveying the websites by using website analysis is the way to know whether websites have these characteristics. For example, marketers can survey how functioning their websites on the browsers their consumers use is. When some functions are not supporting on particular browsers, analysis helps marketers know the problem and they can update the technical functions to make their website work on different browsers. Otherwise, websites will lose customers because of functioning problem. Marketers know very clearly what the problems they have on their websites are.

To sum up, measuring website is important for every marketer who has built a website. It helps marketers to know well about how their websites work for their consumers.

 

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:nltSZPVkKjAJ:pfwebmon.com/Cyclik%2520Whitepaper%2520-%2520Customer%2520Experience%2520Measure%2520What%2520Matters.pdf+Measure+Web+Channel&hl=zh-CN&ct=clnk&cd=2

http://www.website-analyst.co.il/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxCFpmzof5c&feature=related

 

Privacy Online

 

This week we discuss about online privacy. Through a research, 73 percent Canadian over 16 use internet for personal reasons. People use internet for shopping, banking, making friends and so on. As more and more people have used internet to shopping or banking, personal privacy has become a very important thing people care about.

A lot of websites we use require customers to register, so when customers have to use the web sites they have to write down their personal information to sign up our accounts. However, in many situations we don’t know how safe our privacies are. To let consumers be sure they are safe, many online companies such as Yahoo and Ebay don’t only provide their privacy policies but also use Truste certificated privacy. Because Truste is a non-profit organization and follows many different privacy law and standards, it makes these websites more credible.

Although most websites have developed different ways to protect customers’ privacies, and privacy laws have been developed, people should learn some knowledge. For example, at website of Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the privacy quiz tell people that their email massages may be read by others and they’re not private. If people understand knowledge of online privacy, people can pay more attention when they do online massaging, shopping or banking.

 According to the Center for Democracy and Technology, there are ten ways to protect privacy online:

1. Look for privacy policies on Web Sites

2. Get a separate account for your personal e-mail

3. Teach your kids that giving out personal information online means giving it to strangers

4. Clear your memory cache after browsing

5. Make sure that online forms are secure

6. Reject unnecessary cookies
7. Use anonymous remailers

8. Keep your e-mail private, use encryption

9. Use anonymizers while browsing

10. Opt-out of third party information sharing

All these ways can help people protect privacy online. Addition to laws and policies, if people pay attention by using these ways when they use online registrations, it can be much safer.   

     To sum up, online privacy has been developing since internet becomes more and more popular and useful in people life. However, in order to protect personal privacy well, using security technology such as Truste is not enough. People have to learn about knowledge and ways to protect their privacies.

  

http://www.privcom.gc.ca/quiz/re1_e.asp

http://www.truste.org/10th/video.php

http://www.cdt.org/privacy/guide/basic/topten.html