Week 10

In this weeks blog I am going to talk about web personalization. I going to say how I feel about personalization if I am for it of if I am against it. I will provide evidence for my opinion, so I can justify what I am trying say and get across. I will also try and show good or bad examples of personalization through images and links to sites.

 

My thoughts to web personalization, are that they are good as they can make a website a lot more interesting, and also they can give you ideas to buy products through web adverts such as widgets these can be very useful and they make a website look more interesting.

 

(the image above is of contextual Advertisement)

If a website looks eye catching a tasteful then a user will be more inclined to use that site, instead of a bland boring site that will loose a person attention straight away and the user will probably go onto another webpage, in some cases people can over personalize a webpage and this will cause the page to look very cultured and can do the opposite of the personalization the webpage in the first place and the user may not even bother using the webpage as it is to cultured and award to use. If the personalization is done properly then it can have a great effect on the webpage increasing the amount of users. If a webpage has been personalized well the website can then use application such as:

 

• Targeting advertisements and promoting products
• Managing marketing campaigns
• Managing Web site content
• Managing knowledge
• Managing personalized portals and channels

It is very easy to peronsalise a webpage and i have shown an example below using http://www.google.co.uk/ig?hl=en&source=iglk

 

This is the page personalized

 

In this fianl image in my opinion is a good example of webpersonalization this image is of the www.hmv.co.uk the reason why it is a good example is because it have widgets, data mining, Browsers into buyers, Cross-sell, Loyalty methods incorporated

 

 

Week 9

For this week’s blog I’m going to construct a list of key phrases that best describes www.ebay.co.uk . I will use the Google search based keyword tool, to help me come up with ideas for the key phrases that will describe www.ebay.co.uk. This is the link for the website http://www.google.co.uk/sktool/ . The final key phrases will only be twelve phrases long.  After using the Google search based keyword tool these are the results I got

 

 

In the screenshot above I type into the www.ebay.co.uk then I typed in to keywords filter auctions these were the results I got.

The mean task for this week’s blog is to cut down the deluge of keywords to around twelve key words to around twelve, that perfectly descries www.ebay.co.uk and can be used as part of an ad words campaign. EBay is such a big business that I could use a lot of phrases to describe this business.

I used another tool from Google to help aid me in trying to get the right phrases, the tool was called Google keyword tool, all I have to do was type into the search engine www.ebay.co.uk into the tool, making sure that I selected the website content radio button  to get the right results. Then I made sure that I had the right category chosen in the match type column I had as phrase for screenshot of the results below

 

 

 

These are the phrase that I have come up with using these search tools that Google have provided, there are twelve key phrases that I gathered from by using  these, and by using these phrases I will now try make one key phrase to best describe ebay.

• Sell products on eBay
• Buy sell on eBay
• Selling on eBay
• Making money on eBay
• Buy sell anything you want on eBay
• Online auction
• Best online auction on the web
• Safe secure and reliable auction  
• Fast, easy, safe, reliable auctioning
• Anything can be sold of bought
• Bargains on eBay
• Best price for goods on eBay

 This is the phrase that i came up with to me that best describes eBay in my own personal opinion.

Looking to sell, buy goods use eBay Fast, easy, reliable auctioning service

 

 

 

 

Week 8

Week 8

 

For this weeks blog I am going to look at E-marketing for eBay, and how it uses the internet to market its products. Through out this blog I will show evidence of what I have learned by conducting this research, I will try show pictures of the results that appear.

            The first thing I did for this weeks blog was first of all use a couple of search engines such as www.google.co.uk  and I did this to see how easily my choosing website would come up in a search engine such as Google, and as I thought would happen after using this search engine, I found that www.ebay.co.uk was displayed in the top three of the search results, I expected this to happen as eBay is an extremely popular site as millions for people use this website every day. I then did this experiment with another search engine to make search it wasn’t a fluke and the search that was used was www.yahoo.co.uk and the same thing happened, eBay was in the top three results shown, I had to carry out this research to see how easy or not it was access eBay using a search engine, I can happy say that it is very to access eBay using a search engine (I have shown these results as screenshots below for yahoo, and Google).                                                                                        

 The next bit of research that I carried out was a bit tricky but I had to try and search for eBay own brand products as eBay is an online auction so it did not really have any of its own brand products so I then had to have a look at the key themes into a search engine. When I typed into Google for example a type of shoe there were a few problems with the results, when I got the results form the Google search engine I got a lot results from different e-commerce websites and there were now real hits for eBay shoes, this is what happened again for yahoo, this because eBay is a online auction site so it does produce any of its own products, it does allow other e-commerce businesses to display there goods up on www.ebay.co.uk. I also tried some key themes into a search engine it came bay with better results because I typed in online auctions and eBay was in the top three search results in both search engines yahoo, and Google. (The results are displayed in screenshots below).

When I used eBay itself to purchase goods from the site there were no other offers made by competitors. I thing this due to fact eBay is online auction site and there is not going to be any other competing retailers the online other competitors would be the online bidders such as the user who is trying to buy goods.

 

 

Week 7

For this week I carried out web research on what “Cloud Computing” is and how it can benefit E-commerce. Cloud computing is a basically virtual servers available over the internet for users that have internet access to get these services. Cloud computing when it is applied to I.T. it can allow the I.T. users increase capacity or add capabilities with out investing in a new Infrastructure which will save a lot of money, this can also can be applied to training new personnel, or licensing new software. Cloud computing users pay-per-use or subscription- based a service that, in real time over the internet, extends I.C.T existing capabilities. There are couple of types of Cloud computing and they are; Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) for example Amazon Web Services provide virtual server instances with unique IP addresses and blocks of storage on demand. Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is a set of software and product development tools hosted on the provider’s infrastructure, such as portals or gateway and the last type is Software-as-a service (SaaS) the vendor supplies the software infrastructure, the software product and interacts with the user through a front-end portal the services can be anything from web-based email to inventory control and database processing. Cloud computing is basically a pay as you use; you can use software such as Microsoft office for a limited time until the user has completed his task.                                                                                                      

 Cloud Computing could have a massive an effect on the e-commerce world as it could have huge benefits to businesses and for normal everyday user such as students.  The main reason why cloud computing could benefit the e-commerce is because of it great ability to be very cost beneficial.  In theory, the cost of cloud computing are based on the consumption. There is no software, hardware or infrastructure to buy and in most cases you simple pay for what you use.  Using the cloud you only pay for the processing power, storage and bandwidth you, meaning you don’t have to pay for times when your business is idle. Some I.T experts say that 90% of all e-commerce businesses will be leveraging some from of cloud computing in there operations. They also say that companies will simply  offload there infrastructures , development and software applications to the cloud, For example, it would be unlikely for major companies such as Google and Amazon to utilize the cloud for cost benefits or added flexibility.  However, they probably wouldn’t mind raking in the profits by selling cloud services to others.

Week 6

EBay’s Strategy for management of the upstream and downstream supply chain is  that it use both push and pull Tactics to try sell there merchandise as well allow the users to sell and purchase there own goods. EBay also allows companies to advertise there own goods on the website, as mentioned before eBay uses push and pull tactic’s to sell its goods as   they emphasis on the distributions of a product to passive customers and its also use the pull supply chain tactics to emphasis on the delivering value to customers who are actively involved in product and service specification. It eBay’s main method of use is push SCM.              

eBay has vertical integration in place as the organisation actives are undertaken and controlled within the company so it is control if it is trying to advertise good on the site. When comes to the vertical integration eBay is not really involved with this method as it does need to use method because it is mainly used for specialised or propriety production, it would also not really use vertical disintegration as this involves out sourcing, and a network of suppliers, this aids in cost reduction and it focuses on the core capabilities, eBay would use virtual integration method as it would have total reliance on the linked third parties, and it would have to close relationships with the suppliers, and this really aids the companies that use eBay as a marketing tool as it has the benefit of rapid market penetration the dot-com approach. In this approach though there is a lack of physical structure, and it has a very big reliance on knowledge from the users, it has to have the use of communication technologies, this can be very expensive initially for the user, it does allow mobile work to accrue, another characteristic of this is that its boundaryless and its inclusive flexible and responsive.

week 5

E-business strategy

The threat of substitute products and services

There are a couple of website that have the potential to substitute EBay and one of these sites are Amazon as this website is very similar to eBay and you may be able to get better Deals on this site. When using the internet to sale product it enables a website such as Amazon to advertise the product this will enable faster buying of products, which can then lead to eBay not selling as many goods as Amazon has done.

The threat of the entry of new competitors (barriers to entry)

Since eBay has been up and running it has been increasing the sales of online products, and the traditional high street markets have been loosing out, so now a days the retailers have started creating there own online E-commerce so that they do not loose out on sales. When a new entranced is entering the online market they have to be watch just so that the market does not have had over crowed or erosion of the market.  Also when the internet services are incorporated they are very easy maintaining c compared to traditional services such as stock in votary it will also for fast followers.

The intensity of competitive rivalry

Also the rivalry becomes a lot more intense as product lifecycles shorten, and this makes the websites try to sell ore good in a smaller period of time thus making the competion more intense this also makes the normal retailers have to sell all there products a lot quicker. Also this will make the product development news decrease as people can get more access to the development of the product. Also when the internet is involve it make the small business a global market this will make it a lot hard to sell goods as this means there will be a lot more competitors for that business to compete against. 

The bargaining power of customers/buyers

EBay also has to compete with the fact that people know all about the transparency of the prices over the internet so online consumers know that they could a better deal on the product they are looking to by on a different website, this will then make a website like eBay drive down the cost of product just so that eBay can compete with its computers such as Amazon. 

The bargaining power of suppliers

Because of the internet the retailers can now barging with the suppliers as they could probably get a better deal from another supplier. There also the opposite effect though as the supplier good say that your making a better profit off the cheapen goods that the suppliers have given you they good actually increase the cost of the product from the suppliers.

Week-4

Q.7 Look in detail at the terms and conditions for purchasing from your site.

Are they reasonable?

The terms and conditions do seem reasonable for eBay. As they have many policies that protect the buyers/ bidders of eBay, also they have policies that protect the sellers of the eBay. There’s a lot of polices that also have to do with the payment of the goods, such if the transferral of money has not happened the item will not be posted to the persons who has ordered. If the item is not delivered then user can request for the money back eBay is not responsible it is the seller’s responsibility to get the money returned to the buyer or send the buyer’s money back. If they do not do the buyer can take seller to court eBay can if the transaction logs but eBay is still not liable.

What about returning goods?

IF the user is not happy if the goods that they are happy, that they have purchased they would have to contact the seller to see if they could get a refund, but in most case they will not get a refund because it will make the seller go out of his way to refund the money and get the buyer to post the item back to seller this is just a big hassle, also eBay has nothing to do with this process.

Describe the main mechanisms of support provided by your site.

The support that eBay give is very good as it has a lot of support and here is a link to it http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index_selection.hmtl

These are so of the support pages aviaible from eBay and there are many more eBay has a very good support system

• Buying and Finding
• Account Security
• My Account, Registration, and Password
• Selling and Managing Your Item

 

Do you think that it is better or worse than the competition?

I do think eBay is better than its competitors as it was one of the First online  auctions sites and its is still going well and seems to have a better support for all types of users on eBay such the advertises, seller’s and buyers it also try’s to protect its users as well help them unlike some other sites.

Q.8 Examine the registration process for your site, from the perspective of security.

Search for the item you want

2) Look at how you can pay for item (PayPal is the most common, credit card, bank transfer, money order, cheque etc.)

3) Place a bid

4) Update your bid if you get outbid

5) If you receive an email saying you’ve won, pay for the item (inc. P&P) using one of the methods

6) Your item will be posted to the address you provide

Is your data encrypted?

Yes the personal data is encrypted, because in most case people used PayPal to place there bids or buy items, PayPal is a search that has your visa debit card details and these are encrypted that hackers can not steal someone personal data. If eBay did not provide this service they could be liable and they could get sued this is because eBay own PayPal. 

What does this mean?

Encryption is a way of protecting data form people that you do not want them to see. data encryption is basically were data is jumbled up and the only way it can be put back to the way it was is if the person you want to have the data has the decoder key.

Q.9 does the site use cookies? Yes the EBay does have cookies as remembers the user account if the users was going to log-on.  

Find out what cookies are?

In computing, a cookie (also tracking cookie, browser cookie, and HTTP cookie) is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by a web browser.

Week 3

For this weeks blog post I am going to get data on www.ebay.co.uk that helps put eBay in context for example, competitors, industry averages, also I will look growth rates for eBay each year.

The first thing that i have done is compared the yearly growth of www.ebay.co.uk against a competing site such as www.amazon.com. I also had a look at the monthly growth as well as the amount of daily visitors. Below ius a screen shot of these stats as a comparison.

 

From this graph I interpreted that www.ebay.co.uk has around 76,845,924 users a year and for www.amazion.com  there is only 69,493,618. EBay has more unique users a year than Amazon, also ebay have a better monthly growth over Amazon as well the monthly growth of eBay is +8.97%, where as Amazon is only +3.37%. each year both of these companies are increasing in size, Amazon in creasing more each year than eBay , as Amazon is increasing at a rate of +24.70% while as eBay is increasing by a yearly change of +12.26%  

References

www.compete.com

 

When buying any thing of eBay there are simple to follow, and I have gone to eBay a these are the following steps to selling or buying anything off eBay.

 

 

 

Get started using these steps: 

1. Find an item. Enter keywords into the search box located at the top of any page, or browse through our list of categories on the home page.
2. Learn about the item you found. Read the item description carefully. If you have any questions about the item, you can ask the seller by clicking the “Ask seller a question” link.
3. Review the seller’s Feedback. View the seller’s business reputation by looking at his or her Feedback Score, and read the comments left by previous buyers to be sure that this is a seller you feel you can trust.
4. Bid or Buy It Now. Check the item page to see what purchase options are available. You can either place a bid on an item or purchase it instantly using Buy It Now. Remember, all bids are active until the auction ends. If you win a listing, you’re obligated to complete the transaction.
5. Pay for the item. After you’ve won or bought the item, send your payment to the seller within three days. If you want to pay with one of the electronic payment methods offered by the seller, click the Pay Now button on the item page or email notification. Otherwise, the seller will let you know how and where to send your payment. If you’re picking up the item, you can pay by any method the seller accepts (including cash).

After the payment has been completed the item will be sent to the buyer by mail or you can pick it up at a particular addressed area, also the on eBay they also advertise good on  eBay as well to help with the buying process.

 

Mobile eBay makes it easier for the user to keep an eye on an item that my be tempted in bidding for example u could receive a text it someone has surpassed your previous and it could ask u to increase your bid so that you can get the product u are after. The businesses in this area that what to develop this business should make sure that mobile technology are up to scratch before they invest in this technology.

References

www.ebay.co.uk  

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/questions/buy-item.html

Ebay

The E-commerce website that I will be reviwing is the very popular and very well known website www.ebay.co.uk. The website its self is basically a Auction were the users can buy or sell what ever  merchandise they want that is on sale. (The screenshot below is of the home page of the website.) 

The reason why i did this post was to find out some fincial information about ebay, such as how much money the site would make a year, used some search engines to get the information

eBay Income Statement

	2008	2007	2006
Revenue ($ mil.)	8,541.3	7,672.3	5,969.7
Gross Profit ($ mil.)	6,313.2	5,909.4	4,712.9
Operating Income ($ mil.)	2,191.6	767.5	1,553.0
Total Net Income ($ mil.)	1,779.5	348.3	1,125.6
Diluted EPS (Net Income)

In a year ebay rougly makes  nearly $6 billion in annual revenue a year that is a huge profit. the CEo of ebay Whitman succeeded to expand eBay from just 29 employees to more than 11,000, turning the site into the world’s biggest auction website. She has also made possible a rising of the profit every year for the company, which now has 248 million registered users globally and 15,000 employees.

EBay’s success has made Whitman a billionaire, with her net worth recently estimated by Forbes at $104 billion.

Internet usage 2006-2008

When I was researching the stats for the amount of internet usage in 2006-2008  I found an interesting site which was http://www.emarketer.com/Reports Online life is thriving in the UK. From my source eMarketer estimates that 1.3 million UK residents have come online since 2007, and a similar number will access the Web for the first time between 2006 and 2008.

The UK Internet Users and Usage report analyzes the continued growth of online population in a country that is already, in many areas, a pace setter for the rest of the world.

The eMarketer source estimates that the number of Internet users in the UK reached 36.8 million in 2007, and will pass 38 million in 2008—equivalent to 62.6% of the entire population.

18.3 million households in the UK (70 per cent) had Internet access in 2008. This is an increase of just under 2 million households (11 per cent) over the last year and 4 million households (28 per cent) since 2006.