Enterprise Ireland is looking for business partners - people not companies. They want to collaborate with experienced entrepreneurs to convert research in startups into economic benefit…

Enterprise Ireland is currently seeking new Business Partners to help us create start-up companies. We want to hear from successful business people to partner with us to transform State funded research projects into profitable commercial ventures. Our Business Partners Programme is fast tracking the creation of new companies by giving you access to our portfolio of potential start-ups. It will be your job to lead them to the marketplace. We would like to hear from you if you have:

• a strong commercial track record
• excellent business credentials
• capacity to invest
• ability to identify commercial opportunity
• vision to transform new technologies into solid businesses

Customers may be talking about your brand online - even if you are not!
It’s important to monitor activity around your brand online - here’s a classic customer service nightmare for United Airlines which obviously touched a nerve…

This is a humerous (but clearly serious for the target brand) version of the increasing phenomenon of the consumer hitting back online - Mommy (& Power Titterati - with over a million followers) Heather Armstrong took on Maytag and gave them a bloody nose - see the article in Forbes

Google Resources
Google has a wealth of online tools and resources - this should be your first port of call when trying to develop your search strategy…

Webmaster Guidelines

Google Search Insights

Google Browser Labs

Google Analytics

Google AdWords

Webmaster Tools

Jeff Bezos on Amazon and customer focus

Zappos - Getting to a billion dollars in sales

Tony Hsieh CEO Zappos on Company Culture


Link to the video

Hitwise - traffic map for UK
A fascinating map of the movement of traffic between the largest trafficed sites in the UK
Read the article on the Hitwise blog here…

Social Media
The rise of the importance of social media is captured succinctly in the
current stats on Facebook usage published by facebook - yes that really is 3.5 Billion pieces of content generated each week!

Yogatic.com is a fascinating case study of a small company leveraging the available tools to create a brand online…

With almost 12,000 subscribers and over 4.5 Million views to her Youtube Channel Esther is reaching a global audience from her studio in West Cork.

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

We would like to wish everyone a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year! Best regards from all the team at Aonach. We look forward to talking to you in the new year. Our offices will be closed from 23rd of December until 4th of January 2010

See it in action over here - Google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats/

I noticed it’s not as accurate as one might have imagined…

In January 2009, JP Morgan estimated that 2008 worldwide retail eCommerce spending, excluding travel, totaled $438 billion - of which one third ($152m) was in Europe.JP Morgan, January 2009

Now I presume that they meant $152 billion - so as ever with this type of thing you need to check for accuracy and you also probably need to understand the context of the research and the statisitical tools used for analysis. But as a quick thought provoking snapshot of the state of the Markets I think it’s great…

Some of the interesting eCommerce Stats that caught my eye were as follows:

41% of Europeans claim to have changed their mind about what brand to buy as a result of researching choices online, according to EIAA’s latest Mediascope survey.Mediascope Europe, November 2008

In the past year, UK female Internet users have made an average of 17 online purchases of products/services and spent an average of £600. eMarketer, February 2009

97% of UK female Internet users research products online and 92% of UK female Internet users buy products online. eMarketer, February 2009

In February 2009, Eurostat reported that 32% of citizens in the EU-28 had purchased an item over the Internet during 2008. (Figures for big markets: UK 57%, FR 40%, DE 53%, IT 11%, ES 20%). Commission of the European Communities, February 2009

According to Forrester, nearly 45% of European Internet users say that in the past three months they have researched a product online and then bought it in a shop. Forrester, March 2009

33% of shoppers in the UK shop a lot more online since the recession.  Media & Marketing, March 2009

Online spending in the UK grew 25% to £18.4 bn in 2008, outperforming the 2.1% increase in total retail. Verdict Research, May 2009

Price has become a less significant determinant in online purchasing: online shoppers citing price as the deciding factor in choosing a retailer has fallen to 44.0% in 2008 from 50.0% in 2007. Verdict Research, May 2009

Despite the recession, UK online shoppers had spent an average of £10 more per site visit in April 2009 than this time a year ago. (April 08 to April 09) NMA, May 2009

34% of Brits spend a whole day trying to find the best holiday deal online. Greenbee.com survey, January 2009

20% of Brits will spend at least 8 hours trawling the Internet for a cheap travel-related deal. Greenbee.com survey, January 2009

50.1% of online shoppers who placed items in their shopping carts did not go on to place an order. Core Metrics, March 2009

Remote (home) shopping has grown three fold in a decade - from £9.7bn to £26bn. Growth fuelled by the Internet accounts for 74% of the market, compared with 4% in 1998. Verdict Research UK, 2009, December 2008

Over 1 in 3 (34%) UK adults have researched a brand that they have seen advertised online. TGI Net Q109 (Oct 07 - Sept 08), Q2 2009

According to the European Commission, cross-border eCommerce remained stable between 2006 and 2008, despite EU consumers shopping online increasing from 27% to 33%. Verdict Research, May 2009

In December 2008, Eurostat reported that 60% of all homes in the EU-27 countries had Internet access and 48% had broadband. This equates to 4 in 5 homes with Internet access in the EU-27 having broadband. In 13 out of the EU-27 markets, over 50% of all homes had broadband - including the UK (62%), Germany (55%) and France (57%). Eurostat, December 2008

Worldwide, over 6 billion songs have been sold on iTunes.  TechCrunch, January 2009

UK mobile search increased from 3.2m in July 2007 to 4.3m in July 2008. eMarketer, December 2008

84% of the UK population owns a mobile phone. Deliotte, April 2009

Nearly two million people in the UK use their mobile phones for a growing number of services, from text alerts that confirm when they have been paid to transferring money between accounts. Times Online, February 2009

Japanese etail giants can make as much as one quarter of their sales via cellphones. Nearly half of Tokyo’’s single females are accessing the mobile web more than five times a week, with the peak shopping time between 1pm and 3pm reflecting the part-time employment status of many young Japanese.Internet Retailing, May 2009

Click and collect services, where goods are ordered online and picked up from a store, are one of the fastest-growing trends among internet retailers. Argos last week reported its Click & Reserve service was up 45% on last year and is responsible for 17% of all sales. Halfords.com were another early mover and their reserve and collect service has driven an increase in multichannel sales of 90% in the year to April 2009, having passed the million customer mark.

This trend makes huge sense for the consumer and the retailer. The consumer doesn’t have to wander round the shop or queue endlessly for checkouts, but can select goods from a reputable brand at their leisure online. For the retailer the upside is this makes the nightmare of shipping goods to individual homes (and trying to find people when they are at home) go away. Indications are that these multichannel approaches also drive more people to the store (above and beyond the online purchasers). Nevertheless, it’s not all easy - it requires accurate realtime stock levels and a slick customer experience both on and off-line to succeed. ]]> http://aonach.com/chatter/click-and-collect-gains-momentum/feed/ http://aonach.com/chatter/online-statistics-for-irish-market/ http://aonach.com/chatter/online-statistics-for-irish-market/#comments Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:08:34 +0000 John Prendergast http://aonach.com/?p=249 Google circulated some interesting statistics on the state on the online market in Ireland. Some of this information is derived from market research by 3rd parties but some is internal, all of it useful if you’re trying to guage the size and opportunity of the Irish online channel.

69% of Irish people are regular internet users

1.25 million people are subscribed to broadband in Ireland

Ireland is ranked 10th in the world for online buyers

25% of Irish people expect to spend more online in 2009

50% of irish consumers look for advice online before making a purchase

90% of consumers beieve they can save money online

The average online spend of an Irish consumer was €1700 for 2008

€300 million worth of goods were purchased online in Ireland in 2008

€2.5 billion spent in total online transactions in Ireland in 2008 (including travel, gambling and finance)

96% of internet users in Ireland use Google

Youtube has 131,000 Irish  users on an average day

47.5% of Irish Youtube users are aged 25-44

This information was circulated as part of a marketing drive by Google, so those of us with a natural distrust of statistics and marketing will probably want to check the numbers before making any major strategic decisions!

What’s new over at Google? Well, they have unveiled a preview of their next update codenamed “Caffeine” - you can trial it over here at http://www2.sandbox.google.com…

What’s all the fuss about? Well, when Google opens up a test environment to their next release it’s alway good to have a look and see how it may effect the performance of your site in the SERPs…

Some analysts have cited faster speeds (with very little backup) so we decided to test this on the search term “Ryder Cup” which we monitor for our case study.

“normal” Google - speed 0.42 seconds

Google “Caffeine”- speed 0.11 seconds

So is it 381% faster?

Well one swallow doesn’t make a summer so we performed 100 searches 50 on Caffeine and 50 on the current Google.com (not intended to be a statistically significant analysis - we’re just trying to get an indication) and measured the speed for each search. How did it perform? Well here are the stats on the speed recorded for both…

So what does this tell us? Basically it’s faster and more consistent (about 254% faster) - but is that just because it’s not yet under load?

Twitter is an increasingly powerful online tool. It’s not for everyone but increasingly it is making inroads into the business world…

The art of building a network based on 140 character updates is pretty much mainstream now - if you want to start sign up at Twitter.com and for a great guide to getting going download Mashable’s guide to twitter

If you are contacted by someone alluding that they are from Google and asking whether you want to sign up to their service and guaranteeing you a number 1 position on Google search results - just hang up the phone…

Google NEVER phone businesses and promise them a number 1 position in their rankings - this is just a scam. It’s a UK agency that offer dubious SEO services and infer that they are calling from Google.

If you want to be listed by Google there’s some work involved I’m afraid. Bear in mind that Google’s business is advertising and one of their primary precepts is to offer the user a search result set based on merit (rather than human editorial intervention). They have invested over 1000 man Years in developing their system, which automatically determines your search position for any search term - so they are not going to jeopardize this by offering to allow you to jump the queue.

Is it valuable to be listed in the Google search results? Absolutely! It’s essential if you want to do business online. How do you go about it?

1. You need to have a website (obviously!)
2. The site should technically expose it’s content, structure and relevance to Google
3. You should submit your site to Google http://www.google.com/addurl/
4. Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines http://google.com/support/webmasters
   This is where Google actually tell you how to be found and what to avoid!
5. Ask other (quality) sites to link to you
6. Ensure that you acually have useful and relevant content on you site - remember that Google only wants to send IT’s users to sites where they will find what they are looking for…

This is a potted synopsis of a much more complex principle - however I hope it will help you realise that being ranked in Googles search results is something you should take seriously and not simply hope to pay a few quid to someone who cold calls you on the phone for! Read more on Search Engine Optimisation Here