This week in e-commerce news, NetSuite introduces a wireless application for the iPhone and PayPal's Mobile Checkout debuts while a new study says that online shoppers are taking longer to complete purchases, which affects pay-per-click campaigns.
Meanwhile, Nielsen/NetRatings is generating a lot of buzz with its announcement that it's abandoning the longtime industry standard of page views and replacing it with visitor duration for its rankings. Also making headlines is an industry report outlining the top 10 developments in e-commerce for the past decade.
Wireless Wonders: iPhone and PayPal Apps
NetSuite, a provider of on-demand, business management application suites for online businesses, today announced SuitePhone, which allows NetSuite customers to run business operations using the Apple iPhone. The new application runs on Safari, the iPhone and Mac browser.
When business owners log into their NetSuite accounts on iPhones, they can manage their operations while they are away from their offices, remotely accessing invoicing, accounts receivables and payroll. Additionally, they can enter sales leads, file expense reports or place quotes and orders. Furthermore, online store owners can oversee their businesses in real-time.
"With my new iPhone I have so much of the functionality of NetSuite right in my pocket, with no additional cost, other than Internet access time, and without having to install any additional layers," Brian Keare, COO of Circle of Friends, said in a statement.
His online store, based in Pacific Palisades, Calif., sells hair and bath products for children "I am particularly impressed with the ability to dynamically resize Web pages and use dropdowns," he said. "I have already used it to enter and approve sales orders, make deposits, and check inventory."
Current NetSuite users can simply access their accounts on an iPhone at no additional cost for the hosted, on-demand applications. NetSuite said new customers who want to use the iPhone will be able to start next month.
In other wireless news, PayPal announced the launch of Mobile Checkout, a service allowing consumers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada to buy items securely using cell phones and the mobile Web.
PayPal partnered up with GPShopper, a firm specializing in mobile product search technology, to allow shoppers to search for products from PayPal merchants, see product descriptions, images and then buy products from their mobile phones. From www.mobile.paypal.com, consumers click "Buy Something," and then can find products they want to buy, see featured products, browse mobile stores or find storefronts over the mobile Internet.
Study Advises Reassessing Cart Metrics and PPC ROI
On the research front, a study by ScanAlert, "Digital Window Shopping: The long delay before buying," reports that the average time it takes a consumer to make an e-commerce purchase jumped from about 19 hours in 2005 to 34 hours and 19 minutes this year.
The study is based on about 128 million visitors to 470 Web sites, including some major companies, such as Restoration Hardware and Lillian Vernon, as well as many small e-tailers, such as Brianstoys.com and Hammocks.com. Key take-aways from the report for e-tailers are that PPC campaign evaluation should take into account the delay in purchase decisions and that cart functionality should be improved to save items while consumers shop around.
First, the study says Web store owners should stop focusing on shopping cart abandonment and focus on site abandonment.
"Retailers should think of shopping carts as convenient shopping tools, and encourage shoppers to save their searches for future return visits. Of course, merchants might have to work with cart developers to create this functionality," the report said. "Still, saved search functionality where returning purchasers can easily pick up where they left off would save more of these types of purchases. Amazon's 30-day cookie recreated the author's two-day old search for a heart rate monitor but the experience could have been much more comprehensive (and more likely produced a sale) if a saved search and [an] e-mail reminder system had also been used."
Second, the report advises that e-biz owners reassess the ROI of pay-per-click advertising programs.
"Someone who clicked on your $0.50 keyword ad and didn't immediately convert is not necessarily a foregone half-dollar investment. There is a good possibility that she will return and buy. Make sure that your analytics data can reflect the origin of multiple subsequent return visits," according to the report. "Study your Adwords conversion tracking code data, for example, and take a holistic, long-term view of your campaign spending to arrive at more accurate ROI numbers."
Traffic Report: The Times They Are A Changin'
In other news, the Nielsen/NetRatings is now going to track how long visitors spend at sites rather than measure page views to rank Internet traffic.
Industry watchers say the move is being made to take into account the huge popularity of online video, which makes page views a less efficient yardstick for measuring popularity of a site since people spend more time at a page with video. Also cites is the use of Ajax [define], used to continually update pages without visitors having to pull up a new page, resulting in decreased page views.
Nielsen will still provide page view figures but won't formally rank them. And, while page view remains a valid gauge of a site's ad inventory, According to Nielsen/NetRatings, time spent at a site more accurately shows how engaged visitors are with a Web site.
A Decade of Digital Developments
Finally, the Software and Information Industry Association, the trade association for the software and digital information industry, just announced its list of the top 10 developments that have had the most significant impact on e-commerce since the White House released the "Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" 10 years ago.
Here they are, with inception dates included:
1. Google (Sept. 1998)
2. Broadband Penetration of U.S. Internet Users Reaches 50 percent (June 2004)
3. eBay Auctions (Launched Sept. 1997)
4. Amazon.com (IPO May 1997)
5. Google Ad Words (2000)
6. Open Standards (HTML 4.0 released 1997)
7. Wi-Fi (802.11 launched 1997)
8. User-Generated Content (YouTube 2005)
9. YouTube (2005)
10. iTunes (2001)
11. BlackBerry (1999)
Source http://www.ecommerce-guide.com
