Third Party Twitter Tools - Make the Best Use of Twitter!

What Twitter has achieved as a popular blogging platform, no other blogging application can achieve that. Though there is a major shift in the blogging trends after introduction of Twitter like blogging tools, yet the basic remains same as it was previously. The only difference we can find in blogging is Micro Posting and Colloquial Text. Blogging applications like Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal are still popular among serious bloggers, who prefer writing more elaborately on various topics. Micro Blogging applications like Twitter are for young mass which facilitates short, crispy and informative personalised online briefings. The best aspect micro blogs like Twitter are their Marketing Aspects. It suits the online marketing scenario, where everyone is in hurry. Micro blogging services like Twitter can help your business not only reaching out potential customers, but also help your campaigns more organised and traceable. I’ve personally used, analysed and rated some of the popular Third Party Twitter Applications and here follows the top 5 chronologically:

Twitpic - Twitpic is a Twitter tool that lets twitters sharing pictures on Twitter. Just login to Twitpic with your existing Twitter User ID and password and now you are all set to twit your favourite pictures.

TweetDeck - TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck is a simple and fast way to use Twitter on your desktop. TweetDeck allows users to customise Twitter experience with columns, groups, saved searches and sharing your tweets on Facebook instantly.

Digsby - Digsby is an application that centralizes e-mail, IM and social networking accounts into one desktop program. Digsby is an IM type application where users can maintain one combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts. Users can manage email accounts like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from Digsby. Users too can get real time updates from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn like social networking site. What more you can expect from such an application, if you are a social networking buff!

Tweetburner  - Twitter just offers 140 characters to tweet. So it’s not possible for its users to give every detail in a single tweet. That’s why, very often Twitters write a brief with a reference link to it. Tweetburner is an online tool that helps you tracking the reference links you tweet.

GroupTweet – If you maintain groups on Twitter and want certain messages to send to a specific group of followers, the GroupTweet is the right tool for you. Register on GroupTweet with a newly created Twitter account for your group. You need to change your Twitter settings in order to make your group a private one. Now you can easily broadcast messages among the members of that group using GroupTweet tool.

Give these Twitter applications (developed by third-parties) a try to help simplify your social networking campaign. These tools certainly help your campaign an easier and traceable one. Reach more people, and stay organized just for free or a marginal payment. In the subsequent posts we will be including more useful Twitter tools to the existing list. Check the post regularly!

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Micro Blogging is all about Individuals, Involvements, and Influences!

Just years back, the concept of Micro Blogging was nowhere in the internet. Now Twitting might have made itself a legitimate lexeme in several mainstream dictionaries. So the fact is what compels Twitter a real hit among online folk! I tried to have a small research on the various aspects of micro blogging and soon got some interesting opinions and facts on micro blogging.

John (requested to be mentioned anonymously) is an active member of aerospace engineering research team at the University of Manchester since 2005. Last summer, I had the opportunity to speak to him while I was on a business tour to Manchester. During this brief conversation, John mentioned that he and his team were using twitter to share their daily research briefs on Twitter. Twitter! Really, I need to have a look at it at least to what it is all about. Since then I’m an ardent fan of Twitter. Since then Twitter, a micro blogging application has achieved a lot and successfully established itself in the mainstream blogging community. The best example would be Barak Osama’s Election Campaign as Obama micro-blogged from his campaign trail using Twitter. This has successfully followed by media giants like The New York Times and BBC to publish headlines and links in micro blog posts.

The initial concept behind Twitter is to promote mobile blogging, especially through SMS. Here we can assume that Mobile Blogging is the base concept from which Micro Blogging has evolved out. In simple words we can sum up Twitter is a micro-blogging application that facilitates its users to connect with people directly on their cell phones or computers in a non-obtrusive way. Twitter is all about speed and participating in the discussion. This concept is so important to your success in Twitter that it bears repeating. Twitter is about individuals, involvements, and influences. Twitter like micro blogging application has really revolutionised the way people share their thoughts, discoveries, questions and happenings. The impact of micro blogging throughout internet is so immense that Twitter like, micro blogging applications have qualified to the discussion as significant as about global recession. A close look all major news headlines would confirm the popularity of Twitter across the globe.

Along with Twitter, there are other big players too that have substantial shares in the micro blogging industry. Here follows some of them: Pownce, Tumblr, Jaiku, MySay, Hictu, Moodmill, Frazr and Emotionr.

In the end, we can conclude as Micro Blogging isn't not her online for a day or two - it is here to stay and stay alive forever. The evolution of blogging to micro blogging has spawned this new tiny version of blogging and many sectors like mobile technology, media and other similar sectors are eyeing on its growth minutely. The simplicity and ability to post frequently are basic facets that attract micro blogging the most. I expect a much faster adoption of micro blogging and mainstream penetration than blogging in general is evident in near future.

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Best Search Engine Optimisation Tips for E-Commerce Web Shop Owners

SEO has been a buzzword among online shop owners. The reason behind such hullaballoo is the challenges erupted out of complexities of all existing E-Commerce Applications. It would take hours to place all these complexities in our discussions, so we would limit the discussion to certain points related to SEO. It takes a substantial period of time (even years of R&D) to develop a user-friendly application. During this course of time, it is obvious to expect various complexities creeping into the application. This is one of the established procedures of developing an application. Features those make an application a successful are flexibility, expansibility and usability. There must be scope for up-gradation of an application as it is expected to improve the performance level to deal with the ever changing technological scenario. Let’s find out what are basic complexities of E-Commerce Applications in recent times:

Technical complexities

In comparison to static websites (i.e. .html websites), dynamic websites powered by E-Commerce Applications are large sites and have the capacity to generate up to tens of thousands of web pages. So it is really a tough most task for a single person to understand, implement and manage an e-commerce website. On the other hand, a poor understanding of such an application yields bad ever worse results for both e-commerce store owners as well as store users.

Business Complexities

Lack of technical understanding of an e-commerce application affects the website’s profitability. Person or team that manages the e-commerce website faces really gruesome tasks ahead to meet the business objectives. As we consider communication and sales as two basic strengths of a business are hampered severely.

An e-commerce website should satisfy the above two complexities in order establish itself as a user-friendly one. So far we have discussed the general complexities of an e-commerce application. But Web has its own complications and has been doubled by the growing popularity of search engines. It does not make any sense, whether you have a great looking e-commerce site with thousands of popular products in your inventory. The matter is buyers must find you online easily. So, do potential buyers find your web store easily online? If your reply is affirmative then your business gets a huge boost. But a negative reply can be devastating for your business. Search engines have their own web page standards and strictly follow them. Here follows the Quality Guidelines from Google:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages with malicious behaviour, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programmes with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate programme, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

(Courtesy: Google.com)

So far as E-Commerce website is concerned, a lot of things one web store owner can take care of for search engine ranking improvement. Search Engine Ranking (acronym is SER) is very important for those who operate online business through web stores, because more than half of the internet users use search engines for finding information. If your web shop is not available in search engine result pages, then you lose the chunk of traffic from search engines. There are around 101 points can be implemented to make an e-commerce website search engine friendly. Here go some of the most significant points that you must prioritise. I’ve distributed all the points under three broad categories that will give you a better understanding of SEO points: On-Page Optimisation, Site-Wide Optimisation and Off-Site Optimisation.

What you think about your business may not be similar to the users’ views. So consider terminologies that your web store users would type in the search boxes to find web pages similar to your website. Always ensure that your website really consists of those terms within it. So the bottom-line is a good Keyword Analysis required to find out some relevant key phrases to target for the site.

1. Distinguish between "user end" and "admin end" web pages.
2. Target one unique key phrase per web page.
3. You can use the key phrase in your web page's file name, meta-elements (i.e. Meta Title, Meta Description, Headers)
4. Substitute dashes (-) with underscores (_). You can rewrite the URL Structure Rules in the available .htaccess file in your website root folder.
5. Try to use the targeted key phrase number of times in the content, reasonably.
6. Make sure your content is for users, not for search engines.
7. Key phrase stuffing is a sin in the process of search engine optimisation. Don't stuff the key phrases everywhere on a web page.
8. The major problem of an E-Commerce web store is that it generates number of duplicate pages with exact content. You can do this away with Canonicalization.
9. Do not hyperlink action words like Click Here, Enter and so on as these hyperlinks may confuse search engines.
10. Add a blog tool to your website and regularly update with useful articles, product reviews and HowTos. Some of the popular blogging applications are Wordpress, LiveJournal, Xanga, Blogger and so on. Wordpress is a great blogging tool which can be hosted independently.

Follow the above SEO points for your E-Commerce Web Store and adopt best industry SEO practices for quick search engine ranking improvement and targeted traffic with better ROI.

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Canonicalization – Make your site more Google friendly

World Wide Web maintains a standardised web document format to make the most out of this virtual world. There are several technologies also contribute to this Web Standardisation Process. Some of these influential technologies are Browsers, Internet Connectivity and Search Engines. Now-a-days, all available browsers are supporting most of the web document formats. Internet connectivity quality has been substantially improved with the introduction of broadband technology. In comparison to previous two, search engines are a bit slow upgrading their technology. Search engine industry leaders like Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask are investing to cover as much web document formats as they can. This process is an ongoing one and this suits the best to the ever changing web technology sector. One of such recent recommendations has come from Google – Specify your canonical. Let’s learn what a Canonical URL is all about!

Though some months back the concept of “Canonical URL” was no where around WWW. But this has really been a great problem for those who largely depend on the search engines to make business. Search engine is all about a tool that provides relevant web documents when a search is made. Everyday millions of web documents on various niches are generated and search engines too regularly indexes them. But things become worst when a web server provides different version of URLs for a single web document. This results into indexing duplicate copies of single information. To avoid such technical shortcoming, Google introduces Canonical Tag. Google spokesman Matt Cutts informs “Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages.” Here goes the Google defined tag:

So there is a question that how somebody ensures that Google indexes the URL you prefer? First ensure which URL (i.e. http://yourdomain.com/ or http://www.yourdomain.com/) you want to use widely and consistently throughout your website. Once that has been fixed, use that particular URL in Canonical Tag consistently. Don’t make your half of the site URLs without www and half of the URLs with www.
Matt Cutts too suggests some other solutions in his famous article on Canonicalization. Checkout more information on Canonicalization in SEO advice: url canonicalization.

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DMOZ – The Open Directory Project Reviewed

Web Directory is a common term for SEO professionals, webmasters and online advertising experts. A Web Directory is a type of website allows users to browse through links based on relevant categories as well as users can submit links to the relevant categories through a web form or email. The fundamental logic behind web directory development is publishing website links and short descriptions taxonomically. The term Browsing is chiefly associated Web Directories and Searching is associated with Search Engines so far as World Wide Web is concerned. There hundreds of thousand web directories active on internet. DMOZ, Yahoo Web Directory and BUBL are some of the popular web directories.

DMOZ, also otherwise known as The Open Directory Project (ODP), is one of the largest categorized directories of websites and pages, which is maintained by volunteers. Every website and page that is added to the directory is manually reviewed before it is included to the directory. The listing of a website in DMOZ is absolutely FREE. Let’s learn some of the interesting facts about DMOZ.

The ODP (Open Directory Project) is the largest human-edited web directory on internet. Some of the popular web portals and search engines like AOL Search, Netscape Search, Google, Lycos, Alexa and HotBot use DMOZ’s data.

People behind DMOZ

The Open Directory Project is hosted and administered by Netscape Communication Corporation. ODP is primarily a self-governing community of netizens. “Through a system of self-governance, the ODP volunteer editors manage the directory's growth and development, and through a system of checks-and-balances, ensure the directory is of superior quality.” (Courtesy: DMOZ.org)

DMOZ is an acronym for Directory Mozilla. The association of the term “Mozilla” with Directory is a clear indication of its Open Source aspect like the Open Source browser attempt as Mozilla Firefox. The term Mozilla represents the popularity and growth of Open Source projects.

Yahoo Vs DMOZ

Yahoo! Web Directory is developed and managed by small group of paid professionals. But DMOZ exceptionally does well with small staffs and still manages to retain its quality as well as its huge database.

DMOZ is developed and maintained by a continuously growing community of netizens who are highly skilled and well exposed in their respective fields of interest. Such a vast community of volunteers and the global scope of the Directory has been the success secret behind maintaining quality of the directory. “Given this vast community of subject expertise and the global nature of the directory, there is always someone working on the directory: processing submissions, resolving dead links, culling out the bad and keeping only quality information, and discovering new topics to add.” (Courtesy: DMOZ.org)

Unlike Yahoo!, DMOZ editors are core web surfers helping to create a web directory for other Web surfers. Getting your site listed in DMOZ is very difficult and frustrating, too. Everybody (who is more or less associated with SEO/SEM) knows that being listed will probably help website’s Google ranking, but getting listed can take a very long time. But one should not lose faith and keep trying to submit the original website details in reasonably regular intervals to ensure that your site is not out of the queue.

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Security and E-Commerce Transactions

Transaction Security has been a matter of concern while you make purchases Online either for your business or your household. Small-Scale Sellers those heavily depend on internet to operate their business, always neglect security issues. Although, they seem to be ignorant of the fact that this Negligence may cost them dearer in a long run as such security issues lessens the Customer Loyalty. The most significant aspect of operating business online is one does business with strangers. Very often customers have to complete transaction without exchange a single word with the seller before making purchases. So here things can be concluded as “First Impression Lasts Long”. As a seller you must not assume that all your visitors are as loyal as you. Your lapse in security issues may have a devastating impact on your business. So let’s learn some facts related to Online Security in association with E-Commerce Transactions.

People use credit cards or debit cards for purchases in an online store. While making such online transactions, your account information is transferred for transactional approval online. In a usual environment, access to such information is/should be limited to individuals and businesses directly involved. So the involved persons and organizations must ensure the security of such private information. Those who still presume that going offline, is possible alternative to such information theft; later or sooner they have to use internet for such information sharing. This compulsion is inevitable as there is substantial upsurge in use of Internet as a Digital Information Sharing Tool.

Online Payment Transactions can be thoroughly monitored, recorded, and key logged by different hackers and third parties without your knowledge or prior consent. Immediately such private information can be available for other hackers and this would certainly put your business and company reputation in trouble. This information is transmitted across hackers’ networks and opens up the gateway to several types of risks that can be fall into the wrong hands. If you store your user ids and passwords on your computer, they are especially vulnerable to security breaches and easy to steal. A meager computer security loophole can open up the entrance to the password files, and hackers can extract and copy this information without your knowledge.

While dealing with online sellers, the best security option is your common sense. Anyone can launch a professional looking e-commerce website, as it costs some hundred pounds and there are millions of e-commerce solution providers operating online. So make it sure that whenever you are dealing with any online seller, the company must be a reputed one. Here follows some of the fundamental questions, the answers to which can solve your problem:

• Is this the e-commerce website of an established retailer?


• Does the website have an exact street address, not just a post box number?


• Is there any facility to call customer service?


• Is a return and refund policy published on the website?

If you’ve got the positive replies to above questions, they I assure you that your transaction would be safe. Now-a-days, most of the online sellers do offer Secured Check Out page. These check-out pages are secured by SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). SSL is a protocol (developed by Netscape) for transmitting private documents and information through the Internet. SSL uses a cryptographic system that uses two types of keys for data encryption − a Public Key known to everyone and a Private or Secret Key known only to the recipient. So before making any such financial transaction over internet with any e-commerce website, make it sure that its check out pages must use SSL or any such similar data encryption software.

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E-Commerce – History, Fundamentals and Trends Simplified!

E-Commerce is the acronym that stands for Electronic Commerce in general. E-Commerce is chiefly facilitated by technologies like; Electronic Data Interchange and Electronic Fund Transfer. Both these two technologies were introduced way back in the late 1970s and a lot has been changed during these four decades. In 1980s, the growing popularity of credit card, automated teller machines and telephonic banking had added one more success-story to the E-Commerce. The concept of online shopping was first invented and introduced in 1979 by UK based Michael Aldrich. Although the early developments in E-Commerce Technology appears to be a fairytale like, yet a lot of research, manpower, experiment have been put into bring the best possible E-Commerce Solutions out. With growing number of hacking attempts, Secure E-Commerce Solution has been an expensive business, yet in comparison to physical business module, E-Commerce is pretty cheaper and secured. E-commerce is simply a virtual version of commerce that operates on the World Wide Web. Some of the best possible examples would be to have a look at online book retailers (Amazon.com), computer retailers (HP), and so on. All of these online sellers own very large e-commerce store fronts. E-commerce is made up of the same factions and components that make up commerce fundamentals; i.e. buyers, sellers, and producers. E-commerce involves all the similar aspects of regular commerce, but the only distinction can be made that it takes place on the Internet. Let’s explore some of the major features of E-Commerce imparted in recent times.

During these days, most of the online sellers prefer to manage their business through various other channels including their own web store. Online market places like eBay, Amazon and Kelkoo; Shopping Search Engines like Google Base, eDirectory, Shop.com; and Comparison Shopping sites like Shopzilla.com and Google Products are some of the most preferred destinations for shoppers to shop at. That’s why online sellers prefer to make their presence felt at these channels as well as their own web stores. This is one of the reasons that has made E-Commerce applications with multi channel selling features are high in demand. There are numerous e-commerce solution providers available online; you can choose any of them as per requirements.

Though it appears pretty easy from customer point of view, yet E-Commerce can be truly a complex technology to develop. To offer a world class customer experience, sellers must incorporate and integrate technologies and functionality that exceeds growing customer expectations.

Your complacency may cost dearer if your website does not meet customer expectations as well as search engine guidelines. If your web store satisfies both the requirements, the conversion average of your website traffic will go up. Here follows some of the insights:

Think Fast

Broadband has made data transfer a quicker business, but quite a number of potential customers still use dial-up connection. So while developing a web store for your business, ensure that page loading time should be within 9 seconds. Your failure may be an advantage for your competitors. Recommended page size should be within 60kb to 70kb. Try to avoid flash. Images are very important and mostly neglected by seller. Product images should be of high resolution and larger with multiple size variants.

Shopping in general is a part of entertainment activity and online shopping carries the similar taste and trend. A customer should not be forced to make transaction as this may affect your business. Your web store should have multiple order facility like; Order through Phone and Checkout as Guest or Registered User.

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Blog – New Face of the Changing Web!

A Weblog can simply be understood as a Digital Diary. A blog is updated on daily basis. But there some bloggers who blog new posts several times a day. Blogs can be found of different types and such types are defined not only in the type of content, but also in the way those contents are written. It is really a very lofty task to put all or most of the blogs in different types, but I’ve still tried to type down some of the popular types of blogs: Personal Blogs, Corporate Blogs, Question Blogs, Media Type Blogs, Device Type Blogs, Genre Type Blogs and so on.

Personal type of blogs is one of the most common blogging forms and the number of personal blogs is pretty healthier than any other form of blogs. Such types of blogs are traditional, maintained on daily basis as a digital diary. Growing popularity of blogs as a medium of communication has opened several other options. Such an example is Corporate Blogs. Corporate blogs are either used internally to improve Communication and Culture within a corporate or externally used to create Brand Awareness and Promotion.

Blogging is one of the popular cultures of growing Social Networking. The collective community of all similar blogs is known as the blogosphere. Such networking has been possible among bloggers through blogrolls, comments, linkbacks and backlinks. Whether it is 9/11 or 26/11, bloggers and blogs are always ahead to share information, ideas, feelings and condolences with each other. Blogs are the forbearers of Personalised Web World. Blogging applications are offered by quite a number of websites; some of them are absolutely free, free with further upgrades and paid. Some of the free hosted blog sites are blogger.com (from Google), WordPress.com (from WordPress.org), LiveJournal.com, Xanga.com and so on.
The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. Justin Hall, who began personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers, as is Jerry Pournelle. Dave Winer's Scripting News is also credited with being one of the oldest and longest running weblogs. Another early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site in 1994. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance, and such journals were also used as evidence in legal matters. (Courtesy: Wikipedia.org)

Despite a shaky start, blogs finally gained popularity 1999 and there onwards it has further popularized with various first hosted free blogging tools. Blogger.com belongs to such an era. Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched blogger.com in August 1999 and it was acquired by Google in February 2003. Blogger.com is one among some popular blogging tool. Blogger is further supported and strengthened by Google Blog Search, FeedBurner.com (Google venture) and some other popular applications. Bloggers do honoured with various blog awards like any other form of art. Among the major blog awards are The Weblog Award, the Bloggies, and the BOBs (Best of Blogs).

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Web Design Tactics Explored!

A Well-Designed Website cannot be possible without correct conceptualization, proper planning and meticulous modelling and execution of all three previous processes. If we closely observe the complete web design process, a Two-Part Process can easily be carved out. Let’s find out how this Two-Part Process works. The first of this process is to analyse the requirements and objectives with the help of your development guys so that a Well Thought-out Plan can be established. The second process is to prepare a Project Specification Document that must define what you plan to do and why, and what external support you may need, how long the process may take, what resources may be spent, and how the efforts can be assessed.

Web design is not as easy as most people assume. Several groups of people meet together, zoom in to the requirements and deliver a well-designed and user-friendly website. But it has been found that very often the web developers approach and accomplish web design project from a technological point of view and web designers are nothing but mere. This never justifies a web design project. One should consider some other groups of people to consult with. You may need the following groups while planning a web design project:

• Content Experts,
• Writers,
• Information Architects, and
• Graphic Designers.

All web design projects have a single bottom-line, “have to be genuinely useful to your target audience, meeting their requirements and expectations without being too hard to use.” Here we can infer some of the basic objectives of web design and that are:

• A website should be designed and developed for its users.
• A website should be user-friendly.

Most of the users of your website are not expected to be technologically savvy. The users always follow the directions that you have shown to them in your website. If your website navigation structure does not provide easy drive experience for the users, then it is obvious for users to hit back button more often. Your website should provide a pleasant experience to each and every visitor it receives. Here follows some guidelines for developers and designers while developing a website:
Online visitors are very volatile, but in general they show a similar pattern in tendencies which govern their behaviour while surfing online. First, most of your website users are expected to scan your web pages in top-to-bottom and left-to-right pattern (this assumption is based on English speaking readers and specific to English websites). Put your navigation menu at the top or on the left of the web page. Users have come to expect this anyway as this pattern is one of the Web Conventional Page Structure.

The navigation menu should explain what the destination page would be and its relationship with the source page. The users should be aware of the outcomes of each and every click on web page. If you are not following this content display policy, then it is nothing rather your design stupidity.

Text Underlining is one of the neglected parts of a website. Underlined text within content very often assumed as hyperlinks. So unnecessary underlying of non-hyperlinked texts for the sake of highlighting texts is not a good idea. You can bold or italicize texts in order to highlight texts.

Creating Mouseovers and Alt-Titles on your graphic links is a very good aspect of a user-friendly website. This makes it pretty easy for a visitor to recognize that the link exists, what it does and where the link is heading.

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Mobile Web – Innovative Design and Advanced Development!

The number of mobile users is growing substantially in comparison to PC users. This growth has led various companies to explore another level of business development. Everyday new technologies are introduced to make Mobile a possible alternative to Personal Computer. Being a leader in Digital Communication industry, mobile phones have opened a new set of standards for digital content providers. Apart from calling, features like SMS, MMS, Email, Mobile Shopping and Money Transfer have made mobile an indispensable gadget of 21st century. With the emergence of high speed wireless network technologies and the growing market penetration of cell phones the global advertising industry’s interest in using this communication platform as a medium of marketing and advertisement is in rise. Though mobile technology has been quite advanced, yet the Web Experience for mobile users is still a matter of concern. The problem is with the new set of web standards for mobile, which are completely different from web experience through PCs and Laptops. You would surprise to know how addictive the world has become from the following statistics:

• 1996 - GSM phones in 103 countries
• 2000 - 10 million i-mode users (Japan)
• 2002 - 1 billion mobile phone users worldwide
• 2009 - 3 billion mobile phone users worldwide

Another surprising fact is that in the UK, there are more mobile phones than users. As the Mobile Internet continues to grow there is a growing need to provide users with effective Web Browsing Facility. Further we will explore that the standard Web Browsing Trends, Digital Content Standards and the Interface Limitations of mobile devices.

Presently, the most serious problem for mobile web designers is with design and standards issues. This might be the reason behind the delaying adaptation of Mobile as successor to PCs and Laptops. Further, mobile search engines are themselves very new and a lot of technological efforts still need to be put into. But the thing is, developing a great web experience for mobile users is much easier. Here follows seven simple tactics that will help you avoid the early drawbacks that have caused many other mobile sites to fail:

Don't Mix Up Your Markup

Earlier users used to browse only WAP sites. Most of the WAP sites use Wireless Markup Language (WML) as its markup language. WML is an XML markup language. XHTML can too have a very good alternative to XML. Most built-in phone browsers these days can handle XHTML just fine. A mobile phone recognizes two flavors of HTML:

• XHTML -- the same, basic XHTML rendered by desktop web browsers
• XHTML-MP -- the MP here stands for Mobile Profile

Screen Size and Resolution Issues

A mobile web designer should deal with different screen sizes and resolutions, but also different shapes of mobiles. After closely examining several mobile phones, we have found four basic screen sizes:

• 128 x 160 pixels
• 176 x 220 pixels
• 240 x 320 pixels
• 320 x 480 pixels

Knowing these screen dimensions helps you optimize some of your web content, however it's advisable to keep the size and style of your site as minimal and linear as you can.

Validate Your Markup

A mobile browser generally won't have the luxury of a 2 GHz processor and 100MB of disk space. So a minor HTML error can make browsing difficult for users. For that reason, you must check, validate, and recheck your markup, time and time again to ensure that your mobile web pages are 100% perfect.

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Web 2.0 – What Why and How Explained!

Web 2.0 is a technological realization of World Wide Web. It describes the evolving trends in the adaptation of World Wide Web Technology (including web development, web design and information management). Some of the best outcomes of Web 2.0 are Social-Networking Sites, Video Sharing Sites, Wikis, Blogs, and Folksonomies. It would be misleading to comprehend Web 2.0 as a Specific Technological Update; but rather a Revolutionary and Evolutionary change in the way we Use and Utilize the Web. Tim O’Reilly defines the Web 2.0 as, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”

Let’s make a One-to-One Markup between Web 1.0 (dot-Com) and Web 2.0 through some concrete examples:

Web 1.0 --> Web 2.0: DoubleClick --> Google AdSense; Ofoto --> Flickr; Akamai --> BitTorrent; mp3.com --> Napster; Britannica Online --> Wikipedia; personal websites --> blogging; evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB; domain name speculation --> search engine optimization; page views --> cost per click; screen scraping --> web services; publishing --> participation; content management systems --> wikis; directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy"); and stickiness --> syndication. This list can further be expanded and one can easily draw a comparison between these previous web application combinations. Despite such a wide level of Web 2.0 adaptation, most have missed out the opportunity to understand and implement the Web 2.0 standard. Let’s chalk out the base principles behind Web 2.0:

Strategic Positioning:

• The WEB as Platform

User Positioning:

• You Control Your Own Data

Core Competencies:

• Services, Not Packaged Software;


• Architecture of Participation;


• Cost-Effective Scalability;


• Remixable Data Source and Data Transformations;


• Software Above the Level of a Single Device; and


• Harnessing Collective Intelligence.

Web 2.0 appears to be Imperative, but how does imperative buy Fortune for you? Let’s precisely make out what's basic distinction about Web 2.0 and how these distinctions can harness your organization’s bottom line. Web 2.0 is an APPROACH that attempts to improve how businesses, customers, and partners interaction runs. it opens up a variety of new business models. Web 2.0 is a kind of business revolution in the IT industry caused by the move to the World Wide Web as a basic platform, and an attempt to comprehend the rules for success on that newly created platform. Significant among those rules is this: Develop applications that strengthen network effects to get better the more users use them. Here follows some basic principles that may help you remodeling and developing your existing business model to Web 2.0 standard:

• Don’t consider software as an object, but as a process of engaging users. This can be termed as The Perpetual Beta.


• Your data and services should have re-usability. This principle can be defined as Small Pieces Loosely Joined.


• Don’t think of applications that reside on either client or server, but build applications that reside in the space between devices.


• Remember that in a network environment, open APIs and standard protocols win, but this doesn’t mean that the idea of competitive advantage goes away.


• Chief among the future sources of lock in and competitive advantage will be data, whether through increasing returns from user-generated data.

(Courtesy: EDU.ru)

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Twitter and Its Marketing Aspect – An Overlook!

Technology has greatly influenced the overall marketing fundamentals. Every time a new technology has been introduced, marketing gurus start exploiting the technology to reach out customers. Here comes the urgency of ORM (Online Reputation Management). Every individual business must maintain its online reputation. There is greater chance that a potential customer with whom you are about to make a business has surely googled your name or your business name on the Internet. Owning a space in a popular shopping mall gives you good business, but the online reputation of your business can give you better business. Modern day customers are not leaving a single chance to inquiry about your business before making a purchase. With growing popularity of internet, managing your business’s online reputation is must.

There are several ORM tools available to make a foothold in your niche business. One of such recent ORM tools is Twitter.com. From a technical point of view twitter can be defined as a micro-blogging application. In recent times Twitter is emerging as one of the efficient and effective marketing tools. I would like to add some more lines to the efficiency and effectiveness of Twitter. 188 years old The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) has made an announcement on 1st April, 2009 that it will cease its print publication and go Twitter only. This confirms that now people around the world can follow The Guardian reports within 140 characters. The Guardian’s celebrated editor, CP Scott has warmly acclaimed this news reporting medium, “Comment is free but facts are sacred.” The success stories of Twitter are growing everyday and as a serious online business holder you should join the hoard. Let’s discuss how Twitter can help your business grow.

Most of the web stores offer email based subscription service to their customers. Twitter can be a better alternative to your email subscription module. The only difference is that the latter is a third party application and shares your information to a larger audience than your limited email subscribers. In a recent report by TechCrunch, Twitter has almost one million users and three million messages are posted on daily basis. So, don’t you think you, your company and your brand should make a buzz around Twitter? Let’s explore some of the marketing possibilities of Twitter.

Twitter can be a great option to share any updates about your company or new products. But one must not be too promotional while sharing information on Twitter. Twitter is more of a casual conversation and breaking news platform. You should give your messages a personal tone. You can use Twitter as a customer interaction platform, but this needs a lot of customer dealing skills. If you think you are not that competitive, then you should not entertain this aspect of Twitter. It would be a better option to use Twitter for making friends, replying every information scrap that you consider worthy for your business.

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Recession – A Double Edged Sword for Online Sellers!

Recession has hit the World Economy severely. Corporate biggies are crumbling down like a card house; employees are pink slipped; bail outs are declared and every day SENSEX is deepening down by some numbers. Reuters has reported that in “the U.S. recession will probably be the longest since World War Two and could worsen without heavy government spending, according to a closely-watched survey of economists…” Amidst such gloomy global economic scenario, there is still a light of hope is lit up for online sellers. Let’s discover some of such facts that have really inspired more people to join the online selling sector. Before this, a small explanation of Recession would be more helpful for readers in realising SUCCESSES as an online seller.

Wikipedia defines Recession as “In economics, a recession is a general slowdown in economic activity in a country over a sustained period of time, or a business cycle contraction. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way. Production as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment, investment spending, capacity utilization, household incomes and business profits all fall during recessions. Governments usually respond to recessions by adopting expansionary macroeconomic policies, such as increasing money supply, increasing government spending and decreasing taxation.”

It is obvious that during recession both the Production and Consumption of Products (i.e. including Goods and Services) goes down substantially. So as a seller, it is really hard to push products through possible buyers. That’s why companies and business organisations start giving discounts coupons, free trials, extended warranties to motivate buyers. Here online sellers can see their opportunities to make a good business despite recession. Another source of opportunity is electronic and digital sector, where buyers always look for second had, refurbished and ex demo products. So Product Promotion is one of the major challenges during recession. Just handing over discount coupons won’t help your business glitter; you need a constant effort to take more cost-cutting measures and at the same time make your buyers feel that it is worthy enough to make purchases with you. Here follows some valuable tips that may help your business make the best out of recession:

• Give your business a hi-tech shape and invest in skilled people. Technology may be expensive, but it helps you saving more in the long run which would have paid in salary to unskilled employees. A technological alternative of your business is surely a cost-cutting measure. Give it a serious thought, understand your business requirements and look for a company that deals with similar solutions.

• Put Sales on Top Priority List. Arrange one hour everyday to train your sales staff on marketing. Analyse daily sales and let them identify the positives, negatives and solutions to boost your sales. Acknowledge, Complement and Award who performs the best in the team.

• Introduce the online version of your business. Maximise the number of channels, where you can share your product inventory. Join Affiliate Portals, where you can find experienced people who can sales your products to potential buyers on commission basis.

So why shading tears on recession! Now you can battle out Recession taking advantage of its double-edged sword.

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Web 2.0 – What Why and How Explained!

Web 2.0 is a technological realization of World Wide Web. It describes the evolving trends in the adaptation of World Wide Web Technology (including web development, web design and information management). Some of the best outcomes of Web 2.0 are Social-Networking Sites, Video Sharing Sites, Wikis, Blogs, and Folksonomies. It would be misleading to comprehend Web 2.0 as a Specific Technological Update; but rather a Revolutionary and Evolutionary change in the way we Use and Utilize the Web. Tim O’Reilly defines the Web 2.0 as, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”

Let’s make a One-to-One Markup between Web 1.0 (dot-Com) and Web 2.0 through some concrete examples:

Web 1.0 --> Web 2.0: DoubleClick --> Google AdSense; Ofoto --> Flickr; Akamai --> BitTorrent; mp3.com --> Napster; Britannica Online --> Wikipedia; personal websites --> blogging; evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB; domain name speculation --> search engine optimization; page views --> cost per click; screen scraping --> web services; publishing --> participation; content management systems --> wikis; directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy"); and stickiness --> syndication. This list can further be expanded and one can easily draw a comparison between these previous web application combinations. Despite such a wide level of Web 2.0 adaptation, most have missed out the opportunity to understand and implement the Web 2.0 standard. Let’s chalk out the base principles behind Web 2.0:

Strategic Positioning:

• The WEB as Platform

User Positioning:

• You Control Your Own Data

Core Competencies:

• Services, Not Packaged Software;


• Architecture of Participation;


• Cost-Effective Scalability;


• Remixable Data Source and Data Transformations;


• Software Above the Level of a Single Device; and


• Harnessing Collective Intelligence.

Web 2.0 appears to be Imperative, but how does imperative buy Fortune for you? Let’s precisely make out what's basic distinction about Web 2.0 and how these distinctions can harness your organization’s bottom line. Web 2.0 is an APPROACH that attempts to improve how businesses, customers, and partners interaction runs. it opens up a variety of new business models. Web 2.0 is a kind of business revolution in the IT industry caused by the move to the World Wide Web as a basic platform, and an attempt to comprehend the rules for success on that newly created platform. Significant among those rules is this: Develop applications that strengthen network effects to get better the more users use them. Here follows some basic principles that may help you remodeling and developing your existing business model to Web 2.0 standard:

• Don’t consider software as an object, but as a process of engaging users. This can be termed as The Perpetual Beta.


• Your data and services should have re-usability. This principle can be defined as Small Pieces Loosely Joined.


• Don’t think of applications that reside on either client or server, but build applications that reside in the space between devices.


• Remember that in a network environment, open APIs and standard protocols win, but this doesn’t mean that the idea of competitive advantage goes away.


• Chief among the future sources of lock in and competitive advantage will be data, whether through increasing returns from user-generated data.

(Courtesy: EDU.ru)

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Make Your Business Count This Year!

After Year-End Sales closing, the first three months are usually the best time for online merchants to conduct and implement all kinds of Researches, Renovations and Resolutions. After Holiday Sales Bonanza is over, it's the right time to reassess your business.

2009 has brought a lot of changes to eBay's base platform and the growing determination of many online sellers to go Multi-Channel are two major factors in recent times. These two factors have really inspired sellers to work out such experiments with their businesses and these three months are the right time to do so.

I personally have spoken to several of my seller friends (most of them are from eBay background) to find out what exactly they were planning to work out during these three months and to my surprise most of them have complied with me that they wanted to go global with apt technological support for their growing business. Though Recession towards the end of the previous year has marred a lot of such planning, yet sellers have not stopped becoming bold so far as implementing innovative stuffs. After assessing all replies, I discovered Four Decisions that sellers are keen to concentrate during these three months.

Look into the Barrel Down

A proper analysis of the things that worked and did not work for your business over the previous year is one of the best ways to assess your business. EBay is such a platform where you can sell anything to anybody. Some eBay Sellers said they plan to get rid of slow-moving or non-performing inventory to better help them assess and restructure their business.

One of among my eBay seller friends, Tina explained me, "I could see that my performance on eBay was improving, but the major problem is with tax as I feel that my profits were going straight to the Internal Revenue Service."

Mr. Bennet, another eBay seller has decided to liquidate his baby wear inventory as he is finding his electronic shop has performing pretty well. He would put his baby wear products on auction style to finish up the inventory. This will facilitate him analyzing his inventory. "I’ve already decided to make the storage space more organised, and to examine and explore where I can generate maximum profit."

Diversify

Buyers are always active and browsing pages for shopping every moment, and you need to be ready to meet their demand, too. Enlisting your products on multiple channels (i.e. marketplaces), as well as setting up a Web Store is an added advantage for your business. You can get your potential buyers gather through various popular social networking sites. Further these social communities can be utilized for promoting upcoming products and brand awareness. Some of such popular social networking sites are Facebook, My Space, Twitter, Orkut and Hi5.

Professional and Personalised Customer Service

Customers are normal human beings and mostly driven by emotions. Though emotions and feelings do not run a business, yet it can help your business growing immensely. Prepare a list of previous customers as well as their emails and keep in touch with them in regular interval with personalized messages. As an online seller, you should have a system for regular communication with previous customers. The advantage of such a system improves your Customer Retention Average and as per experts Customer Retention costs lesser in comparison to New Customer Acquisition.

Give Coupons

Coupon sites are one of the best ways to promote your inventory. Such coupon sites have really been popular among buyers during past few years. These types of sites have become very popular over the past couple of years, and going to get more popular in such a gloomy global economy scenario. More and more buyers are ensuring for any such discount coupons before checking out on any store. So why not using such coupon sites to give some added exposure for your products!

I hope these valuable tips surely help you and your business grow substantially this year and make 2009, a successful business year for you.

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Amazon – A Mystery for Sellers and Buyers!

Amazon has always a mystery for people who wish to make some extra money selling things online. It’s not the Amazon that only provides the opportunity to sell things to potential buyers, there are other popular marketplaces like eBay are too well-known. We can simply draw a comparison line between Amazon and eBay that they are into the same sector where buyers and seller explore each other for possible transactions. But both are completely different from each other so far as selling and buying methods are concerned. EBay is known for its auction style selling procedure and Amazon is well known for book selling. But both the online marketplaces have come a long way ahead. From Dot-Com to Web 3.0 through Web 2.0, a lot has been changed on World Wide Web and the way internet surfers behave online especially during online purchases.

If anybody asks me which WWW term is the most confusing, I would say “Web 2.0”. According to Wikipedia.org, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.” Web 2.0 revolution encourages lightweight, easy-to-use and user centric business models. In other sense we can assume that Web 2.0 ushered the era of Internet Independence. Amazon has rightly supported the Web 2.0 standards and has opened its solutions to other sellers. As a result Amazon sellers now can sell a lot variety of products apart from books.

The best thing about Amazon is that it offers a wide range of individual features to the customer that, when united, offer a very interactive experience. Due to this reason, Amazon successfully retains customers despite heavy competition from other marketplaces so far as price is concerned.

Features like Products Review, Tagging and Categorization, Product Rating, and even Product Review Rating by other customers have made Amazon a reliable source for buying and selling.

Over the course of time, a customer can build a reputation as a reviewer. This facilitates a sense of ownership on the site and encourages customers getting engaged on the site while shopping. Buyers can publish photos of the products they’ve bought. This all serves the customers by providing additional information that plays a major factor while making a purchasing decision.

But this does not stop here. An Amazon Buyer can prepare lists of various relative items that they can be recommended as a group.

This is all Open Data Contribution feature of Amazon. But Amazon also follows its buyers’ behaviour and gathers information from such buyers’ behaviour patterns. If an Amazon buyer looks at one product but ends up buying another, that’s a Data Point that can potentially control a purchasing decision for the next buyer. Amazon gathers this information and prepares a Product Ranking, along with additional information that eventually gets published along with the core product features.

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eBay Business – A Review!

I was randomly crawling through some articles related to eBay and surprisingly, I read, “eBay losing more and more business is no big surprise. eBay should be flourishing in times like these, however competition from Amazon is fierce! You can only sell so low before you both go! A few more years Amazon and eBay both will be out of business!” So far as eBay is concerned, the statistics are a bit encouraging. Since its foundation in 1995, eBay has come a long way ahead. With a global customer base of 233 million, eBay has expanded its business over 37 different countries. “While the holiday season was tough and competitive, our overall results for 2008 were strong,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “For 2008, we delivered double-digit revenue and earnings growth; made significant changes in our eBay business; and built a stronger, more diverse portfolio of leading e-commerce businesses. We will build on our strengths in 2009 while managing our business prudently in the continued challenging environment.” Due to Global Recession eBay has not achieved a substantial growth, yet more positives are expected in future, especially in 2009. Such ups and downs are a part of business and those who rely on their strengths really stand out in crowd.

EBay has completely changed the concept of business operation. It has helped numerous people realizing their dream of owning a business and not be confined to 9 to 5 jobs. Although such business is not like that your father might have owned, yet in various facets, managing business on eBay is too a profitable affair. It is profitable because you need not to invest thousands of pounds, initially. Just one computer with reliable internet connectivity, a vacant space to store items and a post box would be enough to start with. You don’t have need to rent an office space, hire professionals or many such conventional business requirements. Chiefly, there is freedom, dignity and a sense of self-fulfillment that most of the conventional business owners enjoy.

EBay has been so popular among small business owners because one can make himself/herself a big business with comparatively little investment. You may need to put some extra pound to improve your business operation efficiency and most of the amount would go for an updated computer, some basic applications and office supplies. So far we have discussed how eBay has changed the whole scenario of running a business online is cost-effective. Big players too have adopted eBay as one of their reliable resources to sell and market their products. So why wasting your time and waiting for time to change of luck! Speak to our eBay Specialist for more details on how to run an eBay business.

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Negative eBay Feedbacks – Ignorance May Damage Your Business

"Now, we have an open forum. Use it. Make your complaints in the open,” says Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar. "Better yet, give your praise in the open. Let everyone know what a joy it was to deal with someone. Above all, conduct yourself in a professional manner." This was a response from Mr. Omidyar on the crisis of eBay Feedback System. The whole situation was like that this leading premier online auction site was planning to restructure its feedback system and would ban sellers from leaving negative comments about buyers. However it would be a biased idea to comprehend that this attempt was solely taken to protect buyers from the wrath of sellers. I would like to refer one of such numerous issues sometimes ago, one eBay seller faced:

“I know the rule for removing an unwarranted feedback. Before any of your replies let me make it clear that if this is a genuine negative feedback, then I’m sorry it’s enough.

I sell cloth baby-sling and kids accessories on eBay. One of my items ended with a bidder. Bidder then said that he had got some problem with his PayPal account and pursued me to re-list that item once again. Don’t you think he would have the same PayPal problem once again and I’ll be charged the Listing fee once again? I sent an invoice through eBay twice, yet to get the reply from him. So in the end I issued an UPI and you know what I get instead is a negative feedback, “Item not received…” Don’t you think this is a kind of threat? I’m really going crazy. Please suggest me how I can remove this negative feedback as my feedback average is around 99.8%.”

I hope, Mr. Omidyar has never thought of crisis that may erupt out of this eBay Feedback system. The mere problem is lack of trust between buyers and sellers. No business can stand without buyers and this influences every business decision. So there is nothing to be surprised of Mr. Omidyar above message. But the problem is how to meet with such scenarios. Such buyer seller confrontation is not a good sign so far eBay is concerned.

As an eBay seller, your Feedback Profile values the most for your business. One Negative Feedback from certain buy could spoil your reputation and substantially damage your business, too.

To begin with always make sure you are polite to your buyers, I need not to write this due to all good sellers are well-aware of that it is vital to be polite with your buyers. If you are respectful towards them in all levels of communication then you should be able to work out any issue that you are having. Regardless of how rude the buyer is while making transactions with you always keep yourself cool and reply to them with a courteous email. If the buyer is a sensible individual then you will be able to resolve the crisis without risking your business with a negative feedback.

If still this doesn't work, there is a reason to be irritated. Well nothing to be worried about, even if the buyer leaves you a negative feedback after your polite corresponding there is still a way to get out of this negative feedback problem. The possible solution is "Mutual Feedback Withdrawal". This is where both buyers and sellers agree that the feedback is no longer justified and both parties focus on to remove the negative feedbacks.

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Amazon – A Mystery for Sellers and Buyers!

Amazon has always been a mystery for people who wish to make some extra money selling things online. It’s not the Amazon that only provides the opportunity to sell things to potential buyers, there are other popular marketplaces like eBay are too well-known. We can simply draw a comparison line between Amazon and eBay that they are into the same sector where buyers and seller explore each other for possible transactions. But both are completely different from each other so far as selling and buying methods are concerned. EBay is known for its auction style selling procedure and Amazon is well known for book selling. But both the online marketplaces have come a long way ahead. From Dot-Com to Web 3.0 through Web 2.0, a lot has been changed on World Wide Web and the way internet surfers behave online especially during online purchases.

If anybody asks me which WWW term is the most confusing, I would say “Web 2.0”. According to Wikipedia.org, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.” Web 2.0 revolution encourages lightweight, easy-to-use and user centric business models. In other sense we can assume that Web 2.0 ushered the era of Internet Independence. Amazon has rightly supported the Web 2.0 standards and has opened its solutions to other sellers. As a result Amazon sellers now can sell a lot variety of products apart from books.

The best thing about Amazon is that it offers a wide range of individual features to the customer that, when united, offer a very interactive experience. Due to this reason, Amazon successfully retains customers despite heavy competition from other marketplaces so far as price is concerned.

Features like Products Review, Tagging and Categorization, Product Rating, and even Product Review Rating by other customers have made Amazon a reliable source for buying and selling.

Over the course of time, a customer can build a reputation as a reviewer. This facilitates a sense of ownership on the site and encourages customers getting engaged on the site while shopping. Buyers can publish photos of the products they’ve bought. This all serves the customers by providing additional information that plays a major factor while making a purchasing decision.

But this does not stop here. An Amazon Buyer can prepare lists of various relative items that they can be recommended as a group.

This is all Open Data Contribution feature of Amazon. But Amazon also follows its buyers’ behaviour and gathers information from such buyers’ behaviour patterns. If an Amazon buyer looks at one product but ends up buying another, that’s a Data Point that can potentially control a purchasing decision for the next buyer. Amazon gathers this information and prepares a Product Ranking, along with additional information that eventually gets published along with the core product features.

Read More