Week 10

For my final blog of my COM425 E-Commerce module I will be discussing web personalisation. and my personal views on it.

Personally, I am for web personalisation..  I am for this because I believe that it gives the user a chance to view a page that is specific to them and includes relevant information to the user.

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/papers/bowen/bowen-fig1-inline.gif

Web personalisation is done in 3 stages:

• Input
• Algorithm
• Output

The input is the user viewing or purchasing products or information, the algorithm is done by collaborative filtering and simple data mining to show which products and information should be displayed.  The output is the relevant products and information being shown.

Personalisation works by using collaborative filtering, finding out information about the user and displaying information and products that the webpage believes to be relevant and useful to the user.  A simple example of this is on e-commerce sites Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk) and Play (www.play.com), where products are displayed and recommended to the user.  These results are dependant on what the user has searched or purchased in the past.  I admit that this can also be a downside as the products etc that are displayed are not always relevant to the user.

www.amazon.co.uk

The image above shows products that have been recommended for me by Amazon.  This is shows both good and bad web personalisation as I would be interested in the 1st and 3rd games shown.  It shows bad personalisation as I would not be recommended in purchasing the 2nd game shown.

Another example of bad web personalisation would be when I go to Amazon to buy a product different from my previous purchases, and I am constantly being recommended with irrelevant products.

With the web moving into its next generation, Web 3.0, personalisation is going to be a ever present form of displaying information and data to the user.  Many experts believe that the web will become like a personal assistant to the user.  The browser will do this by learning from the users searches and purchases, allowing the user to be less specific with their searches.

Week 9

For this week’s blog, I had to find the most popular search results for my website, (www.prodirectsoccer.com).  I did this by using several internet tools.  As I was expecting a large amount of results, I had to cut down the list to the 12 results that I believed to be the best for an Adword campaign.

The first tool that I used was Google’s search based keyword tool.  I typed in my website and searched for the keywords.  Top of the list was “football kits” with 12,000 search results.  I found this surprising as ProDirect concentrates more on football boots than football kits.  This had a suggested bid of $0.66 and had a high rate of advertiser competition.  Second on the lost of results was “copa mundial”, a make of football boots, with 6,600 results.  This result had a suggested bid of $0.46 and had a low competition rate.  In second place was “soccer boots” with 5,400 results, suggested bid of $0.37 and the same competition rate as “copa mundial”  The results of the search based keyword tool can be seen below.

http://www.google.co.uk/sktool/#keywords?site=www.prodirectsoccer.com=

The next tool that I used was Google Adwords: Keyword Tool.  I again typed in the name of my website, and searched for results.  Top of the list with this tool was “football boots”, with a local search volume of 74,00, and global search volume of 1,220,000 for October.  The second most popular result was “new football boots”, someway off first with a local search volume of 2,400 and a global volume of 18,100.  The third most popular was “kids football boots” with a local volume of 1,600 and global volume of 18,100.  The results of this search can be seen below.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

The last tool that I used was Google Insights.  This tool allowed me to search terms and phrases and see which ones created the most interest.  The terms that I searched were:

• football boots
• soccer boots
• kids football boots
• football equipment

Football boots attracts the most interest, followed by football equipment, and then soccer boots.  Kids football boots attracts very little interest.  As the graph below shows, the interest in football boots has deteriorated over time, and shows no major increase for 2010.  The results of this tool are shown below.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=football%20boots%2Csoccer%20boots%2Ckids%20football%20boots%2Cfootball%20equipment&cmpt=q

After using these tools, I found that Google search based keyword tool was the most useful and easy to understand.  This tool played a major factor when I was choosing my twelve best results.  These are shown below.

• football boots
• football kits
• soccer boots
• new football boots
• kids football boots
• football equipment
• copa mundial
• football boots sale
• running trainers
• climacool
• mercurial vapours
• total 90 laser

Week 8

This week I have been asked to assess how easy it is to find the ProDirect website using a search engine.  I will use 2 search engines for this, Google (www.google.co.uk) and Bing (www.bing.com).

First of all I searched “football boots” in both of the search engines.  The ProDirect website appeared first in both search engines.  In Google, it was the first and second results, with a link directly to the boots page of the website in second place.  In the Bing results, the boot page was third behind www.footy-boots.com.  This website appears to be popular as it is also third on Google.

JJB Sports, who I believe to be one of ProDirect’s largest competitors,was ranked fourth on Google.  I was quite shocked to find that not only did JJB not appear on the first page of  Bing, it did not appear at all on the first 5 pages of the Bing results.

ProDirect does not appear as a sponsored link on any of the search engines.  I think this is because they have realised that as their company and website are widely known and as it appears first on all of the search engines, there is no need to pay for sponsored links.

Littlewoods appears as a sponsored link on both of the search engines.  The website www.kickbacksports.co.uk/football appears as the top sponsored link in both of the search engines.

I then typed in “football equipment” into both of the search engines.  In Google, ProDirect appeared fourth in the list.  In Bing, it appeared at the bottom of the third page.  I think this is because ProDirect do not use as much resources marketing football equipment in general, but concentrate more on the football boots.  Again, ProDirect does not appear as a sponsored link on the search engines.  JJB Sports does not appear in the first page of both search engines.

When searching for “football boots”, I do not have any recommendations for ProDirect as they are first on the list.  However, I do believe that they should increase or change the tags that they are currently using for when the user searches for “football equipment”.  This is because on Google, the ProDirect website does not appear first, and on Bing, it does not appear until the third page.  Most users try another search or stop looking after the second page of results.

Week 7

For this week’s blog, I will be researching the term ”cloud computing”.

The definition of cloud computing differs from supplier to supplier.  According to Dan Kusnetzky (http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=733), the definition that is widely accepted is “the availability of an application,  an application framework or IT infrastructure available for use on the internet on a pay-to-play pricing structure”.

In an organisation, cloud computing works by the business loading one application for all users instead of purchasing multiple applications for each user.  This application allows all of the users to log into a web-based service.  This service would then host all of the programs that the users would need.

This leads to a major advantage for cloud computing, the user’s computer will have no need for large amounts of memory or processing power.  This is because the network of computers and servers that make up the cloud handle the work involved in opening and running applications.  This leaves the user’s machine to run only the clouds interface software, which can be as simple as to open a web browser.

Most of us have used cloud computing before, even though the majority will not realise it.  If you have an email account with Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, you have used cloud computing.  Instead of the user running an email program on their machine, they log into a web email account remotely.  The software and storage needed for this is stored in the service’s computer cloud.

The cloud’s servers are kept in data centres.  These centres are kept cool by air conditioning as the servers generate a lot of heat.  As the air conditioning is harmful to the enviroment, Google has patented the idea of locating their data centres off shore on boats.  They would use the water to keep the data centre cool and for energy.  If this idea is perfected, Google could build a 40 megawatt data centre that doesn’t require real estate or property taxes.

http://ambuj.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/cloudcomputing-2.jpg

The advantages of cloud computing to E-commerce are:

The cost to the user is lowered as there is no need for lots of hardware and software on their machines.  This then leaves the user more money which they could possibly spend on E-commerce websites.  The cost to the business is also less as they do not have to hire IT experts to keep their applications running.

Unlimited storage capacity will allow an E-commerce site to store vast amounts of information on its customers.

This data would also be more secure on the servers.  For example, if a desktop was to crash, the data would not be lost as it is stored on the server.

The data being stored on a server also leads to a major disadvantage for cloud computing.  There will always be the risk that a hacker or virus could infiltrate the servers and steal or erase the data stored on them.  There is also the issue of who can see the data stored on customers, as this may be in breach of the Data Protection Act.

Another major disadvantage of cloud computing, is that the user also requires a constant internet connection to access the applications.  This will prohibit the user from working on the move, unless there is a wi-fi connection set up.