Tag Archives: Internet

Traditional retailers problem with online shopping


Yet another Thanksgiving followed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over. Everyone got some required things, and some things just because there was a deal! With shopping comes the experience of buying it, be it online or in the retail store.
online-shopping

Each retailers got their online shopping with their website and mobile app but major difference for retail stores is their core business compared to online only shops like Amazon, eBay, etc. Once upon time having retail shop used to be advantage but Today not having retail shop is advantage for some as it reduces huge operational cost and entire energy is focused on online shopping experience. With Amazon, eBay etc, it has become default expectation to have the website which like virtual store unlike just one product on one page. For example, when we look for one product on Amazon, it has plenty of review from other buyers, It shows option to compare similar products, shows similar products other have purchased after seeing this product and very detailed product information include high quality images. Now compare same product on specialized retail store online shop, eg. Toys R Us, most of them just display product details and empty review boxes and option to purchase.

Problem for retail store’s online shops, eg. Toys R Us, Kohl’s, Sears, JCP etc, is consumers default expectations for online shopping has experience of Amazon or similar and retailers can’t practically quickly adapt to change in dynamics. Online shops having online only being core business, they have best of best features ready to avail compared to catch up game by retail store. Possibly one store which has somewhat close to Amazon experience is Wal-Mart, they have made their online experience quite smooth.

This years most of the black Friday shopping being online, wouldn’t be surprising to see some of the retail store like Sears being outdated in next 10 years unless they re-imagine the consumer buying experience.

Uber vs Lyft or Uber + Lyft


Over last couple of years, peer-to-peer service/economy has been taken by storm. Specially in travel and accommodation industry. For most of the tech savvy folks Airbnb and Uber or Lyft has been way of travel. Also there is upcoming startup Flytenow for peer-to-peer flights between different locations. There are ideally two types of industries.

  1. Everyone has their market share and competitiveness among similar business model
  2. Winner takes all

When it comes to social networking, back in 2002 – 2006 many startups with similar model and more or less similar growth trajectory. In early 2010 Facebook took a leap forward and emerged as clear winner, leaving other social networks much behind. Its reached a place where its difficult for anyone to step in now.

Same applies to Google search, even Google started much after Altavista but it didn’t took much time for them to surpass their rivals due to their founders vision and excellent technology. Microsoft Bing and Yahoo search are distant runner-up in search in race. Google take away more than 80% search market by storm.

In peer-to-peer economy, airbnb has taken leap ahead in accommodation and taking on traditional hotel business and regulators. When it comes to most promising industry for peer-to-peer – taxi /cab service, there are two clear frontrunners – Uber and Lyft. Both started almost same time, similar business model, similar service and even some drivers drives for both Uber and Lyft.

With ongoing tussle to tap more market, Uber as well as Lyft are trying to woo riders (customers) with one or other offers all the times. It’s good for common public. In days to comes, it would be interesting to see whether both companies will continue to operate independently as they are now or become formidable company by merger/acquisition?

elance and odesk has merged recently to provide better work platform for freelancers and businesses. My take, merger of uber and Lyft in next couple of years!

Online Journal – It works!


I tried writing daily journal over the years but didn’t succeed for long time. I use to write for few days before missing couple of weeks and there after it use to be occasional phenomenon. Initially I tried with year book but later couldn’t see many blank pages so shifted to just blank journal. Maintaining journal book is tough and availability is another concern.100 Posts

Last year, I thought to try personal blog just like journal as private blog to note down anything that matters to me. It didn’t become daily dairy but it became great place to get my journal at one place. It has what I need, when I need. With mobile app, it became even easier to update my journal on the go. Today I completed 100 quick blogs on my personal private journal and really happy with the content I put there for myself! 🙂

 

Email trick for subscription


I’ve few email subscription for my personal email id, like Seth Godin or Robin Sharma’s blog email. These are something I would like to read when I have some time. Whenever we see new email, its human tendency to see the email and either read or ignore. For me, it use to be half way, open the email but may not be completing it due to one or other reason. Reading those blog’s is important but not urgent. I was thinking for option to get best of these email without spending much time.

Other day, I added one new rule for my incoming email that mark those “Subscription” and change status from unread to read email. Now I don’t see those emails when I open my inbox but I do have those email cumulate at one place to read whenever I’ve some time and right mindset.

This trick worked very well.

Unique Payment system to get best return on spending


Peter, Just like all of us has four credit cards, one debit card and paypal account. Along with this he have two store credit cards like Banana Republic, Amazon etc. Each of those credit cards and store card has their reward systems, cash back offer but not same for all type of purchase. One card may be good for travel and other for gas purchase and another for some other service. So there is always confusion which card to use for which transaction to get better return. Yes, return on spending!

Peter could manage to get some good cash back on one card and earn spectacular reward points on another card after using his payment choise wisely every time. But there is no guarantee he is using best payment choise (card) which gives more return. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there is some system which takes care of all the math and tell you or automatically uses the best payment option every time Peter does the transaction? In short getting the best possible return on spending.

Consider, this Peter guy is me and tell me, do you know of any such product or service in market?

Search… wait… SmartAds, and Smartbuy!


Wondered anytime when you searched for something say “Hotels in Key West” and moved to something else on internet. How you get the ads for hotels in Key West be it Google, Facebook, or any other site like news or any site which supports ads. Most of the ad programs (Adword, Adsense, Facebook ads, email ads, email offers) run on internet captures your internet activities and depending on what you are doing it prompts you with ads related to it. Up to some extend it enters into your privacy but that’s up to you to decide what kinds of cookies you should enable and disable. For Google, just like Google search, Chrome browser is another rich source of raw data to come up with ads for targeted audience. Google allows third party portal to make money by hosting ads on the webpages and those ads comes intelligent data they store from our activities.

It’s just not Google, when you search something on Google and go on to Facebook, most likely you are going to get some page related to what you searched as sponsored page. You search for something to buy on Amazon, overnight you get email from Amazon with all possible offer either from Amazon or it’s affiliates.

As consumer, It’s possibly best to plan, search, wait and act depending on what you see. Say you want to buy Smart TV, search on Google, Facebook pages, Amazon for Smart TV and start looking for offers on linked ads, offers from Amazon in email or their site. Pick the best possible deal and make a purchase. Also we need to be aware about possible incorrect offer and frauds in the process.

One annoying thing is, even after you make purchase, you continue to get those ads for some time, as those ad program don’t know yet whether you made purchase or still yet to make it.

Once clean, now filled with ads!


Online ads are not new and unknown to anyone today. It’s well known fact that almost all major internet giant’s majority of revenue comes from online ads in one or other format. Online ads has evolved over the time from Spams, pop-up ads, flashy banners to inline text. Also over the time internet user response to the ads has gone down, for sure one of the reason is users know they are ads and not what they are looking for.

Sample Google search for "Ads on the Internet"
Sample Google search for “Ads on the Internet”

 

 

 

There was time when innovative brands like Google, YouTube, Facebook and so on use to be “The” portals who had their user ahead of anything else. It’s not like they didn’t have ads but the amount of ads and preference for user content. Over the years trend is changing and up to some extend it’s hurting the users interactiveness. When we look today for search result on Google, more than 75% of first page is filled with ads. When we start the video on YouTube sometime advertisement at the starting is longer than actual video. When you login to Facebook, you see one or other sponsored content at the starting of the page, your friends posts are long lost in the process. User is not spending such much time as they use to spend on Facebook.

WhatsApp founders said so rightly, people don’t go to sleep or wakeup with excitement of what ad they will see tomorrow. In the process of more and more revenue user content is lost. Is there any alternative? May be yes or may be No. But it’s high time to come up with alternative for ads and have the clean experience on the internet. They brand which comes up with alternative is ahead of the pile…

http://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads