First Internet Blog- latest industry blog

Ecommerce has had a massive impact on businesses with price competition and provide consumers with more choice and information on products. According to a recent survey conducted by Ecommerce-Excellence in conjunction with ScotlandIS (ICT trade body) and Indez (supplier) Scottish businesses are behind when it comes to online-trading. 60% of Scottish businesses rate themselves as ‘poor’ when it comes to their international ecommerce skills. Furthermore, 30% rate their ability to capitalise on domestic ecommerce as “poor.”

These are less than positive results for the 35 companies who took part in the survey. The findings highlight an issue that is having a detrimental effect on the Scottish economy which has been reiterated by Polly Purvis, executive director of ScotlandIS:

“Ecommerce is now a major force in the UK economy. The latest results from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index show that total ecommerce sales continue to grow substantially, with consumers spending £4.5 million online last month alone [...] Addressing this skills shortage would help transform the Scottish economy. If many more small businesses were trading online, we could lift our exports substantially.”

The partnership between Google and Verizon has made people be concerned about the future of net neutrality. The idea of net neutrality is that all traffic on the internet is equal and that no traffic should be prioritised or restricted.

There are now worries that certain content on the internet will be treated differently and only be available to access at premium rate charges, such as some healthcare services and online gaming sites.

Google have denied the allegation that they have joined with Verizon in order to have their traffic routed faster.

The understanding of the proposal is that Google received commitment to net neutrality for wired internet access – which is internet accessed via a computer at home or at work. Verizon will not be as regulated for wireless access via Smartphones.

Research conducted by Chikita Inc advertising company has revealed that the Google search bar on the Firefox toolbar is responsible for more search traffic than both the Bing and Yahoo search engines combined.

Google currently retains over 80% of the Internet searching market out of which 9.18% is from the Firefox toolbar Google search, whilst Bing handles 8.56% and Yahoo 6.69%. These statistics indicate that Mozilla is therefore the next in line behind Google as a driver of searches, particularly as the figure omits web addresses being typed directly into the address bar of the browser.

The Mozilla foundation could have a fight on its hands between Google and Bing when Google’s contract with Mozilla ends in November 2011. The $75 million that Mozilla has made from going into partnership with Google is likely to increase if there is an all out bidding war between the rival companies.

First Internet is offering a young and talented digital designer the opportunity to work closely with our
head of Digital Design over the summer holiday and gain some excellent experience.

Projects will include:

• Helping with the design of new websites and development of online branding

• Creating images to promote brands in an eye-catching manner.

• Helping with the redesign and refresh of our existing clients websites on an on-going basis and other adhoc projects for web, emails for special promotions and tactical sales banners etc.

Download the Specification here

It has been announced that Google have bought the San Francisco based company; Metaweb. The Metaweb database called Freebase is, unlike Google, able to understand the relationship between people, places and things. The database then assists the website in making these connections between those words. The use of Freebase by SEO services could prove very beneficial and has been described as a “tremendous resource” by Jack Menzel; director of product management at Google.

The database currently indexes information on over 12 million subjects, including books, TV and film, celebrities, businesses, countries and more. Metaweb want to encourage other web companies to contribute to this huge catalogue of data.

Google intend to utilise Freebase to generate more relevant and accurate results when users search using complicated questions. Google’s current algorithm cannot cope with complicated questions i.e.  ‘Bands from Manchester who have had a top 10 single.’ Freebase will be able to understand the question resulting in more relevant Google results. This is a positive advancement for the search engine.

If you’re one of the 7% of internet users still using Internet Explorer 6, then now is the time to think about upgrading to a more modern web browser. You run a higher risk of virus infection or identity theft, and with Google officially dropping support for IE6 in January 2010, many of your favourite websites may soon stop working properly unless you upgrade. (more…)

Here at First Internet, we stand by our theory that ‘time’ in the online industry should be measured in dog years- such is the rate in arrivals of industry-shaking marketing ideas and era-defining technologies.

It has been six months since we last momentarily stopped, drew breath and took stock of the recent developments in online advertising. The interim period has seen the industry cement its reputation as an essential medium of forward-think marketers.

As predicted the IAB online spend figures for the first quarter of 2010 saw online spend rocket past the £3bn mark. So what are the reasons for this continued growth of Roman Empire proportions? Well, in fact, its success is down to the perfect blend of old and new.

Marketers continue to get better at using the online essentials, such as display and search, while ceaselessly striving to maximize the effectiveness of the medium and tap into the latest nuance of consumer behaviour.

The internet has always been a medium where free content is natural and we have come to expect it. Whether it be an article, document or video content we are used to viewing these without having to pay. In a recent study carried out by Edelman, it stated that the internet came second for entertainment purposes, with television in the first position, of course.

In the US, a healthy increase of 15% of users compared to 2009 have been accessing content online for entertainment. The study also highlighted the fact that this is the first year that users are more likely to opt for paid content vs. free content. Perhaps this is because there has been an increase in sites offering paid content and the poor quality of free content can ruin the user experience.

Delving deeper into the study, the reason for the uprise in digital entertainment is that 61% of 18-24 year olds in the UK consider social networking to be a form of entertainment. Do you think that the constant evolution of web design and web development have been factors of this increase?

Here at First Internet, we watch trends in web design and online with an almost obsessive interest; we – along with the rest of the online world – were excited by the meteoric rise of social media and we waited with baited breath for news of Google’s ‘next big thing’. Therefore, the fact that online television has – as yet – failed to make a significant impact on the world has not escaped us, but why?

With BT cashing in with their i-player service and ITV and Channel 4 launching similar propositions, internet protocol television (IPTV) is one of the sector’s hottest topics. Yet, paradoxically, it is also perhaps one of the least understood and under-used. While the UK was ahead of the game, launching its first IPTV service way back in 2003, its growth has been at best marginal and at worse stunted.

One of the main reasons for this is that the UK’s TV industry were not sure about what opportunities IPTV offered to advertisers and many questions were raised about how appropriate traditional advertising models would be in this new medium.

However, while there remains – for the moment at least – a mainstream audience for whom any form of advertising is an unwanted invasion, there is still a wealth of opportunity in IPTV ,as any advertiser who is willing to be creative in the medium will see.

From the SmartPhone revolution, m-ecommerce, the way in which people access the internet is changing. Nowhere can this trend be more clearly identified than when you look at the first day of sales for Apple’s iPad.

Apple managed to sell an impressive 300,000 iPad’s on the first day of launch in the US, although this wasn’t quite as high as the sales of the iPhone, which topped half a million.

More than one million applications were also downloaded from the app store on the launch date, with over 250,000 ebooks purchased from the iBookstore. But what does this mean for the future of web design?

Well just as the launch of the iPhone completely revolutionised the mobile phone sector, the launch of the iPad will completely change what consumer demands from a brand’s website.

Web designers will have to respond quickly and strategically to the changing landscape of web design or risk getting left behind . . .