Chapter 11 Internet Marketing News Analysis and Reflections

Internet Marketing News Analysis

Source:http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006193&src=article1_home
On-line Banking is old News. Hello Mobile
Author unknown
April 18, 2008


What I learned:
This article is about the use of cell phones in connection with banking. In the past, cell phones have not been popular with consumers when it came to banking for a few issues, the most important being that cell phones get lost, and consumers didn't want just anyone to have access to their account information. Bankers are now finding that more and more people want to be able to do simple things with their cell phones, such as checking account balances. It is said that by making it simple, mobile banking is to move beyond the early adopter crowd. 61% of todays users would like to be able to check their balances via text message, while 57% want to be able to do it with their internet browsers. Banks are predicting by offering such services, it will strengthen customer loyalty.


Analysis:
This relates directly to the chapter 11 readings in the sense that Marketers need to know how to most effectively use their web sites and stay up to date with what new data is available, and what metrics are needed and how to obtain them.


Reflections:
Chapter 11 is about the fact that marketers need to know what data is available, what metrics are needed and how to obtain them in order to best market their products. In order to determine effectiveness and clarity of an ad, marketers use many techniques, one of them being usability testing. Usability testing is is not considered non conventional marketing research and is exclusively designed to see if the site works in a user friendly fashion. It goes hand in hand with quality assurance and is divided into three categories, concept, prototype and full testing. There are different methods to this technique and as everything in marketing research, the techniques have their advantages and disadvantages.
The Pareto curve is a technique used to show 75% of a sites usability problems in as little as 2 days. It is said that eliminating or skimping on usability testing is a false economy and is essential part of launching any web-site. It can be done throughout the stages of construction on a web-site, however the later in development, the more cost that may incur as changes may become harder to make. Many site creators believe that it should be regarded as an integral part of the development process to ensure that the site has an enjoyable and satisfying visitor experience. It is important at the point of the sites launch to be able to measure attainment of the pages communication and business objectives.
An important measure of the business effectiveness of a site is to measure the number and quality of its visitors. It is an essential way to make improvements and establish advertising rates. Traffic data is usually obtained by measuring activity on the web-site as well as looking at the behavior of those visitors. Hit counters are popular in doing this, and they count the number of visits to the site with a small piece of software inserted into a web site. Coded web pages are another technique and uses a cookie like device that returns an image about the users activity on the page.
However obtained, good internet metrics is essential to devoloping a sucessful web-site. There is almost infanite amounts of data to be obtained and tons of methodologies that are yet to be developed in doing so. Although very complex, methods are becoming more and more useful in determining traffic, audience and campaign metrics all the time. To marketers, it is a must to pursue this though as it seems to be the feature of marketing everywhere.