Every year, hoards of online shoppers bolt when they’re just a click or two away from finishing the checkout process. Maybe it’s a security concern, or what if returning the item turns out to be too much of a hassle? Whatever the reason, one study found that as many as 60 percent of online shoppers flee, making shopping cart abandonment a huge and costly problem for any business selling on the Web. The great frustration for online businesses is that a salesperson can’t just walk over to you and offer help.
George Lawrie, Principal analyst at Forrester has written about Online Retail Industry. George writes that the single largest source of revenue loss for most online retailers is shopping cart abandonment — driven in large measure by sources of inconvenience in the online space.
Is the Web 2.0 economy in limbo? Wrapping up the Web 2.0 conference CNET News.com Editor in Chief Dan Farber and reporter Caroline McCarthy wrap up the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco and discuss the current Web 2.0 boom and how long it will be sustained.
Tried it and fell in love with it right away. This is a sure winner for those writing cross domain widgets for the Internet. JSON is a data format that can be handled with ease in JavaScript (or Java or any programming/scripting language). It also allows cross domain scripting which is not supported by AJAX. Here are some cool resources to get started.
Leveraging Web 2.0 to Sell by Geoffrey James
The Internet is the ultimate disruptive technology. Like telephony, radio, television, and even the printing press, the Internet is dramatically changing nearly every aspect of daily life, both inside businesses and in the daily lives of individuals. Much of this disruption has been both unplanned and unexpected, and nothing more so than the sudden prominence of what’s been called Web 2.0: the blogs, wikis and social networking sites where users generate content for consumption by other users.
Sales 2.0 represents not just a better way of selling, but a substantial enhancement of the customer experience. The Web 1.0 environment, with its emphasis on pushing information out to a wider audience, overloaded customers with information. While they had access to information that in the past belonged entirely to sales professionals (i.e. product features, comparison pricing, customer complaints etc.), many customers saw all that data as an undifferentiated blur of meaningless facts. By creating a more collaborative environment, Sales 2.0 allows the sales professional to use his or her specific expertise to help the customer differentiate between information that’s essential and information that’s not.
Sure the Summit (SFO, Oct 17 -19) was sold out. I would have loved to be there, but living in the other corner of US makes it difficult to participate in the excitement. It might have been really refreshing to see Mark Zuckerberg, wearing jeans and his signature sandals. Zuckerberg had informed attendees that he expected the number of workers at Facebook to increase to 700 in a year from the more than 300 employees today.
The line-up of speakers was indeed very impressive: Meg Whitman (eBay), Steve Ballmer, Rupert Murdoch, Stewart Butterfield (Flickr) and more - the complete list here
Get the official scoop:
Any how, Ii am hoping to catch some of the happenings on pod-casts and screen-casts. I am sure you-tube will have a few pretty soon. Here is one that covers the last years (2006) Opening Session. Please post any links you have in the comments.
I hope that many investors walked out of the event with a commitment to support web 2.0 initiatives further. All the software makers and start-up entrepreneurs owe one for Oreilly for coining the terminology and nurturing the concept of web 2.0.
The idea of buying a new laptop was looming in my mind for a while now. I visited CNET to find whats the right product for my needs and did some research. I also visited Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Circuit City to take a look at whats out there. I liked Toshiba, HP and Dell from a price/quality perspective. When at Best Buy i almost bought a Toshiba but decided to do some more research before i spend the bucks. Last week i was continuing my research and visited Dell website and found some thing that i liked. Dell Inspiron 1420. While reviewing the product i found a “Chat” button on the website and clicked to ask a few questions. I wanted to know if i can ask Dell to package Windows XP instead of Vista. The girl i was connected to said that is not possible. She continued asking if i would be purchasing the Laptop today. She mentioned to me that she can get me a 25$ discount if i made the purchase today. She connected me with her Supervisor who was able to call me instantly and we were on the phone. Apart from answering my questions, the Supervisor doubled the discount. At that point i decided that i will make the purchase. The discount was not that great for the price of the product, but hey i was going to buy a Laptop any way and any discount i would get is good. We made the transaction and there you go, i finally bought the laptop i needed. Even though i had a need to buy a laptop, i needed some motivation to make the final move. I loved the chat service and also the ability of the sales associates to guide me and throw some discount. Who does not love discount especially when offered on the spot. Dell website did have comparisons and product reviews - but all of that were static. What made me really buy was the personal touch of somebody offering me product information and a discount at the right time.
A must read for those evaluatiing Ruby on Rails.
