Rarely has a new area of business been heralded with such enthusiasm as "mobile commerce", that is the conduct of business and services over portable, wireless devices. Due to the astronomical growth of the Internet users, maturation of the Internet technologies, realization of the Internet's capabilities, the power of electronic commerce, and the promising advancement of wireless communication technologies and devices, mobile commerce has rapidly attained the business forefront. An m-commerce application can be B2B, B2C or any other of the classifications available with e-commerce world. M-commerce, although not fully mature, has the potential to make it more convenient for consumers to spend money and purchase goods and services. Since wireless devices travel with the consumer, the ability or perhaps temptation to purchase goods and services is always present. This is clearly a technique that can be used to raise revenue. Also, the successful future of m-commerce depends o! n the power of the underlying technology drivers and the attractiveness of m-commerce applications.

Motivating Factors for M-Commerce

Internet use has grown to such a level on the strength of PC networks. Due to the huge base of installed PCs, which is predicted to grow in a faster pace in the days to come, electronic commerce and other communication applications are bound to thrive further. Also, these computing systems will have greater power and storage capability, the best ever price-performance ratios, more powerful and sophisticated applications will likely emerge for desktop computing and the Internet. However, there are two major limitations on PCs. First , users have to sit in front of them, PCs, even portable-notebook computers, have to load software, dial into and connect with a network service provider and await for the initial process to be accomplished before launching an Internet application.

There will be a huge increase in other wireless portable devices, such as wireless PDA. The advantage with these wireless devices is they do not need no booting process and thus facilitating immediate usage of them. This makes them attractive for quick-hit applications.

M-Commerce Applications

The general m-commerce applications are categorized as transaction management, digital content delivery and telemetry services. The applications can be further subdivided into passive and active m-commerce applications. Active application relates with the applications in which the user has to take the initiative on his wireless device. In contrast, the passive applications themselves get activated towards accomplishing the assigned jobs or facilitate the users to carry forward.

First in Updations:  Be the first to update new things, news or any attractive information.

Re Tweet: if you think other people posts is interesting, useful or fascinating then Re Tweet it

Tweet a Joke Comment: Tweet a funny story or re tweet, but make sure it is humorous!

Recommend Product: Recommend a product or may be service, this will be a good way of build up the relationship between you and your followers.

Special Offers or Discounts: Tweet about special offer either it's your product or others Products which are having discounts.

Wishes: Don't forget to congratulate whenever you saw someone’s success on the tweet post.

Thankful Mind Setup: Thanking someone is another good way of build good quality connection.

Video Sharing: Share the videos which you think is humorous, imaginative, obliging or remarkable to the followers.

Event Publication: Share the event information like seminar, webinar, TV program etc.

Indian Retail Industry is the 5th largest of the world. Comparing organized and unorganized areas retail industry is fastest growing in India. Esepically for the last few years.

The high growth of Indian Retail Industry is due to huge amount of investments and breaking up traditional marketing sector. This growth is giving for Indian Retail Industry for further growth in Retail sector.

Now a days,Because of the increasing technical boom E-Shopping growth is increasing in India. And also one of the main reason Internet facilities also available in urban and rural areas.Other reason Growth in Credit Card Industry and also other online transaction methods.

The major focus area in Indian Retail Industry is supply chain management. In outside India retail sector is highly depending on the system supply chain. However development in the supply chain in Indian Retail sector is quite slow.

Other area that needs attention for growing Indian Retail Sector is including duty and tax structure,infrastructure , rising land prices and effective trend forecasting. Trend forecasting needs to be done in the country especially in the segments of cosmetics, apparel and footwear for this will help the retail companies to curtail their expenses substantially.
 
The chains in the Indian sectors needs to be changed frequently their stocks and also provides home delivery facilities.  If all these area are implemented,then the growth of Indian Retail will increase fatly.

Why Indians are fear about the Online Shopping? 
 

In India E-commerces has been very slow track compare to other countries in olden days. Because earlier days lack of Internet accessing knowledge and also lack of Internet facilities.

Some of the reasons which are working against the E-Shopping industry.  

1. Product demo is not available.
2. Bargaining is not possible.
3. Delay in product delivery
4. In security of creditable of shopping portal
5. Not sure of product quality
6. Low retail management skills.

Why People are choosing Retail Industry?

Online shopping is most convince for customers. And also it will give better deals for their money.

It has more advantages some of them are.  

1. Saves time and efforts
2. Convenience of shopping at home
3. Wide range / variety of products are available
4. Get details / demo of the products
5. We can compare various of products

Development of Gift Voucher :

1. Customer has to register once and has to login every time he wants to purchase the Gift Voucher.
2. Provision for customer to select a template from different types of templates.
3. Provision for customer to type a recipe name.
4. Provision for customer to type his name.
5. Provision for customer to give message, what purpose customer is giving the Gift Voucher.
6. Provision for customer to select a different denominations and expected quantity.
7. Provision for customer to check his Gift Vouchers preview.
8. Provision for customer to change another template and editing any details.
9. In the next step customer can see his invoice.
10. In the next step provision for customer to pay amount through paypall or other payment gateway with secure manner.
11. As soon as customer payment is successful Barcode, Gift Voucher number has to generate ontime for every Gift Voucher and print should happen automatically and that session should expire.

In the above process till 9^th step its partial transaction this information maintains in only session, not in database. At 11^th step while printing Gift Voucher its details will be store into DataBase and expires its session, This is complete transaction.

A vexed question to many traditional retailers in Australia is whether the investment in an online presence with full e commerce capability will have some kind of return on investment. Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman, one of Australia’s top retailers has continuously said that online retailing is a waste of time and cannot provide the kind of return he is used to from his retail stores. He says that retailers making $300,000 – $400,000 a year online are just wasting his time. David Jones another major retailer attempted to enter the online retailing market in the late 90’s and had to retract from the market to prevent shareholder backlash on poor performance. I think these types of examples have been well publicized and possibly contribute to the slow uptake of online in this country. Other factors one could attribute to the slow uptake are the large distances between major cities, relatively high cost of delivery and a small population relative to the size of the country. There are a few major retail chains and brands that dominate the market and there is just no need in their eyes to pursue an online strategy.  

From a usage perspective over 14 million Australians use the web, and in November 2009 according to Nielsen research 46% of all Internet use was on Facebook. GetPrice.com.au a shopping comparison site commissioned some research on pre Christmas shopping behavior and not surprisingly a high percentage of shoppers researched online before buying. Now this is one of the crucial elements that a lot of retailers don’t think about. The value of an online presence to drive customers into stores. 

From a different perspective, small to medium sized businesses have attempted to harness online retailing. The top 5 online retailers are all pure play online retailers and are relatively successful. They however are not anywhere near the size of any of the major retailers in Australia. Security and trust online are still a large barrier for many shoppers.

Many shoppers would not feel comfortable paying $1500 to an unknown online retailer for a laptop for example, just in case they never see their money or the laptop. (see this link related to a site that is damaging the reputation of online retail in Australia: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/967179.html)

As time moves on we believe that more retailers will develop a web presence with ecommerce capabilities because their customers will demand it. There won’t be a sudden massive increase in online retailers, and at the same time as consumers get more comfortable with buying online the number of online shoppers will steadily increase.  

Mark Freidin

Founder

InternetRetailing.com.au

Since your bookmarks are categorized into different TAGS, you will get much targeted traffic from people searching within a particular TAG. They will click on your bookmark link and visit your site. Your tags will rank well in the search engines due to the authority these sites have. 

 

Source: bookmarkingdemon.com

The use of barcode technology in an industrial setting can be traced back as far as the 1960s, with some early implementations to identify railroad cars. Today, barcodes are just about everywhere and are used for identification in almost all areas of business.

When barcodes are implemented in business processes, procedures can be automated to reduce human error and increase productivity. More accurate data entry, better document tracking, reduced inventory costs, increased sales–such benefits as these are now within the reach of any size business, with barcode’s use and its capabilities are being applied with sometimes startling results by firms that range from defense contractors to libraries.

Most firms used bar-code systems to track documents on microfilm, to follow the processing of materials in factories, to record billing time, and even to replace time clocks. Many firms begin using bar codes to record their inventory and then discover other applications for the technology.

Are they limited to do so?

One of the most common methods of reading barcodes is with a hand-held pen or wand-type readers and Fix-mount readers for automatic reading. These days, The few mobile phones and iPhones having facility to scan barcodes using the camera. With their scanning applications, you can scan a product and depending on the barcodes, it can be anything from opening a mobile webpage, to retrieving information about the product, to downloading a piece of content.

This app lets you shop by scanning the products, and one-click order at the end in the counter, Need not roll your trolley or carry your baskets in the shop.This can also used in all retailing industry to track products, modify orders, receive personalized recommendations, customer reviews, receive the newsletters about the retailing products, access your Wish list and check out the products then and there. And also if you have updated with the "Wish list/Monthly List" you need not come to shop for the next time, modify the list(if required) send a query to the retailing shops.

Even more, you can look for the same products from different shops and search for the price and compare them. Verify the duplication or malfunctions of the products.

Order your favorite foods, Look for the film previews and reviews and order film tickets,And Still not yet limited… Still to go… It’s all to make you and your customers to have a more happy sophisticated life.

References: http://www.barcodefaq.com/barcode-scanning.html

• Mail-order companies: 50+ years in remotely dealing with consumers
• Advantages due to existing client base and infrastructure (logistics, CRM, etc
• Pure players with only limited access to clients
• Online marketing (not performance marketing) helped players to keep brand awareness

• "Old" players: processes and IT are not matching "online" requirements
• Brands/manufacturers learning to keep direct contact to consumer (flag-ship store approach in internet)
• Leading to higher pressure on retail sector, as brand focus in moving from retail-brand to manufacturer-brand
• Key advantages for new players: speed, user-driven, IT-enabled, new shopping experience, outsourcing infrastructure, etc.
• Performance marketing as a driving factor for "new" players

• Tesco in UK (successful)
• Wehkamp in Netherlands (successful)
• Vente privee in france (successful)
• Quelle in Germany (failed)

‘Virtual Credit Card’ is a unique payment solution which is used for online transactions only. The short lifespan and limited amount of VCC makes it one of the secure payment methods. There is no physical existence of the VCC but only available over online. This is one of the payment methods becoming popular day by day.

How do we get Virtual Credit Card?

Virtual Credit Card is always associated with your “Primary Credit Card”. The process which is used to generate VCC slightly differs from bank to bank but the basic principle remains the same. Please note I have used, for reference, HDFC’s ‘Netsafe’ & ICICI’s “Inifinity” account. Please refer to the respective bank website to get more information on this type of account.

Steps to generate VCC:

1. Refer to Internet Banking section of the bank website to register your Primary Credit Card. Refer to HDFC Bank – netsafe account; ICICI Bank – inifinity account.
2. Provide necessary information during the initial registration process of the netsafe/infinity account. Remember this information is crucial for the password retrieval as well as for online transactions.
3. After the successful registration of the netsafe/inifinity account, login to the corresponding account to generate a new Virtual Card.
4. You can set the amount based on your spending limit. This new virtual credit card number, date of expiry and CVV are used for the online transactions instead of the “Primary Credit Card”.
5. The usage of the VCC can be viewed in the netsafe/infinity account on real time basis.
6. All transactions done using VCC will reflect on the Primary Credit Card statements and there will not be any separate credit card statement for each VCC.

Why do we need Virtual Credit Card?

VCC is one of the secure payment methods to prevent the misuse of “Credit Card” during online transactions. VCC prevents the sharing of the confidential “Primary Credit Card” details like CVV, number and expiry date with the internet world. Newly generated VCC is valid only for one online transaction within the expiry date of the VCC. You can delete VCC at any point of time if you don’t want to use it and amount will be credited back to your Primary Credit Card upon the removal of the VCC. When the VCC is targeted by the phishing & identity theft website, the amount of damage is very less compared to “Primary Credit Card”. It is practically, impossible to get the information of “Primary Credit card” by using VCC only since VCC are being generated by the ‘secure system’.

If the bank offers this type of secure payment solution then it provides a detailed demo on generating and using VCC. Please refer to the respective links of the bank.

References:

http://www.hdfcbank.com/personal/payments/netsafe/netsafe.htm

https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/Login.jsp

"Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic — and potential prospects — to a small business’ Web site," a PRWeb spokesperson once told WebProNews. "However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive."

Back in the summer, PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn’t believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the "shelf life" of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

"When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement," the CEO of the company behind the case study had said.  "With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off.  With these features we’ve seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued."

In a study from Arketi Group, also back in the summer, journalists were found to use the web in the following ways:

• 95% search
• 92% reading news
• 92% emailing
• 89% finding story ideas
• 87% finding news sources
• 75% reading blogs
• 64% watching webinars
• 61% watching YouTube
• 59% social networks
  

You’ve got to wonder if that social networks number has gone up by now. My guess is that it has, and social media has since become all the more important to search, particularly with the inclusion of real-time search results in Google and Google’s social search experiment (which may eventually move beyond experiment status).

Marty Weintraub, the President of aimClear shared some great tips and insight into the use of press releases for search in a recent interview with WebProNews. Among other things, he noted that when you do a press release, you’re "hitching a ride" in the search engine results and news results. You can use outbound links in press releases, and perhaps more importantly, you’re out there where the journalists are looking.

Here are some press release distribution sites (some are paid and some are free): 

• Business Wire
• PR Newswire
• PRWeb
• 24-7 Press Release
• PR Zoom
• PR Leap
• I-Newswire
• Webwire
• ClickPress
• PR.com
• PR Log
  

Beyond the distribution sites, don’t forget to include your releases on your own site. Journalists like being able to find the most up to date information from the source itself.  Earlier this year I discussed how some companies’ own press centers are holding back some marketing opportunities for them. Your site should have a section for press releases, and that should be up to date with the latest release when it goes out. You’d be surprised at how often these go without being updated even when a press release has been spotted elsewhere. It is also a good idea to link to any company blogs, Twitter accounts, or any other place where company announcements are made. 

Source: www.101techreview.co.cc

Marketers targeting business channels, for example, are often tasked with generating leads to support a long and complex sales process. This is why about a third of B2B marketers define a conversion as a visitor completing a registration form.

The B2C sales cycle is often short and sweet, and driven by an ecommerce website transaction. This is the reason approximately half of all B2C marketers define a conversion as a visitor who purchased a product or service online.

Digging deeper we find that the larger the organization, the more likely it is to define a conversion as a visitor taking an action, such as downloading content or completing a registration form. Smaller organizations are more likely to use a direct marketing approach, defining a conversion as a visitor purchasing a product or service online.

• Gives immediate online presence
• Have a new site? Have ads in an hour
• Start getting ROI sooner
• No ramp up time
• Great for seasonal items or time sensitive promotions
• Great for testing
• Easily test effectiveness of new marketing message or site design change
• Quickly gather feedback
• Regulate traffic volume
• Sales pipeline empty? Use PPC to push traffic
• Overloaded? Pause campaigns or cut back spend
• Have limited sales season? Saturate market while demand is high

The Robots Exclusion Protocol, more commonly referred to as a /robots.txt file, provides webmasters with the ability to provide instructions on indexing the site to bots. The file, which must reside in the domain’s root directory, serves to limit the bots’ access to files within that domain’s root directory. There are often a large number of pages that make up an entire site, but many of those pages – like registration, login, 404 error, privacy policy and order confirmation pages – should not be indexed by search engines. The /robots.txt file also comes in particularly handy for webmasters with a wide network of sites with identical privacy policies, terms and conditions or e-commerce sites that have checkout pages, shopping carts, etc.

Addressing Duplicate Content with /robots.txt

The /robots.txt file can also help to eliminate duplicate content issues that arise with blogging software, such as WordPress. With WordPress – and all blogging software, for that matter – content from blog posts is published on the post URL itself, but copies of that content are also published on category pages, as well as tag and author archives. This inadvertently creates several pages of duplicate content. Since duplicate content can have a negative impact on a site’s ranking in the organic search results, the /robots.txt file can help to reduce the potential for duplicate content that can adversely affect the site’s search marketing strategy.

Understanding How to Use /robots.txt

In order to function properly, the /robots.txt file should be accessible at http://www.domain.com/robots.txt and reside in the domain’s root directory. The file itself should be created as a plain text document. Do NOT use Microsoft Word or another word processing program – the standard Notepad program that is installed with Windows or SimpleText/TextEdit with the Mac OS work best. The file name must be robots.txt and uploaded directly to the domain’s root directory. The commands within the file itself can be as simple or complex as your needs demand.

The standard, generic /robots.txt file – one that does not limit access to any of the information in your domain’s root directory – would be formatted like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

In order to block bot access to the domain’s root directory completely requires adding only one character to the standard or generic /robots.txt file and would look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

What if you want to limit bot access only to certain subdirectories or specific pages of the site? Not a problem. You would simply add each individual subdirectory or URL to the /robots.txt files as follows:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /checkout.asp
Disallow: /add_cart.asp
Disallow: /view_cart.asp
Disallow: /error.asp
Disallow: /shipquote.asp

The Robots.txt File Is Not Fool Proof

While the /robots.txt file does a good job of blocking a bot’s access to the domain’s root directory, it isn’t fool proof. Each individual page you do not want bots to index should also incorporate a properly formatted robots META tag. The standard robots META tag is configured like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow” />

To help to prevent the bots from accessing individual URLs, the robots META tag in the header of the page should look like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow” />

or

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow” />

The Bottom Line

A /robots.txt is a very useful tool and, unfortunately, an often overlooked and neglected aspect of web development. Now that you have a better understanding of what it is, what it does and how to use it, take some time to consider how your site may benefit from having a properly configured /robots.txt file. In the meantime, start checking out the /robots.txt files of the sites you visit to familiarize yourself with different configurations and uses for it.

For that you just need to open your FeedBurner dashboard, then click the title of RSS feed and select “Configure Stats” under the Analyze Tab. Now tick the options that say “Items views”, “Item click” and “Track clicks as a traffic source in Google Analytics” and save it.

Besides the click counts, you will also know the exact source from where the click may have originated. This is an important data because it will help you to know if people who subscribe your feed in Google Reader are more engaged than you “My Yahoo” subscribers or vice-versa.

Traffic from the clicks inside your RSS feed will come under “All Traffic Sources” and “Campaigns” in the reports of Google Analytics reports. Select “Ad Content” from the category drop down in the traffic source data table and it will allow you to see the incoming traffic from your RSS feed segmented by the specific feed readers or the email clients.

1. Use keyword-rich titles, about 20 words long and unique for each page of your site. These titles are the first things that Yahoo! sees and are the single most important aspect of your site regardless of which search engine you are optimizing for.  

• Website tracking
• Adobe Flash rich media tracking
• Gadget Tracking
• Exporting Analytics data 

The Analytics developer documentation is divided into the following sections:

• Overview

  This section covers important technical concepts in Google Analytics that will help you correctly modify or use the APIs for Google Analytics. Here, you’ll learn:

  • how the tracking code works
  • how Analytics accounts differ from Google Accounts
  • which cookies are set and for what purpose
  • how and when data is sampled
• Tracking Code

  The Google Analytics Tracking Code, ga.js, works with any web page or web application that can execute JavaScript. You can install the tracking code for your site with a simple copy-and-paste operation to enable hundreds of reports for your website traffic.

• Data Export API

  Use the Google Analytics Data Export API to download Analytics data in the form of Google Data API feeds. With the Data Export API, you can embed a customized dashboard in your website to display the most commonly viewed or requested page statistics for all your reports users. Or, you can integrate your Google Analytics Data with other website data that you might be tracking in a separate system.

Content Taken from Google Analytics Info

Working to stay at the top of the organic search results for their top product categories involves a very different approach, which is not as easy to succeed at without the right approach and plan. Since organic search results are a reflection of Google’s assessment of site content and link popularity, it means that internet retailers need to continually create content and establish links to their online store from other sites. This is not as easy as it sounds because retailers need the right type of content and links if they want to be first for their desired product category keywords. 

The study used over 300 keywords to determine where top internet retailers ranked on Google’s search engine for a number of product categories. It found that they only owned the top three spots in a little more than 50% of the 20 merchandising categories, placing in 35 of 60 possible spots.  

Results were slightly improved over the prior year, but still indicated that Google completely passes over internet retailers for the top positions in the organic results. For example, when searching for "refrigerator" 3 out of 5 of the top results did not even sell the product and were informational sites like wikipedia.org and energystar.org. Profit margins on organic search traffic are typically significantly higher than that of paid search and if internet retailers want to improve their overall profitability then they will need to focus on a strong search engine optimization strategy.

Popular micro blogging service website Twitter earlier this week announced that it had reached agreements with Microsoft and Google to integrate users’ tweets into search results, creating a considerably changed situationfor search engine optimization (SEO). 

The battling search giants will both Google and Microsoft Bing have access to Twitter’s vast store of public data in real time, enabling the users to track trends with a high degree of accuracy. AFP reports that, under the terms of a recently signed deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will also gain access to the real-time data.

Microsoft has signed an additional deal that will give Bing and, presumably, Yahoo access to user status updates on Facebook. This will provide SEO professionals with an additional analysis tool to help them more carefully craft site content for improved search rankings.

Rumors about the Twitter deal had circulated for weeks, fed by sources inside that company who said that a deal was close. Experts say that effective SEO will have to become more responsive and more content-based in order to fully take advantage of the new opportunity.

The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail sales index showed online sales rose a lower-than-normal 1.9 percent month-on-month in September to 3.9 billion pounds ($6.4 billion) and were up 7.6 percent on the year. "The results for September show a slowdown in the growth of online spending but we view this as a temporary blip and expect growth rates to return to the 15 percent year on year trend we have seen over the last year," said Mike Petevinos, head of consulting for retail at Capgemini UK.

Growth in online sales of clothing, footwear and accessories slowed to an annual rate of 10 percent from a recent average of 20 percent due to a step in promotions from store groups and warm weather, which encouraged shoppers to leave their homes. "Postal strikes have also acted as a deterrent for online shoppers, and will continue to be a key concern for e-retailers in the lead up to Christmas," IMRG Capgemini said.

Workers at Britain’s state-owned Royal mail postal service are planning a series of one-day strikes from October 22 in a long-running dispute over pay, jobs and modernization.

(Reporting by Mark Potter; editing by Elaine Hardcastle : Source: bnet.com)