Will smart phones replace your wallet?

     Just recently Bank of America and Visa started testing contact-less payments through mobile phones. Customers who install this on their phones can simply wave the phone above a sensor rather than swiping a credit card through the register. Similar services already exist in Japan, Turkey and the UK.

     Mark Siegel, a spokesman from AT&T, was quoted saying that mobile payment are the logical next step for consumers, which sounds right to me, but just like people are still writing checks and paying cash in a world where credit and debit card are so popular, I doubt that this technology will hurt the credit and debit care companies.

     This article is talking about reaching a tipping point with the younger consumers and claims that almost 80% of the 18-34 years old will use mobile financial services within five years. There is a rapid growth of consumers using their smart phones to manage many aspects of their lives already; the financial piece of the puzzle is the next “hot trend”. 

   
    I’m not sure if we are really “there” yet, although smart phones are on the rise we still need the merchants to be able to work with those new features and that may take a little longer to sink in and the author of this article tends to agree with me.  It is a circle that we have to find a way to beat before we can win this battle – the consumers will not download these apps until they know that enough merchants will accept this type of payment, but merchants will not implement this technology until there are enough consumers who will justify the cost of implementation which is estimated at $200 per reader.

     The growth potential for this kind of technology is great. We can extend this type of payment to create a Mobile Ticketing system for public transpiration starting with bus and trains and maybe in the future replacing electronic airline ticket, concert tickets or even hotel room keys. The technology has been around since late 2003, but it is not widespread yet as phone manufacturers are not shipping their phones with the build in technology. Only earlier this year Nokia announced they will have this feature as standard option in the 2011 phones so maybe we get closer to adopting this new technology in the near future when more phone manufacturers will follow.

Is the Internet channel alone enough?

Internet marketing is getting more and more popular, which leads one to think that a product can be marketed online without using any other channels. Flowtown’s illustration of the history of marketing claims we’ve come a full circle today from the primitive cave painting that now evolved into writing on people’s virtual walls on Facebook. Is this writing on the wall enough? Does is really work without using other channels to support it?

Google gave it a try with their first Android smart phone, Nexus One, that was launched earlier this year. Google make the decision to only use the Internet channel for this phone, but it seems like the message only got to some “phone-geeks” and not the masses:

“Google had sold only 135,000 Nexus Ones in the first 74 days after the phone's launch. By comparison, about a million Motorola Droids and Apple iPhones were sold in the same period following their respective rollouts.” (Bertolucci, PCWorld)

     If we compare the sales to other smart phones released at the same time frame is looks like it was a flop, but on the other hand Nexus One helped Google get their foot in the door and established the Android operating system that is now growing rapidly. Google used its home page, AdWords, You Tube and other online ads to promote the phone while reports claim that Verizon for example spent $100 million to market the Droid just months before.  Google likes to do things differently, they may be taking risks that the phone will not succeed, but there are also not investing much in the advertising dollars and looking at the results it brought them in the long run, it might not have been a bad decision. It may have been a slow burn but it does seem to spread far enough.

     Other examples of good use of the Internet marketing channel comes from Dell Computers and General Electric, but those are supported by other channels. Both Dell and GE are cutting costs and passing savings on to customers by using the Internet to link directly to suppliers, factories, distributors, and customers. Because customers deal directly with sellers, e-marketing often results in lower costs and improved efficiencies for channel and logistics functions such as order processing, inventory handling, delivery, and trade promotion.

     It is not only the business that are saving money by using the Internet Channel. Consumers also benefit a lot using the Internet as a buying channel as they don’t have to worry about traffic, find parking spaces, and trek through stores and aisles to find and examine products. They can do comparative shopping by browsing through mail catalogues or surfing web sites. Direct marketers never close their doors. Buying is easy and private.  Customers encounter fewer buying hassles and don’t have to face salespeople or open themselves up to persuasion and emotional pitches. Business buyers can learn about and buy products and services without waiting for and typing up time with salespeople.

    Internet marketing is a great tool and for companies like Google, Dell and GE who can experiment with some of their products marketing, using it solely can be an acceptable risk. For newer businesses that are still trying to establish their brands and consumer base, this may not be enough.

Top 5 tips for creating your new website

Today most companies want to have a website just to have some online presence and I think it is a great idea especially since I use the internet to at least research if not buy most of the items I purchase over time.   Almost anyone can be a web-master these days as the tools to create sites are widely available and not as expensive as they used to be. You don’t need to be an expert to create a site, and hosting a site doesn’t break your bank anymore. The problem is that with such a low entry barrier, everyone can easily get something out there and make mistakes.

There are many mistakes to be made, here are my top 5 of things you should do if you want to have a good and successful website for your business

1.  Don’t be like everyone else – you want to be unique, stand out from your competitors. Yes, there are concepts you should follow, colors you should avoid, formats that work better, but don’t make your site look like everyone else’s. If I can’t remember your site tomorrow, I might not come back to it.
2. Align your design – if you have a physical business with flyers, business cards, logos, or any other physical presence- follow it. Don’t make your website totally different than your existing business if you want people to make the connection.
3. Think of your customer base – if you want to sell your products to certain social groups, learn them and use that information in your benefit. If they are heavy mobile users – create a mobile version of your site. If they are heavy social network users – create links to those type of sites or even create your own pages within them.
4. Stay up-to-date – Use technology to help you keep your inventories correct so you won’t make a customer think they ordered something just to find out later it was out of stock already. Also stay up to date with website technologies, for example don’t use out of date HTML tags. Although most browsers will still render your site correctly, it may slow performance.
5. Stay organized – people have a short attention span online, they want to be able to find what they are looking for quickly or they will move on to another resource. Organize your site so everything is easily accessible and organized in a logical manner that is easy to follow. Good navigation is a key.

Did I miss anything that you think is an important tip?

Just Google It!

Google has become a part of our vocabulary; people use it as a verb interchangeably with the word search. If you want to find out about something you “Google it”. How did Google become such a big influence? Why didn’t Yahoo get there? I’m not sure I have an answer to this, but I do find this company fascinating.

Some interesting facts about Google

•  Google started as a project of two Stanford Computer Science grad students back in 1996.
• Their original project was called BackRub, but was quickly changed to Google - a play on the word googol – a mathematical term.
• By Feb 1999 they outgrew their garage office and moved to a real office with their 8 employees
• April 1 2000 started with the tradition of April fool’s day hoaxes, by announcing a tool that can read your mind and visualize the search results.
• By September of 2000, Google was offering search in 15 languages, it grows to 72 less than 2 years later
• By October of 2000, AdWords is introduced with 350 customers
• By March of 2009, even the white house becomes a major user, holding an online town hall to answer questions submitted by Google Moderator

Google has evolved to be more than just a search engine, you can do so much with all the different tools that Google offers these days, from email (Gmail) to Instant message (gtalk), through cheap international phone calls (Google Voice), sharing your photos (Picasa), sharing documents (Google Docs), finding directions (Google Maps), Blogging (Blogger), Monitoring your health (Google Health) and so much more. Google is everywhere in your web experience and now also with its own operating system (Android) who knows where it would take us. 

In the Gartner’ Magic Quadrant, Google is a strong leader, it has a complete vision with the ability to keep growing and the power to execute all of those. The competitors do not seem to be able to keep up with the pace.

Do you know how to tweet?

If someone asks me about tweeter I can say that I have a tweeter account and I use it randomly, do I really know what I'm doing there? Probably not so much. It may sound silly but the reason I even started using tweeter is because my favorite singer started using it frequently and I felt left out when I wasn't part of the conversation. Since then I have learned to follow my friends, family and some celebrities and radio stations I like. I have followers, I check it daily on my mobile phone or the home computer, but I still feel lost in there sometimes.

 

Am I a newbie? not so much anymore, but I still try to learn how to do it better. I recently found some interesting advices that I would like to share.

Size matters

Although the character limit is 140, you should think about limiting your messages to 120. Why? if you think your messages are important and some may want to re-tweet them (meaning forwarding your messages to their followers), re tweeting automatically added RT and your uses name to your message and if your user name is not very short that may add up and get your message cut off.

How much is too much?

Some tweet more than others, but what is the right amount for your messages to be effective? This blog suggests that 12-14 messages a day are just right. I'm not sure about the exact number, but I do know I tend to skim through messages of some of my friends who tend to tweet about every little thing they do all day.

Reply or Direct message?

When you reply you send a public message addressed to a person, when you direct message - it is private. Since replies do not have the history in then, it may be hard to follow a conversation. If you have something to say to someone, even if the information is not sensitive it may be a better approach to use direct messages

Quantity or quality?

It does not matter how many people you follow, it is about the quality of the people or companies you follow

Identify yourself

You don’t have to use a real photo of yourself, but do use an avatar and have your profile set with some basic information. Having nothing there says "I'm new and I don’t know what I'm doing, I'm just following the trend."

Additional good advice can be found at these articles that I read lately:

• Twitter mistakes that can destroy your twitter reputation
• Top 7 mistakes new twitter users make
• Twitter mistakes made by ad agencies for new business

Know your Domains and URLs

One of the great inventions that made the Internet so accessible to the masses is the domain names and URLs, if addresses to where we needed to go stayed at their basic form of numbers I don't believe we would be using it as broadly as we do. URLs gave meaning to the links we use and made them easier to remember. I doubt anyone knows the real IP address of amazon.com, but we all know how to get there by using the domain name.

Since URLs are used by everyone on the Internet to take them to the desired location, it is important to know how to identify real and safe domains and how to identify fake domains that may pretend to be real and maybe used for phishing information.

An interesting article I found from the Information Technology Services department at Yale University, refers to this subject and stresses the importance of knowing where you click to ensure you are taken to the real amazon site for example and not some website that pretends to be amazon and will use the information you provide for identify theft and credit card frauds.

The article brings three good points that will help identify a fake URL :

• The end of the URL is what matters the most
• Accounts.amazon.com = Valid
• Amazon.accounts.com = Fake
• Beware of Internet IP addresses in URLs - criminals may use a raw IP address such as 122.334.2.18
• Fake URL maybe disguise in a email link or a web page link - always hover about the link and look at the status bar to see where it really takes you

Avinash Rana, an independent blogger that writes mostly about Internet and technology wrote a recent blog about the very same topic. In his post he says it is pretty easy for a talented web-developer to make it seems like you are in a real website, therefore we all must pay attention to where we enter in the virtual world, especially if we plan to disclose any personal information that may be used to harm us.