Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

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<Moderator Comment>

Greetings LEDer,

Do you know anything about "Second Life"? It's a virtual reality

online gaming world. That's nothing new -- the interesting thing is

the marketplace that its developers intended. Members of Second Life

(no doubt in their deep desires to have a different life than the

one they've got) create avatars, homes, and even stuff to sell to

other Second Lifers.

Here's a description of what it's all about from the Second Life

site:

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"Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its

residents... today it's inhabited by nearly 100,000 people from

around the globe.

- From the moment you enter the World you’ll discover a vast digital

continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and

opportunity. Once you’ve explored a bit, perhaps you’ll find a

perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.

- You’ll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow

residents. Because residents retain the rights to their digital

creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other residents.

- The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in

monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world

currency, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at

several thriving online currency exchanges."

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Here's an interesting story about this phenomenon at Wired:

http://snipurl.com/mcph. From the article:

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"It's not just a game anymore," said online artisan Kimberly

Rufer-Bach. "There are businesses, nonprofits and universities"

taking advantage of the online world.

"With users now numbering over 130,000, game-maker Linden Lab

estimates that nearly $5 million dollars, or about $38 per person,

was exchanged between players in January 2006 alone. Working in

Second Life is "the same as working in London and sending money home

to pay the rent for your spouse," said company CEO Philip Rosedale."

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It seems people are making some pretty good coin in this game. This

whole thing reminds me of William Gibson's "Neuromancer."

It's all pretty bizarre to me, but hey - whatever floats the old

boat.

What do you think of evolving new "virtual markets" like this? I'd

love to hear your thoughts.

Best wishes,

adam

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From: Vicki Lambert

Subject: Cart abandonment

I also agree that trying to get the shipping costs is one of the

reasons I will abandon a cart.  But there are other reasons as well.

 The biggest one is the hassle factor that I encounter when trying

to check out.

I do 95% of all my shopping online.  The only thing I don't buy

online is make-up, groceries (I use to) and gas for my car. And if a

site makes it too much work to check out, then I am gone.  I don't

shop at Wal-Mart (among other reasons) for the same thing.  I don't

like to spend my time shopping just to spend more time waiting to

check out.

Just the other day, I went to a new site to get something and by the

time I had to set up an account, think up three different user IDs

because someone already had that one, answer the questions, give

opinions,  I said the heck with this.  The sites that have me coming

back time and time again are the ones that make check out simple.

No user ids, no passwords, nothing.  Just go to the shopping cart,

put in my card and identifying info and I am done.

I understand that it is important to gather info from the site as to

who is buying, but if I had to do that just to enter a brick and

mortar store, I wouldn't waste my time so why should I do it on line?

Vicki Lambert

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From: Rick Gortatowsky

Subject: Cart abandonment

> ... are there any comparisons between brick-and-mortar

> abandonment and Internet abandonment?

        - Beth Ann Earle, LED 2088

I've kept rather silent during all this. Do people abandon shopping

carts in retail? Most certainly. At the rate of the Internet? Not

even close. No statistics are needed to figure this one out, your

local Walmarts would be swimming with carts (vs returns! :) LOL).

Reality here is people on the web abandon shopping carts because

they can without anyone taking any notice. Now some eGuru's can tout

all the statistics they please. Reality again is in a high traffic

consumer based economy, nation does not matter... People LOVE to

shop! Shop! Shop! Shop! Does not mean they can afford to actually

purchase.

Whomever did these statistics it's all curious yes, but surprising?

Not at all. See... Marketing and sales economics 101 in college

states if you do not capture the sale at the point the consumer is

shopping odds are you simply will not capture that sale. It's no

different than someone going into brick and morter and browsing. The

difference on the net is they can put things in a shopping basket so

they do. When they store that shopping basket they are storing it

because A. They dont have the money right now or B. They are going

to look elsewhere before consumating the formal purchase.

Again, "Sales 101" if you do not capture the sale as the consumer is

shopping odds are you never will.

Sites should get smart. When the customer goes to store their

shopping basket there are numerous options / actions that can be

taken. We can call it "Layaway" just like retail. The customer need

have the credit card entered in order to do this. With that time

payments can be made or if payment is not forthcoming a penalty paid

just like the retail. Or, we can attempt to charge a storage fee for

the cart, "A $5 charge (whatever) will be applied to hold this cart,

the $5 upon completion of your order will be applied to the purchase

price... blah blah terms blah terms blah duration days... blah blah".

Sites can be promotional... If a cart has $400 of stuff in it,

perhaps a email of "Complete this and it ships free" or "10% off if

you act within 24 hours".

The keywords thus are to cherish the consumer who really is

serious... "I will pay on Friday" and get those who wont even spend

$5 or work a layaway deal to not store carts.

Still... odds are if the consumer leaves the site after initial shop

& drop they wont be paying for that stored cart. What does retail

do? They run sales, they say in flyers "Limited Availability" (even

when those limts are sizeable), a favorite, "Only a few left!"...

Capturing sales can result from percieved pressure, "If I dont get

it now then this place might not have it tomorrow".

If consumers could walk into any brick and morter retailer fill up

shopping carts and then walk out the door as "store policy" know

what? Be no room in the store for the rest of us to get in and shop!

This aspect of the Internet is no different than all internet

communication. Since it is disconnected, not face to face often

people do things they would never do when people are around their

person.

If sites partition the serious buyer from the buyer who is not by a

small fee, lay-away... Get that card on file in other words then the

serious go, "Ok... no problem". Those just having a shopping attack

never really intending or affording consumating the sale will not

store the carts.

Sincerely,

Rick Gortatowsky

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From: Tom Aman

Subject: Secure servers

> I closed out of the page without placing my

> order... can there be encryption and stuff

> on a page without the https://~ in the URL?

        - Tom Anson, LED 2090

It does not really matter whether the page where you enter your

credit card information is http or https.  Up to the point where you

actually click the button to *send* the credit card information, it

is not really necessary to use any encryption.

BUT, the URL used when the credit card information is sent must be

https to ensure the info is encrypted.  Of course the problem is,

that until you click that button, you have no way of knowing (unless

you actually check out the page source).

An example:

If you use Yahoo mail, you can login via a page using the URL

http://mail.yahoo.com.  Note that this is an http URL, not an https

URL, yet under the Sign In button it says "New Submits over SSL"

(meaning https).

When I do the Sign In, I end up at my mail page, again an http page.

 There is no indication that https was ever actually used.

However, if I look at the HTML source for the Sign In page it uses a

form and this includes:

action="https://login.yahoo.com/config/login_verify2?" So the actual

ID and Password are submitted via a secure connection.

In Tom Anson's case, my own GUESS is that the info is encrypted if

the site's claims are true and that what was actually experienced

was a poor design decision.  The page where the credit card

information was collected should have been an https (i.e. encrypted)

page so the user would have confidence in submitting credit card

information with reasonable assurance that the info would, in fact,

be encrypted.  Tom, if you have the time, it might be a neighbourly

thing to contact the site and let them know of the situation.

Tom Aman

Aman Software

http://www.cyberspyder.com

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From: Andreas Huttenrauch

Subject: Phish spam

> How many of these e-mails do people

> get? And who are they from?

        - James Miller, LED 2090

In time, I've learned to smell a phish when I see a phish, and

usually just ignore them.

A few months ago I did see one which intrigued me though. The

English was actually OK, and they made it look like a plain text

message, but it was in HTML, so the URLs didn't go where they said

they'd go.

For some reason I decided to check it out anyway, and what I saw

astounded me. I still haven't figured out how they did this, but

they managed to overwrite the URL in the browser with a fake domain.

It looked like an image was used for this, which was meant to be

placed over the URL in the address bar.

Luckily, I was running the Google toolbar, so the fake URL ended up

in the wrong place, but if it landed on the actual address bar, it

would have been really hard to catch this phish.

When in doubt, try looking at the message in a plain-text client or

webmail where you can be guaranteed that what you see is really

plain text only, and the URLs you see are true to themselves.

Andreas Huttenrauch

Globi Web Solutions

http://www.globi.ca

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From: James Miller

Subject: Phish spam

You ask why I would never bank with a company that gets lots of

phishing e-mails.

If they are the targets of crooks, then it is likely that their

security is not as good as the other banks.  So why should I take

the risk.  I’d like to see banks be made to publish how much they

lose to fraud and in which ways.

It is interesting you mention Halifax and Barclays.  These are the

two banks that I get most phishing for, other than PayPal and eBay.

One trick I have done with PayPal is to make my primary address,

james,daisy.co.uk, but set james.miller,daisy.co.uk as the address

that PayPal uses to communicate with me.  If I get anything for

james from PayPal, then it’s spam.  As I never publish the other

e-mail, no-one can associate it with my PayPal account.

James Miller

Daisy Analysis

www.daisy.co.uk

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