INTERNET RECAP -- April 2005

Spring Business is Blooming

Think the Internet boom is over for good? Think again. Research estimates from Price Waterhouse Coopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau show that for the second straight quarter, Internet advertising revenues have soared to an all time quarterly high. Advertising for the first quarter of 2004 reached nearly $2.3 billion, an increase of 3.9 percent from the previous quarter's $2.2 billion, which included the high-volume holiday sales period. Comparing first quarter 2004 against first quarter 2003 shows a 39.8 percent increase in just one year.

Is your site ready for the increased volume?

Simplicity Still Selling Better

Despite a tendency by Marketing and IT Managers to use the latest Web site technologies in building e-commerce and corporate Web sites, a recent panel discussion at the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo underscored the fallacy of that position. Search still do not index Flash, multi-media, and PDF content as well as basic HTML code. What's more, they don't see the need to do so.

Traditional search engines like Yahoo and AOL will focus on expanding their capabilities to include better search support for news feeds, but currently have seen little benefit from attempts to index content presented in non-HTML formats. Although PDF support is expanding, especially within the Google-based engines, Flash support will likely come from efforts by its developer, Macromedia, who are currently working on enabling Flash files to be more "search engine friendly." 

Got PayPal?

Given the quickly growing popularity of PayPal, the online payment intermediary is positioning itself to become as universally accepted online as MasterCard and Visa. Most often thought of as a means to pay for E-Bay purchases, PayPal has made a number of recent moves that will improve its ability to interface with businesses in a way that makes it an attractive payment option for both its 45 million registered users and a growing number of enterprise managers. Its MassPay interface, expected to release in June, will work in concert with single and batch processing capabilities that will roll out by year-end 2004 to provide merchants with instant transaction transparency. On-going security improvements already make it an attractive online payment option for businesses who sell primarily to other businesses, who transact a lot of international business, or those who do not wish to obtain a traditional merchant credit card account and secure site certificate. With credit card processing and authentication handled by PayPal's servers instead of at the merchant's own Web site, merchants do not need to worry about being held liable for protecting their customer's credit card numbers. Given the 27.3 million cases of Identity Theft in just the past five years, the additional security of having their information centralized with just one site is appreciated by an increasing number of shoppers as well.

Spam Reduction Drives Site Design

If it seems like 80% of the email in your inbox is junk these days, you're not alone. The amount of junk email received by its employees provided the impetus that prompted software giant, Symantec, to add email filtering technology to its already impressive list of security products. But it's not just the quantity of junk that is alarming - it's the nature of the messages we're receiving. Adult topics seem to be getting ever more shocking and, adult material vendors have discovered the old adage of a picture being worth a thousand words. Shocking as some of those pictures can be, they're nothing to the shock suffered by over 500,000 Americans last year who found themselves victimized by identity or credit card theft, some of it as the result of following apparently legitimate offers received by email.

If you're tired of receiving junk mail, there are some emerging solutions you can try. Check the following products:

• MailWasher.net
• McAfee SpamKiller
• Norton Internet Security 2003 from Symantec
• SpamBuster by Contact Plus
• SpamNet from Cloudmark

Prevention is still the best cure though. One way to cut down on spam before it starts is to strip email addresses from your site. Using contact forms in place of email has a number of advantages. Built-in contact management systems like the one offered with SensibleWebControl let you read and reply from anywhere, keep track of your workload, follow the progress of responses or workflow generated as the result of a contact. 

Is Your WebSite Infectious?

Before uploading any file to your Web site, make sure your own computer and network are virus free. Purchase an anti-virus cleanup/monitoring program such as those offered by Symantec or McAffee and install and run it on every computer in your business, making any necessary repairs to cleanup current problems. From then on:

• Turn off the automatic preview pane in your email reader.
• Don't open file attachments unless you are expecting them and know what they are -- no matter who appears to have sent them. 
• Immediately delete spam or unsolicited mail and junk - never reply to any offer sent by email if it looks like it has been sent as part of a mass mailing.
• Never download executable files, including Word or other word processor files that can contain macros or small executable programs except from trusted sources.
• Download even non-executable files to a floppy disk then check that disk with your own anti-virus software before using the file.
• Update your anti-virus software at least once a month. 
• Update files to your site only in a relatively safe format like Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF) files.