Are you Web Savvy Answers, Part 2

May 12, 2009

1. What is the fastest growing demographic of Facebook users?
2. According to website usability expert Jakob Nielsen, what is the top e-commerce site for usability?
3. How fast is the Internet growing compared to other forms of mass media? 
4. Give an example of a website that uses encryption. 
5. Name five advantages of e-mail marketing.
6. What popular web application is known as "Thoughts Which I Type to Every Reader"? 
7. Is it a good idea to go phishing on the Internet? 
8. How important is it that your company's website appears at the top of the Google results?

Answers:

1. Although Facebook is the hottest social networking site in the U.S. right now, it’s not just for those under 25. Facebook users between the ages of 35 to 54 are currently the fastest growing demographic. Between June 2008 and January 2009, this group grew 276.4%. Users aged 55+ are not far behind, with a 194.3% growth rate. What can we learn from this? While Facebook users ages 18 to 24 are still the largest demographic, making up 40.8% of the site’s population, users ages 35 and up comprise nearly 20% of all Facebook users.

2. Amazon.com is the most usable e-commerce site on the Internet, in Nielsen’s opinion. “The best sites tend to be the most famous sites because you get to be big on the Internet by having good usability,” he says. Such sites, he adds, “all emphasize getting users the information they want, as quickly as possible, and then they get out of the way.”
   Nielsen’s research also indicates that good usability transcends demographic differences such as age, geography and culture. “It doesn't matter if a Web site targets an Internet surfer who is 20 and not 50 years old, or is Asian and not American,” he says. “The site will succeed in attracting visitors if it is designed according to how humans think and behave.”
   Another key aspect of usability? Legible text. Even younger Internet users prefer larger, easy-to-read text.


3. The Internet is growing at a nearly incomprehensible rate. Radio achieved 50 million users in 38 years, and television in 13 years. The Internet took only 4 years to generate 50 million users.


4. Any secure site that transacts money, such as Paypal, should be encrypted.
   What is encryption and why does it matter? In encryption, information is transformed using an algorithm that makes it unreadable to anyone except those who possess the key, or specialized knowledge, needed to decipher it. With billions of dollars changing hands electronically, data encryption is critical in ensuring customers that any financial or personal information that they send online is secure. It also enables both customers and merchants to know that the parties they are interacting with are really who they claim to be, and prevents third parties from tampering with sensitive information.


5. There are numerous advantages to e-mail marketing, but here are some of our favorites:
   Affordability. Compared to other types of marketing, such as direct mail and newsletters, e-mail marketing is less costly.
   Targeted. An e-mail list allows you to send information to a very wide range of specific potential and existing customers.
   Timely. A broadcast e-mail can be sent in seconds, much faster than the day or more it takes a mailed advertisement to reach a customer.
   Green. E-mail marketing is paper-free and reduces waste. Who doesn’t like that?
   Popular. How many times a day do you check your e-mail? E-mail is a highly utilized channel that makes perfect marketing sense.


6. Twitter is a commonly used acronym for “Thoughts Which I Type To Every Reader”.
   Twitter, developed in 2006, is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that lets users send and read other users' updates, which are referred to as tweets. Each tweet can contain up to 140 text characters and is displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them. Tweets can be sent and received via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS), or external applications.


7. No! Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of obtaining sensitive information such as bank account and credit card numbers, passwords, and usernames by pretending to be a legitimate entity, such as your bank or a trusted retail website. Phishing can happen when you receive an official-looking e-mail from what appears to be your bank, asking you to verify personal account information. Or perhaps you Google your favorite online clothing store and click on a link, taking you to a site that appears to be the store’s site. A pop-up window then opens up, asking you to enter personal information. If you’ve ever experienced these scenarios, you may have been phished.
   Helpful information about phishing can be found at the U.S. government website http://www.onguardonline.gov/topics/phishing.aspx.


8. The results of a recent study show that the number one position in search engine result pages receives about 42% of all clickthroughs, while the number two position accounts for only about 12% of all clickthroughs. This means that being “number two” yields you approximately 72% fewer clickthroughs than the number one position. If your company comes up as the very first search engine page result for your keywords/phrases, you will nearly quadruple your traffic as compared to your rival in the number two position.
   Another study indicates that 49% of users who don’t find the result they’re looking for on the first page of search engine results will then change their search term and/or search engine. Ninety-one percent of users will abandon their original search term and/or search engine if they don’t find the result they’re searching for in the first three pages.
   Clearly, you want to be fast and easy to find, and that’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to the success of your business website. Contact us today to learn more about how we incorporate the latest SEO guidelines into every project we develop to ensure first page rankings.