Microsoft's Latest Ad Buy

Microsoft today announced that it is purchasing Rapt, an advertising technology company specializing in sophisticated analytical tools. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Today's is the latest in a frenzied string of acquisitions by Microsoft and other Internet heavyweights looking to expand the reach and technology underlying their online advertising businesses. Most recently, Microsoft purchased YaData, an Israeli company specializing in behavioral targeting technology.

The Rapt buy is about helping well-funded Web publishers manage their advertising efforts with premium analytics and campaign planning features. Microsoft will fold Rapt's technology into its Atlas Publisher Suite (APS). Atlas is one of the brands Microsoft acquired through its purchase of aQuantive.

Consistently, Web publishers say that they want to focus on driving ad sales by improving their content and their users' experience, but that is only a small part of the equation, said Scott Howe, general manager of Microsoft's APS.

"Selling online advertising if you're a publisher is hard, and it's getting more complex as time goes on," Howe said.

Where many publishers need help is in the technical aspects of managing ad sales, such as pricing, forecasting and selling remnant inventory.

Rapt's Yield Advisor product, which Microsoft will begin promoting to publishers as soon as the deal closes, offers predictive tools for sites to plan ad sales around future-looking inventory estimates.

Pricing analytics are designed to help sales teams determine the optimal rates to charge advertisers, aimed at minimizing the amount of unsold inventory.

Microsoft expects the purchase to round out its suite of offerings for publishers.

"As a result of this acquisition, we feel like we have no gaps," Howe told InternetNews.com. "We can partner with the publisher very narrowly or very broadly."

The announcement comes just a day after Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced its first ad product following the close of the DoubleClick acquisition -- also a service for publishers to manage their ad inventories and sell remnant space on their sites.

In their latest ad moves, Microsoft and Google are both courting publishers. The principal difference is that Google's Ad Manager, a free, hosted service, is intended for small companies with marginal sales staffs, while Microsoft's acquisition of Rapt is geared for high-end publishers with large content networks and sales staffs. Among Rapt's clients are The New York Times Company, Fox Interactive Media, Yahoo and Microsoft itself.

source:- internetnews.com/

Five Tips For Improving Ecommerce Website Usability

ECOMMERCE AND USABILITY: What did you spend in man (or woman) hours and advertising dollars last month to drive traffic to your ecommerce storefront? And what will you spend this upcoming holiday season? If you're like most Internet retailers, it might just seem like the total expenditure of a small nation. Is it more than you need? What are the other options to improve long-term customer value? Let's look at some practical tactics for improving the usability of your ecommerce site to increase long-term customer interaction with your products and your brand.

- Identify Users By Email Address; Not Username:-
It might seem like a good idea on the surface to enable people to customize their user experience with personalized usernames, but most consumers change their personal profiles frequently. How do you ensure your "forgot username" function doesn't get overloaded? Try using an e-mail address to identify users rather than a username. E-mail addresses (while changed frequently) are easier to remember, often require no special characters and are most always unique, so users avoid the problem of someone else already taking their preferred username.

- Shorten the (Perceived) Distance To Checkout Completion:-
Can't see the forest because of the trees? Probably so. Often times, ecommerce merchants think they "get" the optimal user checkout experience, but breaking the process up into shorter segments allows users to focus on one step at a time. There's less to think about at each step and less information to enter (or screw up). Consider splitting the ordering process into just five sections (supposing they are logged in); delivery address confirmation, delivery option selection, entering payment details, order review/submission and confirmation.

- Address (and Publicize) Common User Issues:-
All the time you've spent building out a comprehensive FAQ section should not go to waste. It's important that throughout the ordering process, common user questions and queries are addressed. Users might want to know how long delivery is expected to take, or if they have to enter extra information such as their date of birth, they might want to know why. Go through the ordering process and ask yourself at each stage: What queries might a user have? Answers to these queries should either be provided on-screen, or through a hyperlink. Take this a step further by cutting off issues at the pass. If you give your users a "dashboard" to see account activity, this is the perfect place to highlight these issues.

- Establish Trust With Users:-
Many consumers are still not 100% comfortable buying online - no surprise, right? They might be concerned about giving out their credit card number, or about not receiving the items they've paid for. It's therefore important that you acknowledge and allay these concerns to put users' minds at ease. Try and think about the concerns users might have at each step of the ordering process, and try to address them. For example, who is this person or company I am buying from? Including information on your company and the people behind the company is essential to your success. Links to this information should always be included in the navigational architecture of your users' experience, but consider calling out this information within a sidebar during the actual checkout process. If you're worried about abandonment or leakage in general - open up the link in a new browser window.

- Success From Confirmation Emails:-
Once a user has placed their order, a confirmation e-mail should be sent immediately - no waiting until you can process the order. Confirmation e-mails should be brief and tell users important information such as the order number or tracking code. Including contact information for a real customer service associate from the company might be a little too much for the business process of smaller enterprises, but if you can manage, there is no substitute for conveying yours is a quality product from a quality company.

source:- websitemagazine.com/