Week 10

This weeks task was to explain my own view on personalization in e-commerce. Personalization of web pages is dependant on the different characteristics of a certain person (the user) where there interests may vary from another. The personalization of a website depends on data such as previously bought items or items which the user has viewed.

I believe that personalization is useful and that it can be benefited from, due to the user finding items they may have never noticed or heard of due to them for example being in the same genre and the site has recommended it. Neither the user nor the website can have a downfall from recommendations as in the user’s point of view if it’s not useful it can be ignored and from the websites point of view it can only encourage users to possibly purchase more goods. The website may have to pay a few extra pound for the coding to be wrote but i believe it would be very beneficial to them due to the above stated point.

From researching online to find out a bit more about personalization I have found some people seem to believe that it’s a waste of space and money but this can be dependant on the website used and the style in which the website recommends products to users. An example of this is if there are multiple user buyers using same account or if the user is new to the website and therefore the website wont have a general over view of what the user likes or dislikes. It can take a while for it to gather information on the buyer.

Personalization is now used on a range of websites such as eBay, Amazon and other e-commerce sites. Amazon uses personalization once an account is made. Once an account is made the user is greeted by amazon along with personalised news letters and emails. In this case this is known as explicit personalization due to the information being received directly from the user.

Another type of personalization is implicit due to the site tracking your previous purchases and views without the user having to submit data. Previous purchases and views of products help Amazon to show you what they recommend for the user usually something within a similar interest.  My Amazon account recommends me to buy other dvd’s, etc which are within my interest. Due to me purchasing the “Drift Bible” off Amazon its recent recommendations are shown below and are along the same lines. A screenshot is shown below:

As you can see I believe that personalization is only positive and for those that dont like it they can ignore it. I dont see why it could be classed as a negative feature unless the user does not want people to know what they have been searching for or some people are just very worried about their privacy although I dont believe personalization affects this.

Week 9

This week we have been asked to gather together a list of 12 key phrases which best describe our website. In my case Pistonheads. A selection of websites will be used that contain keyword tools which will allow me to find the most popular phrases which are associated with Pistonheads.

The following websites were used to source these key phrases (only the useful ones are shown in screenshots):

http://www.google.co.uk/sktool/#

http://google.co.uk/insights/search/

http://www.keywordspy.co.uk

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/

Now i have established a number of websites for finding relevant information the following screenshots will be of the relevant information of the websites. The tools allow me to find good key phrases and also keywords which would be associated with Pistonheads. The first website to be used is google keyword search tool and the screenshot below displays the results for “www.pistonheads.com”.

These results did not really gain me any insight into what keywords i could use and so I therefore decided that i should take a look at other keyword tools which may produce more defined results for me and therefore help me gather my twelve keywords. The next website I used was Google Insights which allowed me to enter up to five different search items which “Google” then calculated the popularity of each and displayed it over a time period.

The first search i done was the web address itself to show how popular it was (www.Pistonheads.com). The results showed that there has been a constant increase in interest and usage of the site since 2004 with the highest figures in 2009 and projected figures increasing into 2010. There was a slight dip in the usage of the site in 2009 which may have been due to the economic recession but now the usage of the site has increased and is higher than ever (as shown below in the screenshot).

The results also displayed the usage of the website in different countries with the website being used more in Ireland and the Uk as the top two users (shown below).

The next website (Wordstream) provided the most useful information along with Google Adwords which I and users could relate to as keywords that would be associated with Pistonheads although still a lot of rubbish mixed in between the useful keywords. The results are displayed below:

From looking at the websites above, (some of which have not been shown in screenshots) i have gathered what I believe are the best twelve key words/phrases for www.Pistonheads.com:

1. Car Sales

2. Used Cars

3. Performance Car Sales

4. Rally Car Sales

5. Classic Car Sales

5. Classifieds

6. Car Parts

7. Driving – Trackdays

8. Automotive News and reviews (I believe this is due to their updates and forum).

9. Aston Martin

10. BMW

11. Porsche 911

12. TVR

Due to the website being such a specific area of sales i believe this is why throughout my searches i was being inundated with lists of car manufacturers but have decided to list the last few here due to Pistonheads being one of the biggest known second-hand dealers in these manufacturers of cars.

Although i am focusing on Pistonheads classified side of the website, the website has alot of followers due to its news and reviews in the automotive field. An example of this has been given below of the GT-R being tested at the Nurburgring.

Week 8

We where asked this week what the ease of access to our website was like. To assess this i first went to google and typed in “Pistonheads” and searched. This gave me the first result as the site in question, the same again was received in Ask Jeeves. A screenshot of google search is shown below:

Next to search for was indirect links. In this case i would search for “performance car sales”. The results would then be checked and see where my website was listed in the list of results.

In google when i searched the results given had pistonheads listed at number 2 in the search results. The site was not in the paid for search results although i believe that pistonheads do not usually pay to advertise in this paid sections due to them having an already increasing member list which spreads its name through the positive uses of the site along with the good market use for selling on cars.

I next typed this into Ask Jeeves to see how the results would be displayed and the results didnt display the site within the first 5 pages of results nor did it display it as a paid for link.

As you can see the search results show that the webpage is not one of the largest accessable sites but strives apon getting customers through word of mouth, sponsoring car shows and automotive events and good reviews.

The competitors of this website are those such as red-line motor sales, f1carsales along with more well-known companies such as autotrader. These companies seem to pay for paid searches where as they have paid for there results to come up in google ads along with recommend results within ask jeeves.

Possible improvements for accessibility for pistonheads could be as such as them paying for to have ads on google or recommended results within ask jeeves. The website would then benefit from more hits and possibly an increase in-car sales and more users overall making it easier found when online when users are searching for car results or interested in purchasing a car in the future. Cost per click could be more achievable to be used as then the company will only have to pay if the user uses the link and accesses the site.

Overall i dont think that pistonheads is the most easily accessable website but the site strives to be one of the best around in terms of performance car sales while the likes of other sites sell every day cars which are not as desirable to some people as the cars on Pistonheads.

Week 7

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is where a business or person does not have to save their programs or data on one stored computer or hard drive and access it via that. They are able to access these from any computer or laptop with and active internet connection. They can use as much as much as the service as they want and it is fully managed by the provider, therefore maintainance is low for the user as the provider will assure this. The user usually pays to use the service either by the hour or by the minute.

The video above gives a rough outline on cloud computing.

(Image showing how cloud computing can benefit companies)

Some popular cloud based applications are:

• Adobe Photoshop Express
• Apple MobileMe
• Glide OS
• Google Docs
• Microsoft Office Live Workspace
• Zoho Office

Benefits of Cloud Computing

• Agility improved (rapid and in-expensive use of resources)
• Cost reduced as no purchase costs for one time use of software, the provider takes this purchase. Less It knowledge required. The user doesnt have to worry about setting up and running of servers.
• Independence on location and device use, allows users to access their files and programs from wherever they may be with any system with an active internet connection.
• File and program sharing is made easy, anyone with the details can access the files and programs from wherever they may be. (with an active internet connection)
• Larger storage areas than on private machines available.
• Less staff required as no technical staff needed to update the software.

Drawbacks of Cloud Computing

Usage laws are a major problem for cloud computing, whereas a company may be based in the Uk but the cloud computing company in the US. This means that the UK based company has to comply to the US terms and conditions and laws due to them being the providers.

Previous Legals issues with cloud computing:

“In March 2007, Dell applied to trademark the term “cloud computing” (U.S. Trademark 77,139,082) in the United States. The “Notice of Allowance” the company received in July 2008 was cancelled in August, resulting in a formal rejection of the trademark application less than a week later.

In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License, a version of GPLv3 intended to close a perceived legal loophole associated with free software designed to be run over a network. Founder and president, Richard Stallman has also warned that cloud computing “will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time.“

(The above legal issues where taken from Wikipedia)

The reliance of cloud computing can cause problems for growing e-commerce websites due to the growing demand. Websites such as Amazon have seen greater downtime in the past few years due to this with the systems crashing with Amazon being down for around 7/8 hours at one point.

Week 6

This weeks topic is hard to associate with my e-commerce site but i will do my best to associate it to the required information. This week I am analysing Pistonhead’s strategy for the management for the upstream and downstream supply chain.

Push vs Pull Supply Models

There are no major offers or sale lines on the homepage of my website compared to other peoples sites such as amazon etc this is due to the site selling customers cars. They do not own them and therefore do not put special offers on the main page to encourage the sale of a particular customers car. On the other hand they do push different cars which have just been released or have just had an article done on them. Also famous peoples cars sometimes get articles on the main page due to them being different from normal such as a chrome plated Aston. Although these articles are not straight adverts they do intrigue the reader into reading them and becoming more interested in that particular car. This is not a verified pull model but it still does intrigue readers. Also in the classifieds users are given the option to sell a car in a premium section which again pushes the advert toward the user due to the seller having more pictures and the option of more detail in the advert.

Pull supply model is used more within the classifieds with ad views being recorded allows the website to put a few options on the classified such as “Most Viewed”, “Most Expensive”, “Whats New”, “Classic Cars” and then a few different higher bracket price ranges. The site recorded the data that has been entered or that has been viewed and this therefore allows users to quickly browse to the most viewed ads meaning more chance of your car if large amounts of views to be yet viewed again and therefore more potential for the car to sell. The pistonheads website also uses its forum to be able to find out what users want to be able to quickly view or which kind of sections have direct access links too.

Vertical integration vs disintegration vs virtual integration

Pistonheads is hard to categorize within any of these groups, they have distant relationships with suppliers as such in vertical integration, although they have a large network of supplier as in disintegration but also have total reliance with linked third parties along with rapid market penetration as in virtual integration. Therefore due to the nature of the website and the way it deals i would not categorize it under any heading.

Evidence of value networks

Value networks within Pistonheads is a hard strategy to look at, there is no set network as in where a demand for a certain product is required and therefore it is produced after market research shows this product is in demand. Although it could be said that the sale figures are recorded and used to show what kind of cars are most popular within the website and when that there is a downturn in car sales aswell as an increase therefore ads could be reduced or increased in price.

Supply chains

The supply chain as stated previously for pistonheads is suppied by personal ad’s for people selling their cars. If there are more people selling cars in one week then there will be more ads and more products available. With the current economic downturn there has been less car sales due to there being less money to be made although interent ad’s for selling cars are more popular than ever now due to them being cheap to place, aswell as quick and have a wide viewing audience.

As you can see pistonhead is a hard site to place in these sections due to the way the site operates as such.

Week 5

Pistonheads mainly sells cars, car parts and high performance racing cars and engines. Substitute products are not really a worry for the “pistonheads” site due to them selling a wide range of cars covering a wide spectrum and not being in direct line to any one manufacturer.

Customers are free to roam to different alternative companies but although other companies such as Ni Car Finder or Autotrader have a wide user database there selction of products (Mainly Cars) is usually everyday cars while Pistonheads cars are mostly high value, high performance or modified cars which the other sites are not really in the market at selling. The market on autotrader may sell more cars privately which are of low value but the likes of pistonheads may sell one car of high value which is worth the same as 4 or more of the cars sold on autotrader.

Competitive rivalry in selling cars is high when the cars that are being sold are new. Due to the high demand on the market and what the customer wants new ads have started to appear on the pistonheads website with contact details which they pay for to pustonheads for their ad. These ads have been moderated and less are appearing on the websites due to the main aim of the website to sell used cars and engines and parts. There is not many websites which actually offer the style that pistonheads allows the user to advertise parts along with non road legal cars which are mostly high performance track and terrain cars where other rivals do not match this in terms of what they advertise. The site does not really prise itself with advertisements across walls or on the television. It is a word of mouth car sales site which is more to a specialised sector and of interest to certain people.

The last two points of porters 5 forces are hard to be relevant to my website, the bargaining power of customers is done away from the website side of things with the private sale and will be dependable on the asking price and condition of the car. Customers can place a price they wish on a vehicle and the seller can accept or decline this offer as he/she sees fit. On the website side of things the customer can not reallly bargain with the website about ad prices or hpi checks as these are set prices although the market is always watched carefully and the price adjusted accordingly.

The suppliers in this case are the sellers that sell the cars, without the sellers there would be no products on the website and due to the site establishing its name and verifying that it is a posititive way to sell cars has got its own credit and therefore sellers are willing to pay to display their cars on its website in which way that customers can view them and can contact the user and arrange a meeting to view the car in question. Cars such as japense cars are currently in a high demand in the market and are therefore being imported and sold for higher prices than previous. This means that users can sell there cars at a higher price if they fall intop this category.

Overall these five forces apply in some way to my website although not in the same way they may do to sites such as amazon, tesco, currys, etc.

Week 4

Pistonheads website is very vague on buying terms and conditions due to when purchasing a car most cars are “sold as seen” unless purchased from a dealer. If you purchase a car privately then you are responsible for the maintenace and upkeep of the car from the time you purchase it.

If a car is purchased from a dealer then a years warranty is usually given which will cover different mechanisms and mechanical engine components but each of these dealers may have a different list of components they cover.

The term “Sold as seen” has been used widely when buying cars privately and there does not seem to be any change in this in the coming years. Cars are a risky purchase and therefore should be fully inspected by a qualified mechanic or professional before purchase to save the buyer a nasty bill if the headgasket goes or the gearbox gives out. This may seem unreasonable to some but has always been this way, although there have been instances where people have been taken to small claims court for selling a vehicle the buyer believes they knew was unsafe or mechanically unreliable.

In terms of returning the goods this is a very grey area where private sales this will not happen but with dealer sales there is a possiblilty of returns if the vehicle is found to be in a state of disrepair although in most cases the dealer will offer to repair the car before accepting returning it in the most strangest of cases.

Other sites that rival pistonheads such as “Autotrader” and “NiCarFinder” are all based on the same terms, so in that area they all can be seen as having as much support as “Pistonheads” in that cars are “Sold as seen” unless bought from a dealer where dealer support varies from place to place.

When registering for an account on “Pistonheads” security is not as neccessary as a site in which you would use to bank etc due to the website not using a buy online feature to sell cars. To purchase the car you have to view it by contacting the seller in person and then the deal will also be done in person. Your information on the website is also not data encrypted. Data encryption is the protection of your data through coding to make it unaccessable to any one that does not know the code.

The site does use cookies but only logging cookies which are logged on your pc to allow you to go back to what you where at in your history. Your information is not recorded on the website although on the forum to keep you logged in cookies are used to keep your data active.  A simple defination of cookies are:

A cookie is a small text file created by an Internet site which is placed on a visitors PC. It identifies an individual computer, not an individual user. The main cookies types are:

Persistent cookies (multiple sessions – most valuable for marketers to identify repeat visits to sites)

Temporary or session cookies (single session – useful for tracking within pages of a session such as on an E-commerce site)

First party cookies (served by the site you are currently using – typical for E-commerce sites)

Third-party cookies (served by another site to the one you are viewing – typical for portals where an ad network will track remotely or where the web analytics software places a cookie).

Week 3

Pistonheads as stated is an online forum with an online function for car sales. Sites which would compare to this site would be such as car finder and autotrader although pistonheads is a more performance based car sales.

Each month over 2.5 million unique visitors use PH reading hundreds of millions of pages between them.

The above chart shows the daily page views of the sites “Pistonheads”, “Autotrader” and “NiCarFinder”. As you can see autotrader is a very largely used site selling a wide range of cars that most people will use as a daily car. Pistonheads is more specialised cars and therefore the views are lower and more refined to certain users. Ni Car Finder is only really useful to only customers in Northern Ireland or for customers that may be wishing to travel from across the water to source a certain car.

How Pistonheads.com is ranked around the world:

• 147 United Kingdom
• 380 Ireland
• 4,316 Australia
• 5,478 Netherlands
• 8,619 Greece
• 8,637 Italy
• 10,056 South Africa
• 11,463 Canada
• 12,429 France
• 14,849 Germany
• 24,167 United States
• 50,833 India

Pistonheads.com users come from these countries:

• 72.0% United Kingdom
• 6.0% United States
• 3.0% Ireland
• 2.3% Germany
• 1.5% Australia

• 1.4% Italy
• 1.2% India
• 1.0% Netherlands
• 1.0% Canada
• 0.8% South Africa
• 0.8% France
• 0.6% Greece
• 8.4% OTHER

As you can see from the above details users from the UK are the most active on pistonheads therefore the higher ranking in the Uk statistics.

Buying from Pistonheads:

Url is entered into address bar: “www.pistonheads.com”

Once the URL has been entered the homepage or Pistonheads will appear. You will then need to select “classifieds” if you are looking to purchase a car which is along the top header navigation bar.

This will then present you with a selection of different makes and models of cars. For instance if i was looking for a Nissan 200sx I would scroll down the manufactures list and beside Nissan will be a list of models available. I would then select 200sx. Once i have selcted this i will be shown a range of cars from the Uk all of which are 200sx’s.

Next i would simply browse the cars and select the one which i want to view more details on and read the users details to gain points about the car. Once decided on if i want this car i would then choose to contact them.

The options for contacting the users are as follows:

1. Telephone Number
2. Email
3. If user is a dealer then they will also have a link to a trade site

These options can be seen at the bottom of the following screenshot.

The customer would then meet the seller and view the car and if in a condition the buyer finds acceptable then they may purchase the car.

The use of mobile phones to now access the site is now widely used and has become a common way to view pistonheads either the forum or the classifieds. It is also helpful if you are out and about and need check car sales etc. Aspects such as the way the site works on phones etc have to be taken into consideration but this im sure provides large amounts of viewers while at work or in studies.

Week 2

Pistonheads is an online news site dedicated to the automotive industry. The site has large amounts of related articles along with a sportscar buying and selling facility, and a largely followed internet forum. The expansion of the site has seen an introduction of a jobs section, calendars listing events along with other resources.

The site, which attracts 900,000 unique users every month, was set up eight years ago by owner Dave Edmonston as a meeting place for TVR owners. It now matches whatcar.com for audience and encompasses all areas of car topics, from Porsches to parking tickets.

The website is now owned by Haymarket Media which is a large group incorporating large amounts of websites and smaller companies.There are around 200 employees working for the group in this section.

The financial figures for Haymarket and Pistonheads:

2007: another record year for the Group

• Turnover £247m, up one per cent
• Profit £31.7m, up five per cent
• £18m invested in new products and acquisitions
• Online developments continue through launches and acquisitions
• Overseas businesses grow from both owned operations and licensing

The website does not only channel its business through the web but also sponsor car shows such as one coming up at the NEC in the forthcoming months. These shows make large amounts of revenue through different companies stalls and different automotive shows and events taking place at this show.

Below is a shot of the flyer for the 2010 Pistonheads Show:

UK Internet Usage (Statistics 2006-2008)

Week 1′s task was to research the internet usage in the UK in 2006-2008. I have used a number of sites to get relevant information and statistics such as:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=8

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/inta0807.pdf

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/inta0806.pdf

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/iahi0808.pdf

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/index.html

There has always been a wide use of the internet from 2006-2008. In 2006 14.4 million households had access to the internet. This was around a quarter of the population.

2007 seen a rise to 15.23 million households in the UK having access, this was just below an increase of 1 million households.

2008 again seen a steady rise in interent usage and access again rising by around another 1 million households to an overall 16.46 million households with internet access.

As you can see this has been a steady increase in the number of households with access to the internet with a wide range of households using it for different reasons throughout the UK with a steady increase expected in following years.

The graph below shows the increase throughout the years:

As you can see from the graph above an increase of users have started accessing the interent with  a wide range of broadband services available making it simplier to access the interent at higher speeds with less lag and less waiting times. Also downloading has become more common with the introduction of itunes etc along with shopping online and banking.

More people throughout the years have become more relient on the internet when back in 2006 43% said they did not need the internet to 2008 when only 35% said they did not need it.

2008 seen the most common gender using the interent being men at 75% compared to females using it at 66%. A wide range of ages use the interent with children younger than 16 using it right up to 65+.

As you can see from my statistics internet usage is on the increase and has been set to steadily rise within the following years.