Website Design is Important?

Website design likes a store layout. A good website is very important and affects whether or not the company successful, especially e-business organization. It is an environmental factor that could attract and retain customers, simulate them to take action. Surtex.com has re-branded and redesigned its website recently. (Home Textiles Today, 2010) Its trendy graphics and bold colour give visitors a fresh and positive image. The streaming industry news and up-to-date exhibitor images on the web make customers feel comfortable and convenient. Therefore, website design is one of the main reasons to help an organization or new company to reposition or to be success. A plenty of theories or factors are proved for judging whether a website is good or not.

Good layout and organization

A good or bad website layout is commended subjectively, but some characteristics or factors are mostly affecting the result of people like or not. Little text, little number of characters on a page and visual appeal as well as main large picture on a page could make the website clear and aesthetical. (Cober et al, 2004; Perez, 2008; Djamasbi et al, 2010) Moreover, an excellent website is mostly decided by how the web layout is organized. The information list or menu on the front page should be clear and well organized. (Djamasbi et al, 2010) It is not only important that visitors are willing to stay, read and purchase, but also easy for them to find what they are searching quickly. It is because people are impatient and easily bored. (Nielson, 2005) The better website layout of a company is created, the better brand or organization image is build.

Colour branding

Many researches showed that colour is an important effect on people’s visual performance. “Colours are known to possess emotional and psychological properties” (Lichtle, 2007, P91) Using colour in website design is a brilliant method in marketing. Colour difference combination could make the website aesthetical and memorable. (Cyr, Heas and Larios, 2010) For example, we are recalled the colour of red and white very quickly when we heart Cheaptickets.com. The text and background displayed with colour contrast may be good for visitors reading. (Wang et al, 2002; So and Chan, 2008) Some researches found out that comment white background is the most suitable for reading. Therefore, we could find a lot of famous websites are only used two or three colours such as Facebook in blue and white. The colour on a website likes a logo of a brand. Therefore, the tone and colour of a brand, product or company should be consistent with its website layout design.

Speed and Global concern

In internet market, speed is a big reason visitor concerned. The speed of loading front page or scrolling must be considered during creating and designing a website, so it is no good to put more hyperlinks on homepage. (So and Chan, 2008) All hyperlinks should be related and loaded as quick as possible. People might close the window if they feel they have spent quite a long time to go onto the website. In addition, search engine is needed as it is convenient for customers to search information about products or history. (Chadwick-Dias, Tedesco and Tullis, 2004) The payment procedure should be simple but security. The purchasing process should be a circle step, go, check, buy, pay and back to home page that making customers complete it smoothly and feel satisfied. For global company, foreign languages are needed for customers from different countries. For instance, Google provides many languages on its website.

As the result, an outstanding website design should include simple 2-3 colours and white background colour and good website layout, good organization of website and convenient and easy to use which have been mentioned above. Some examples are mentioned as below.

It is a pity that something people want to read but the various elements were surrounded by the text, so the main purpose designer should do on the website is clearness consideration. Many designers only want to put down more information in this narrow space of a front page. It may results an unhappy and unsatisfied experience for visitors. Reasonable use of blank in the website can give breathing space to the elements and decrease the pressure to the visitors’ eyes in order to give a happy experience to the visitors.



In Soccernet, the simple colours and white background colour are used. People may feel comfortable and read information easily. Also, an excellent design should include high-quality pictures. Pictures should be the complement of your website to promote the products or to convey some information, or just to attract eyeballs. The drawing picture on Tom Pojeta website has brought the vibrant and natural feeling. It could relax people



Guiding people on the website is also an important part of the page, because it is the most important way for users to use the site. Simple and clear guide can not only enhance the site's ease of use, but also can reduce the trouble for users to search the contents. The website of Dabs uses guides and uses sidebar on the left side so that visitors can easily and convenient use this website.



The biggest worry of people browsing is the slow web page loading so that the visitors do not want to read and shut off site. Google utilizes simply design to make the website faster and easier to load. At the same time people prefer to use it.



To conclude, a famous and successful website, MSN Website, is used as tt contains all important factors of website design. First of all, the layout of MSN home page is simple and clear in two main colours which are blue and white. These two colours respond the brand logo that makes whole page containing the images of MSN. Significantly, the colour of background is white and the word descriptions and hyperlinks are in blue colour. The contrast colours make users not only easy to read the information but also feeling comfortable. In addition, it offers other five colours for users to change the major colour of layout. Even though that may change the colour branding, the background and main letters are still in white and blue.

Secondly, the organization of MSN website design is also obvious and simple. For example, entire page is separated into three different areas where different uses has. The search engine is on the top of the page with seven categories. Also, the main information is displayed in the middle of page such as sports, cars, hearth and games which are public and popular issues. In contrast, right area is much more personal. For instance, the email services, messengers, weather forecast and so on are all in the right section. Moreover, here are deeper information on the bottom of the page where is related the extension detail about those above-mentioned issues.

Finally, the search engine (Bing) is efficient with clear selection of searching category such as web, news, images, maps, videos ,shopping and MSN UK. That can shorten the searching time when users are searching. On the other hand, here are many hyperlinks with key words such as cars, eBay, jobs, news, films and so on that can also save user's time on searching internet. Moreover, the clear design of MSN home page also can help viewers to approach what they exactly need by these three major areas. For instance, on the top is for searching information, popular and public issues is in the middle and to check personal information on the right side.

Website is an important tool for marketing nowadays. An excellent website layout could help an organization. On the other hand, a bad website layout design provides negative image to customers. It is a part of brand identity likes brand logo, therefore, marketers and designers should not depreciate.

Reference:

Chadwick-Dias, A.,Tedesco, D. and Tullis, T. (2004) ‘Demographic Differences in Perferred Web Sit Content In Proceedings of Usability Professionals’ Association Annual Conference, Minnesota, 2004

Cober, R., Brown, D. and Levy, P. (2004) ‘Form, Content and Function: An Evaluative Methodology for Corporate employment Web Sites.’ Human Resource Management, 43(2,3), 201-218

Cyr, D. Heas, M. and Larios, H. (2010) ‘ Colour Appeal in Website Design within and across Cultures: A Multi-method Evaluation’ International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68 (1.2), 1-21

Djamasbi, S., Siegel, M. and Tullis, T. (2010) ‘Generation Y, Web Design and Eye Tracking’ International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68(5), 307-323

Home Textiles Today (2010.04.01) “Surtex Rebrands, Launches Website” Home Textiles Today, 31 (1), 23-23

Lichtle, M. (2007) ‘The effect of an advertisement’s colour on emotions evoked by an ad and attitude towards the ad.’ International Journal of Advertising, 26(1), 37-62

Perez, S. (2008) ‘ Why Generation Y Is Going to Change the Web.’ ReadWriteWeb, 2008

So, J.C.Y. and Chan, A.H.S. (2008) ‘Effects of Display factors on Dynamic Text’ Engineering Letters, 16 (3), 368-371

Wang, A. H., Chen, C. H. and Chen, M.T. (2002) ‘Effect of Leading Display Design of Dynamic Information on Users’ Visual Performance and Visual Fatigue.’ Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineering, 19 (2002), 68-78

The differentiation and effectiveness of trust and trustworthiness in emarketing

Introduction

Nowadays, internet is becoming one of the main marketing platforms as a result of the development of technology. However it is a cheaper medium for organization to promote, sell and advertise their products or services, not every company is successful at e-marketing. One of the main reasons is about“trust and trustworthiness ”. Even though the concept between trust and trustworthiness is really similar and notional, it plays an important role of e-marketing.In this essay, will represent the differences and relationships between trust and trustworthiness. Moreover, here will include some examples that explain the effects and outcomes of applying trust and trustworthiness.

Literature Review

“Trust as the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party, based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.” (Mayer et at, 1995, 712) Broadly speaking, trust is one person want to be vulnerable to the action of another party (trustee), even when trustee cannot be controlled or monitored. For example, customers want to save their money (vulnerable) in a bank (trustee) because of trust. According to a study of Barber (1983), trust has two critical components which are confident expectation and willingness to be vulnerable. Individuals trust a person or an organization as they have expectation of the persistence and fulfillment of moral social order, expectation of technically competent role performance as well as expectation that partners in interaction will carry out their fiduciary obligations and responsibilities. (Lewis and Weigert, 1985) Trust is an expectation set within particular contextual parameters and constraints. In fact, trust is not easy to be built especially though Internet. (Cheng and Lee, 2006) The perceived risk might be higher as the time lapse between product order and product delivery, consumer cannot physically check the quality of product before placing an order and consumers cannot fully monitor the safety and security of sending sensitive personal and financial information. Trust is very important to an organization that it could bring customers’ loyalty and brand value.

However, “trustworthiness perception is as an antecedent to trust” (Frazier et al, 2010) which are about people’s feeling before action or willingness of trust. The notion of interpersonal trust is built on the foundation of social exchanges that inform one’s perceptions of another’s trustworthiness. It could be individual to individual, consumer to organization and business to business. For e-marketing, therefore, the positive trustworthiness perception of individuals affects the outcomes of whether strong trust of an Internet organization or a person (trustee) was built. “Trustworthiness concerns the perceptions about a trustee’s characteristics that influence the extent to which a trustee make oneself vulnerable to the trustee.” (Frazier et al, 2010)Trustworthiness perceptions are crucial cognitive evaluations that individuals make in response to justice perceptions. Basically, trustworthiness will lead to trust. (Tomlinson and Mayer, 2009) According to the model of interpersonal trust (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995), trustworthiness is composed of three main components. They are ability, benevolence and integrity. These three- characteristics of the party might dominate the individuals’ assessment of an organization’s (trustee’s) trustworthiness.

(Figure: The model of interpersonal trust) (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995; Cheng and Lee, 2006)

Ability: The perceived skills, competencies and expertise that enable the trustee to be successful within a particular domain of interest.

Benevolence: The trustor’s belief that the trustee has the trusor’s best interest in mind and cares about the trustor.

Integrity: The trustor’s perception that trustee adheres to a set of principles that the trustor finds acceptable.

Instead of these three factors, the security and privacy people perceived affect their evaluation of a party’s trustworthiness and the trust of the party. (Cheng and Lee, 2006) Most consumers avoid to buying things online because they are not sure whether the security of payment process or the privacy of their payment details are safety protected or not. To reduce anxiety, uncertainty associated with transaction among relative strangers, customers tend to trust large online company as they have great word-of-mouth, financial background and acceptable contract. Customers also believe they give them the best offer or interest.

An organization’s trustworthiness perceived by customers is significant in e-marketing. It could affect a company (like a website) successful or not. If outcomes are positives, prior beliefs about trustworthiness will be reinforced and trust will either be maintained or strengthened. It outcomes are negative, some combination of ability benevolence, integrity will be reevaluated and possibly scaled back, leading to a lowered level of trust. Some examples of successful e-companies and companies without strong trust would be showed below.

Examples for positive and negative

E-Bay is the worldwide largest e-commerce company which is a good example to explain how to successfully establish trustworthiness for consumers. First of all,how does eBay deliver perceived ability to customers? eBay was established in 1995. So far it is the international largest e-commerce site and the company's market value is nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars. A number of large sites and enterprises around the world have a cooperative relationship with eBay. Therefore, customers for the ability of the company will have a considerable credibility.

Secondly, how does eBay deliver perceived benevolence to customers? eBay has a wide range of goods. Consumers can optionally select and purchase commodities on eBay. In addition, eBay has two most important systems which are text comments system and the reputation system. The two systems not only have a communication platform to the buyer and the seller, but also makes the transaction more ease and unaffected to the buyer and the seller. Then more customers join eBay, as consumers felt the eBay of human services.

Thirdly, how does eBay deliver perceived integrity to customers? Similarly, text comments system and the reputation system to the buyer and the seller offer the possibility of reference to the transaction. text comments that provide evidence of a seller’s responsibility or credibility while comments that provide evidence of irresponsibility or poor credibility serve. (Utz Sonja, Matzat Uwe, Snijders Chris, 2009)

More over, eBay uses PayPal for online payments. Now, PayPal has supported more than 57 regions, the number of more than 100 million registered users (February 14, 2006). PayPal is currently the worldwild largest online payment provider. Finally, eBay was nominated by the reliable privacy prise in 2009 . Due to eBay had built comprehensive privacy protection policies that achieves the positive corporate image. Consequently, it is really rational that why eBay is successful in the category of e-marketing.

On the other hand, there is an example which outcomes are negative. Amazon, one of the largest online retailers. Firstly, Amazon cannot supply perceived ability to consumers in some areas. For example,in China, there are some other online retailers such as Taobao, QQ Tencent and Eachent. Although these retailers have not the history as long as Amazon, they have better trust concept for the consumers than Amazon. Thus in China ,Amazon should let consumers think it can supply the services well as mainland online retailers.

Secondly, why some consumers can not feel perceived benevolence from Amazon in China? Like other online retailers, Amazon has communication with customers termly. However, it is not enough. Amazon just applied their previous experience into China market without building perceived benevolence. Consequently, Amazon still can not develop as strong as before in the china market.

Because of these two points, Amazon cannot develop rapidly in China. So if an organization wants to make consumers feel its trustworthiness then trust it, it must do very well on these five aspects – perceived ability, perceived benevolence, perceived integrity, perceived security and perceived privacy.

Conclusion

To sum up, the concept of “trust and trustworthiness”is reasonably important for e-companies and e-marketing. However “trust and trustworthiness”is very notional image, it interprets the further relationship between consumers and organisations. For instance, the benefits of this concept are not practical existing such as brand value,brand loyalty and credibility. Nevertheless, those benefits could maintain the long term relationship between consumer and organisation. Consequently, “trust and trustworthiness”in the category of e-marketing is the most significant issue that must be concerned immediately. Because the basic element of e-marketing is credibility which is built by the conception of trust. Furthermore, if trust and trustworthiness could be applied into a cycle system that might be much more effective for marketing,especially for e-marketing. For example, the concept of trustworthiness is offered invisibly by the seller, and it would result trust when the buyer receive, believe and purchase. Then the“trust”is built by the buyers who really buy the products or services. After that, the seller should reinforce the relation with buyer through trustworthiness. Finally, that might make a unbeatable and stable relationship between buyer and seller.

Reference

Barber,B (1983) The logic and linits of trust. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Cheng, M.K.C and Lee, K.O.M. (2006) “Understanding Consumer Trust in Internet Shopping: A Multidisciplinary Approach” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2006(February), 479-492

Frazier, M.L., Johnson, P.D., Gavin, M., Gooty, J. and Snow, B.D. (2010) “Organizational Justice, Trustworthiness, and Trust: A Multifoci Examination” Group & Organization Management, 35 (1),39-76

Lewis, J.D. and Weigert, A. (1985) Trust as a social reality. Social Forces, 63 (4), 967-985

Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H. and Schoorman, F.D. (1995) An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20, 709-734

Tomlinson, E.C. and Mayer, R.C. (2009) “The role of Causal Attribution Dimensions in Trust Repair” Academy of Management Review, 34 (1), 85-104

On-line Reputation Systems: The Effects of Feedback Comments and Reactions on Building and Rebuilding Trust in On-line Auctions, Utz, Sonja; Matzat, Uwe; Snijders, Chris. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Spring2009, Vol. 13 Issue 3, p95-118

The differentiation and effectiveness of trust and trustworthiness in emarketing

Introduction

Nowadays, internet is becoming one of the main marketing platforms as a result of the development of technology. However it is a cheaper medium for organization to promote, sell and advertise their products or services, not every company is successful at e-marketing. One of the main reasons is about“trust and trustworthiness ”. Even though the concept between trust and trustworthiness is really similar and notional, it plays an important role of e-marketing.In this essay, will represent the differences and relationships between trust and trustworthiness. Moreover, here will include some examples that explain the effects and outcomes of applying trust and trustworthiness.

Literature Review

“Trust as the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party, based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party.” (Mayer et at, 1995, 712) Broadly speaking, trust is one person want to be vulnerable to the action of another party (trustee), even when trustee cannot be controlled or monitored. For example, customers want to save their money (vulnerable) in a bank (trustee) because of trust. According to a study of Barber (1983), trust has two critical components which are confident expectation and willingness to be vulnerable. Individuals trust a person or an organization as they have expectation of the persistence and fulfillment of moral social order, expectation of technically competent role performance as well as expectation that partners in interaction will carry out their fiduciary obligations and responsibilities. (Lewis and Weigert, 1985) Trust is an expectation set within particular contextual parameters and constraints. In fact, trust is not easy to be built especially though Internet. (Cheng and Lee, 2006) The perceived risk might be higher as the time lapse between product order and product delivery, consumer cannot physically check the quality of product before placing an order and consumers cannot fully monitor the safety and security of sending sensitive personal and financial information. Trust is very important to an organization that it could bring customers’ loyalty and brand value.

However, “trustworthiness perception is as an antecedent to trust” (Frazier et al, 2010) which are about people’s feeling before action or willingness of trust. The notion of interpersonal trust is built on the foundation of social exchanges that inform one’s perceptions of another’s trustworthiness. It could be individual to individual, consumer to organization and business to business. For e-marketing, therefore, the positive trustworthiness perception of individuals affects the outcomes of whether strong trust of an Internet organization or a person (trustee) was built. “Trustworthiness concerns the perceptions about a trustee’s characteristics that influence the extent to which a trustee make oneself vulnerable to the trustee.” (Frazier et al, 2010)Trustworthiness perceptions are crucial cognitive evaluations that individuals make in response to justice perceptions. Basically, trustworthiness will lead to trust. (Tomlinson and Mayer, 2009) According to the model of interpersonal trust (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995), trustworthiness is composed of three main components. They are ability, benevolence and integrity. These three- characteristics of the party might dominate the individuals’ assessment of an organization’s (trustee’s) trustworthiness.


(Figure: The model of interpersonal trust) (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995; Cheng and Lee, 2006)
Ability: The perceived skills, competencies and expertise that enable the trustee to be successful within a particular domain of interest.
Benevolence: The trustor’s belief that the trustee has the trusor’s best interest in mind and cares about the trustor.
Integrity: The trustor’s perception that trustee adheres to a set of principles that the trustor finds acceptable.
Instead of these three factors, the security and privacy people perceived affect their evaluation of a party’s trustworthiness and the trust of the party. (Cheng and Lee, 2006) Most consumers avoid to buying things online because they are not sure whether the security of payment process or the privacy of their payment details are safety protected or not. To reduce anxiety, uncertainty associated with transaction among relative strangers, customers tend to trust large online company as they have great word-of-mouth, financial background and acceptable contract. Customers also believe they give them the best offer or interest.

An organization’s trustworthiness perceived by customers is significant in e-marketing. It could affect a company (like a website) successful or not. If outcomes are positives, prior beliefs about trustworthiness will be reinforced and trust will either be maintained or strengthened. It outcomes are negative, some combination of ability benevolence, integrity will be reevaluated and possibly scaled back, leading to a lowered level of trust. Some examples of successful e-companies and companies without strong trust would be showed below.

Examples for positive and negative

E-Bay is the worldwide largest e-commerce company which is a good example to explain how to successfully establish trustworthiness for consumers. First of all,how does eBay deliver perceived ability to customers? eBay was established in 1995. So far it is the international largest e-commerce site and the company's market value is nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars. A number of large sites and enterprises around the world have a cooperative relationship with eBay. Therefore, customers for the ability of the company will have a considerable credibility.

Secondly, how does eBay deliver perceived benevolence to customers? eBay has a wide range of goods. Consumers can optionally select and purchase commodities on eBay. In addition, eBay has two most important systems which are text comments system and the reputation system. The two systems not only have a communication platform to the buyer and the seller, but also makes the transaction more ease and unaffected to the buyer and the seller. Then more customers join eBay, as consumers felt the eBay of human services.

Thirdly, how does eBay deliver perceived integrity to customers? Similarly, text comments system and the reputation system to the buyer and the seller offer the possibility of reference to the transaction. text comments that provide evidence of a seller’s responsibility or credibility while comments that provide evidence of irresponsibility or poor credibility serve. (Utz Sonja, Matzat Uwe, Snijders Chris, 2009)

More over, eBay uses PayPal for online payments. Now, PayPal has supported more than 57 regions, the number of more than 100 million registered users (February 14, 2006). PayPal is currently the worldwild largest online payment provider. Finally, eBay was nominated by the reliable privacy prise in 2009 . Due to eBay had built comprehensive privacy protection policies that achieves the positive corporate image. Consequently, it is really rational that why eBay is successful in the category of e-marketing.

On the other hand, there is an example which outcomes are negative. Amazon, one of the largest online retailers. Firstly, Amazon cannot supply perceived ability to consumers in some areas. For example,in China, there are some other online retailers such as Taobao, QQ Tencent and Eachent. Although these retailers have not the history as long as Amazon, they have better trust concept for the consumers than Amazon. Thus in China ,Amazon should let consumers think it can supply the services well as mainland online retailers.

Secondly, why some consumers can not feel perceived benevolence from Amazon in China? Like other online retailers, Amazon has communication with customers termly. However, it is not enough. Amazon just applied their previous experience into China market without building perceived benevolence. Consequently, Amazon still can not develop as strong as before in the china market.

Because of these two points, Amazon cannot develop rapidly in China. So if an organization wants to make consumers feel its trustworthiness then trust it, it must do very well on these five aspects – perceived ability, perceived benevolence, perceived integrity, perceived security and perceived privacy.

Conclusion

To sum up, the concept of “trust and trustworthiness”is reasonably important for e-companies and e-marketing. However “trust and trustworthiness”is very notional image, it interprets the further relationship between consumers and organisations. For instance, the benefits of this concept are not practical existing such as brand value,brand loyalty and credibility. Nevertheless, those benefits could maintain the long term relationship between consumer and organisation. Consequently, “trust and trustworthiness”in the category of e-marketing is the most significant issue that must be concerned immediately. Because the basic element of e-marketing is credibility which is built by the conception of trust. Furthermore, if trust and trustworthiness could be applied into a cycle system that might be much more effective for marketing,especially for e-marketing. For example, the concept of trustworthiness is offered invisibly by the seller, and it would result trust when the buyer receive, believe and purchase. Then the“trust”is built by the buyers who really buy the products or services. After that, the seller should reinforce the relation with buyer through trustworthiness. Finally, that might make a unbeatable and stable relationship between buyer and seller.

Reference

Barber,B (1983) The logic and linits of trust. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Cheng, M.K.C and Lee, K.O.M. (2006) “Understanding Consumer Trust in Internet Shopping: A Multidisciplinary Approach” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2006(February), 479-492

Frazier, M.L., Johnson, P.D., Gavin, M., Gooty, J. and Snow, B.D. (2010) “Organizational Justice, Trustworthiness, and Trust: A Multifoci Examination” Group & Organization Management, 35 (1),39-76

Lewis, J.D. and Weigert, A. (1985) Trust as a social reality. Social Forces, 63 (4), 967-985

Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H. and Schoorman, F.D. (1995) An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20, 709-734

Tomlinson, E.C. and Mayer, R.C. (2009) “The role of Causal Attribution Dimensions in Trust Repair” Academy of Management Review, 34 (1), 85-104

On-line Reputation Systems: The Effects of Feedback Comments and Reactions on Building and Rebuilding Trust in On-line Auctions, Utz, Sonja; Matzat, Uwe; Snijders, Chris. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Spring2009, Vol. 13 Issue 3, p95-118

The impact of virtual revolution


Introudction

Nowadays, internet has been growing for over twenty years and it leads human beings into the new age of life style and technology. People can have much more convenient instruments to maintain and support their daily life. For example, habitants can arrange their social life through the web, and which could solve distance and geographic problems. Nevertheless, there are many negative effects behind using internet popularly. For instance, people have less real relationships in the daily life. Especially for young generation, web is becoming the only one medium which they use to live in the real world. In this essay, the impact of virtual revolution would be evaluated and argued in two main areas which are the changes of human relationship and student thinking and learning.

The change of human relationship

Social network as a new type of information transfer and communication tools is influencing and changing the relationship between people and the world. As a communication platform between people, the network of a continuing communication of information is possible. It enhances the overall knowledge of human capabilities, the relationship among people and satisfies people‘s communication and understanding needs. Social network has become a major channel for people to obtain information. The world is getting smaller and smaller, such as Facebook to people communication provides an effective platform. The Facebook users can have more new friends through this website which can also promote relationship with their old friends. In other words, the network connects people very effectively.

Social network for mankind is a better understanding of themselves and the world in order to improve relationship between human and the world. Social network can be said to be an important way of ideological and political education. People visit these sites to participate in the activities of web site to help strengthen the moral consciousness and the status of the principal. Social network openness and convenience, the diversity and breadth of content is providing people with a vast space for learning so that it greatly broadens the means of people's quest for knowledge and also for people’s negative emotions release to provide a relatively relax environment. The establishment of online new human interpersonal approach and social relations for people provides a buffer space before they entering the real society. For young people social network is also providing a training ground which helps to promote the socialization of young people.

Although Internet brings many advantages to humans’ life, there are also some disadvantages which cannot be ignored. Firstly, when Internet improves the connection between people from different areas, the communication between them has been reduced much more. For example, in South Korea, because of its faster speed of Internet than any other areas else, most people spend more time on Internet than the others. Actually, it can make people connect friends or family much easier, but the traditional communication has become to disappear.

Communication with screen starts to replace communication face to face. Then human beings may lose much more valuable things. In the future, people may not know what the real relationship is. In South Korea, there are 210,000 people who will spend 18 hours on line each day. They have fell into Internet world instead of real world. In their eyes, they may not need real world any longer. Last year, there was a movie called Surrogates. In this movie, human beings use Internet to keep touch with others instead of the real communication skills. For a long time, people may not only lose real sensibility but also their soul.

Nowadays, more and more children touch Internet when they are very young. Then Internet will take their much time. The result of this is that communication between children and parents has been reduced much more. In fact, Internet has started to destroy people’s family. When the children grow up, parent-child relationship may be not clear. On the other hand, about the relation between strangers, there is a sample about restaurant in the video. The Facebook of the restaurant in the video has many followers. These Facebook members just have relationship with the writer of Facebook. They do not have real friendship with this restaurant. If this writer disappears, this relationship will disappear too.

Secondly, much negative knowledge has been shown when Internet supplies the information that people need. With popular of Internet, when people have some questions they may ask “friends” on line. But they may not find the right answers. Contrarily, wrong way or some dangerous things may be supplied to them. At that time, Internet will not give people useful information but negative help. So when people use Internet, they should know that Internet just a tool to help human. It is just a tool.

The change of student thinking and learning

Obviously, internet becomes a new media. People could access internet conveniently. They could download and upload anything everywhere. To compare the generation of using print media and printing press, creating and releasing information or knowledge on web are not only by professionals, but also by everyone who could access internet. The roles of ideas, knowledge and information are decentralized. According to the BBC program of “The virtual Revolution: Homo Interneticus”, Carr (2008) described this is information overload generation. New generation is growing with plenty of information in real-time society. Therefore, it is interesting to argue that how does the speedy evolution of internet affect student growing and learning?

Firstly, there is a main problem that student’s thinking is destroyed. Student, nowadays, uses internet for entertainment as well as searching information. It is effective and efficient to search by using key words. Student could use less time to find more information whatever they need on world wide web which created by Bush (1945) Also, the hyper links which linking one pieces of information to another help student to click subject to subject easily. However, these not only make them lazier, but also distract their thinking. When searching one thing, the hyper links or searching lists distract from what they are looking for and make people unable to concentrate. (Keen, 2007) Although this computer system is copied from human brain’s associate thinking concept, people find difficult to go back from linear thinking. Linear thinking is important for student learning and studying. Learning step-by-step is good for strengthen broad-based knowledge. When young people learn some concepts and theories, linear thinking strongly helps them to understand knowledge by process and deepen memories.

Secondly, internet fosters student learning attitude. According to the BBC test in its program, young generation spent 1/6 times of the elderly on one page to find data. They are not willing to stand in a site or one page for long. Most of student do not want to spend time on reading books and never read things in details. (Runciman and Nicholas) They are more likely to search information online and copy other’s ideas. Therefore, students in digital generation are lazier and study without their own thinking and opinion. It is believed that in foreseeable future, the quality and ability of our next generation will drop.

On the other hand, internet still bring new generation a lot of advantages. Internet has become an indispensible means for young people, the web surfing is the basic skill with all of them. People’s sense and imagination is mostly form screen, they often increase their creativity when they have seen from internet. For example, The Youtube website creates a lot of video and makes people to get lots innovations and comments when they view other people’s compositions. In addition, using blog is also encourage students writing, they usually practice their writing skill when they search other people’s own words, although it is not formal, they are more likely to write rather than handwriting daily.

The development of Internet is not only interesting for young people’s life but also affects them to learning and accesses some boring areas, such as political and medical technology. It offers young students have lost experience to contact the thing they are unfamiliar. At the same time, student may interflow with each other’s thinking and idea. The real-time benefit could make them get a great deal of new information as well as new knowledge which replace the old one.

Time is changing; the internet has been essential to human life. It helps people link to entire world and reach to any distant places. Consequently, internet changes the way of communication and make turn the world into a single community

Conclusion

To sum up, indeed, internet has been influencing people's life enormously. Inevitably, this revolution would be continuously and bring controversy over the advantages and disadvantages. However there are many serious and negative effects revealed through the basic of human lifestyle that would be the juncture to rebuild and improve the internet system. For example, reinforce the correct conception of using web by education. On the other hand, this trend could be an opportunity for marketers to develop marketing strength. As evidence of this, marketers can reach their target audiences by applying World of Mouth, such as Youtube to influence young generation or advocate the right concept of using network.

Reference:
BBC (2009), “The virtual Revolution: Homo Interneticus” [online] Available from [28th February 2009]

Bush, V. (1945) ‘As we may think’, Interaction, 3(2), 35 - 46
http://net.pku.edu.cn/~course/cs410/reading/bush_aswemaythink.pdf

Carr, N.G (2008) ‘Is Google Making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains’ The Atlantic magazine
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9962935-16.html

Keen, A. (2007) The cult of the amateur: how today's internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy, London: Nicholas Brealey

Nicholas, D. Director of CIBER, UCL
Runciman, D. Political scientist, Cambridge University

E-marketing, a key success factor for SMEs


The rapid development of computer technology and extensive application of basis, the world has entered the Internet age; the market determines the marketing strategy, under the influence of the Internet, and a huge market for the inevitable requirement of traditional marketing strategy needs adjustment. Why E-marketing in marketing are very important position? How does E-marketing affect the market?

1. E-marketing has changed the traditional marketing.
Traditional marketing only trusts layers of tight channels. This will require support in order to put a lot of manpower and publicity to fight for market. It is time-consuming, laborious and costly. In the Internet age, due to the broad popularity of the Internet, businesses can take advantage of this global network to extend the scope of business activities around the world. Business purchase of raw materials, production organization and coordination, and product advertising, sales will be changed.

2. E-marketing has changed the form of enterprise competition
Openness of information makes more fair market competition; industry boundaries will become even more blurred. Large enterprises will not only face competition from SMEs, they are also facing competition from other industries and enterprises.

3. E-marketing has changed people's traditional consumption habits.
According to statistics, the average age of users around the world is at 33 years old. These people's consumption behavior are often more independent. For goods and services have become increasingly demands personalized. Customers are no longer content to passively accept the production and sale of products. For product quality, specifications, style, shape and even the packaging will continue to make their own new demands. In e-commerce, the speed of each customer access to information and content is much faster and more than that in the past. So they also become to be more strong desire for change.

4. E-marketing has changed the marketing environment.
E-marketing means that customers purchase increasingly personalized. Producers’ responses are faster to market opportunities. The possibility of producers dealing directly with the customer increases. Thus broker's role would be weakened.

5. E-marketing has changed the corporation's marketing model.
E-marketing model is between consumers and corporations. Enterprises aim to understand each customer's individual requirements in order to make corresponding policies to maximize their profits.

To sum up, e-marketing for the company's marketing strategy is very important. DELL can be a good example to explain these importances. Of all the companies, the U.S. (Dell) companies can be regarded as a pioneer in direct E-marketing. It was just a small computer assembly manufacturer. In the early 90's, the traditional marketing policy setbacks, when Dell used means of Internet as a business contact which are online promotion, online market research, online direct marketing, E-marketing integration etc. E-marketing enabled that it would be not only to maintain a good relationship between the company and the majority of customers, but also have established close links with other firms. Dell rapidly developed and ultimately to become computer manufacturing boss.

To compare with traditional marketing, E-marketing plays an important role in the SMEs’ development. They do marketing through technological ways widely. For example, ACADIA Pharmaceuticals and Acorda Therapeutics use website as their platform to access target customers, medical professionals or doctors, comprehensively. Website is a cheap platform to post plenty of information about the firm and latest news. (“ ABOUT ACORDA” Those SMEs use website to do announcements of events and news rather than advertisement as their target audiences are regular computer users. (“ INVESTOR RELATIONS”) Informing online is the best communication tool to reach this niche market. Therefore, website is one main element for small or medium sized enterprise to be successful. It could access target consumers frequently, quickly as well as rightly. Moreover, SMEs do lots of promotion online through e-mail or online advertisement as they do not have much more capital. For example, National Express not only launches special offer ticket frequently on its website, but also introduces the offers to a list of customers through viral email. National Express is environmental friendly company to encourage customers using mobile SMS ticket. It is a clever method to bring consumers’ benefit of convenience.

In collecting information from consumers, E-marketing is useful too. Like the samples above, these firms all can get information from communication with consumers by E-mail. These enterprises can collect the information they want from customers who register their websites easily. And also some questionnaire can be sent by network. It will cost less time and money. But the efficiency will be much greater than traditional ways to do it. Nowadays, most corporates including all classes of enterprises will do marketing research online. With this way, information can be collected in a shorter time than before. And the range of research will be much wider than before too. For example, the website of “ opinion outpost”, enterprises can put their questionnaire on it and consumers who visit it can complete it. It is easy to collect the information which enterprises want.

Research and relevant information can be quickly passed to Internet users around the world.

Compared with the traditional marketing research, E-marketing can effectively reduce the cost of research to increase the convenience of research.

The questionnaire can be reduced the unreasonable result of the findings of bias and other issues.

Users fill in information is its voluntary. On the one hand the research can ensure objectivity and authenticity and effectively avoid the traditional marketing research in the human factor interference.

E-marketing can be carried out marketing research after day, without waiting and monitoring man-made.

E-marketing can effectively capture the quality of information on the implementation of the system of inspection and control.

On the other hand, market research can find the target market for the E-marketing and help enterprises to find that the market opportunity to provide the basis. Marketing research is the basis for marketing product replacement and decision of marketing strategy use. Market research can make a highly efficient e-marketing strategy and decrease the cost.

The evaluation of new technology development

Nowadays, mobile is becoming a small computer which can bring with wherever people are. People are freed from the need to access via the desktop. For examples, business man could use online banking to check their bank account everywhere. Young people could chat with friends through facebook or msn rather than ringing. Consumer could search any sale promotion voucher or information online when they were shopping. Therefore, the benefit of not fixed location is greatly contributed to all people at different life levels. In additional, using mobile and online advertising in combination can significantly increase brand awareness and purchase consideration. The research of IABUK showed that people receive mobile advertising prompting consumers to seek information online. It means mobile online is not only convenient for consumers shopping, but also giving a platform for marketer informing, persuading and reminding consumer purchase.

Check here to know more about the research of IABUK: http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/mobileandonlinegoodtogether100210.mxs

Second, in the past time, mobile phone only can use 2G service, user cannot use internet through their mobile. When GPS and 3G service developing, it makes human life more convenience. People can use mobile phone to do computer’s thing directly; via 3G service, consumer can get more information to help their daily life by their mobile phone. For example, when people get lost, they can use mobile’s GPS to find out their location immediately; when they are hungry they also can use it to find the nearest restaurant they like. Compare with wireless, even though the connection speed is faster than 3G service but wireless’ range is limited.

Further, searching internet through mobile is much more private than desktop. For example, the message or e-mail is only can be downloaded or read personally by the mobile owner. In addition, it is much more difficult to steal the information through the mobiles.

On the other hand, there is a disadvantage of using mobile online. The trend of mobiles development is to combine all the communication tools in our daily life, event mobile phones could become the form of wallet. Nevertheless, there are also numerous risks might be occurred, especially in the risk of thefts. For example, if someone found the missing mobile, they could buy anything they want completely. More importantly, the finder could steal the personal and private information from the owner directly. Thus, the system of security should be built completely before using mobiles as the form of wallet.

To sum up, indeed, mobile will play an important role in the future. Nevertheless, before this expectancy comes true, the system of security should be done completely. Otherwise, there would be same problems as the internet crimes.

Group profile

Hello, everybody!

This is a Blog called Fever Bus which has five members, Kit Yan Irene Mak, Lei Yu, Yin Cheng, Yu-Te Lee and Ta-Yung Chang. We are the student who studying in MSc Advertising and Marketing and MSc Strategic Marketing Management . We all have writing Blog habit such as Xanga. Why do we create this blog? We think that studying E-marketing likes a journey. All of us have same mission and goals on Fever Bus. During the traveling, we will not only learn and discover a lot of new knowledge and interesting things about E-marketing, but also face and overcome a lot of difficulty. Therefore, we would like to use this Blog to record our experience, knowledge, and point of view in progress. It is exciting and funny to explore, overcome obstacle and complete all our tasks finally during our trip.

Fever Bus is very important. In the coming 10 weeks, we would like to share our knowledge and opinion about E-marketing on Fever bus frequently. For examples, we will post some latest related journals or news. All entries will be concerning E-commerce, online marketing activities, E-marketing resources, segmentation and target market analysis, integration of promotional mix, customers’ profiles and data management, online customer communications and promotion of a virtual store. Both entries and comments are significant. New entries give all members new knowledge and view. Comments are good feedback and support for poster.

In additional, our Blog is linked with all other groups in class. It is advantageous for us to operate and market our Blog better and better continuously. The interactive learning could broaden our eyes, wider our field of vision, stimulate our thinking as well as give us more new skills and ideas about E-marketing. In order to make Fever Bus more interesting and attract more audiences including class mates and other people to read, we will post a lot of pictures, videos as well as interesting links and website. We will also update our Fever Bus layout design in innovationand creativity regularly. Sending our Blog links to friends and using our Fever Bus account to give comments in other Blogs are effective way to access new reader. We are looking forward to hear your voice, any good or bad comments and ideas?

Are you ready? Starting off to be a professional e-marketing manager!!