PRIVA LAUNCHES WEBSITE FOR PRIZM

Click here to see our just launched website promoting our new advanced web analytics system, Prizm. The site showcases Prizm's main report which displays the rate of conversion of visitors from different sources, like search engines and PPC services (e.g. Overture). Conversion can include sales, subscriptions, downloads and more. The site explains how Prizm outperforms competitive solutions.

PRIVA ADDS TO TOTAL MANAGED HOSTING SERVICES

A hosting operator gets an email or phone call from any server that is experiencing distress, so engineering staff can immediately address the problem. No news there.

But Priva is now providing a service that automatically alerts its programming group to problems that arise within an individual website.

These problems might be a coding anomaly in which a situation or sequence occurs that even the most brilliant software architect would never have anticipated. Problems can also occur because of ongoing changes to the site that also produced unanticipated consequences. Or they are not coding problems at all, but changes in the overall Internet environment have invalidated some otherwise solid assumptions.

Our service not only notifies us of the problem, but identifies precisely where it has occurred, which gives us a headstart on diagnostics.

The most beneficial aspect of this service is that we will now be made aware of problems users are encountering that NO ONE would otherwise be made aware of. It's a rare online customer who will send you an email telling you s/he has encountered a problem with your site. They just click elsewhere!

We are making this service standard for all Total Managed Hosting clients. While our customers will continue to reimburse us for making actual repairs or changes in light of this notification, the amount of time required to produce precise diagnostics is substantially reduced.

This is a concrete example of the benefit of hosting at Priva, with both top-flight engineering and programming staffs supporting our hosting services.

DIECAST ZONE GETS MORE OUT OF GOOGLE!

If anyone has forgotten, Google accounts for almost two-thirds of all searches these days. So taking full advantage of any opportunity to increase exposure on this leading engine is a no-brainer.

But there are some twists and turns in the road...

For our client, the Diecast Car Collectors Zone, we set up a Trusted Feed into Google. A Trusted Feed allows us to feed our client's pages to Google rather than wait for the Googlebot to come and index the site. As part of that feed, we have been feeding the massive number of images of scale model cars that the Zone catalogues.

So far so good. This means that the thousands of car enthusiasts looking for an image of say a Pontiac '68 Firebird will be directed to our client's site.

But what was being served was just the image. The image provided none of the header menu items that would allow the searcher to wander through the rest of the site. Fortunately, this dawned on one of our team members working on the site. The necessary fixes were made so that when the photography was served to a Google searcher, it had menu information that would motivate deeper perusal of the site.

Moral of the story: As we take advantage of new features Google and other search engines are providing, it helps to realize that our sites were designed before these features and modifications may be necessary.

PREDICTION: NEXT GENERATION OF USER EXPERIENCE

Evolution in User Experience

What will drive a renewed invention in the user experience will be the sustained growth of e-commerce.

GartnerG2 has predicted total e-commerce revenue will increase from $88 billion in 2002 to $288 billion in 2006. Because this projected growth is multiples faster than growth in Internet use, this means new competition for customers. And competition is the mother of all invention.

We're already working on a new kind of checkout process that consolidates the usual succession of screens into just one compact screen. The advantage is that users can see their options clearly displayed and the consequences of their choosing a specific option. For example, choosing another set of dates for an airline reservation may lower the price, but represent a blackout date for using loyalty program miles, and involve an extra stop. Changing the dates may mean flight at the time of day you want is sold out.

Why should you continue to have to toggle among different screens to zero in on your preferred option? You won't.

Ready to checkout with a sweater and arctic parka in your shopping cart? Instead of four steps to the confirmation page, it's all on one page. The artic parka will take six weeks to deliver? Drop it from the cart while remaining on the checkout page. And see your shipping cost (it was heavy!) be immediately reduced.

What will enable this advance in convenience is a reworking of the current client-server relationship. Macromedia is interested in seeing its Flash technology play a role in this. More layers may intermediate the traditional client-server scheme. Obviously more will have to be happening on both the client and server than is now.

Oh, and rather than fill in fields of credit card info to pay? No more, you just drag a wallet icon on your desktop over an icon of a cash register. You're done!

When will these innovations start appearing? We predict within two years. It's time to recover from the dotcom hangover.