NZS.com Newsletter : April 2008
As the nights get darker earlier, we often end up wrapping ourselves in blankets in front of the television or on the net at night - which is great for businesses online. The online clothing industry is continually growing in New Zealand, especially for female users, so why not make buying garments online as easy as possible for your customers?
Guys, don't worry you don't have to read any more about women's clothing, skip down to our article on Internet Explorer or check out the menswear category on NZS.com.
Contents:
- Top Ten Sites
- The new Internet Explorer
- Online social networking
- Linking success
- Earth Hour - a recap
Searches for the perfect formal or ball gown are huge year-round online, and with the summer season coming to an end it is the perfect time to invest in a new dress to roll you through the weddings, balls and other special events that are coming up in winter.
Top 10 Ball and Wedding Category Sites
| Rank | Site Name | URL |
| 1. | Ellen-H | www.ellenapparel.co.nz |
| 2. | Bella's | www.bellasonline.co.nz |
| 3. | Milford Gowns | www.milfordgowns.co.nz |
| 4. | Women's Dress Hire | www.womensdresshire.co.nz |
| 5. | Park Avenue Fashions | www.parkavenue.co.nz |
| 6. | Golden Gown | www.goldengown.co.nz |
| 7. | 4Ever After Bridal | www.4everafterbridal.co.nz |
| 8. | Jessica Bridal | www.jessicabridal.co.nz |
| 9. | Robyn Cliffe Couturiere | www.robyncliffe.co.nz |
| 10. | Astra Bridal Importers | www.astrabridal.co.nz |
Tips for online clothing businesses: If you are an online clothing retailer or wholesaler in New Zealand you are probably always looking for ways for consumers to buy from your site, rather than search the online auction websites. The rag trade is a competitive game, so here are a few tips on effective e-commerce for fashion brands.
- Invest in quality web design that is both easy on the eye and fast to load.
- Make sure that the online design reflects the offline brand.
- Provide close-up images to accent the detailing in your products.
- If your customers can pay online, make sure that the purchasing process is as smooth and error-free as your customer service offered offline.
- Offer encrypted, secure payment options for credit cards - this will ensure your customers see you as a reputable online business.
- Use rich media components such as Java and Flash sparingly, to make your website user-friendly to all customers.
- Provide an informative, true-to-product size chart for all types of garments, measured to real people.
- Keep in touch with your customers via e-mail newsletter and tailored promotions (remember you need to get their permission to do this). Continually remind them to revisit your website.
From our own statistics, we can see around 75% of visitors to NZS.com are viewing the site through Internet Explorer. Of these, around 57% are using IE 7 and 41% have stuck with the earlier IE 6. (In October 2007, we noted the slow uptake of IE 7 which was released in October 2006). Microsoft's Internet Explorer still has the largest market share in Internet browsers worldwide, competing with others including Apple's Safari and Mozilla Firefox, Google's preferred browser.
So, what's new with the new IE?
Microsoft advances further with beta IE 8. Tech-eyes are scouring Internet Explorer's newest iteration and comparing it with Mozilla's soon-to-be-released Firefox 3. While it's mainly suited to Web developers, this early version of IE 8 does have a couple of new user features:
- Activities - allows users to highlight text and right click to open an Activities window in the same tab, rather than opening a whole new Web page. This means you can quickly and easily view a map for an address or translate text to a different language without leaving the page.
- WebSlices - when enabled in a site, a WebSlice is detected by IE 8 and a button appears on the browser tool bar. Clicking on this button will subscribe you to the WebSlice, adding it to your favourites and enabling you to view content from the tool bar without launching the website.
There is also an enhanced security feature to switch your browser back to an IE 7 rendering of the site you're viewing (great for developers). And developers will be happy too with IE 8's default standards-compliant mode.
Where can I get IE 8?
In its early form, Internet Explorer 8.0 is rated developers-only and not recommended for regular users. If you're keen, you can download IE 8 and get exploring on the Web with the latest version.
One of the biggest internet news stories of 2007 was the spectacular uptake in personal social networking pages on sites such and Bebo and Facebook. Bebo is at the top in New Zealand with 41.77 percent of the social networking market, and Facebook is a close second with 35.11 percent.
A recent report by Nielsen Online has found that 1.3 million adult New Zealanders, or 62 percent of NZ's adult population, have browsed other people's social networking pages over the last twelve months.
Online social networking is perhaps so popular in New Zealand because so many Kiwis have lived overseas for a period of time during an OE. Online social networks mean an easy way to get in touch with old friends and colleagues in foreign countries.
For those with multiple profiles on community user sites - Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, Windows Live Spaces, YouTube - it seems inevitable that a tool will emerge which allows you to update and manage all of your online identities from one place.
Microsoft have just launched a beta concept for public trial on Windows Vista which aims to bridge five different social networking platforms. This may very well be the first attempt at capturing the market of the consolidation of social networks, but certainly will not be the only endeavour.
Does this mean end of photo e-mailing and instant messaging to individual friends is near, in favour of releasing your holiday snaps to the whole world, and writing on friends' walls for all to see from one place?
Come 2009, we may very well be able to send our videos, read personal news feeds and invite others to events from one single source, no matter which online social community your friends subscribe to. No longer will anyone need to check four different pages to see who has left a message, or posted a photo you want to see.
Have you been struggling to promote your website? The toss up between investing in online advertising versus real world advertising to promote your URL can be tough.
We often run into URLs in the offline world: on billstickers, business cards, on the side of cars. For someone to actually remember and write down a URL in order to type it into their web browser, they will probably have a strong interest in the product or service already.
One crucial thing that advertisers often forget about is the power of links. A major part of web traffic is users clicking links, whether they have a genuine interest in them or not. It costs a user nothing, and is effortless to connect them with a destination instantly.
As users of the New Zealand web space, your first experience with linking your current website may very well have been on NZS.com, as we provide a link to your website - and in exchange you can provide a reciprocal link back to us. To thank you for doing this, we make your link stand out in bold amongst other links, which are in a standard, less visible font.
It is one thing to move your cursor a few centimetres to click on a button, it is quite something else to see a URL in the outside world and remember it for the next time an internet browser is handy. Getting your website link available in various places the online world is a sure-fire way to increase awareness of your business or organisation.
International Earth Hour, which took place on the last Saturday in March, is being hailed by worldwide media as a huge success. Christchurch, New Zealand's official ambassador city for the international event, reported a 12.8 percent decrease in electricity consumption.
The question still remains, is one hour a year enough to raise awareness to encourage a more conscientious global community? Here are three tips to save energy at your computer:
- Downgrade your screensaver
Do you really need a flashy, hypnotic screensaver on your computer monitor when you are not at your desk? Bright, emotive screensavers are unneeded energy users. The Earth Hour website has an official low-energy screensaver available for free download, and there are many others available by searching online. - Upgrade your monitor
If you haven't already, make sure you upgrade the computer monitors in your office to LCD (flat screen) rather than the traditional CRT. LCD monitors use an average of 50 to 70 percent less energy than CRT monitors. - Use the energy saving features
Rather than just having a screensaver when you are not using your computer, why not change your power settings in Windows (Display Properties>Screensaver>Power). You can have the convenience of leaving programs running and files open, like with a screensaver, but your computer's hard drive will run in low energy mode.
We're interested in your opinion, if you have anything you'd like to hear about in the newsletter, let us know.
Images from Flickr: My Social Network, Best Mouse Cursor Ever, Earth Hour.
