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Travel websites in the UK have recovered a lot of UK searchers according to new research.Highlights of the ecommerce research include:
• Travel websites bounced back this quarter with all of the major travel brands rising up the rankings since May 2011. One in five websites in the Hot Shops List this quarter came from the travel sector.
• Having dropped out of the Top 50, cinema brands Odeon (ranked 37th) and Vue (44th) both returned to it this quarter. Cineworld also rose up the rankings in a strong three months for the movie industry.
• The fastest movers in the Hot Shops List during the last three months were: Travel Republic (up 18 places), Odeon Cinemas (+14), First Choice (+12), Travelodge (+12) and Cineworld (+9). Next was also a notable climber this quarter, moving up two places to 3rd in the Hot Shops List above Tesco and Play.com.
• Entertainment retailers Play.com, HMV and GAME all fell in the rankings , revealing a decline in demand for video games, DVDs and CDs.

Overall analysis revealed that discount fashion brand Matalan was the success story of the quarter, up 15 places in the Hot Shops List since May.

Matalan reached its highest ever position in the Hot Shops List , ranked 40th overall, up from 68th position in August 2010.

The fashion and homeware retailer revealed in its Q1 trading statement that online sales had doubled compared with Q1 2010, and UK internet visits to the Matalan website reached record levels in July 2011, accounting for 2.14% of all visits to fashion retail websites.

Next was another fashion brand to perform strongly during this period becoming the third biggest retailer in the Hot Shops List.

In the process of climbing to third spot in the August list, Next overtook Tesco, which fell to fourth place this quarter.

Other supermarket brands also dropped down the rankings between May and August, including Sainsbury’s (down 5 places) and ASDA (-2).

Travel brands surged back up the list this quarter with Thomson the best performing travel brand ranking 10th overall.

Travel Republic was the fastest moving retailer of the quarter, up 18 places to 28th in the list. Budget airlines easyJet and Ryanair also climbed the rankings as consumers booked last minute flights abroad.

First Choice returned to the Top 50 after a dip in performance last quarter.

You can download the IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List : http://hitwise.chtah.com/a/tBOSkRXB8U3jIB8c0UgAAAb42q-/download

All businesses make mistakes – but how those mistakes are handled may often decide whether the business retains or loses its customers.Businesses are not philanthropic institutions: they exist to make money in the form of profit. To make money businesses have to anticipate and satisfy customer’s demands, so that customers provide the necessary income to the business in return for the goods or services that they require.

Identifying enough potential customers who have the requirement for the goods and services on offer, is the primary problem for every business. Having identified the potential customers, the next difficulty is to convert them into customers that pay for their goods and services.

It often costs businesses more than they realise in order to gain a new customer – and considerably more than it does to retain them, so it is surprising how businesses can often take a casual attitude to their customer relations and to retaining customers for their repeat business.

Gaining and retaining customers is a privilege not a right. Customers don’t have to give their business and they are not obliged to remain customers, especially if the marketplace is filled with competing offers for products and services.

Maintaining customers depends largely on how the product or service is delivered.

As a minimum standard customers should always receive their goods and services at the price agreed and delivered in the manner and time expected. This is certainly the case in business to business transactions, where delivery to price and specification have particular importance to companies involved in manufacturing, or where their supplies inventories work on “just in time” deliveries.

From time to time, mistakes will be made – products may fail to meet their specification, deliveries are incorrect or are late, or perhaps there are mistakes in the invoicing.

When a customer complains, the customer is not always right.

But customer complaints need initially to be treated in the first place, as if the customer were right. It is easy for some employees not directly involved with the customer to treat such complaints as a nuisance, but complaints are a valuable source of information about how customers perceive the product and service  for which they are paying.

It is all too easy for  employees not directly in contact with the customer to be unaware of how their actions can alienate both potential and existing customers; for example a delivery not being made on time, a credit level exceeded that prevents delivery, incomplete orders.

When such events occur, provided that customers are informed of the problem at the earliest opportunity and kept informed about progress to its resolution, the harm to customer relations will be minimised.

The worst situation is to not inform the customer of any problem, but allow the customer to find out the hard way, which may create problems for the customer, and breaks the trust of reliability between the customer and supplier.

For managers responsible for getting and retaining business, it is important to ensure that all employees understand that however remote their jobs appear to be from a direct relationship with the customers, their actions can have a significant role in the acquisition, retention or loss of a customer’s business.

Getting customers and retaining their custom is hard work which can easily be undone and negated by others who don’t appreciate the consequences foreseen or unforeseen of their activity or lack of it.

If a customer complains, and there is shown to be a problem, the first action is to admit it to the customer and apologise. It is the job of the manager responsible for getting and retaining business to investigate the complaint, its possible causes, and to provide a swift remedy for the problem. In doing so, managers should consider the following principals:

• Don’t assume that approved business procedures are followed, always check.
• Can procedures and policy it be verified?
• How do you know?

Managers who are responsible for getting and retaining business, must take ultimate responsibility when customers are lost through failings of company staff.

Managers must check that the policies, procedures and results are maintained by their employees, and be ready to help when foreseen and unforeseen problems arise that effect the customers.

All businesses make mistakes, but how those mistakes are handled may often decide whether the business retains or loses its customers.

From: http://businessperformancemaximized.com/it_is_easier_to_lose_business_than_to_get_it

Rural areas in England and Scotland have been allocated nearly £363 million to improve their broadband connections.Cumbria gets one of the largest shares of the £530 million pot, with over £17 million to cope with its 96.2% of homes eligible for subsidies.

By contrast, London gets nothing as it assumed that private investment will cover all parts of the capital.

It is a change of strategy for the government which originally asked counties to bid for money with local authorities and residents deciding how the money should be spent.

County councils and private enterprise partnerships will be put in charge of broadband rollouts in their areas, and will be required to draw up delivery plans and find additional funding from elsewhere.

The areas receiving most funds are:

• Cumbria: £17m
• Devon and Somerset: £31.3m
• East Sussex: £10.6m
• Kent: £9.87m
• Lancashire: £10.8m
• Lincolnshire: £14.3m
• Norfolk: £15.4m
• North Yorkshire: £17.8m
• Suffolk: £11.68m

Wales and Northern Ireland have already been given their share of the £530 million broadband fund which was set aside from the TV licence fee.

The government hopes that by allocating money instead it will speed up the process and has pledged to make the UK the best place in Europe for broadband by 2015.

Up to one third of UK homes will not get fast broadband services from the big commercial players without government subsidy.

This is because the number of people living in rural areas versus the cost of creating a next-generation broadband do not represent a good return on their investment for players such as BT and Virgin Media.

So for example Northumberland has 71% of premises that will not be reached by commercial projects. It has been allocated over £7m.

Berkshire, with only 8% of homes unlikely to get next-generation services via commercial firms, gets £1.4m.

But some have questioned whether the £530 million will be enough to fill in the gaps.

There are two inevitable privacy-related consequences of the current spate of riots and civil disorder across the UK. The first is that technology such as social media and mobile networks will feel the heat of condemnation for facilitating the chaos. The second is that there will be a renewed attempt to implement new surveillance and law enforcement measures.

The blame game has already started. Inevitably, it begins with parents.

They should be keeping their children under control – or at least keeping them at home. Parents should certainly be turning their children over to the police if looted items are discovered under the bed.

This, for the moment, is the cross-party line being held by police, government and Opposition. However, as with previous city-wide disturbances elsewhere – including Paris – this fantasy is unlikely to hold viability for long, and so the blame will need to become more specific.

The MP for Ealing – one of the affected trouble spots – told the BBC that the riots are being organised on social media sites, while Twitter is a conduit for disinformation intended to confuse police operations planning. “Something”, she declared, must be done.

For example, the Home Office’s Interception Modernisation Programme – rebranded as the “Communications Capabilities Development Programme” – will almost certainly be presented as a crucial tool for crime prevention.

That project aims to technologically infiltrate social networks on a mass scale but until recently it had been abandoned in the wake of the Coalition government’s commitment to place limits on the extent of State surveillance. The Home Office will at some point argue that the scheme should be escalated and expanded.

Private briefings to journalists by police and Home Office officials claim that ringleaders are using “clandestine” and more private communications methods such as BlackBerry Messaging – methods that officials argue are largely immune from open scrutiny by police. Law enforcement by this reasoning is being outflanked by systems that are intentionally designed for private communications.

Now technology commentators are being wheeled into television studios with a remarkably similar analysis: new technologies are gifts to criminals.

The consequent media reporting is confused. One BBC report today holds encryption responsible for the cloak of criminal secrecy offered by Blackberry.

This, despite a public statement by the company that it continues to cooperate fully with authorities.

Notably, no government MP has so far pinned blame for the riots on the decimation of police budgets and resources over the past eighteen months. Of equal note, few MP’s have so far pinned blame on failed fiscal policy, a generation of institutional racial abuse by police or the collapse of support for community and family support programmes.

Needless to say, no-one has dared question the quality of media reporting and its’ possible role in the chain of events. Remarkably, little has been said of the role of computer games, though that link will emerge (the acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police gave it away when he stated “this is not just a game”).

Where does all this leave us? Clearly new technologies are an easy target for blame, just as monarchs of centuries ago would blame coffee houses as the cause of social disorder and treason.

It remains a mystery why police continue to claim that they have been taken by surprise by the nature of these events. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of actions inspired through 4-Chan would understand that the ground rules changed years ago. To hold information networks liable would be a dangerously short sighted position.

If there was ever a need for an evidence based approach to a social problem, this is it. When Parliament meets to discuss the riots it should demand evidence to back up any claim of blame, and it should institute a rigorous process to ensure that any response is justified, lawful, viable and fair.
This article was origonally at: https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/privacy-consequences-uk-riots

A leading German privacy official has accused Facebook of using face recognition software in a manner that violates German and European law.Facebook was also scolded for collecting and storing biometric data without users’ consent

Johannes Caspar, a data protection expert with the city of Hamburg, called on the US-based social networking company to delete from its site the individual biometric data it has collected.

“If the users’ data falls into the wrong hands, it would be possible to compare and identify anybody captured in a photo taken with a mobile phone,” Mr Caspar told the Hamburger Abenblatt newspaper.

The programme allows Facebook users to locate new “Friends” after discovering their identity through a biometric data scan.

The programme tries to match data captured in a picture with the trove of data it has already collected from its hundreds of millions of users.

“This is what’s most problematic. The programme feeds off a stock of data designed to physically identify millions of users,” he said.

He further scolded Facebook for collecting and storing biometric data without users’ consent, insisting the practice violates privacy laws.

Germany, which is considered a leader on Internet privacy issues, has criticised Google for its “Street View” programme, which makes street-level images freely available online.

German officials also previously urged Facebook to beef up its privacy protections, notably over its Friend Finder feature, which allowed the site to register or even import users’ entire email address books without notifying them.

Plans that would make it legal for individuals to make digital copies of their CDs and DVDs have been announced by the Government in a shake up of copyright law predicted to boost the economy by £8 billion.The plans would make it legal for people to copy CDs on to their computers- which is already legal in many other countries.

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, gave his “broad backing” to a review by Professor Ian Hargreaves of copyright law, claiming it would stimulate innovation.

“We are removing the barriers to the intellectual property system to encourage innovation. We need a legal framework that supports consumer use rather than one that sees it as regrettable,” he said.

The changes are expected to pave the way for Google and Amazon to launch “cloud” music storage systems for UK consumers – although there was still some confusion over whether this could run into conflict with European law.

A government spokesman said any conflicts would be dealt with during the consultation period, but Mr Cable said he was “confident” there would not be problems.

The shake-up will also allow anyone to apply data-mining technology to published journals, making it easier for the scientific community to access research.

However, the move was met with hostility by publishers, who see data-mining as a major source of growth.

Richard Mollett, chief executive of the Publishers Association, described the changes as an “unwarranted blunt instrument” that would damage a £1.5 billion industry.

He added that 90pc of research is made available for mining on request, despite claims by research charity the Wellcome Trust that 87 pc is unavailable.

2G phones are often better for making phone calls than the latest 3G smartphones according to the communications regulator Ofcom.People living in rural areas should exchange their smartphones if they want to actually make phone calls new research from communications regulator Ofcom suggests.

New models, such as Apple’s top-selling iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S2, offer sophisticated “third-generation” (3G) technology to allow access to high speed networks, email and the internet, but the new Ofcom study found that starting and completing calls made from rural areas was better on older 2G phones.

These devices, called feature phones rather than smartphones, allow more internal space for aerials.

Ofcom found that “in the more rural areas that the phones were tested, the feature/entry-level phones generally returned somewhat better performance than smartphones for call completion and call setup.”

The regulator suggested that “This may be due to the reduced complexity of antenna on these devices and 2G phones not having issues in switching between 2G and 3G networks.”

Quality of sound was found to be the same between devices, however.

Ofcom carried out its research to assess whether consumers were being properly informed about mobile network coverage.

It found that, while individual phone companies provided valuable network maps, just three out of every ten consumers consulted them.

The regulator wants to encourage shops to inform customers about coverage when they’re buying mobile phones, and it also wants different networks to standardise their information so that consumers can compare services across providers.

Ofcom’s comparison of 2G and 3G handsets aimed to examine whether coverage maps were accurate across different devices.

The regulator found that “performance differences are likely in practice to be modest, and not necessarily a factor that consumers should base their choice of phone on”.

Overall, Ofcom found that mobile networks were making progress at addressing areas of poor-coverage both in rural areas and in buildings.

The regulator added, however, that there were a number of areas where commercial organisations were unlikely to be able to justify making sufficient investment to seriously improve coverage.

The coalition has relaunched an e-petitions website in a flawed attempt to improve democracy.Any e-petitions signed by more than 100,000 UK citizens will go to the cross party Commons backbench business committee, which will then decide whether it is worthy of debate.

This does not mean any parliamentary bills will be tabled as a result, simply that the matter will be discussed.

Leader of the House of Commons, Sir George Young, said that the threshold for debating an e-petition could be raised if too many reached the signatures target.

He said: “We do want to monitor it to see if we’ve got the threshold either too high or too low.

“This is a new initiative and we’ve set 100,000 because we think that’s roughly the right target, but if lots and lots of petitions sail through that barrier then we may need to see if it should be higher.

“If none of them are able to reach that target then we may need to lower it.”

The petitions suffer from the same flaw as when Tony Bliar launched the original scheme- there is no ability for people to counter vote for any proposal.

On the plus side at least some MPs will consider any popular petitions, whereas the labour scheme just ignored voters’ requests.

The first e-petitions have focused on the return of the death penalty- with dozens of separate campaigns calling for it.

Other suggestions include keeping all Formula One races on terrestrial TV, leaving the EU and a lower voting age.

One demands that prisoners’ diets be restricted to bread and water, as in the “good old days”, another that bodybuilding should be encouraged to improve the nation’s health.

Since launching on Thursday, the e-petitions site has experienced problems, with about 1,000 people a minute logging on.

A government spokesman said: “We apologise for any inconvenience experienced as people try to access e-petitions – this is a result of greater-than-expected demand.”

The system replaces the previous e-petitions pages on the Downing Street website, set up when Tony Bliar was PM.

The most popular of these, with more than 1.8 million people in support, opposed road pricing.

More than 70,000 backed the one-word suggestion that Gordon Brown should “resign” and almost 50,000 signed up to the idea that TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson should become prime minister.

Online auction company eBay has reported better than expected profits thanks mainly to growth at its PayPal division.
Second quarter net income was £176 million, down from £257 million for the same period a year ago.

But the fall in earnings was largely due to eBay’s takeover of GSI Commerce, a digital marketing and ecommerce firm, earlier this year.

Ebay’s main online Marketplace business showed signs of a turnaround and its PayPal division grew well.

PayPal gained members and the value of merchandise sold through its eBay.com website rose.

Taking out one-off cost – including those of acquiring GSI – income was 19% higher than last year’s £331 million.

However after eBay increased their charges in May there was a considerable backlash from UK etailers- some of whom claim that eBay’s new charges make them unprofitable.

These higher charges are making them switch from eBay to Amazon- who has kept their UK charges flat.

The EBAY share price still trades at a discount to it’s record price set on 1st October 2007 of $39.90.

Rural broadband bills could fall after telecoms regulator Ofcom moved to cut the wholesale price that BT charges other internet providers.
The company is the only operator in many smaller telephone exchanges and ISPs have to factor ‘renting’ BT’s equipment into their price plans.

That means customers often miss out on cheaper deals available in towns and cities.

The reduction only affects broadband services of up to 8Mbps.

From mid August until March 2014, Ofcom has ruled that BT must cut its rates by 12% below inflation per year.

Rural campaigners welcomed the news.

The Countryside Alliance said it was “delighted” by the decision.

Many ISPs, other than BT, are able to offer consumers cheap broadband through a system known as local loop unbundling (LLU), where they place their own equipment in the exchange.

In less populated areas, where this may be uneconomical, they have to effectively ‘rent’ the system for delivering their service from BT

BT Wholesale’s costs are passed on, typically adding around £10 to customers’ broadband bills, according to the website BroadBandChoices.co.uk.

BT said the impact of the cost reductions on its revenues would be in the “low millions”.

The prices BT Retail charges consumers will remain the same.

Ofcom has not applied the reduced charges to ADSL2+, a next-generation copper-wire technology which offers speeds of up to 24Mbps.

It said it hopes that this will encourage BT Wholesale to invest more in this.

The government is keen to see next-generation services thrive in rural as well as urban areas as it aims to make the UK the fastest broadband nation in Europe by 2015.

Critics have argued that relying on copper technologies will not future-proof networks and have urged operators to invest in fibre optics which can provide much faster services.

Whether consumers will benefit from the price cuts is not yet clear.