SEO/SEM Journal: Simmons Announces Creation of New Online Research Services Group

Simmons Online Links Custom Online Research with its National Consumer Study

"Simmons Online will leverage Simmons patented behavioral integration technology and other Experian data assets and tools to combine the speed and agility of online data collection with Simmons high standards and scientific approach to market research," the company says.

"Focusing on its core offerings, Simmons Online will link custom online research with its National Consumer Study (NCS) allowing clients to access proprietary data along with more than 50,000 additional data variables within the NCS. Additionally, Simmons Online is producing a series of syndicated extensions to the NCS with an automotive product introduction this August. Moving forward, linkages to Simmons Hispanic, Youth and Local Market products will be available," the company added.

“Simmons Online initiates a new era for “need-it-yesterday” quality research within Simmons” said Chris Wilson, president and COO of Simmons Research. “Simmons’ experience at conducting high quality tracking panels and custom research is now joined with state-of-the-art online study capabilities that extend our evolution from more then 56 years of research innovation.”

Simmons Online accesses Experian’s pool of over 24 million permission-based on-line responders to create highly targeted online samples with high yields. “With over 4,000 fields of respondent provided information coupled with propensities against Simmons’ 50,000 plus variables, Simmons Online offers online researchers the most intriguing targeting options available in online research,” continued Wilson. “Offering complex sample designs, statistically representative data and “projection models” and the ability to instantly screen panel respondents via Experian’s real time verification system, Simmons Online is setting the standard for high quality online research.”

What's the Difference Between Websites and Weblogs

More and more, people don't have traditional websites: static things where pages can be added, updated or taken away. Instead, they write new material for their website when they feel like it, and then put it up on one page, with the most recent writing first. These people are running weblogs.

How Did Weblogs Start?

Many people say that there have been weblogs (or blogs, as they're sometimes called) for as long as there has been a web. Back when there were only a few thousand websites, the 'What's New' page that announced each new one (yes, there really was such a thing!) worked in just the same way as blogs do today.

Early weblogs included Scripting News, Robot Wisdom and Camworld, which all started in 1997. To begin with, blogs mostly consisted of often-updated lists of useful and amusing links to other websites, but it gradually became clear that the format was just as good for distributing longer articles. Blog software started to be developed, and their popularity quickly exploded. By 1999, everyone was talking about blogs.

Why are Blogs So Popular?

In recent years, the blog format has very much taken over from the 'personal home page'. People seem to find it much easier to just put a kind of public diary online, instead of putting up a little biography of themselves and a collection of articles. It's more personal, more fun, and more interactive day-to-day.

Businesses have started to open blogs too – in many ways, they're like a replacement for newsletters. A regularly-updated blog gives customers a great sense of what a business is like, while giving the business a great way to keep communicating with its customers and being useful to them, even when they're not buying anything right this minute.

In my opinion, the biggest reason for blogs' popularity is that they make publishing to the web very easy. You don't really have to know anything about what's happening behind the scenes: blogs finally make publishing your thoughts for everyone to see as easy as posting to a forum or sending an email. In a way, blogs fulfil the original promise of the web.

Weblog Software.

Today, there's a lot of blog software out there – if you want a blog, you're spoiled for choice. What you get will depend on how comfortable you are with technical stuff, and whether you want it to be part of your main website or not.

Movable Type. This is software that you install on your web server. You simply log in and type your post, and it creates your pages for you. Movable Type can be a little complex to set up, but you can use a version called Typepad that is hosted by its creators instead of using your server.

Blogger. You don't install Blogger on your server – instead, you give it your FTP password and let it upload files to your web server for you. If you don't have any hosting, you can also host blogs for free at Blogger's Blogspot. Blogger is owned by Google.

WordPress. WordPress is a free alternative to blogging software. It works in basically the same way as Movable Type, but without the restrictive licensing and with nicer-looking default templates. Many people have switched to WordPress out of frustration with Movable Type and not looked back. You have to host it on your own server, but it's very simple to set up – don't be scared!

LiveJournal. LiveJournal is a completely online service, meaning that it has nothing to do with your website, except that you can link to your LiveJournal if you want. LiveJournal is more social than most blogging, allowing you to join communities relating to your interest.

There are plenty of other online services, but they're all pretty much the same: MSN Spaces, AOL Journals, and so on. You're unlikely to get taken very seriously if you have a blog at any of these places, although it'd be easy. In the end, it's all about power versus convenience: the more work you put in to get your blog working, the more likely that it's going to be what you really wanted it to be. If you're creating a website anyway, you'd be silly not to put a blog on it.

E-Commerce Explained

By: Ken Charnly

E-Commerce is way of doing business transactions electronically. The first wave of doing business was exchange of information. The word electronically here in this context means that in E-Commerce business transactions gets completed via electronic medium. This electronic medium mostly uses computers on Internet. The transaction may also be done through mobile that is mobile then it is mobile commerce. Mobile commerce is a subset of E-Commerce.

Several simple example of E-Commerce includes:
An individual purchases a book on Internet
An individual withdraws funds from ATM
A retailer orders merchandise using an EDI network or suppliers extranet
An individual or business calls a toll free number and orders the requirements using the seller’s interactive telephone system.
A manager orders office supplies for his office using Internet on a commercial website to seller.
An employee reserves a ticket for airline or railways or if he reserves a room in a hotel using the Internet by surfing the related website using a few clicks of mouse.

Complex example may include:
A student visits the website of a bookstore on Internet and makes inquiries about the availability of an out of stock book. The bookstore employee downloads the digital copy of book and prints it along with cover. Until and unless agreement to purchase on this computer mediated network does not occur there is no E-Commerce transaction.

Factors which mainly affect E-Commerce transactions are:
Capital Availability: There should be sufficient source of capital available with Internet based companies so that the can handle their business transactions in a comfortable manner without doing any delay for payments.

Technology: The technology being used by the Internet based companies affects the business. Companies doing E-Commerce transactions should armed themselves with latest and largely acceptable technologies because outdated technologies can bring unpredictable, disastrous and hazardous results and can ruin their businesses. Example:
If a person is doing electronic transactions but the antivirus that he is using is of older version which is neither able to detect nor stop the entry of newest viruses. Now as a result of which it is possible that some virus may creep into local file system of operating system without user knowledge and permission and will look for important account information like username of soma accounts and password etc and then can pass this vital information to the virus creator. This will enable these virus creators to enter into users account without his knowledge and permission and commit thefts like cases. So it is advised to every user involved in electronic transaction to use the latest released versions of antivirus and antivirus should be a reputed one in market like Norton and PC Cillin etc.

Language: Many E-Commerce innovations originate in US and thus language mostly used is English. So people who are not very fluent in English and do not possess good communication skills will not be able to complete E-Commerce transactions comfortably.
Attitude: To facilitate E-Commerce requires possessing of an attitude that is open to change, innovation etc. People should be able to accept E-Commerce transactions over manual handling of transactions.