Sunday 4 April 2010

IN SEARCH OF A PERFECT WEBSITE.



The web has become an essential tool for most business enterprise these days. According to Roger Black “the latest craze to hit the internet is “push technology” which allows information providers to deliver data directly to an individual rather than requiring them to request or “pull” the information from the internet. A well designed web site usually will have a positive effect on the ones business and a poorly designed one will have a negative effect. Most websites are geared at providing the consumers with up to date information on their products or services with the intention of leading to the consumer to purchase its product or services.
      In creating a website, the utmost thoughts on the designers mind -should be an analysis of the customers that will use the site. A site should be designed around the needs of its clients. The designer should also consider what the site is required for, what will enable users find the site and will the users be able to find the required information from the site. (Journal of information technology volume 5, 2006) one of the worst web designers’ mistakes is to create a web design without a previous analysis of the users needs. Such websites may seem interesting and well designed to their authors but they are complicated and almost useless for many visitors. Users should be consulted before a web is designed to know their desires.


USABILITY

 visitors expect to find useful sites to do business as fast and as comfortable as possible. Therefore usability which is defined as the visitors’ ability to use the site appropriately is very important. Section unfortunately, there are numerous websites with mistakes against   usability. A users investigation in 2004 (“web usability – the main rules”, 2004) shows that about 40% of users never come back to a website after their first unsuccessful attempt. The most common reason for their disappointment with the website can also be found in this investigation. According to Powell (2000) the main web design aspect are purpose, web content, visual elements and technologies. The basic principle of a good web design is a balance between these four aspects. (Journal of information technology volume 5, 2006)



THE STRUCTURE

A web structure is the framework in which the information or content of a website is presented. The structure includes the layout, the colors, navigation and the content of a website. It is important to have a clear and friendly website layout where consumers find the information they are seeking directly when they arrive on the page. The contents of a website should state who you company is, its objectives and its services or products.  It is worth noting that these sites should be updated regularly. The web navigation helps consumers find the information and the answers they are seeking by the shortest route possible. Website navigation should be organized in such a way that the information is only two clicks away. The main content area of website should be linked directly to the information a visitor is seeking. Too many links should be avoided on many pages. Headlines for each web page should grip a customer’s attention immediately. The colors of a web site or page are very important considerations should be given t the type of colors chosen to ensure that the colors relax the eyes and do not turn the customer off.
(www.lukew.com)


Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Another important question a designer should ask is not only how a prospective customer is going to find their web site ones it has been activated but also what will ensure that they visit the site again. A search engine enables someone on the internet type in search terms in hope of retrieving data that leads to a result of the desired website. A good web design should incorporate competitive and relevant keywords which make search easy for a customer. The research and placement of keywords are very important if you want your website to stand a chance before the search engines and make a positive impact in your business. It is paramount that pages should have reverent titles this aids in search.
(www.yourthreshold.com/blog/entry/the_importance_of_search_engine_optimization/)
conclusion
The web design of a company is very important for that may be the only contact a customer may ever have with that company and if the consumer did not feel satisfied or was lost along the long there is no chance that there will be a revisit to the site again. It is therefore important that companies ensure that they create and lasting a great image through the web.

References


Design on the web: Where it's @. By: Blyth, Dave, AdMedia, 01126997, Mar1999, Vol. 14, Issue 2

Journal of Information Technology Education Volume 5, 2006
Web Design Curriculum and Syllabus; Based on Web Design Practice and Students’ Prior Knowledge.
Tanja Krunić, Ljiljana Ružić-Dimitrijević, Branka Petrović, and Robert Farkaš

The web scene; web design seo and internet marketing by CPC computer consultants – www.cpcci.com

www.lukew.com/ff/

www.cpcci.com/blog/7facts/

www.rocketface.com

Thursday 18 March 2010

EVALUATE THE CLASSIC TRUST LITERATURE.

The concept of trust is the main base in any business environment today. Man cannot live in isolation and at one point in time will need to engage in one form of transaction or the other with people or the business environment at various levels. 
In order to carry out any transaction effectively there is the need for trust especially in reference to online transaction where the customer cannot see or feel what is been purchased.

The Trust literature is a growing one, with its roots in the works of Mayer et el (1995) titled An Integrative Model of Organization Trust and Morgan & Hunt (1994.) Commitment – Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing. It is imperative to define the word trust prior to it’s evaluation of the trust literature so as to give us a background to understanding.
(Yamagishi 1998) defines trust as a person’s expectation of the others cooperative behavior in situations where it is possible to suffer some damage if the other behaves selfishly.
Liberman (1981) further states that trust in fiduciary relationships is based on a belief in the professional competence and integrity.


Mayer et el (year) maintains that trust is “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on expectations that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party”
The word trust can be effectively understood when associated with certain characteristics, although these they are not trust per se, the characteristics help build the foundation for the development of trust Mayer et al (year). These characteristics are


Ability: - which are those groups of skills, competencies and characteristics that enable a party to have influence within some specific domain. Giffin (1967) suggested expertness as a factor that leads to trust.

Benevolence: - is the extent to which a trustee is believed to want to do good to the trustor, aside from an egocentric profit motive. Benevolence suggests that the trustee has some specific attachment to the trustor.
Integrity:-the relationship between integrity and trust involves the trustors perception that the trustee adheres to a set of principles that the trustors finds acceptable.
Morgan and Hunt (1994) laid a lot of emphasis on the fact that relationship commitment and trust are vital to any successful relationship marketing. Not power and its ability to “condition others”. Trust and commitment go hand in hand; they are key factors because they encourage marketers to work at preserving relationship investment. No business can be successful without its dedicated consumers therefore it is of great importance to work in an atmosphere of trust and commitment so as to thrive. Commitment can be explained as the belief that relationship is worth working on to ensure that it continues indefinitely The Commitment Trust theory explains that shared values positively influence both relationship commitment and trust, and relationship benefit and termination costs also positively influence commitment. This theory explains how shared values influence relationship, commitment and trust it explains how commitment influences trust.
In the business environment, it should be noted that trust is dynamic and there is constant need to strengthen it as often as possible as it remains an extremely vital factor for business survival. For trust to be build and commitment there are antecedents that are required or needed. These are the things that help to build up trust and commitment in any firm to their consumers. Researchers like MacMillan et al (2005) and Wick, A. C and Bernard, S.L (2004) have also gone further by identifying these antecedents

Reputation:-.The image of an organization is very important and this includes the images of its staff at all times.An organizations previous attitude usually is a major determinant of the future. Good image builds trust and bad image destroys trust. For trust to be established therefore, a consumer will usually refer to the past records of the organization and determine whether or not to transact with them. When any organization is known for bad publicity due to bad images then it will be automatic that there won’t be trust for that company. When dealing with trust and commitment image is everything.

Integrity: - this is equally important in any business environment, as it is paramount that the organization is upright in its dealings and prompt in all transactions as this enhances trust.

Reliability: - there has to be the assurance that a customer is in safe hands and will not be exploited in any form.
Shared values: - are the values of the business shared by ones relational partner. Shared values are very important to build trust. Because the consumer sees that this person has the same characteristics as mine, like having the same background and because of that then trust is build automatically. These ethical values are like bonds between which develop not only trust but also commitment.
Trust cannot be achieved without efficient and Communication. There is a positive relationship between communication and trust. If there are communication difficulties between any two parties then trust or commitment can’t be built. Once you communicate then you transfer the message of what services you are going to offer the other party and the other party sees if it can get it and begins to trust the organization. 

Figure 1.0 below by Finch, O’Reilly, Varella and Wolf illustrates dimensions of trust. 
















Figure 1.0 illustrating the four dimensions of trust.

The concept of trust is rather broad and dynamic. The online segment of the market is a growing one. But in many situations it is noticed that consumers have their fears about transacting online as they are apprehensive in regards online shopping and do not trust online transactions. Therefore it is paramount that there is no room for bridge of trust for it is cheaper to retain an old customer and more expensive to keep a new one. In the survey by Hanai,T., and Oguchi . T. (2009) about how consumers perceive the reliability of online shops, they investigated what kind of information contributes to trust formation in online shopping that dealt with branded products. They observed that consumers will only buy from shops they believe do not provide counterfeits in other words they must trust a shop before they can buy online.


In line with this Riegelsberger, Sasse and McCarthy (2007) point out the importance of trust formation in mediated transactions such as online shopping. In mediated transactions it is necessary to match the consumer’s intention of buying to the shops intention of selling. If a consumer feels they are unable to trust the shops, they stop their transaction. Looking at trust in relationship to online shopping, it will be vital to consider what factors enhance trust. Since an online transaction prevents the consumer from physically seeing the product they intend to purchase; it is very essential that shops gain trust of their customers by ensuring that they provide their customers with adequate information about their products so as not to give room for mistrust in the minds of the clients. The quality of information provide to consumers should always be updated frequently as trends change.

There are a lot of positive impact of online business some of which include the reduction of over head cost and the expansion of consumer cliental. Consumers also can take their time to assess the websites before they purchase their products. As trust declines people are increasingly unwilling to take risk and demand greater protections against the probability of betrayal. In e commerce security and reliability refer to positive trust that is shown in the consistency and assurance between what a trading partner says and actually does. (Hart and Saunders, 1997)

Reference:
Journal of marketing volume 58 (1994) 24-28, Morgan and Hunt.
The Commitment – Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing
How do consumers perceive the reliability of online shops?. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 3(2),
article 6.
Hanai, T., & Oguchi, T. (2009).
The Effects of Relationship Commitment
and Trust on Business to Consumer Electronic Commerce - The Case of Taiwan
Communications of the International Information Management
Association, Volume 3 Issue 1
Houn-Gee Chen ,Edward T. Chen Ayi Yeh
An integration model of organizational trust
The Academy of Management Review; Jul 1995; 20, 3; ABI/INFORM Global
pg. 709
Mayer, Roger C; Davis, James H; Schoorman, F David
Return on trust: An empirical study of the
role of sponsorship in stimulating
consumer trust and loyalty
David Finch,* Norm O’Reilly, Paul Varella and Diane Wolf
Received (in revised form): 11th August, 2009

Saturday 13 March 2010

two literature

Thursday 4 March 2010

The Effect Of World Wide Web To The Society

The World Wide Web was first invented by Sir Tim Burners Lee. Basically this is the site that helps us when we want to get information in the computers or wanted to learn things on the internet. Its short forms are WWW. By the use of these three words you can type the site you want to visit and it takes you through. And when we talk of effects here they can be good or bad.

The main aim of doing this study is to find out if the WWW has any negative infects to the society or just positive. Because as far as the Web is concern it was invented to help the society and not cause any harm to it. But like any other thing it has got to have its negativity in one way or the other.

There are positive effects of the Web which are as follows:

Easy access to any information. Before the web was invented people just used to read books, journals and peoples diaries. And these things were not so much easy to get. And they were limited in number. But once the Web was introduced getting information are become so much easy, Information for Human being has just become one click away. Examples of these sites are like Wikipedia, Google and so many other search engines.


Learning, In places like South Korea learning is done by the Internet. They learn through different sites that are in the Web and create other sites to help their kids learn. This can be in governments, primary or even higher education. The Korean government has promoted e learning on all fonts of education as part of long life learning and commercialization philosophy. Example in 2006 over half of 4 year colleges and universities were offering e learning courses.


Social network sites like Facebook are increasingly important environments for expressing and maintaining interpersonal connection. These kind pf sites help especially the youth in creating friendship channels in different parts of the world and hence making communication for them easy and fun.


Apart from the positive effects of the WWW there are negative effects of it, which are as follows:

Most of the youth nowadays spend most of their times on the internet these days. Either facebook, my space, listening to music, playing games or even watching movies. With this then in has broken the relationships of families all over the world. Parents don’t get to spend time with their children and hence don’t get to know how they are getting along with life and generally how they are doing. Example in South Korea 62% 3 - 5 years children spend more than 8 hours per week in the internet.

This shifts people from the real world. Example people don’t get the time to read a book, just go for a walk, have meaningful conversations unless its via the internet. This has given people a new way of thinking especially the youth. Example according to the bbc.co.uk/virtual revolution a kid says that without the internet then life would be boring.

In South Korea 62% of the kids that use the web have been diagnose with medical problems. 80% are on medication while 20% are already admitted.
So this shows how the internet can affect our health, especially when it is overdone.


The web can also get you addicted. And when one is addicted to it means that he or she will have to nothing else but jut se in the internet all the time. And this is a very bad situation for any one. The symptoms of an addict are as follows, being unstable, not satisfied, of which this will lead to one loosing friends and the other is no relation with the family.

To conclude it can be said that the Web ha done much for the society as much as bad. And that in North Korea the web is much used compared to any other part of the world. An as much we reduce the use of the Web then the better it will be. Because as it is said too much of anything is harmful.


REFFERNS

1) www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/The Virtual Revolution

2)Mike Thelwall. Statistical Cybermetric Research group, School of computing and Information Technology, University of Wolverhampton.

3) e-service-experts.com .
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