The first segment I will be creating is “visitors from the Town/City called Belfast who also use the Internet Explorer browser”.

The below screenshot reveals that of 321visitors to the TRAIL website, 43 were from the Town/City ‘Belfast’ and also use ‘Internet Explorer’ as their preferred browser.

The below screenshot is a graph mapping the differences between overall visits to the site and those representing visitors from ‘Belfast’ that use ‘Internet Explorer’, from the 15th June to the 15th November 2010. The graph reveals that only a small percentage of total viewers to the TRAIL website are from Belfast and use Internet Explorer, only 58 out of a total of 929. But the bounce rate of our created segment is over 5% higher than that of all other viewers. This can probably be explained by students of the module COM425 visiting the page once for the purpose of their assignment, without taking an active interest in the website as a whole.

(B.) The second segment that you design is left to yourself. You can pick any variable combination.

For my custom segment I have selected the variables, visitor Operating System: Linux, Browser: Chrome and Screen Resolution: 12080×800. The screenshot below shows that out of 321 visitors, one person matches all of the variables!

The screenshot below shows that over the time period of 15th June to 15th November, only one of the 929 overall visitors to TRAIL fit the selected variables; Operating System: Linux, Browser: Chrome and Screen Resolution: 12080×800. the bounce rate of our one visitor is 100%, compared to the 67.31% of all visitors.

I chose ‘Linux’ as a variable because it is an uncommon operating system and I was curious as to how many students and visitors to TRAIL used it. This is also why I chose ‘Chrome’. Firefox is the default browser for most Linux set ups and I wanted to know how many of the discovered Linux users opted for Chrome over firefox. The chose the last variable, ‘Screen Resolution’, because at this point in the segmentation I was left with 2 visitors who fell under the category of my selected variables and I wanted to differentiate between the two. In the end I discovered that one user has a 1280×800 resolution and the other a 1360×768 resolution.

Google analytics reveals that between 15 June 2010 and 15 November 2010 there were 929 visitors to the site.

B.)  Answer all three questions. What is meant by bounce rate? What is the bounce rate for the TRAIL site in the last 5 months? Should the website try to lower or raise the bounce rate?

According to Wikipedia, a Bounce Rate is a term used in web site traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of web site visitors that only view a single page on the website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs.  The bounce rate for the TRAIL website in the past 5 months is 67.81%.  TRAIL should try and lower bounce rates, to generate interest in the entire website as a whole, rather than one individual page.

C.) In the last 5 months, where are most visitors coming from: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites or Search Engines?

TRAIL were directed the most visitors from Search Engines. A total of 55.76% of it’s total visitors came from search engine results.

D.) What was the most popular key word (or phrase) that visitors typed that brought them to the TRAIL web site in the last 5 months?

In the past 5 months, the phrase that most prominently brought users to TRAIL was ‘Trail living lab” with 11.78% of visitors typing it.

E.) A referring site is a site that brings visitors to the web site. In the last 5 months, which site (that is not a university of ulster web site) is the largest referrer?

In the last 5 months, the largest referrer that is not a university of ulster web site was Brain-project.org, which referred 31 visitors to TRAIL.

F.) What is the sixth most popular country of origin of visitors for the site in the last 5 months?

The sixth most popular country of origin of visitors to TRAIL was Belgium , which provided 17 visitors to the website.

G.) How many mobile visits were there to the site in the last 5 months?

In the last 5 months there have been 11 mobile visits to TRAIL, from iPhone’s, Android, iPad’s and iPod’s, of which the Iphone was the most popular method of mobile viewing.

H.)  Examine the Visitor loyalty graph. Interpret the graph and explain what it is showing.

A visitor loyalty graph reveals how often a visitor returns to a website after their initial first visit. The graph reveals that 81.25% of trail visitors visit only once and do not return. It also reveals that the second highest grouping of TRAIL visitors 6.14% returns as many as 51-100 times. For these statistics we can gather that, although the majority of TRAIL visitors do not frequent the site more than once, TRAIL does have a small but loyal percentage of followers who return to the site on a regular basis.

I think offering this service online is innovative. Being given the opportunity to fill in personal health details online, provides a sense of freedom and ease of use that wouldn’t be there in a standard health care system. Filling in details online, prior to a visit to the clinic, cuts down waiting time and increases the efficiency of patient handling in the clinic. So more time can be spent treating and screening patients than sitting in a waiting room filling out personal details.

I think the system could be described as convenient and innovative to those who are comfortable with a web 2.0 system.  Although, a negative to the system is that not everyone is computer literate and some users may have trouble with the online system. It should also be taken into consideration that not everyone has access to the internet. Also, with being based in Northern Ireland, it means that despite being an international organisation, their target audience is significantly reduced. For the purposes of blood sampling, patients would be required to attend a physical appointment in northern ireland, which is understandably not ideal for many international patients.

In summation, the idea itself is incredibly innovative but lacks practical solutions to actually make it a viable business venture. If the idea could be expanded upon, by opening physical health care centres in countries other than Northern Ireland, it could become a more realistic health care facility.

Typing ‘Busted Tees’ into Google returns 420,000 relevant links. Being a unique phrase, every single result on the first page is relevant to the clothing label. The sponsored or ‘paid for’ results display three links to novelty t-short stores. Busted Tees is a very popular web store store and as such, companies with a similar product market are trying to benefit from the high traffic of Busted Tees by paying for adverts on google to draw in people they know their product will appeal to.

If a person was browsing for a new novelty t-shirt clothes, but was not aware of Busted Tees as a brand, carrying out a google search  for ‘funny t-shirts’ produces 22,200,000 results. Busted Tees appears on the tenth page, whereas their rivals ‘Snorg tees’ and ‘Truffle Shuffle’ both appear in the ‘paid for’ search results. From this we can assume that Busted Tees’ traffic probably benefits more from through traffic from their popular sister site College Humor, and from returning customers, than from those directed from search engines.

Busted Tees’ downfall, where search engines are concerned, is that it is only known as a by-product of College Humor and not as a web store in it’s own right. A separate advertising campaign directed at people who are not visitors of College Humor could help bring their site higher up the Google page ranking and establish itself among it’s rivals as a stand alone web store.

In 2001, Porter published Porter, M., (2001) Strategy and the Internet, Harvard Business Review, March, pp.62-78, where the five forces model was updated to take account of the impact of the Internet. This update will allow us to take a more relevant approach upon investigating our ‘e-store’.

The first force ‘The threat of substitute products and services‘, this entails the existence of a close subsitute product, which may increase the propensity of customers to switch to alternatives. BustedTees main product is t-shirts. There are an uncountable amount of clothing web-stores online, but what makes BustedTees so appealing is that it uses it’s own unique t-shirt designs which you won’t find anywhere else. For this reason, I believe the integrity of BustedTees’ product is yet to be under major threat of a substitute.

The second force is ‘The threat of the entry of new competitors‘. Essentially, a successful market will continuously draw in new firms or companies. As the amount of competing companies in a market grows, the resultant is effectively decreasing the profitability of the market. Googling ‘Novelty T shirt’ returns 1,090,000 results. As long as BustedTees maintain their competitive pricing, marketing and an original, unique and relevant twist on a popular product they will maintain profitability, regardless of new competitors.

The third force is ‘The intensity of competitive rivalry‘. Industry competitiveness can be aggressive, whether through competing prices, or competing designs. In the real world, realistically, you need only compete with businesses contained in your own city. The internet is a global village. Every city, in every country around the world becomes your competitor. BustedTees have the advantage of being a sister site of a vastly popular website College Humor, and as such they receive a large quantity of it’s traffic. This puts them a step ahead of similar stand alone sites.

The fourth force ‘The bargaining power of customers/buyers‘. In an online market the bargaining power of customers or buyers, is vastly increased to that of customers in the ‘real world’. Due to the ease of access, and competitiveness of e-stores, customers have a much wider choice, causing prices to be driven down. In the case of BustedTees, having a product that is unique twist on a popular product, gives them an edge over other competitors which produce generic and widely available clothing, leaving them to be forced into aggressive industry competitiveness.

The fifth and final force is ‘The bargaining power of suppliers‘. Outside of the internet, suppliers hold a sufficient amount of power over a company, and are able to set any price for unique resources. Similarly to the bargaining power of customers, internet suppliers are now vastly affected by the wider choice, increased commodification and competitiveness of the online world. Companies no longer need to rely on one supplier, but can choose the one best suited to their own needs. BustedTees print their designs on ‘American Apparel‘ t-shirts. American Apparel is a popular american clothing brand. BustedTees choice to use American Apparel is not based on competitive pricing, but on associating with a high quality, respected brand. American Apparel are not a supplier, but an established clothing store, and as such their prices are not subjective, but set. This means Busted Tees do not have to suffer  under the bargaining power of suppliers.

Firstly, let’s take a look at ‘Terms and Conditions“. Whether you are purchasing an item online, or just creating a user account on a webpage, you will have likely agreed to the terms and conditions of the site.

So, what are ‘Terms and Conditions’? Wiktionary defines them as “A specification of restrictions for the use of goods or services.” Being asked to “agree” to terms and conditions has become a commonplace feature of online surfing, so much so that it can be easy to agree without thinking, in most cases, you are not signing your life away, but I would advise to always have a degree of understanding of just what you are agreeing to.

BustedTees’ terms and conditions are relatively straight forward, and reasonable, there is nothing uncommon or unusual that would cause major concern. If the situation arose that you wished to return a purchased item, there is a “Returns” page, which states that “If for any reason you are unsatisfied with your order, you may return it for a full refund or exchange less shipping charges within 60 days of purchase.” It also explains that for residents within the US, they will cover the return postage of unsatisfactory orders.  Customer support is clear and straight forward. They provide an email address, phone number and also an address to post inquiries to. There is also a “Live Help” feature, which means it is sometimes possible to have a live exchange with a BustedTees employee, who will provide help and answer your queries in real time through the medium of a chat box. BustedTees customer service compares favourable with it’s competitor Snorg Tees, who only provide email addresses as a means of contacting them. This method of contact would be inconvenient for a person who does not have access to an email account. In order to provide an adequate service, support should be made through various different mediums in order to cater for the needs of all customers.

In computing terms, a Cookie is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by a web browser. BustedTees has a section of policy dedicated to their use of cookies. They explain that they use cookies to track pages you have visited and searches you have conducted on their site, in order to assist in analysis and research on the effectiveness of their site, content and advertising. They also use cookies, if indicated to do so, to remember account details such as a username, or a password. They also state that third party advertisers on their site may also use cookies to collect information about users who view or interact with their advertisements, in order to deliver targeted advertisements and gauge their effectiveness.

According to Compete and Quarkbase, on average, Busted Tees receives 299,326 unique visitors per month. One of it’s main competitors Snorg Tees receives 279,598 unique visits per month. These numbers show that there is very little difference in traffic between the two. A Uk based competitor Truffle Shuffle receives 11,120 unique visits per month, which is just 3.7% of Busted Tees monthly traffic. Using Compete, we can draw comparisons between Snorg Tees and Busted Tees annual traffic with the aid of a graph.

The graph confirms there is very little difference in traffic between the two stores, although in the month of February 2010 Snorg Tees receives almost double the amount of traffic that Busted Tees receives.

The process of purchasing from Busted Tee’s webstore is straight forward and user friendly. You simply browse through their online catalogue, select an item you want and click ”Add to Basket” below the selected item. This brings you to your “Shopping Cart”. You are presented with 3 options, you can continue shopping or you are presented with two options to pay for your selected items, “Standard CheckOut” which requires you to provide personal details, such as address and credit or debit card details and “Checkout with Paypal”, which requies you to log in to your paypal account. Paypal allows you to make secure money transfers over the internet and is a much more straight forward method of paying for items online.

There are numerous new channels to market e-business, one example being mobile device access, internet access from your mobile phone. The increasing availability of 3G internet on mobile phones means that the internet is available at your finger tips, anytime, anywhere. It’s possible to check your emails on the go, look at websites and make actual online purchases from your mobile. Busted Tees could create a mailing list, to email potential customer with sales, offers or news about the company. They could send SMS’s to let people know about the latest additions to their catalogue. The aim of successful marketing is to become more and more accessible to customers, and through the medium of mobile internet, Busted Tees could see a sizeable increase in site traffic.

The Busted Tees Blog reveals that the business is run entirely by six College Humor employees, Amanda, Caroline, David, Mikhail, Will and Jonny. Free Website Report estimates it’s net worth at $140,630 USD, with a monthly ad revenue of $5,779 USD. Price Of Web estimates BustedTees yearly revenue at $63042.84 USD.

BustedTees FAQ section reveals that they have no physical stores and are an entirely web-based business. The company originated as a side venture of the creators of College Humor and according to this 2004 interview, it was the founders first venture into the world of E-Commerce.

Internet use has been linked to socio-economic and demographic indicators, such as age and marital status. For example, 1% of 16-24 year olds have never used the internet, this is a stark contrast with figures that show over 60% of over 65′s had never used the internet, which makes up two thirds of the total number of UK adults who have never used the internet. In 2010, 92% of single adults in the UK had used the internet, 11% more than the number of married adults who had and a 60% more than the number of widowed adults. These numbers show internet usage in the UK is most prominent in young, single adults and less common with older persons.

The National Statistics office also revealed that in 2010 17 million adults in the UK used the internet to watch television or listen to the radio and 43% of internet users used social networking sites. Another popular online activity with UK internet users is online banking, with 54% of users using the facility. The use of email remains to be the most popular online activity in the UK with 90% of all users partaking in the online service.