Archive for category Computers
E-Commerce Trends for 2013
E-commerce has evolved thanks to mobile and social. New technologies have transformed the way consumers shop, review and search for products online. Advertising strategies have been disrupted by mobile apps and micro e-commerce sites. Informed shoppers now enter store locations equipped with powerful search capabilities that grant access to the best prices possible.
In order to capitalize on 2013′s biggest e-commerce trends, retail enterprises should aim to create a more engaging and personalized shopping experience in addition to embracing new technology and marketing strategies.
Micro E-Commerce as a Way to Streamline the Process
A recent trend for marketing and online shopping is the micro e-commerce site. E-commerce should be embraced as a way for creating memorable experiences which play on the unique aspects of online and in-store shopping. If certain items are unavailable, direct a shopper to a micro e-commerce site for streamlined access to products that may not be in stock.
Micro e-commerce sites serve as segmented webpages devoted to timely and specific products and offerings. Often micro e-commerce sites are developed to correspond to the time of year, holidays and time sensitive offers. Similar to a blog, the micro e-commerce site streamlines the process of finding specific segments of products. Think about a Best Buy micro site dedicated specifically to media products. Customers can easily access all available film, music and video game selections from one centralized place.
Adapt to Remarketing and Know How Shoppers Shop
Marketers are beginning to acknowledge the importance of understanding the context for how informed customers shop. They access user generated content, multiple review sites and conduct price comparisons at different times using various channels. Often times their activity can provide insight into why they left a shopping cart filled without making a purchase. Mostly, remarketing aims to bring that user back to your site to make a purchase.
This technique effectively reaches out to customers on different parts of the web to maximize outreach. By using data regarding the site user’s visit, marketers can better understand the nature behind a customer’s choice to purchase certain items or reject others. Advertising efforts can be redirected to the sites that people who didn’t make purchases visit after leaving your site.
Social Integration Can Personalizes Shopping
Worldwide increases in e-commerce have forced some retailers to consider reductions in physical store space as a cost saving solution. Although this tactic can save capital in the short term, it is not a worthy long term solution. Embracing social media integration is a great tactic for enhancing the experience of both etail and retail shoppers.
Integrating the capabilities of social media connectivity and mobile apps can introduce an added layer to the physical process of shopping. Location tagging, sharing features as well as incentivized rewards can serve to revitalize the interaction shoppers have while inside a store location. For instance, offering rewards for sharing recent purchases on social media can drive in-store visits while also considering to potential e-commerce purchases within the customers network. Read the rest of this entry »
How Computers Think
Inside a computer, data and information are stored in a digital binary format. With the term bit we are referring to a binary digit that represents the smallest piece of data. Homo sapiens can understand and remember words, numbers or pictures; computers understand and use only patterns of bits.
One bit of information can have only two possible values. Digit one or digit zero. Therefore, a bit is used to represent only two states. For instance, a light switch can be either On or Off, so in binary system, these conditions would match to 1 and 0 respectively.
PCs use binary numbers to represent letters, numbers and other characters. A universally used code system is the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII). With this system, every character is created by a string of bits. For instance:
Capital letter: A = 01000001
Number: 0 = 00000000
Number: 255 = 11111111
Character: # = 00100011
Every set of eight bits, like the representations of letters and special characters, is called a byte.
Binary codes are used to represent practically any kind of digital info. With the binary system we can represent computer graphics, pictures, video, music and voice.
As mentioned earlier, one bit is the smallest unit of data. One byte is the most basic unit of digital storage. One byte contains 8 bits and is the smallest unit of measure used to represent data storage capacity.
When we are talking about hard disk capacity, we use the terms byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte and so on.
One kilobyte contains 1,024 bytes. One megabyte contains more than a million bytes, specifically 1,048,576. One gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes and etc.
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