Access for everybody (some more than others)

Always useful to see how the chavs are measuring up to the toffs when it comes to the internet. The OxIS has been going for a few years now and provides a useful breakdown of internet access across socio / demographic and attitudinal lines. You can get it here.

On a related matter, stumbled across this site, which is perfect for when you're arguing with a client about how big their website should be and what browsers it should work across. This is the sort of information we all know instinctively (hmm, I feel a 1024 x 768 coming on), but it's nice to know someone has taken the trouble to document this stuff proper and make it available to all of us.

Putting on your game face

Link to a good article on facebook apps. I'll update this later.

New landscape, new ways of measurement

Nielsen Net Ratings have announced their adoption of dwell time as their new lead metric, replacing the long standing page view measurement. For sometime now, pageviews have been a bit bogus, and it's conversion (eg click through and eventual sale) that has been of most interest to brands and agencies alike. After all, what use is 5million page impressions if only 500 click through and bother to take a look at what you're selling / showing.

Dwell time takes into account the abundance of richer user interfaces. With the likes of AJAX allowing for more seamless, non-linear actions online, page refresh becomes a bit meaningless if the use is able to do everything within one space far more effeciently.

Rich media agencies have used this metric for some time now, with total time of interaction being a fair reflection of total brand engagement within a piece of online advertising. This takes these principles into the service areas, online stores, news portals, and gives companies a lear steer on where their customer services could be improved and optimised. Or summat.

How much is that doggy in the window?

Good article from the NY Times about the increasing importance of customer service within online retail. It throws up the ongoing debate between clients and their respective agency as to how much they should be investing in their online channel, and how greater investment can reap greater contribution to the bottom line.

Some brands have "got" this for some time now, noticeably John Lewis, whose website is now their largest store, with the necessary level of ongoing investment to reflect this.