‘The Global Financial Crisis has spurred more investors to take charge – which is why online trading is attracting 100,000 new customers every year.

From a slow start in the late 1990s online trading has ridden the boom in interest in the stock market and rising internet penetration, to the point where it now accounts for about 12 per cent of the trades put through the Australian Securities Exchange(ASX).

That’s not bad, given that the big investment banks – which do almost wholly institutional business – account for almost 80 per cent of trading.

And online broking is still a growth industry, according to the nation’s internet brokers.

‘I think online broking will add a percentage point or two to its market share every year for the foreseeable future,’ says Stuart Sayers, managing director of ETrade, the number two online broker, with 22 percent of the market (behind CommSec, which has 53 per cent.)

‘It almost has to, based on trends we see in the internet penetration and the take-up of online banking. Australia is not quite 100 per cent internet penetration, but it’s pretty close. And internet banking use grows at about 6-7 per cent a year, every year.’

‘That tells me that, one, older people are becoming more comfortable online; and two, younger people, that’s what they do with everything. Those two factors will grow in importance every year….’

‘We’re seeing about 100,000 new customers a year, and that number has grown steadily over the past four to five years – and it had a bit of a jump over the past year,’ Brian Phelps, head of distribution and margin lending at CommSec says. ‘We believe this reflects more people wanting to take charge of their investment. Two years ago, we were averaging 35,000-40,000 trades a day. About a year ago, it was averaging 50,000 trades a day: over the course of the last financial year we averaged 75,000-80,000 trades a day.’

Arnie Selvarajah, chief executive officer of Bell Direct, the online brokering arm of Bell Potter, says the average trade size on the online market has crept up to about $10,000-$12,000…

The next growth boost for the online broking industry is the access through handsets such as the iPhone. Since the iPhone was introduced in Australia in 2008, Mr Selvarajah says the handsets use has grown to the point where about 5 per cent of Bell Direct’s clients that log in each day do so via an iPhone.

The online trading market is also being boosted by the burgeoning market for contracts for difference (CFDs) in Australia now estimated at $350 million in size, and involving 35,000 investors. This market is conducted wholly online.

Source: The Australian

Online Trading On The Up & Up is a post from: OE Design Blog

Life in business is always changing , and if you already have a basis of loyal followers of your products on a social media site like Facebook, then you are ready to tack, turn and  weave with whatever winds of change come your way. And change will come. And only those who are ready to embrace change by utilizing new technology will be here tomorrow.

Even when it comes to fruit….

‘As fresh fruit prices fall, Australian growers are turning to social networking sites and food celebrities to woo consumers. Prices of fruit fell 4.8 per cent in the June quarter, latest inflation figures show.

The chief executive of peak horticulture body Growcon, Alex Livingstone, said plentiful supply and retailer price wars were driving down prices. ‘The flip side is the returns to growers are not good,’ he said.

Tropical Pineapples sales and marketing manager Joe Craggs, who represents 22 Queensland growers, said prices were 10 to 15 per cent lower than the same time last year.

Growers had enlisted Facebook and MasterChef Australia contestant Skye Craig to raise the profile of a fruit oft sidelined as a summertime food, Mr Craggs said.

Citrus Australia chief executive Judith Damiani said consumers were toying with purchasing cheaper fruit, such as bananas.

But Gary Fattore, a manager at national wholesaler CostaExchange, said banana wholesalers were entering their thirteenth week of sales below production cost.

A warm winter had yielded a bumper crop this year, but he hoped prices would rebound as supply dropped off in the coming months.

Apple and pear prices had softened over the last two to three months, and were 10 and 20 per cent lower than at the same time last year…….

Meanwhile, poor citrus crops in Brazil and Florida are driving up costs for beverage makers…’

For those of you not in the fruit industry…..scary isn’t it?

So are you ready for change in your industry?

Do you have a Facebook page for your business?

Maybe it’s time to get organized for change – because change is coming your way – sooner than you may think.

Source: Michaela Whitbourn The Australian Financial Review

The Fruit Salad Of Change on Facebook is a post from: OE Design Blog

Now as the following article reveals – not everybody will agree with some of the developments. But the fact is this. The way we did things in the past are continuing to change at an alarmingly fast rate – whether we like it or not – even in the medical world.

‘More and more British websites are offering medical consultations and medication most countries only allow during in-person visits…

The websites don’t handle serious problems or emergencies and don’t deal in drugs people could become addicted to.

The European Commission does not monitor such medical websites but is working on a paper addressing the legal issues of tele-medicine.

In countries including Canada, Denmark, Germany and France, doctors are allowed to treat patients online only if they have previously seen them in person.

In the United States, several companies offer online medicine, but patients must typically speak to a doctor on the telephone or set up a video-conference for a live chat.

The British websites typically charge from about $A14 to $A34.

Some even ship a very small percentage of their drugs abroad; in Europe, it is legal for medication to cross borders as long as it is for personal use.

Dr Patrick Cadigan, a spokesman for Britain’s Royal College of Physicians, said it was particularly difficult to make a diagnosis without seeing a patient in person.

‘To lose personal contact with your patients means you lose clues about what may be wrong with them,’ he said.

‘I am concerned these websites could be steering patients to treatments for a financial incentive and not for their own good.’

However, on one prominent website in London the site’s medical director says that patients give a medical history, and are asked about other drugs they’re on to avoid any dangerous interactions.

On his website, they can also upload pictures of a problem.

Doctors then diagnose the condition, and if appropriate send out drugs in the mail.

Source: The Gold Coast Bulletin

Online Medicine – The Way Of The Future? is a post from: OE Design Blog

If you choose not to be a part of the Social Media revolution, you are potentially sabotaging the future of your business. The impact you can make can be quite substantial; you just need to choose to join in the Social Media revolution.

Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the number of people collaborating, researching, and interacting online through the different aspects of Social Media.

Google

1. Over 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 (one trillion) unique website’s are listed in Google.
2. Over 121 million searches are made every hour.
3. Daily page views exceed 7.2 billion.
4. Google has 19,835 employees.

YouTube

5. Over 2 billion views a day.
6. 24 hours of video are uploaded every second.
7. Average person spends 15 minutes on YouTube every day.

Facebook

8. More than 500 million active users.
9. Over 695 status updates are posted every second.
10. More than 250 million users log onto Facebook each day.
11. Average user has 130 friends.
12. Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on facebook.
13. More than 100 million people use facebook on their phones.
14. More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.

Twitter

15. 300,000 new users sign up every day.
16. 180 million people use twitter every month.
17. Over 50 million tweets sent per day, at about 600 tweets per second.
18. 600 million searches are made on twitter every day.

Other Social Media Sites

19. Linkedin has 50 million users worldwide.
20. Wikipedia has 14 million articles.
21. LinkedIn has 60+ million professionals worldwide.
22. Yahoo has over 12 million searches every hour.
23. Bing has over 3 million searches every hour.

If you need any help or have any questions regarding social media, feel free to contact us.

Sources:
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
http://mashable.com/2010/03/19/global-social-media-usage/
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/014511.html
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html
http://webtrends.about.com/b/2010/03/15/the-top-10-most-popular-social-networks.htm
http://compete.com
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx

Warning: 23 Social Media Stats You Can’t Ignore is a post from: OE Design Blog

‘….Selling ads is Google’s big money-maker, but the online-ad business is broadening away from Google’s sweet spot, selling ads tied to the search-engine terms people use. Instead, advertisers want to target people based on more specific personal information such as hobbies, income, illnesses or circle of friends.

The changes at Google reflect a power realignment online. For years, the strongest companies on the internet were the ones with the most visitor traffic. Today, the power resides with those that have the richest data and are the savviest about using it.

That has propelled internet ad companies into an arms race so swift that even Google fears being left behind. One slide from an internal presentation in mid-2008, which was reviewed by the Journal, is headlined bluntly: ‘Get in the Game’.

That particular slide describes the importance of breaking into the lucrative business of selling ‘display’ ads, which are larger ads with pictures, as opposed to smaller text ads. Today, Google still trails market leader Yahoo in US display-ad revenue, according to analysts. Google still leads the internet pack overall, of course.

Its revenue, $US23.7 billion last year, is more than three times Yahoo’s, its closest competitor. Its online advertising business is growing faster than those of its publicly held US rivals.

But Google’s revenue growth has slowed dramatically. And social-networking powerhouse Facebook is a widening threat with its ability to sell highly targeted ads to its more than 500 million users.

Fears about Facebook run deep at Google, which is designing its own social-networking service.

In a sign of how quickly things change, Google’s 2008 vision statement scarcely mentioned social networks. Google also plans to go head to head with Facebook’s ‘Like’ button – a tiny tool on many websites that lets people tell friends they ‘like’ something.

Each click gives Facebook valuable personal data about internet user’s interests.

Few online companies have the potential to know as much about its users as Google….’

For those of us in business, as we use these tools – the more targeted our advertising can become with the assistance of these battling giants is going to mean one thing – more business for all of us who choose to engage this technology as part of our marketing campaign.

Source:  Jessica E. Vascellaro The Wall Street Journal

The Raging Battle For Targeted Online Advertising is a post from: OE Design Blog

As the chairman of OE Design – The Web Designers, can I please ask you to forgive me for a moment….

I want to brag about three members of my organization.

But before I brag, the facts are, that I’m not so smart when it comes to websites. But I am smart enough to surround myself with very smart people, while I take copious notes.

As a direct result of that, I’m not only getting older with every passing day, but because of the ‘young’ company I keep, I’m getting to know a few things in this ever changing online world that we live in. And the other bonus I get is that I share in the tremendous success of my fabulous team that is now having an impact nationally and globally as a direct result of being part of the OE Design vision and success story.

So here is my brag – as promised….

1. Daniel Dyson

We here at OE Design do a lot of blogging and this year Daniel – our web designer and project coordinator extraordinaire, created his own Blog on February 8 of this year called The Daily Guitar and this week was awarded 1st prize in the New & Upcoming category in the 2010 Guitar Blog Awards.

Comments by the award organizers were that ‘The Daily Guitar’s got a great vibe about it. Daniel’s posts are fun and engaging.’

They also added that, ‘The Daily Guitar has two main goals: inspiration to practice your guitar daily, and then, to grow a community of guitarists. The Blog is filled with quirky, but inspiring news about guitars and guitar players, and then, gear reviews and tutorials.’

2. Sarah Schelbach

In September 2009 Sarah began the process of creating a brand new website called Wedding House .  It’s an online wedding planner for 21st century brides.

With the launch date of June this year it’s taking the wedding industry by storm and growing at an extremely rapid rate. The New Zealand version of the website is in the wings, ready to be launched before the end of the year and following in hot pursuit are the Canadian, UK and ultimately the USA version of the same concept.

Ably supported by the team here at OE Design and family, its success is assured.

3. Ben Sinclair

Ben was asked in 2005 to assist his local church with the construction of websites that could assist them with the organisation and co-ordination of their volunteers.

Ben has taken that original idea and is already receiving rave reviews from around the world for his website called Elvanto – a rostering system for churches, and with many churches already signing up for their free trial we know that churches all over the world are soon to be better organised than ever because of this globally impacting product produced under the OE Design roof.

Oh and Ben and a few of us are working on another great online directory soon to hit Australia called Fitness House.

Within the culture of OE Design we have always encouraged personal growth and personal product and service production. So what can I say – but watch this space into the future.

Let The Chairman Brag is a post from: OE Design Blog

The following article in The Australian newspaper this morning confirms what has happened to me personally…

‘Smartphone users are more likely to surf the internet than make a phone call as the behavioral patterns of consumers change, new research reveals.

With the latest iPhone hitting the Australian market last week, a global study by media company Initiative found that 51 per cent of owners of smartphones such as the iPhone and Blackberry were using their phones more for data-driven applications, mostly web surfing, while only 39 per cent were using them mainly to make calls.

Christopher O’Keefe, managing director of Initiative in Sydney, said use of smartphones was changing as customers upgraded, with implications for advertisers and content creators.

He said he believed mobile internet use was being underestimated.

“On any given day an Australian smartphone user spends an average of 27 minutes accessing mobile internet. And iPhone users are interacting with mobile internet more frequently than any other handset user.”

About 70 per cent of iPhone owners used their phones to surf the internet several times a day. 49 per cent of Blackberry owners used theirs that way, and 44 per cent of Nokia users did.

“Australians are avid emailers in the morning, taskers during the day, and social networkers after work.” Mr O’Keefe said.

When at home, many smartphone users were using their phones to surf while watching TV or listening to the radio.

Australians are also more interested in fun, escapism and social connectivity than the global average.

But the research also exploded the myth that younger owners are the most open to advertising on their smartphones. “Interestingly, people aged 35-44 are most engaged with mobile communications from companies rather than the younger generation, with almost 70 per cent of people in the demographic opening most or all of signed-up alerts,” he said.

The research also suggests consumers still view mobile advertising space as uncluttered, with just 36 per cent saying they were exposed to too many banner ads. And it was found that nearly 24 per cent of people in Australia were choosing to use the internet via their phone rather than on a PC.

“Convenience and accessibility are the primary reasons.”

Recent analysis of Vodafone by Ovum also showed that future growth was in data rather than voice.’

Source: Simon Canning for The Australian

The Ever Expanding World Of Smartphone Users is a post from: OE Design Blog

‘Amazon.com has reached a milestone, selling more e-books than hardbacks over the past three months.

But publishers said it was still too early to gauge for the entire industry whether the growth of e-books was cannibalizing sales of paperback books, a huge and crucial market.

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos also countered the perception that sales of the company’s Kindle e-reading device had suffered due to the competition from other devices, such as Apple’s iPad.

He said the growth rate of Kindle device sales had ‘reached a tipping point’, having tripled since the company lowered its price to $US189 from $US259 last month, following a similar move by competitor Barnes & Noble to cut the price on its Nook e-reader…

Amazon painted a picture of accelerating growth in sales of e-books, which can be read on the Kindle and through software on a host of other devices, including Apple’s iPad and iPhone. The figures don’t include free e-books.

Over the past month, Amazon sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books it sold, it said…

Another statistic shared by Amazon suggest it remains the leading retailer for e-books. The company said that of the 1.14 million James Patterson e-books sold as of July 6, nearly 868,000 were from Amazon. In June, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had claimed that his company’s iBookstore had taken 20 per cent of the market.’

Source: Geoffrey A. Fowler & Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg for The Australian

Amazon E-Books Overtake Hardbacks is a post from: OE Design Blog

So, the first experience many people have with your business is your website. It stands to reason it should be a key place for you to generate sales leads.

The web attracts a broad audience and common wisdom says it is safest to assume that every prospect is a busy, smart person who doesn’t want to waste time. For this reason, I don’t recommend using an introductory ‘splash’ page since it requires an additional mouse click. You need to get their attention quickly and move them to the next stage, namely direct contact with your sales staff.

I have identified six critical elements that your site must have.

1. Be Found

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) and Search Engine Marketing(SEM). Ensure that your site appears for the most common search terms by including them on your home page and in its keywords. eg: ‘gym<your suburb>’ so Google can find you.

2. Value Based Headings & Summaries

These capture your prospect’s attention using heading and summaries that confirm you can deliver what they want. Give the information concisely and aim to build a sense of excitement about what you offer.

3. Make Your Service Or Product The Hero

The main emphasis of your home page should be the benefits offered by your primary service. Prospective customers only want to know more about who you are once they have established that you provide what they need.

4. Proof

Make sure people don’t have to click more than once to find a written or video testimonial proving that you deliver on your promises. Back it up with a testimonials page.

5. Call To Action

Make sure people know that you want them to become your customer. Tell them what they should do next, if they like what you have to offer.

6. Make It Easy To Contact You

Find our who the prospect is by providing easy contact information and links. Options include a large visible phone number, a link to a contact form, a button or banner with a special offer that links to a contact form. Put a contact link on every page.

Use sibling pages to give more detail for the information junkies, but make sure the home page is snappy and obeys the above rules. A good website generates maximum quality sales leads for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You wouldn’t be without it.

Thank you to Clayton Sinclair – Director of Advance Fitness Marketing for this fantastic article.

Must Haves On Your Website is a post from: OE Design Blog

‘Got a question the other day from a reader wondering when and where it was appropriate to list his show’s website.

I give you my answer in this photo of a Florida license plate.

The state of Florida is so interested in driving traffic to their “Official Portal of the State of Florida” that they aren’t just putting the name of their state on their license plates, their plugging their website!

So there’s your answer.  Put your website everywhere you can.  Especially if your domain name isn’t the exact title of your show.  And with domain name squatters pouncing on more names than ever these days, odds are you’ve had to come up with some modification of your title for your URL (which reminds me . . . if you haven’t read the post of mine from last year on why you must grab your domain name asap, read it now.  I’ll wait).  Putting your site address in as many locations as possible is also important if your site isn’t coming up at the top of a Google search of your show.  (Need an example of what I’m talking about?  See this search for Awesome 80s Prom compared to this search for Memphis).

Websites are now a part of a show’s branding, like a tag line, a logo, or even the trademark sign.

And if a state government is doing a better job than Broadway at marketing their sites, then we’re even further behind the times than I thought!’

Source: Ken Davenport

Where Should You Put Your Website? is a post from: OE Design Blog