Microsoft and Google’s Monopoly break-up

 

Monopoly is something a devastating factor causing troubles to entrepreneurs. Something extraordinary has to be achieved by these new comers to the market to get their work up to some level. In the presence of monopoly competition does not grow and customers have to pay more and compromise with the quality of products, because they don’t have any other choice. They would have to accept whatever the products are in the market at whatever rates. On the other hand if the completion grows, more and more products would be available in low prices.

In the 20^th century, AT&T ended up its dominancy when Justice Department battled with them for 1974 to 1982. More than a decade in 1980s went through in similar fight between IBM and Justice Department because IBM had the hardware monopoly. In 1998, Justice Department started a case against Microsoft as due to their monopoly new firms found hard to come into the competition. Several restrictions were applied on Microsoft. Microsoft also faced several acquisitions in Europe.

And one of the latest Antitrust proceedings made by European commission has been started.  According to the commission Microsoft has failed to the commitment it made in 2009 to start a browser market so as to let new firms come in to the competition.

According to the contract, Microsoft was supposed to display BSC that is “Browser screen choice” on windows PCs in Europe where the default browser is Internet explorer. Most of the companies which exercise monopoly are the tech companies. Microsoft fed the market with its highly popular OS in 80’s and got hold of the market since then. Now most of the necessary tools are built-in by default in its OS. On the above allegation Microsoft’s response was as bellow,

“We have fallen short in our responsibility to do this. Due to a technical error, we missed delivering the BCS software to PCs that came with the service pack 1 update to Windows 7….”

If lost this battle, Microsoft could face many sanctions and penalties. They already had escaped a fine in 2009 when they opted to use BSC allowing users to select any internet browser of their choice on their PC instead of IE. Microsoft offered a fix that will be sent out to all the users about 28 million who were affected.

Negotiations with Google are also underway to prevent the only dominance of Google in Internet search and marketing which is the soul of eCommerce business.  If any lawsuit is brought against Google, it might be dead. According to some reports, Federal Trade Commission is planning to bring legal actions against Google.  They have been monitoring Google for antitrust concerns.  The most important thing is the loss of power, fame, and appreciation when facing such lawsuits irrespective of winning or losing. Microsoft battled for around 4 years which made them lose their focus. Other competitors took benefits of this situation and thus Google became the master in search engines and Apple in music.

It’s not the free internet world today as it was back in 90’s, Google’s crawler might not catch each and everything. In order to compete with Facebook, Google started its own social sharing network Google + which has not been much successful. At the same time Google has wisely stepped into the new era of internet browsing and that is mobile internet. It has launched Android which is a free platform for application development. Microsoft has already been stumbling to get hold of the market and on the other side, Google the market leader in internet search might be pushed into the same situation if faced a lawsuit……..

User Friendly websites with Previous Next Magento Extension

As a user you might see some sites which might look appealing to site administrators or owners but not to you. Designing a site should hold consumer friendly features instead of owner oriented. There are two main goals of any eCommerce site.

1)      Grab potential clients:

Surfing internet and enjoying in this way is now a hobby of many people. Especially if somebody is looking for online shopping, he would search many sites to select a best one based on many metrics such as better look, better information, better features, best tools and excellent customer services etc. In this huge eCommerce market it’s important to at least incorporate those features which can attract these site walkers.

2)      Retaining Existing customers:

Since these are the customers who already are inspired by your services, retaining them could be a challenge because they would expect more enhanced services frequently.

Let us see now what elements are important to fulfill above targets,

1)      Site Load speed

This is probably the first and the foremost element that can send your potential customers away in seconds. Most of people today have now access to high speed internet but still in many areas there exist slower internet connections. You can use tools such as Google Analytics to analyze from where your customers are coming. If most of your customers are using slower speed channels you would need to work hard on speeding up things by keeping your site simple. You would not want to add flash contents, excessive code etc.

2)      Accessibility:

Your site should incorporate features which should allow customers to easily browse and access your site such as by using alt tags, valid HTML and CSS coding and incorporating user friendly tools such as Previous Next Magento Extension which allows customers to quickly navigate to products while staying on the same page.

3)      Navigation:

This is one of the most important elements of your site success. Once visitors arrive at your site, they would hunt for products they are looking for. If you have buried deep down somewhere these products, it would repel customers away. You should provide clear and easy navigation such as Layered Navigation, Ajax add to cart, and as we mentioned above Magento Previous Next Extension. There are many more tools to be utilized.

4)      Proper and related information:

People might come to your site for number of reasons such as to find good news at your site, visit blogs, or looking for products. Those who are looking for products would be eager to see detailed product information that is easily accessible and product images to see how the product looks like actually. Again there are several Magento Free & Paid Plugins available in the market to help you implement these options.

Keeping your site up-to-date with these options ensures your chances to catch more customers hence increasing your sales and business…..

Online Marketing and Product Labels

If you have worked hard to produce some great products according to the requirements of your customers. The next step is to inform them about your products. You would be eager to let them know how well your products are as compared to the competitors. This certainly is accomplished by marketing effectively. There are several techniques that can be used to deliver updates to customers such as email marketing, telephonic advertisement, Ads, social media etc.

The base line of all online marketing starts with SEO. You must have a SEO friendly site or a blog. A separate and effective landing page for products must be created to drive traffic to your site. It should have a unique URL, properly coded, photos, Meta tags, unique content and title tags. Having all these in place ensures that your site will come up in search engines effectively.

Another way of marketing is email marketing. You can send special deals designed only for email receivers. It also increases trust and good relations with customers.  Online marketing involves Google AdWords, PPC, social media, forums, blogging etc. Online advertisement allows you to influence customers in very effective manner.

Above mentioned strategies are all related to market your product, but you can adopt certain strategies that be used to advertise the product itself such as by using product labels. Labels are very effective in telling customers what the product is about or any sales offer quickly and concisely. Combining all these great strategies ensures more chances of catching customers.   If your store is based on one of the leading eCommerce platforms like Magento, osCart etc you can easily find plugins for product labels. Because Magento is the leader of all, there are many great Magento free and paid plugins already in the market to advertise your products…..