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According to an article on the Guardian.co.ukover the next 3 days, those of us unlucky enough to be working will spend an average of 2 hours per day skiving on the Internet when the boss isn’t looking. That’s 25% of a standard working day spent unproductively browsing news and shopping websites if the survey conducted by hotels.com is accurate. Miranda Sawyer of the Observer salutes the skivers for making the most of the fact they are being made to attend work when traditionally there is very little that can, or needs to be done.
I’m not sure I would be saluting anybody who chose to spend their time browsing the web when they had other work to be doing but it does raise the question about whether it is worthwhile companies opening their doors at this time of year. Given that (according to these stats) everyone is working at a maximum of 75% capacity or maybe even less, and a lot of people will be struggling to do their day job due to the absences at supplier and partner companies, would it be more cost effective to shut down completely? It certainly suggests it would be worth weighing up both the tangible and intangible pros and cons of each option. Overheads, opportunity cost, staff morale etc. It is a bit of a long standing tradition on office based environments to have a presence over the festive week but maybe it is time for this to change in the name of good business sense??
I know where Ill be. Sat in front of the television after consuming far too much turkey with all the trimmings, beer in hand, contemplating which variations of chocolate to consume next! After all, that’s what everyone does on Christmas Day isn’t it?
Well, apparently, this year will be different. If the news stories are to be believed millions of people will be logging on to their computers in an attempt to grab a pre-sales bargain ahead of the shop doors opening on December 26th. Reports on the Sky news website claim 5 million of us will be logging on in between mince pies and spending as much as £100 million. In the past I can vouch for the fact that Christmas day and Boxing day are notoriously slow days online. Search volumes and website traffic are down as people spend time with families and sleep off hangovers. But maybe this year will be different, and December 25th will turn out to be one of the bigger spending days as opposed to the lowest.
I have to say it sounds like wishful thinking on the part of the retailers to me, who have brought forward January sales online to try and cash in before the recession really takes hold. But maybe I am wrong, and times are changing, Ill certainly be having a look at search and click volumes when I’m back after my Christmas break. But for now, its back to the sofa and the mince pies! Merry Christmas!
Kelkoo has today emailed all its advertisers to inform them that they have been acquired by newly formed venture capitalist company Jamplant. In a slightly surprising move Yahoo! has relinquished the comparison site but will maintain Kelkoo as the comparison engine behind Yahoo shopping, cars, finance and travel.
This is a strange move by Yahoo! who purchased Kelkoo for $576 M just 4 years ago. With comparison engines a key element of unviersal search and Google placing more and more emphasis on the product search with the introduction of plus box functionality in PPC the sense of this move by Yahoo could be questioned.
Whilst they may maintain they still have access to the functionality and you would hope this is part of the deal. I do worry what happens in the future if the relationship sours. In the current economic climate Yahoo will be happy to relinquish the overhead but it may come back to bite them in the future if they go down the same route as Google has. What do you think? Shrewd move to cut costs, or mistake they will regret in the future?
I blogged about the purchase of the analytics tool Indextools by Yahoo! earlier in the year (Yahoo! acquires Indextools). Now they have finally made the move to bring the tracking solution under their own brand , to be labelled, Yahoo Web Analytics. Not very imaginative with the name but you can imagine they wanted to keep the Yahoo association very strong. Even still they could have come up with something which sounded a bit less than a me too version of Google Analytics. After all Indextools is a far superior tool to Google’s offering and Yahoo need to play on this to gain any competitive advantage that comes with their purchase.
I wonder how long before this is offered direct from Yahoo’s search interface with integration of action reporting to their PPC reports. I think they may need to simplify the installation a little as in the past Indextools has been a little trickier to implement than Google Analytics but if they get it right, analytics will defintiely be one area where they have the uper hand over Google.
