Shopping

Shopping is a day to day activity for a modern man, we shop for must things and essentials, certain other times we shop for things we would like to have though avoidable and certain other times we shop only for our fancy. Our shopping habits are groomed according to our lifestyles, we select the goods and the shopping malls based on the standards we set for ourselves. Shopping is not just a habit but it is a hobby too. A consumer today, has a wide range of shopping centre to choose from - village markets to shopping malls to super markets and department stores. Here the spectrum and ranges of products vary. The satisfaction of a consumer depends on the situations. While we get satisfaction when we shop at a boutique for a designer attire, we get satisfaction and delight while we shop for home made toffees of fancy jewellery from a village market.

Over the years the shoppers’ habits, preferences and priorities have changed considerably. The consumers’ choices and preferences improve as their income level goes up. There is one more reason for the sudden burst in shopping. It is nothing but the exposure we get either through the media or by a chance visit abroad and human tendencies tend to catch up with better standards.

Shopping through the internet has become very popular in recent times. One can sit at home; pick and choose your product using plastic money. It is like having a super-market in your household. Shopping via the net is useful in many ways. You get a wide range of products, ample time to study and compare the products, their prices and take appropriate decisions. This facility is indeed useful for elderly people since they do not have to visit showrooms. And also for couples who are too busy with their job schedules.

One is exposed to new products, services and technologies through the internet and the fineness of presentation through the cyber world ‘tempts’ one and all to go for and ‘buy’ these products and services. Shopping, per se, that was once a part of the lifestyle of the ‘haves’ have now become a pastime for even the ‘havenots’ who got money to spare. Shopping for fun is a new trend for the upper class of society. For them, shopping for the sake of it gives a lot of pleasure. They are in the habit of collecting jewellery, designer clothing and other expensive lifestyle accessories. The new generation boutiques and shopping malls that have come up in metros recently are actually intended for such groups. These malls offer a variety of entertainment facilities apart from shopping. Realizing the changes in the tastes of the customers, the marketers bring in innovations in retailing by way of sales promotion, displays and credit facilities among others.

At a time of globalization and rising standards of life retailing is one area poised to prosper in the years to come. This would offer ample opportunities to fulfill the dreams of potential shoppers.

Web Directories - Basics

A web directory is a directory on the worldwide web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. It lists websites by categories and sub-categories. The categorization is usually based on the whole website, rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in one or two categories. Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submission for fitness. Some directories are very general in scope and list websites across a wide range of categories, regions and languages. But there are also a large number of niche directories, which focus on restricted regions, single languages, or specialist sectors. Examples of well known, general, web directories are Poly-Web Directory, Yahoo directory and the Open Directory Project (ODP). ODP is significant due to its extensive categorization and large number of listings and its free availability by other directories and search engines.

Directories have various types of listings, often dependent upon the price paid for inclusion:

• Free Submission - there is no charge for the review and listing of the site
• Reciprocal Link - a link back to the directory must be added somewhere on the submitted site in order to get listed in the directory
• Paid Submissions - a one-time or recurring fee is charged for reviewing/listing the submitted link
• Featured Listing - the link is given a premium position in a category (or multiple categories) or other sections of the directory, such as the homepage

• Bid for Position - where sites are ordered based on bids
• Affiliate links - where the directory earns commission for referred customers from the listed websites

A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory.

Human-edited directories are often targeted by SEOs (Search Engine Optimization) on the basis that links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines. Some directories may prevent search engines from rating a displayed link by using redirects, no follow attributes, or other techniques.

Many human-edited directories, including the Open Directory Project and the World Wide Web Virtual Library, are edited by volunteers, who are often experts in particular categories. These directories are sometimes criticized due to long delays in approving submissions, or for rigid organizational structures and disputes among volunteer editors.

In response to these criticisms, some volunteer-edited directories have adopted wiki technology, to allow broader community participation in editing the directory (at the risk of introducing lower-quality, less objective entries).

Another direction taken by some web directories is the paid for inclusion model. This method enables the directory to offer timely inclusion for submissions and generally fewer listings as a result of the paid model. They often offer additional listing options to further enhance listings, including features listings and additional links to inner pages of the listed web site. These options typically have an additional fee associated, but offer significant help and visibility to sites and/or their inside pages.

Today submission of websites to web directories is considered as a common SEO technique to get vital back-links for the submitted web site. One distinctive feature of 'directory submission' is that it can not be fully automated like search engine submissions. Manual directory submission is a tedious and time consuming job and is often outsourced by the webmasters. All said and done web directories are a godsend to mankind as the information that one is able to obtain from them is most amazing, to say the least.

Review: adgridwork.com

The latest review from WebIque focusses on www.adgridwork.com.

I came across this site when looking for some free advertising for another site of mine. It offers contextual advertising which is completely free. All this means is that you can have a text advert for your site displayed all over the internet; all you have to do in return is display some ads provided by adgridwork.

Now, you may have come across sites which advertise your site in exchange for putting some of their adverts on your site. What sets adgridwork apart is the fact that ads are displayed on similar site (often referred to as targeted ads), which helps your advert get more clicks. Not only this, but you can track your campaign and view detailed metrics such as impressions, conversions and daily hits to each of your sites. For example, I'm viewing my account now and it tells me my ads have been displayed a total of 2,952 times. As you would expect with any kind of web advert, I haven't had anywhere near that amount of clicks but everything counts. People, myself included, sometimes see ads but don't click on them at the time. They may have remembered the URL though and may visit the site later though, so even if people are just seeing your ads, and not clicking them all the time, it may be quite good.

The website's FAQ does a much better job than I can at explaining what the sites does and how it works, etc. Follow this link to view it.

As well as providing a brilliant service, adgridwork.com also looks great and has an extra fun feature which I like! That is the 'adspy' feature. You can view in real time whose ads are being displayed, and on which sites. I tested the feature by visiting my site and straight away my URL appeared in the 'Shown By' column. Its a great little feature - once you've signed up and your site is in the network, why not give it a go?!

Overall, I really like adgridwork. It provides a very useful service in an easy-to-use yet comprehensive way. The ads they provide blend in with my site, and will do with most sites that display them. Its definitely worth signing up for and giving a go, as you've really not go anything to lose!

Review: Obares.com

Obares.com is a website which offers visitors the chance to buy or sell a home. Specifically, it helps people, and I quote, 'sell your home or buy your dream home the FSBO (For Sale By Owner)'. But its not a simple 'classified ad' type site - it also provides users with resources to help them through the process of buying a new home or selling theirs. I would classify the site in the 'useful services' category, which also has an element of 'uniqueness'. There are other sites out there which allow listings of homes, but I don't expect many (if any in fact) provide a complete service like Obares.com does - they help buyers and sellers by providing useful resources, they help find real estate agents for sellers and they even help finance buyers' loans in some cases!

The site itself is very good. It is comprehensive, easy-to-use and is awash with features to make visitors experiences' smooth and enjoyable.

Lets begin with the homepage: I was drawn straight away to the map. It is very clear, contains all the states and best of all is 'clickable'. You may think this would be expected on a site of this kind, but its not always found. Secondly, there is a search box below the navigation bar, so if you want to browse the listings by city or zip code instead of state, you can do it very easily. For example, search for New York and straight away you are taken to the profile page of New York. What I also like is the fact that on the profile page you can see stats about the city you've searched for; this is by no means vital but its a very nice touch.

On a whole the website should be given a lot of praise. Mainly because it is comprehensive and is filled with good content, but also because it is so easy to use. True, design wise its nothing special, but perhaps if it had a unique design it wouldn't be so easy to use! But there is a downside - I live in the UK so unless I decide to move to the US soon I won't be able to fully appreciate everything the site has to offer. But it was definitely worth a review, and I'm sure quite a few readers of this blog live in the US, so hopefully it will be useful to them.

Link: www.Obares.com

Are you a fellow blogger? Check out BlogRush

Just a quick post to alert other bloggers to check out BlogRush. You can sign up for free, and once you've completed the steps you'll get free promotion for your blog! All they ask in return is you add some code to the sidebar in your blog, like we have >>>

You-Cubez.com

Here is the first review from WebIque!

You-Cubez.com uses the unique concept of selling 'cubes' as advertising. Effectively each cube is simply a text link but in the form of a cube. Visitors to the site can purchase a cube and choose its colours; they also choose the rollover text for their cube, in the hope of attracting people to click on it and be taken to their website.
Cubes can be bought for as little as £1, but in theory the more you pay, the more exposure your cube will get. The cubes are ordered whereby the most expensive cube is at the top. The least expensive (£1) cubes are found at the bottom.
Currently there are three pages of cubes, which indicates the site has been pretty successful. Over 1 and a half of these pages are £1 cubes, but the most expensive cube cost the owner £110, which isn't exactly small change!

You-Cubez.com is not a new site; its been selling 'cubes' for over 9 months now. Started in January of this year, it has sold well over 500 cubes, which we think is impressive. The total value of all cubes on the site is currently over £2400 (£2426) - the top row of cubes have a combined value of £828! But this does not reflect site revenue, as cube owners can add value to their cube by simply logging in (every 30 logins adds £1 value) and inviting friends (£1 for every 15 friends invited).

When the site was first started, it received a mixed reception. Some disliked the design of the site, some the concept. But it also received some positive responses - people liked the idea you could buy a cube for just £1. When I first saw the site, I liked it. In my opinion, the design was quite nice, and the concept itself intrigued me. Its very simple, yet potentially very lucrative. Many visitors to the site (who own a website) probably bought a cube, even if just for £1. And even if 90% of visitors do only spend a pound, you can still make a fair bit of money.

Interesting point: Near the beginning of You-Cubez.com's life, I contacted the owner to enquire about the possibility of investing in the site or joining in a JV (joint venture). Unfortunately, the owner declined as they said for them it would be easier to go alone, mainly because they wouldn't have to worry about pleasing investors (me)! Oh well...

Note: We have contacted the site owner to ask a bit of info on the site, so we can give you some real stats. We may not be told anything, but check back soon if you're interested as we may have a bit more.

Your site here

As a new blog, we're looking for sites to review. If your site is in some way unique, please post a comment here with a link and we'll check it out. If it fits our criteria, we may review the site here, which will give you free positive exposure, plus perhaps some free advice on how you can improve!