Due to the ever growing popularity of online shopping the profit gap between Australia Post’s conventional letter service and parcel delivery business has widened more than ever before.
Chief executive Ahmed Fahour said,
“The period leading up to Christmas really highlighted a widening gulf in profitability of our letters business and our parcels business,”
“We delivered 3 million more parcels in December than we would in an ordinary month,”
You can read more over at smh.com.au
Despite a 5 percent decrease in earnings for the six months prior to December in 2011 compared to 2010 there was positive news from JB Hi-Fi on the online sales front.
The company announced an 80 percent jump in online sales for 2011.
You can read more over at crn.com.au
Technology analysis group Telsyte has released a report showing that discounting is the best way to achieve online sales.
While lowering prices is challenging for the businesses it does go some way to convincing customers to proceed with the purchase.
Telsyte senior research manager, Sam Yip has said,
”All the emerging ways to buy online are tied by a single common factor – discounts,”
Harvey Norman founder Gerry Harvey says Harvey Norman has reduced its forecasts for online sales, believing he got carried away with how big a market he could capture online.
The company was targeting 5% of turnover to be online, while the actual sales figure appears to be as low as 0.5-1%.
Mr Harvey has announced they would now target online sales to achieve 1-2% of total turnover.
The team over at smartcompany.com.au has 3 tips for Harvey Norman, but they could just as easily apply to any other online store.
They are:
To read more about these tips check out smartcompany.com.au
As we discussed last week there has been a backlash in some parts regarding Google’s new privacy policies.
If you’re wondering what alternatives there are to Google stuff.co.nz have come up with a list of your other options.
You can read about the alternatives over at stuff
If you’ve signed into any Google related account in the past week you will have noticed Google has updated it’s privacy policies. Most casual users probably won’t bother reading the changes, however Microsoft have come out firing at Google by placing full-page ads in a selection of major American newspapers criticising the changes.
Kevin Bermeister, an original financial backer of online communications service Skype believes the internet could be on the point of a revolution as ISPs gain access to new technology to help filter out questionable material, such as malware & pirated software.
ISPs could team up with copyright holders by adding in filters that would redirect users searching for pirated material to a legitimate source for purchasing the content.
You can read more at theage.com.au
Following Megaupload being temporarily shut down, it now looks like many other file sharing websites are shutting down world wide due to a US Government led crackdown on piracy.
Unfortunately this is hitting legitimate users of these websites who are now unable to access their files.
Steve Su, an academic in Perth was caught out by the closure of Megaupload.
“It’s like confiscating everyone’s mobile phone because terrorists used them,” he said. “I don’t think it’s correct to penalise the technology because, based on that logic, shouldn’t the internet be taken down, as this is how people infringe copyright?”
You can read more over at theage.com.au
PayPal has revealed the Christmas period was Australia’s busiest ever for online shopping.
PayPal did not announce much much money was spent, but did say there was double-digit growth in the amount of online transactions over the Christmas period compared to 2011.
PayPal spokesman Adrian Christie said today “It’s been the biggest online Christmas for transaction volume,”
“The week commencing December 5 (2011) was the biggest week we’ve seen at PayPal Australia in regards to processing secure payments.”
Mr Christie said roughly 70% of online purchases were made with Australian stores.
You can read more over at the Sydney Morning Herald.
Google has sorted through the years most popular search terms and come up a video capturing everything we were interested in in 2011.
Check out the video below.
