Archive for the ‘technology’ Category
Tuesday, August 6th, 2013
Technology Spectator columnist Tim Reed has called for more innovation from Australian small businesses.
Reed said the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) report on ‘Innovation in Australian Business’ found the proportion of innovation to active small to medium businesses (SMEs) increased by 13% in the year ending 30 June 2012 across four areas of innovation: good or services, operational processes, organisational/managerial processes, and marketing methods.
As small business represents 96% of businesses in Australia, Reed said, what happens in this sector has the potential to drive improvement in the domestic economy.
One way for small businesses to adopt innovation is through the use of online technologies, he said. Most consumers are now searching online first when shopping for a new product or service and yet 2/3 of SMEs don’t have a website, meaning a significant proportion of businesses are missing out on sales and marketing opportunities simply by not having an online presence.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, Australia Bureau of Statistics, business, innovation, online
Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, innovation, internet usage, online business, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 31st, 2013
The CEO of one of Australia’s biggest online real estate advertising companies says businesses in the country need to adapt to the digital future in a hurry or risk being shut out by international competitors who are further ahead.
Greg Ellis, CEO of REA Group, said companies in all sectors in Australia are struggling to adapt to the digital economy and will lose market share to international rivals if they did not change their management Âstrategies.
“On a bigger scale Australia needs a damn big wake-up call,” he told a Melbourne Press Club luncheon last week. “We’ve got some material competitors coming who could take a significant percentage of market share and jobs away through the strength of their digital offering.”
He said managers needed to better tap into the talent in their organisations, saying the best workers found in companies such as his were 30-year-olds familiar with the digital economy.
“There is a significant shortfall of skills to transform Australian business in the digital economy,” Ellis said. “At REA when we bring people in we have to effectively de-program from the historical techniques they have used to manage people. It’s the preparedness to push the responsibility of the decision-making down to the people below you who have the expertise.”
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: adaptation, Australia, business, competition, digital, economy, online
Posted in Australia, business, E-mail & the internet, internet usage, media, online business, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 24th, 2013
The fate of Australia’s National Broadband Network, which aims to bring internet access to the country’s farthest flung outposts, will not be known until the outcome of the country’s federal election is known.
The Labor government and conservative Liberal-led opposition have vastly different plans for the A$37.4 billion for the network (NBN).
A Liberal-led coalition election victory would drastically alter the way the NBN is rolled out, says Melbourne-based RMIT University electrical engineering expert Mark Gregory.
“There will still be activity, but there will definitely be winners and losers,” Gregory says.
While Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor government initially promised to deliver Internet speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to 93% of premises by 2021 using fiber-optic cables, with the remaining remote locations served by satellite and fixed wireless, those goals have been steadily scaled back.
The project has also been plagued with problems and in-fighting among the companies tasked with building the network.
Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott, on the other hand, promises a A$30 billion fiber-to-the-node network. Under this plan, high-speed fiber would be laid to streetside “nodes” but the final connection to homes and businesses would rely on Telstra Corp Ltd’s ageing copper wires, with much slower download speeds than fiber.
The Liberal Party says this would provide 25 Mbps minimum by 2016 and 50 Mbps for the “vast majority of households” by 2019.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, election, federal election, Labor Party, Liberal, National Broadband Network
Posted in Australia, controversy, Federal Government, internet usage, national broadband network, technology, Telstra | No Comments »
Monday, July 22nd, 2013
WooCommerce has recently introduced another seven exciting extensions for everybody’s favourite online store creator.
They are:
- Hipay.com Payment Gateway – This is a plugin to extend Woocommerce, allowing you to take payments via the Hipay payment service.
- US Export Compliance – Makes your shop compliant with the US Export regulations.
- Group Coupons – Allows you to link coupon validity to WordPress users.
- ConstantContact Integration – Allows you to build Your Constant Contact email list with WooCommerce.
- Recommendation Engine – Allows you to offer Netflix/Amazon style product suggestions to your customers.
- InterFax Integration – Integrates your WooCommerce site with InterFax, which enables you to fax the order details to your customers and yourself on every completed purchase.
- Composite Products – With “Composite Products”, WooCommerce allows you to create sophisticated, dynamic product kits by compositing existing products.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, business, extensions, woocommerce
Posted in Australia, business, Exporting, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology, Woo extensions, Woo Plugins, WooCommerce, WooCommerce Extensions | No Comments »
Friday, July 19th, 2013
Australian businesses are quickly jumping on the 4G train as, Vodafone became the final of the big three telecommunications companies to launch an LTE network last month. The latest generation mobile technology provides faster speeds and makes more efficient use of wireless spectrum capacity.
Telsyte analyst Foad Fadaghi said 13 per cent of all mobile connections in Australia — including consumer, business and M2M — are 4G, and the percentage specific to business penetration is likely consistent.
While 13 per cent may not appear large at first, it shows rapid adoption considering that Telstra has only had a 4G network for 18 months, Optus for only 12 months, and Vodafone has just launched, Fadaghi said.
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: 4G, Australia, business
Posted in Australia, E-mail & the internet, iphone, smartphone, smartphones, technology, Telstra | No Comments »
Monday, July 15th, 2013
There are a slew of free WooCommerce extensions available for people who use the software.
Some of the free extensions include:
- Product Archives Customiser – Allows you to customise WooCommerce product archives. Change the number of product columns and the number of products displayed per page and more.
- Sold Out Product Widget – It enhances the built-in WooCommerce functionality by adding a Widget and Shortcode for displaying sold out products.
- Smart Sale Badge – It enhances the built-in sale badge by displaying the total saving amount a customer will receive.
- Bundle Coupons – Enables store owners to make a coupon only apply when all products required for it are in the cart.
- Product Details Customiser – Allows you to customise WooCommerce product details pages.
- Email Validation – It adds a “confirm email address” field to the checkout page as a required field.
- Menu Cart – This plugin installs a customizable shopping cart button in the navigation bar.
- Bitcoin Payments – This is a WordPress plugin that allows acceptance of bitcoins at WooCommerce-powered online stores.
- Improvely – Allows store owners to see the specific website link customers clicked, search they typed into Google, or ad they clicked to get to your site.
- New Product Badge – Displays a “new” badge on products that were published in the last x days (as determined by you in the settings).
To read more about this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, business, extensions, woocommerce
Posted in Australia, business, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology, Woo extensions, Woo Plugins, WooCommerce, WooCommerce Extensions | 1 Comment »
Saturday, July 13th, 2013
Australian online businesses that think of their cyber stores as automatic vending machines need to start rethinking how they conduct business over the internet, a new survey has found.
Customers now expect to be able to get help immediately when they need it and will abandon an online transaction if that help isn’t timely.
The survey, conducted by marketing group Loudhouse on behalf of LivePerson, a provider of customer management software, found 87% of shoppers said they need some form of help during an online shopping transaction and 25% of Australian respondents to the survey expect help immediately when requested.
The main reasons for abandoning a purchase include:
- unexpected costs at 69%
- lack of information at 59%
- navigation difficulties at 52%
- not being able to find answers to questions at 44%.
- difficulty in getting help on a website at 36%.
Out of the 1000 respondents, 79% said they prioritise getting their issue resolved quickly, and 55% want that done in a single interaction — 62% want a problem resolved within a five-minute timeframe, and 54% would give up immediately or only seek help once.
Dustin Dean, vice president of Asia-Pacific at LivePerson, said Australian online businesses should start offering the same type of service that is offered in more traditional retail stores, which includes investing in Live Chat options where customers can get instant access to staff to help with questions and resolve issues.
“I think you have to offer the richness and the depth of the experience of the storefront — especially given access to information now is just so rapid,” Dean says. “This is not simply about making a one-time purchase. You need to create relationships with customers and create an experience that enhances the shopping.”
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: Australia, business, online, website
Posted in Australia, business, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 10th, 2013
You can now track shipments purchased with WooCommerce sites with the WooCommerce Shipment Tracking v1.1.4 Plugin.
You can use the plugin to add shipment tracking information to your orders and provide customers with an easy way to track their shipments.
After adding details to an order, the tracking information will appear in emails, the order tracking page, and the order view page in their account section.
To read more on this story, click here.
Tags: shipping, tracking, woocommerce, woothemes
Posted in Australia, business, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology, Woo extensions, Woo Plugins, WooCommerce, WooCommerce Extensions, WooCommerce Themes | No Comments »
Monday, June 24th, 2013
Founded in 2006 by Ruslan Kogen and headquartered in Melbourne, Kogan Technologies is an Australian consumer electronics manufacturer and retailer.
The company’s business model is to sell products direct from Asia to customers in Australia and the United Kingdom, bypassing the industry’s usual middlemen.
Kogan Technologies’ 2012 revenue was $100 million.
To read/see more about this story, click here and here.
Tags: electronics, internet, Kogan, Kogan Technologies, online, online business, retailer, Ruslan Kogan, sales
Posted in Australia, business, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | 2 Comments »
Friday, June 21st, 2013
Online business in Australia has jumped by 25%.
Orders made over the internet, including both within Australia and from overseas, reaped more than $237 billion in revenues in the 2011-12 financial year over the year before, according to the IT Use and Innovation in Australian Business report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics this week.
Information media and telecommunications businesses received the most online orders in 2011-12, followed by wholesale trade manufacturing whilst agriculture, forestry and fishing had the lowest proportion of online orders.
To read more on this story, please click here.
Tags: Australia, business, internet, onilne, sales
Posted in Australia, business, online business, Online Sales, online shopping, online stores, selling online, technology | No Comments »
