www.WebPractices.com

Plug into the Web's Premier Source for Best Practices and
Resources for e-Business, e-Commerce and Multi-channel Marketing

• WebPractices Home Page

• Presentations & White Papers

• e-Business Books and Magazines

• E-business Newsletters and E-Zines

• Free Online Research

• Vision

• E-Business Planning

• Multi-channel Marketing Strategy

• E-business Articles

• Web Organizations and Associations

• Technical Web Development & Design Sites

• Digital Media Law, Privacy, Ethics & Taxation

• E-Recruiting and Job Hunting

• Web Events, Conferences & Training

• Sample Web Sites- Good and Bad

•  E-Business Consultants

• About Us

FREE E-BUSINESS RESEARCH SITES

Following is a list of my favorite web sites and other resources where you can find free e-Business, e-tailing, e-commerce and general online research. This information is invaluable when preparing e-business plans, road shows and other "convince 'em with the facts" situations. (A continuación se encuentra mi lista de páginas web preferidas con datos y investigación sobre la industria Internet.)

ONLINE RESEARCH

Marks my personal "blue ribbon" resources that I highly recommend.

Research Table of Contents:

• Glossary of e-business terms
• Company and Market Results and Tracking
• Free Syndicated Research
• Customer Experience, Usability and Design
• Scholarly Research
• Paid Research

Glossary of e-Business Terms

• Peppers & Rogers' newsletter glossary

• Morningstar is one of the best analytical stock market sites for real people, according to my mother who is an expert on these things. 
• Hoovers lets you check into the background of companies.
• Yahoo! Finance and Excite's Quicken Finance site let you track all the news and stock performance. 
• CBS Marketwatch keeps you up-to-the-minute and gives "the story behind the numbers".
• CNN Financial News pulls together news, markets, deals and the rest.
• The EtailDex is an index which tracks only the performance of etailers.

Free Syndicated Research

http://cyberatlas.internet.com Cyberatlas and Nua are the two best web sites, bar none, for FREE Research in summarized form about the web. Cyberatlas not only lists the Media Metrix ratings, it also has demographics and summaries of all the expensive, fee-based research from such powerhouses as Jupiter Research, Forrester, Gartner Group, Boston Consulting Group, etc. 

• Keep up on all the latest statistics at the Stats Toolbox. Find out how your target customer groups are reacting to and using the web at Demographics, or how your "going global or acting locally" plans might  hold up at Geographics. You can also keep up with studies on use of the latest Hardware or follow specific online markets such as E-tailing or Advertising.  
• Sign up for the weekly Cyberatlas newsletter so you don't miss any of the "hot research topics". 

http://www.nua.ie/surveys/ Nua Internet Surveys is another superb site for FREE web research. It is particularly strong in giving international research by area and overall, and it covers more individual sectors in depth than Cyberatlas. 

• One of the great features is a list of charts and graphs comparing everyone else's research, such as the estimates of online consumer spending or Comparisons and Predictions. 
• Besides General Demographics, it covers Children, Teens, Seniors, and Women and specific areas of the world like Africa, Asia, Australia/ New Zealand, Europe, Middle East, North America and South America. Nua also covers Society and Government/ Legislative issues related to the web.
• Sign up for Nua's e-newsletter. It will be one that you must read!

www.iconocast.com is "the DEFINITIVE source for facts, figures, trend analysis and insider information in the Internet marketing industry," according to the company.  Hosted by the indomitable e-marketing personality, Michael Tchong, Iconocast features one of the better e-marketing newsletters and research. You can also report anonymous rumors at the "Tell Jaco" area, making this one of the best (or at least fascinating) web rumor mills anywhere.

I just discovered www.deepcanyon.com at Iconocast's Web Attack conference. It is rare to find e-business resources that start-ups and other small businesses can afford. Most of the research and info is free, with the paid reports MUCH cheaper than you would ever pay at the Jupiter's and Forrester's of the world. I love their Panic Button feature, when you need research and don't have time to look for it yourself. For USD $99 an hour, they'll look it up for you.

ResearchPortal has free for members and fee research. Here are a few sample reports. More limited than some of the other sites.

The Pew Research Center offers this study on How Women Use the Internet along with other Pew Internet & American Life Reports.

www.individual.com Individual.com is basically your own free clipping service on the web for company wire service reports and company press releases. You edit the areas you want to see, and it sends you a daily email with links to all the items your topics of interest. It covers the gamut of e-business issues, from e-commerce, to technology to advertising, you name it. It can be overwhelming because it lists such great related links that you'll want to spend all day on it following the threads. 

4electroniccommerce.com is 4Anything.com's site for eCommerce. Limited, but has soem good links to Transaction systems and general e-commerce resources.

CreativeGood is one of the best companies out there for evaluating customer experience, usability and human interaction with web sites. 

CreativeGood's FREE resources are available at www.goodexperience.com, and you must subscribe to their Customer Experience Newsletter. 

Their newest free download is the eye-opening

  Dotcom Survival Guide, an excellent 103-page free guide outlining commerce strategies resulting from their customer research and expert analysis. From merchandising to design, marketing to targeting, this superb free Dotcom Survival Guide is now available here and is a must-read for all interactive e-tailers at www.creativegood.com/survival. 

CreativeGood provides a FREE download of their extraordinary e-tailing report,

  "Holiday '99 E-Commerce", 

which gives screen shots and a blow-by-blow detailing of what was wrong and right with leading commerce sites as pointed out in live customer evaluations. If your web design and management team hasn't read this, get it to them right away to ensure you don't make the same mistakes for  Holiday 2000 ! 

E-business Best Practices is a joint area by ZDNet and Creative Good, which "rates the best and worst features of e-commerce every week." You'll definitely want to check out where you and your competition rate on the week's Top Ten Best and Top Ten Worst e-commerce sites. You can sign up for ZDNet's "The E-business Alert" twice weekly e-commerce newsletter as well.

Scholarly Research

• MIT's E-Commerce Research Forum allows you to search scholarly papers on e-commerce topics for those who want the details.

Paid Research

• Shop.org has great etailing research reports if your company is a member. 
• The Industry Standard's Intelligence Store with pricey but useful research reports.
• Emarketer's online marketing research EMarketer Reports.
• Jupiter has some of the best research reports, but they, too, are pricey. 
• Morgan Stanley Dean Witter puts out very effective one-company and technology sector analyst reports, but you need to have an account with them.

Please help me grow this list by sending your suggested e-business and web resources to me at mjb@webpractices.com. (Por favor, ayúdeme a aumentar esta lista de recursos sobre el negocio por Internet, y envíeme sus recursos sugeridos por correo electrónico a mjb@webpractices.com.) I reserve the right to edit or refuse submissions.