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David Jones has pledged that the shopping frenzy “can continue” after its website crashed for several hours this afternoon during the retailer’s copycat “Christmas Frenzy”.

The entire David Jones website was down for hours and visitors were greeted with a display message explaining that the site was “currently experiencing high levels of traffic”.

A statement on the David Jones Facebook page thanked shoppers for their patience.

“We have received an unprecedented amount of traffic today in response to our Christmas Frenzy.”

“Our team has dropped everything to focus on returning the site to you as soon as possible and we are pleased to report we are now back live so the Frenzy can continue.
Angry customers took the department store to task over the crash.

“This is terrible! you advertise for such a big event yet your website can not handle the volume. instead of gaining loyal customers, you have lost me forever! ” wrote Bess Simpson.

Meanwhile, Rach Scott posted: “‘Unprecedented’” website traffic? Really? Well that’s just plain old poor planning…What did you expect when you advertise [sic] such a large sale?”

A number of other high profile retailers, including Harvey Norman and Apple, have also announced their own rival sales to Australia’s first nationwide online sale Click Frenzy, which kicks off at 7pm AEDT tonight.

How to get the best deals

Click Frenzy organisers have said it will be first in, best dressed when tonight’s event launches and have told savvy shoppers to start preparing now.

All of the online offers will be revealed in one go when the event opens, meaning shoppers should be logged on and waiting to ensure they don’t miss out.

More than 400,000 people have registered so far and while shoppers will be able to register throughout the 24-hour event, a Click Frenzy spokesperson said it advised customers to register ahead of time ”so they can be the first through the virtual doors at 7pm”.

Other tips include:

- Have your shopping list ready – are you looking for a specific Christmas present for granny or a birthday present for the kids? Don’t get lost in the frenzy.

- Plan your attack – will you be shopping by brand, product category, item or just browsing through all the offers?

More than 200 retailers are involved, including Myer, Dick Smith, Target, Bing Lee, Toys `R Us, Saba and online-only stores like Kogan, Appliances Online and Luggage Direct.

Retail websites on their own

Click Frenzy organisers have advised participating retailers to prepare for huge amounts of online traffic tonight, but say it’s their responsibility if their websites crash.

The Click Frenzy website will act as a portal listing all the shopping deals, but customers will have to click through to individual retailers’ websites in order to make transactions.

“We’re expecting up to 1 million site visits Click Frenzy and we’re prepared for this,” the spokesperson said.

“We’ve advised all retailers to ensure their website infrastructure can account for the huge traffic volumes but ultimately it’s on the retailers to ensure they can handle this.”

Click Frenzy has also said it will not take responsibility for the delivery, refunds or returns of any items sold during the event.

“Again all of the logistics and delivery is dependent on what the retailers offer but there’s still plenty of time before the Christmas period,” the spokesperson said.

Retailers announce Click Frenzy competition sales

High-profile retailers who are not participating in the event have also started launching their own rival sales.

Department store David Jones launched the most obvious competition to Click Frenzy today – an event cheekily named Christmas Frenzy.

The day-long sale, available in stores until 10pm and online until midnight, includes savings of 30 per cent on all Manchester and some women’s shoes, 25 per cent off Christmas items and 20 per cent off toys.

A spokesperson for the chain admitted the 24-hour sale was being held in response to a rush of competition for bargain hunters.

Coincidentally, perhaps, Harvey Norman has also unveiled a one-day sale due tomorrow.

Super Santa Day will be held in stores and online and includes up to 30 per cent off all Windows 7 laptops and desktop computers, 20 per cent off all Manchester and a 42-inch LG TV for $568.

Apple also announced its annual one-day sales event overnight, to be held this Friday from 2.01am  AEDST, though it will not reveal prices until the event goes live.

Online stores are also trying to attract pre-Christmas shoppers with one-day sales this week that is hosting a one-day sale today. On the other hand, fashion retailers are delivering pop-up, limited-time sales, including Veronika Maine with 20 per cent off all full-price styles and Tony Bianco with 30 per cent off storewide on Thursday.

The Click Frenzy spokesperson said it hoped David Jones and other retailers would get on board with next year’s event.

Online employment platform Elance has released its quarterly report, revealing record-setting hiring by small businesses in the fourth quarter of 2010. Increased hiring across all categories during what is traditionally a slow quarter further indicates that innovation and growth in the online employment marketplace will continue to rise throughout 2011.

The report also reveals that hybrid organization will be a growing trend in 2011, with companies adopting staffing models that include both onsite and online workers. Elance employers are posting more than 40,000 new jobs each month, and online workers have earned over $340 million on the platform. The surge in hiring aligns with recent findings by the Aberdeen Group that show contingent workers are expected to rise to 25 percent of the workforce in 2011, as employers and individuals seek greater flexibility in an increasingly dynamic marketplace.

Other notable hiring trends include the following:

IT is King
Signs of increased optimism about 2011 are seen at the end of 2010 as online employment shows record growth during a time typically associated with seasonal slowdown. Businesses posted more than 105,000 jobs in Q4 2010, showing an impressive 38-percent increase over the same quarter last year.  Spend grew 11 percent quarter-over-quarter and 44 percent over the same quarter last year as online workers earned more than $27 million in Q4. Creative, marketing and operations sectors all experienced substantial growth. The king of Q4, however, was IT as spend on technology-related work outpaced other categories.

Mobile Continues to Fly; Android on Top
Demand for experts in mobile technologies continues to grow at an impressive pace with demand for iPad programmers growing 15 percent quarter-over-quarter, and iPhone programmers growing 10 percent. However, Android developers experienced even higher growth in Q4 thanks to a 20-percent rise in demand quarter-over-quarter. Demand for iOS and Android programmers is unlikely to slow down anytime soon, as Verizon and other carriers start selling Apple products, and a flurry of new Android devices announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show hit the market.

WordPress: The Undisputed Champ of Content
WordPress appears to have moved from top contender among open-source platforms for online content such as Drupal and Joomla! to the top choice. Over the course of 2010, demand for WordPress experts rose an impressive 15 percent quarter-over-quarter, moving up three highly coveted spots to No. 2, trailing only behind PHP programmers. This marks the first time that any content management system has moved into the top three skills in demand by businesses, solidifying it as the undisputed champ of content, for now.

Online Marketing: The Fastest Growing Segment
Demand for online marketing contractors and consultants is accelerating and is up 74 percent year-over-year, indicating that businesses are making heavy investments in online branding, media and customer acquisition strategies like social media marketing, affiliate marketing and search engine marketing, In Q4, social media marketing saw 20-percent growth and moved to No. 26 on the top 100 skills list, as more marketing dollars are being deployed across social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Facebook: Growing Demand, Getting Hotter
The demand for Facebook programmers grew 23 percent in Q4, moving up 11 positions on the top 100 skills list. Facebook experts are increasingly sought after as more businesses seek Facebook App development, Fan Page creation and Facebook Connect integrations.

HTML5 Explodes, Flash Holds Steady
With a huge 48-percent growth quarter-over-quarter, demand for HTML5 programmers continues to skyrocket as businesses look to not only revamp existing websites, but also create a presence on increasingly popular tablet and mobile devices. On the other hand, despite showing no significant growth in Q4, Flash continues to hold steady as a sought-after skill, indicating that businesses are not dropping the proprietary technology anytime soon.

Texas: The New Online Employment Hot Spot
In Q4 2010, Texas had more cities in the top 10 for online employment than any other state, and tied California for the most cities in the top 30. Dallas maintained its position at No. 4, Amarillo, a hot spot for writing talent, moved up a spot to No. 7, and Austin jumped up eight spots to No. 9. Other Q4 shakeups include Los Angeles moving up to the No. 2 position, Portland, Oregon moving up to No. 3, and San Francisco moving down to No. 5, while New York remains the No. 1 city based on contractor earnings.

IT HAS long been just a matter of time before Telstra’s traditional white and yellow pages directories felt the full onslaught of the internet, and now it’s happened. At Telstra’s investor day briefing yesterday, chief executive David Thodey and chief financial officer John Stanhope revealed a sudden slide in Sensis’ revenue that will gut its earnings.

That bad news is, however, balanced by confirmation that on other fronts, Thodey is delivering. He was chosen to replace Sol Trujillo in May 2009 after telling the telco’s board that the group had completed a technology jump under Trujillo but needed to follow it up by becoming less complicated, more competitive with its pricing, and much more customer-centric.

The changes he has wrought are showing now, in revenue momentum in areas including mobile phones and broadband, and in productivity gains: and these are both adding enough to the bottom line to offset Sensis’ earnings dive.

Thodey says Telstra’s revenue momentum was strong in the opening months of the current June year. Sales are being built in markets including mobiles and broadband without slashing profit margins, and despite Sensis’ dive, Telstra is holding guidance for low single-digit percentage growth in revenue and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

That’s pretty impressive, because Sensis is in a hole and Sensis’ boss, Bruce Akhurst, looks to be a casualty. Sensis is no longer a direct Thodey report. It has been folded into a new business unit, digital media, that will also hold Telstra’s 50 per cent stake in Foxtel and BigPond, and be run by a new hiring, Rick Ellis, who has been headhunted from his role as chief executive of the New Zealand government broadcaster, TVNZ.

In the year to June this year, Telstra posted a 1.1 per cent rise in revenue to $25.3 billion, and a 12.4 per cent decline in earnings before interest and tax, from $6.5 billion to $5.7 billion. Earnings fell as revenue rose because Telstra invested in its restructuring, and also sacrificed profit margin to drive its market share up in key markets, including mobiles.

Within the result, Sensis was a significant element, even though the decline in the traditional directories business was under way: revenue fell by 6.4 per cent from $1.91 billion to $1.79 billion, and earnings before interest and tax fell by 14.7 per cent, from $1.02 billion to $871 million.

Under Akhurst, one of the people who was in the race to succeed Trujillo, Sensis re-oriented its advertising marketing towards digital media in March of this year. Sensis’ sales force is now working on iPads, and offering small and medium-sized businesses separate or bundled advertising packages covering the print directories and digital media. Supporting services such as web design are also offered.

Akhurst told analysts in March this year that he expected Sensis to post mid single-digit declines in revenue and high single-digit declines in earnings in 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 as it entrenched the new business model.

But the new emphasis on digital is accelerating the decline of the print directories. Customers are switching from print directories to digital alternatives that generate lower profit margins for Telstra. And the Sensis sales force has been tied up managing the migration of existing Sensis customers to the new model, resulting in below-budget sales to new customers, a crucial miss given that Sensis needs advertising volume growth to offset the lower profit margin it will get on digital platforms.

Based on Akhurst’s targets in March, Sensis should be on track this year to post a 5 per cent, $89 million decline in revenue this year. All of it would have been taken at the profit line, so earnings before interest and tax would have fallen by the same amount, or about 10 per cent, to about $782 million. Cost cuts would have clawed some back, producing Akhurst’s predicted high single-digit decline.

But Thodey and Stanhope said yesterday that Sensis’ revenue was now expected to fall by ”high teens”, and that Sensis was also copping margin compression – the outgrowth of customer migration from the print directories to lower-margin online Sensis products.

If revenue declines by 18 per cent, say, that will mean a fall of $322 million and Sensis’ earnings before interest and tax will be down by the same amount, a whopping 36 per cent decline to $549 million, barely half what the division earned in 2009-10.

There will be aggressive cost cuts to try to get some of that loss back, and Sensis has already laid off about 100 employees this month. Thodey has also said there will be a review of Sensis’ business plan.

Thodey knows, however, that in Sensis he is managing a business that is losing its rivers of gold and moving to a lower-margin environment. Before Trujillo arrived in 2005 there was speculation Sensis could be floated off for about $11 billion. Trujillo decided to keep it, but Thodey now says it will be sold if the price is right: the right price is now around $5 billion.

Still, there’s enough upside in Thodey’s reshaping of Telstra to cover Sensis’ retreat, at least for a while. Project New, the effort to simplify Telstra and make it more customer-centric, produced productivity benefits of $662 million in the latest year to June. Two- thirds of the gains came in the second half of the year, pointing to what project leader Robert Nason says will be much higher productivity gains this year. A second phase of Project New should repeat the dose in 2012-13.

A recent report from online work platform Elance, shows that more work is migrating to the tech industry, even including a greater demand for jobs in the cloud.

Unlike the traditional employment market, the number of businesses that are hiring online workers has increased 107 percent in the last year.

Hiring trends from the past quarter include an increased need for those that have skills with 3D multimedia and video, as well as skills in mobile — including a 32 percent increase in demand for iOS skills, a 25 percent rise in demand for those with iPad-specific skills and a 14 percent increase for workers with Android skills.

Additionally, the report shows an increased focus on CRM and customer data, including a 35 percent rise in demand for Salesforce.com experts, a 9 percent increase for SugarCRM and 29 percent increase for Data Interpretation.

According to the report, the top five overall skills in demand include PHP programmers, WordPress programmers, article writing, graphic design and HTML programmers.

Gartner has predicted that by the year 2014, a many as 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies will offer public application programming interfaces (API) as a means of disclosing a range of materials, from media content and product catalogs to commercial transactions and medical records.

An increase in API usage will mean that IT managers will demand more control over how API traffic is managed.

Mashery, a provider of API management technology and services, plans to meet this issue head-on with its annoucement of the Mashery API Control Center, a platform designed for flexible routing and management of global API traffic, both in the cloud or on a site. The platform, which is the first in the industry, is run out of a single, powerful dashboard that provides highly scalable and comprehensive insights into API performance.

The Control Center will allow companies to “mix and match” between APIs run in the cloud and those on other premises based on security, speed and control requirements. This eliminates the need for companies and IT managers “to make an all-or-nothing decision between running APIs in the cloud or behind their own firewalls.”

For each API, managers can choose one of two different deployment options. The first is Mashery Local, a new version of the company’s traffic manager that operates entirely inside a corporate data center under the full control of IT managers. The other is Mashery Cloud, which is made up of two independent, global, enterprise-grade API distribution networks that offer four levels of failover and redundancy. The Cloud networks are operated by Mashery.

Email marketing and list management companyMailChimp has had a busy couple of days.

Donor Tools
On Wednesday, MailChimp announced that its services have been integrated with Donor Tools, an online donor management suite. The Donor Tools package is used by nonprofit entities like charities, churches and various other organizations “to manage the logistical gymnastics of running a not-for-profit enterprise.”

This integration will feature a two-way sync between the two services so that users can efficiently keep current records in both databases, segment lists using Donor Tools tagging and take more control over donor-focused emails.

MailChimp will now be available with any Donor Tools account.

ExpressionEngine
The company will also be integrating its service with Web publishing platform ExpressionEngine to launch a new product called ChimpanzEE. The pairing will make it easy for users to integrate email marketing right into their ExpressionEngine-powered websites. It will provide a variety of new tools and features, such as member subscription and the ability to create and send campaigns, and it can all be done without ever having to leave one’s site.

ExpressionEngine’s tagging system will be the heart of ChimpanzEE; by simply including one EE tag, a user can create sign-up forms that are associated with any of his or her MailChimp lists, incorporate all of his or her merge fields and completely customize the design via CSS.

ChimpanzEE also helps keep track fo list health. Users will get a full analytic look at their lists through built-in reports, including the total subscribers, unsubscribes, new sign-ups, activity levels and engagement.

Other features include basic list management (like adding and removing subscribers) and custom email templates.

OnStage
Finally, MailChimp unveiled the OnStage application, “a collaborative email campaign editing solution.” By providing a single location for MailChimp subscribers to display their email campaigns before sending them out, OnStage streamlines the feedback process to allow “for quicker and closer collaboration between colleagues.” Read More…

By 2015, companies will generate 50 percent of Web sales from social media and mobile applications, according to Gartner Inc.

The future of e-commerce was discussed at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, where it was concluded that since the number of mobile phones is starting to pass PCs, customers will start to use mobile browsers and location-based applications as the main type of interaction.

“E-commerce organizations will need to scale up their operations to handle the increased visitation loads resulting from customers not having to wait until they are in front of a PC to obtain answers to questions or place orders,” says Gene Alvarez, research vice president at Gartner. “In time, e-commerce vendors will begin to offer context-aware mobile-shopping solutions as part of their overall Web sales offerings.”

Furthermore, according to Gartner, 80 percent of North American and European online sellers will expand to other countries by 2013 – including Brazil, Russia, India, Africa, Japan and China. This growth is due to the expansion of the Internet, which has created new sales opportunities throughout the world.

“The increasing availability of access to the Internet via PCs, laptops and mobile devices is creating new sales channels in countries, because entry barriers are lowering, thereby increasing the number of online shoppers,” says Mr. Alvarez. “By entering these countries via an Internet sales model, organizations can establish a presence in locations without having to create a physical sales location.”

It is safe to say that the Internet has created vast opportunities for retailers, which will continue to grow as technology evolves. In addition, businesses should be prepared to take advantage of location-based applications, which provide a new marketing avenue for businesses to push personalized and local content to mobile devices, therefore driving sales both on and offline.

Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution provider CFI Group has announced Online Reporting Studio 2.3, which features various enhancements including deeper analytic capabilities and improved performance.

Features from the updated CEM include better usability such as a scrollable time-option filter, expanded tabbed forms and improved sample management. Other new capabilities include user-defined labeling of KPIs, an exportable priority matrix, word cloud hyper-linking of customer comments with context drill-down, customized charting, user-defined ranges for dashboard dials, as well as performance improvements that are designed to support advanced analysis and a growing user community.

“We’re very pleased about the enhancements in the latest release from CFI Group,” says Robin Gomez, director of consumer insight for GSI Commerce.“The Online Reporting Studio is a critical management tool for understanding how we are performing for our customers.”

Online Reporting Studio is a major part of CFI Group’s CEM platform. It provides clients with access to satisfaction measurements and operational data so that managers can understand the impact of decisions on customer satisfaction and financial performance.

NetSuite OneWorld, the world’s first cloud-based ERP solution for global companies, was updated yesterday with the release of its newest version.

OneWorld is the brainchild of cloud-based financial/ERP software suite provider NetSuite.

The 2011 version of OneWorld includes automated intercompany management to accelerate and increase the efficiency of the “close process,” and it also streamlines compliance with expanded support for international taxation and audit reporting.

“NetSuite OneWorld 2011 delivers slice and dice insight for every user, with real-time OLAP style multi-dimensional analytics, and new SuiteCloud developer enhancements which further enable the mobilization of ERP within global enterprises.”

Among the newest features to the 2011 update of NetSuite OneWorld are:

- Broader international business management

- New global financial consolidation and management features

- Advanced back-office ERP capabilities

- Real-time multi-dimensional analytics

- Enhanced CRM

- SuiteCloud platform support for the latest Web development standards

OneWorld has long been one of the world’s most frequently deployed cloud-based ERP solutions for companies that need to manage complex, mission-critical business processes. Currently, over 10,000 companies and subsidiaries are dependent on NetSuite.

Gartner recently named NetSuite as the fastest-growing financial management systems vendor in the world.

More information about NetSuite OneWorld 2011 can be found here.

Of the five major B2B technology collateral types covered in a 2010 survey of corporate technology decision-makers conducted by Eccolo Media, three showed a significant decline in consumption during the last 12 months, according an[download page] update released in October 2011. Consumption of product brochures/data sheets went down 13%, from 83% last year to 72 percent in 2011, while white paper consumption decreased 22%, from 76% to 62%.

In addition, results of the “2011 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report” indicate consumption of case studies dropped 25%, from 67% to 50%. Meanwhile, the consumption of podcasts and video remained more or less unchanged from 2010 to 2011, with podcasts climbing only 5%, from 40% to 42%, and video holding steady at 59%.

White Papers Most Popular Recent Collateral Discovery

When asked if they had started using any new types of collateral in the past six months, 34% of respondents said no. But among those who had recently discovered a new form of collateral for evaluating technology purchases, the numbers were evenly spread among all content types, both traditional and non-traditional.

Twenty-eight percent reported that they began consulting white papers for the first time in the last six months. Twenty-four percent named company web pages as a new source of information, and 20% cited podcasts. The other seven types of collateral, from presentations (13%) to video (18%), were clustered together so closely that the differences between them were insignificant. Read More…