Do the candy at the supermarket register tempt you? Or perhaps you buy one of those cheap on-sale dvds’  on your way to the register?

Perhaps you are one of the many impulse shoppers that daily keep the online stores alive.

I know impulse shopping it alive in our home. My wife is on maternity leave, so it comes very easy to her. One of her favourite stores, trendybaby.dk, asked their 346 most loyal customers about impulse shopping. 39% of the users are “victims” of impulse shopping.

So why are people impulse shopping on the internet? You can browse the store, but you can’t feel the item or get a sense of it’s quality. Perhaps it’s not the right size for your?

What are the online stores doing to deal with these challenges?

I’ve seen a lot of successful online stores that asks their customers what they want. Dialog is a great way to uncover the needs of your customers.

From time to time my wife gets invited to join their customer panel. It’s a brilliant concept. For a few hundred dollars the store will know exactly what their customers want.

One of the recent panel results show that 37% of the customers, went straight to the store right after they received one newsletter. The analysis also showed that only 1% went to the store after seeing a banner ad or other kind of online advertising.

If an online stores want to succeed, they have to give their customers some kind of experience when they do their online shopping. We aren’t interested in static and boring online shops. Take a look the Lego Online Store. Lego has managed to make the gap between the real world Lego store and online store as small as possible, without ruining it with too many complex options.

I can refer to the post I wrote the other day about online advertising, if you want to succeed you have to use your customer. Let the customer test your product before you put it in your store. Let them tell you what kind of colour, model or product they like. We all like free stuff and it’s an easy way to promote your products.

Amazon.com is probably the best example of a store that knows the concept of impulse shopping.

Do you know other stores?

Do you impulse shop? Are you a part of a customer panel?

According to experts the use of online advertising will increase by 23% in 2008. This is more than 40 billion dollars, but a riot might be around the corner.

Adsense has made Google one most valuable companies in the world and the ads on social networks such as Facebook help those companies make billions each year.

But could all this be in danger?

A new analysis from Deloitte indicates that more and more users are tired of online ads.

Are you one of them? Do you find online ads more annoying than ads in newspapers and television?

A good example is the latest protest against Facebook’s Beacon system. When Facebook users shopped online, Beacon told friends and businesses what they looked at or bought. The latest statistics show that users doesn’t spend as much time on Facebook and MySpace as they used to.

This tendency might turn Facebook and other social network’s ad-goldmine into a nightmare. There might be some light ahead though. According to the Media Summit 2008 in New York, there are other ways of targeting consumers online, but it requires courage.

As you probably already know blogs can circumvent this. If a blog recommends a product on Amazon, you usually don’t consider that advertising. If you let a blogger tell you what they think about a product, it will remove the suspicion towards a product.

But will companies entrust their brand to the users? Brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola spent billions of dollars building a strong brand. Will they allow users to play with their brand and values on YouTube?

The companies will have to redefine their brand and if they want the users to be engaged, they have to let go of their perfect image. This transformation requires a lot of confidence and I’m certain some companies doesn’t want to risk it.

Sources: Media Summit 2008, Beacon protests, Deloitte Report

I’ve previously written a guide to ebooks and audiobooks, but the guide doesn’t cover Amazon’s latest gadget, Amazon Kindle.

In this post I’ll list five facts and five things the Kindle lacks.

People have talked about ebooks for ages, but like hover cars and meals in pills, they’ve never really broken through. I’ve always had a thing for Sony’s Reader, but it’s only available in the US. Perhaps Amazon’s Kindle could be the thing I’m looking for. With access to the world’s biggest book catalog, this could be the first big step towards the ebook revolution.

Read this post and you’ll be the judge.

5 cool facts about Amazon Kindle:

1. Kindle uses the American EVDO network, which is similar to the European 3G network, only a bit slower. Amazon picked EVDO, instead of WiFi. This lets the user buy and download books no matter where you are. There is no subscription fee. A book usually costs $10 and takes from about 10 minutes to 10 seconds to download.
2. Kindle has a very basic web browser in black/white and with no Flash or Java support. If you want to subscribe to magazines or blogs you have to pay extra. $.99 per RSS-feed is the price if you want to read your favourite blog’s RSS feed. Even though the feed is free, you still have to pay to recieve it.
3. Kindle is born with 256 Mb storage, that’s about 200 books. You can expand the storage with SD-memory cards. According to Amazon the text is automatically updated, if there is an error in the book. Kindle can also play mp3s.
4. With it’s white plastic surface the Kindle isn’t a beauty. I’m sure Apple would never create anything like this. However it has the same size as a book and unlike a laptop it’s silent and doesn’t get warm. The 6″ e-ink screen can be read in direct sun light and the battery can last up to 30 hours of reading. Personally I think this is only good for books. I’d hate to read my favourite magazine in black/white.
5. Ebooks bought at Amazon are protected by AZW DRM. This way you can’t share yor books with your friends. The Kindle can also read “unprotected” books in the Mobipocket, txt, html, JPG, Gif or Word-format. You can also copy text from the net straight onto Kindle using USB or email the text to it. If you email text to Kindle it will cost you extra.

And now 5 things the Kindle lacks:

1. No PDF-support. How can one of the biggest book formats not be supported. This is a definitive must in the next version.
2. A black/white screen is cool when you are reading books, but I want colours when I’m reading magazines.
3. Why not combine real books and ebooks? If I buy a real books I should get the ebook for free or at a very low extra cost.
4. Why should I pay to read blogs that people write for free? I’m not going to pay $15 $.99 per RSS-feed. I paid $399 for the Kindle.
5. Who designed the Kindle? A designer that escaped the from the former Soviet union?

So having read this – Will you buy an Amazon Kindle? Are you using another ebook reader?

Perhaps you think ebooks are overrated and just a hype. Let me know what you think.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Amazon’s official Kindle commercial

The Beta News 2 Year Anniversary Contest is now officially over and the winners have been drawn.

A great thanks goes to the sponsors, Lorelle VanFossen, David Airey and Entrecard.

I’ve drawn the winners using Random.org and recorded it with Camtasia Studio. This is my first video, so please be gentle.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Congratulations to:

Erz from Blogodise – Lorelle VanFossen’s book “Blogging Tips”

Laura from Laura Williams’ Musings – Blog Design critque from David Aiery

Emma from ItsWriteNow.com – $100 Amazon gift card

BetShopBoy from Bet Shop Boy – $30 Amazon gift card

Egonitron with a messy blogger HQ – €20 Amazon.de gift card

Indo Contest from Indocontest – $25 cash through PayPal and a The Beta News t-shirt

My Blog Contest from MyBlogContest – $25 cash through PayPal

Vincent Chow from Reviewow – The Beta News t-shirt

Sparky123 from Just Another Contest Blog – The Beta News t-shirt

Once again congratulations everybody and thank you very much for participating!

I hope to see you all around on The Beta News.

In the next two weeks I’ll host the biggest contest ever on The Beta News. Actually it’s the first contest ever here, but who’s counting?!

Now the rules to participate are developed by my twisted brain, so hopefully this will be a contest unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

The rules are fairly simple.

Option 1: Follow me on Twitter. At a random time I will announce a keyword on Twitter and the followers will have three hours to mail it to me. A random follower will then be drawn.

Option 2: Keyword in RSS-feed. Subscribe to my RSS-feed and mail the keyword to me. Send the “secret” word to contest (at) thebetanews.com.

Option 3: Blog about the contest or The Beta News content. Write a blog post about the contest, or one of the sponsors, or one of The Beta News posts (for instance one of the Show Me Your Desktop interviews) using relevant anchor text like “celebrity blogger interview, problogger interview or blogging advice”. Another example could be my post about why virtual worlds are the next Web 2.0 money maker. Anchor text examples here could be “Web 2.0 and virtual worlds”, ” webkinz and clubpenguin.com is a money maker” or something similar. Basically anchor texts are links that features keywords about the post being linked to. Remember to Stumble your post and if you think it’s really good, submit it to digg, sphinn or other sites.

Remember to post a link in a comment in the contest post. I will Stumble your post as well. I can only encourage you to Stumble other contestants posts too.
Option 4: Take a picture of your blog “HQ” or desktop. Take a picture or a small video of what your blogger HQ, desk or computer desktop looks like. Post it in a blog post and link to this post.

Each part gives you an extra chance to win the big drawing on day 14.

Complete one or more options. Each option gives you an extra chance in the final drawing. All drawings are made by random.org.

And now for the prizes:

• Lorelle VanFossen’s book “Blogging Tips – What bloggers won’t tell you about blogging” sponsored and signed by Lorelle VanFossen. You won’t find better tips and tricks about WordPress and blogging in general anywhere else. Lorelle is the blogging expert. Visit Lorelle on WordPress.
• David Airey from DavidAirey.com and Logo Design Love has kindly taken some time out of his busy schedule and is sponsoring his design expertise. David will give the winner a critique of his/hers blog with suggestions and improvements. David has been my “go-to-guy” on several blog design occasions and he was the first to refer me to Brian Gardner. His latest blog , Logo Design Love, is all about his passion for logos.
• Entrecard.com has kindly sponsored three Entrecard Featured Status – This means you get a golden border around your Entrecard for a week. Great way of getting more attention. On top of that, Entrecard also sponsor three Fast Passes. With a Fast Pass you can jump to the top of an advert request.
• One Amazon.com $100 gift card
• One Amazon.com $30 gift card
• One Amazon.de €20 gift card (to make the Euros happy)
• Two $25 in cash through PayPal
• Three The Beta News t-shirts with logo and everything

If you feel like sponsoring a prize, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

The contest starts now and ends Friday, 22 February 2008.

Good luck everybody!

PS: If you like The Beta News, please go ahead and Favorite it on Technorati.

The Beta News 2 year anniversary contest is about to kick off. In order to make the contest even more exciting I’m hoping to offer my readers and future readers some extraordinary cool prizes.

I’m therefore looking for some prize sponsors to make this contest as thrilling and interesting as possible.

The contest is planned to run over two weeks with a random drawing once per week (perhaps more often depending on the number of prizes). The big prize, which has yet to be determined (right now I have a $100 Amazon gift card) will be drawn on day 14.

The contest will be divided into several parts.

Part 1: Follow me on Twitter. At a random time I will announce a keyword on Twitter and the followers will have three hours to mail it to me. A random follower will then be drawn.

Part 2: Keyword in RSS-feed. Subscribe to my RSS-feed and mail the keyword to me. Again depending on the number of prizes, I’m hoping to have someone win every third to fourth day.

Part 3: Blog about the contest, a prize sponsor or The Beta News content. Write a blog post where the entrant must write about the contest or one of the prize sponsors or one of The Beta News posts (for instance Show Me Your Desktop) using some anchor text.

Part 4: Take a picture of your blog crib or desktop. Take a picture or a small video of what your blogger HQ, desk or computer desktop looks like.

Part 5: Each part gives you an extra chance to win the big drawing on day 14.

I will submit the contest to the 20+ contest blogs I know about. Write about it on Connectedinternet.co.uk and get as much link love from contacts as possible. The contest will be mentioned on my Entrecard and on as many social network sites as possible, without spamming of course. I still have a reputation to think of.

Prize sponsors will also get as much link love as possible from this modest Page Rank 4 site and from the entrants.

If you are interested in sponsoring me, please use my contact form or contact me on dbp (at) thebetanews.com.