Benefits Of Rss In Ecommerce

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML-based format for content
distribution. News, information, enterprise applications and weblogs (blogs)
can all be published in RSS.
When a new article is posted or a change is made to an application, RSS
feeds can automatically notify the user. Text, images, audio (including
podcasts) and video can be incorporated into RSS feeds.

RSS feeds can help keep you up-to-date on news, information and blog posts,
making you more knowledgeable and productive, both at work and at home.
According to Technorati as of March 2006, there are more than 30 million RSS
feeds available. Most mainstream news and information sites publish RSS
feeds.

There are a number of different use cases for RSS since both internal
(enterprise applications, blogs, reports) and external (industry news,
competitive information, blogs) content can be delivered as feeds. In
particular, many businesses see benefits by not having to periodically check
Web sites for key updates or wade through traffic on e-mail distribution
lists. In addition to increasing knowledge and productivity, RSS feeds can
also be used for brand monitoring, crisis communications, internal/executive
communications and competitive intelligence.

Media Companies and Other Content/Information Providers, RSS feeds offer
readers, visitors and customers a convenient way to read and access their
information. RSS feeds can also be incorporated into Web sites to offer a
more personalized and rich user experience, strengthen the brand and
maximize revenue opportunities.

To view RSS feeds, you will need an RSS reader or aggregator.
There are a number of free or low-cost online, desktop, mobile and
Outlook--based readers available. To leverage RSS for a large number of
users inside of a company, you will likely need an RSS server to handle
security and scalability issues, centrally manage users and groups and
present a common interface. To aggregate RSS into an external Web site, you
will also need a server-based solution, either hosted or customer-premise
based.

RSS and ECOMMERCE

Many online retailers like NewEgg.com are utilizing R.S.S.
feeds to keep there customers coming back. If you visit NewEgg.com you will
see R.S.S. icons near the sites' products, with messages offering users
regular updates on those products.
Once a user has indicated a preference for, say, LCD monitors or daily
specials, he clicks on the icon telling the company to send the alerts to
his personalized page.

If the user directs NewEgg.com to deliver alerts to a My Yahoo page,
NewEgg.com will send the alert, typically an item description with a photo,
only when it has a new product or a promotion relevant to the specified
items.

Customers might not expend the energy to surf through all the merchandise to
find items of interest each time they visit. But R.S.S. is a way to
basically position highly relevant interest in front of consumers.

Retailers who are employing R.S.S. feeds are ahead of the curve, but not
unreasonably so. It's still a little too early for this to catch on widely,
but as something for the future, it can be incredibly rewarding and
potentially very lucrative for retailers.

If you are interested in more information about RSS for your company,
Bizatomic boosts your site optimization by creating RSS feeds containing top
search engine keywords and adding them to your website. Placing
"keyword-targeted" feeds on your webpages will greatly enhance your ability
to achieve optimum keyword density. A news feed is preferable to a search
engine feed for SEO because news feeds are updated more frequently.

About The Author: BizAtomic - http://www.bizatomic.com