Apple Store defies US slump
The Apple Store is bucking the U.S. recession by continuing to perform well, key online-shopping research shows.
Nielsen/NetRatings Holiday eCommerce Index shows that Apple's traffic grew by 71 percent, year on year, attracting 17,642,000 visitors in November and December 2001. The results place Apple fifth in the table of top U.S. ecommerce performers.
The survey rates e-tailers by the number of shopping trips made to e-commerce Web sites. It doesn't record consumer spending.
Traffic
PC manufacturers enjoyed an increasingly profitable Web presence, attracting more online shoppers than ever. HP attracted 26,067,000 visitors, 53 percent more than last year.
Amazon's traffic grew 49 percent, attracting 198,822,000 visitors, against 133,197,000 in the same period last year.
However, in related news, research from Jupiter Media Metrix shows that just 30 percent of online retailers responded to customer-service requests within six hours in the December 2001 quarter.
Jupiter's analysts found that poor online customer service cascades across channels. According to a November 2001 survey, 53 percent of consumers are less likely to repeat-purchase from a retailer's offline store if they had an unsatisfying experience online. Just three percent said a company's online service would have no impact on future purchases.
Macworld.co.uk
Symantec Backup Exec 12 and Backup Exec System Recovery 8 deliver industry leading Windows data protection and system recovery. Download this whitepaper to find out the top reasons to upgrade and how to get continuous data protection and complete system recovery.
Data and system loss — from a hard drive failure, malicious attack, natural disaster, or simple human error — can happen anytime. Don’t leave your business vulnerable. Make sure you have a secure recovery strategy in place. Symantec's latest backup and system recovery technology can efficiently restore critical applications, individual emails and documents and even restore your entire system in minutes in the event of a loss.
Businesses face a growing challenge to ensure that the IT environment is properly protected. Backup Exec 12 integrates with other applications in the Symantec family of products, to complement your current data protection strategy, keep your data securely backed up and make it recoverable when you need it most.
