A couple of months ago I received a telephone call from one of my clients telling me that their website had been copied by a competing company – I thought I’d follow it up this weekend and to my surprise, the copycat website is still live.
To some their life would be empty without it, while for others it is something to avoid like the plague.For those who are already au fait with the likes of Facebook ,X and My Space , you will know how easy it can be to spend hours on end joining obscure groups or seeing what that shy, yet strangely attractive, old school friend is up to nowadays.
Whilst The British Retail Consortium (BRC) this week warns that high street spending is down, it seems that there is no stopping the rise in online shopping. The BRC reports that March’s figures for high street spending were the worst since July 2005, when bad weather hit sales. The results have confounded expectations that this year’s early holiday period would boost the High Street.
We’re a nation in love with e-shopping! Come the London Olympics, online stores will also be going for Gold. Right now, we’re shopping for England (and for Scotland, Wales and Ireland) when it comes to buying online – out-shopping our European neighbours. Online sales in Britain raced ahead to £12.8 billion last year, placing us in gold medal position in the e-shopping league.
John Willman, Business Editor of the Financial Times approached me for comment on the relationship between British business and Gordon Brown’s Labour government.
What’s going on with British business? Can the UK economy really be struggling? With PwC’s global survey of CEO’s revealing an upbeat picture the FT asked me for my views.
Following my attendance at the ‘Future of Europe’ seminar hosted by the IoD in Brussels in February, I was invited by the Institute to contribute to an article on doing business across borders.
Like many people here in the UK I spend a lot of my time driving to meetings, the shops and generally getting around. I tend not to touch public transport unless I’m going to London in which case I’ll catch the GNER or a plane. But the recent Downing Street petition against road pricing got me thinking, so here’s my two cent’s on the subject.
It’s been one of those slow weekends where I spent a lot of time playing with search engines and wondering what’s coming around the corner for us in the world of search.