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corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Although there are many different types of corporate blogs, most can be categorized as either external or internal.
An internal blog, generally accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. Many blogs are also communal, allowing anyone to post to them. The informal nature of blogs may encourage:
-employee participation
-free discussion of issues
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collective intelligence-direct communication between various layers of an organization
-a sense of community
Internal blogs may be used in lieu of meetings and e-mail discussions, and can be especially useful when the people involved are in different locations, or have conflicting schedules. Blogs may also allow individuals who otherwise would not have been aware of or invited to participate in a discussion to contribute their expertise.
An external blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases, though a corporate blog often tries to accomplish similar goals as press releases do. In some corporate blogs, all posts go through a review before they're posted. Some corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be made to the posts. External corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools. Certain corporate blogs have a very high number of subscribers. The official Google Blog is currently in the Technorati top 50 listing among all blogs worldwide. Marketers might expect to have product evangelists or influencers among the audience of an external blog. Once they find them, they may treat them like VIPs, asking them for feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer services audits, etc. The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. The informality and increased timeliness of information posted to blogs assists with increasing transparency and accessibility in the corporate image. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.
One of the famous e-commerce website in Malaysia is AirAsia Airline ( www.airasia.com ). Many people do not know that AirAsia was develop in Malaysia and is one of the public held companies. Airasia is one of the budget airline which focus on online ticket booking rather than having counter selling ticket in airport. Thus, it creates convenient for customer that can access to internet and also save up their cost to set up counter in airport. Let’s take a review on the feature of this website – www.airasia.com.my
TYPE OF PRODUCT
AirAsia is not only offering flight line for customer in one-way and return through online. The website also allowed customer find out Flight + Hotel which means customer can both booking for flight line and hotel together. This has brought a lot of convenience for people who plan for travel by comparing what time to go and return and what hotel to stay based on the rating, price and number of people. Besides, AirAsia also provide their superior services which is high accuracy on flight time. On the website, customer can easily select the place they depart and destination which they prefer to go. It cover a lot of country such as China, Indonesia, Australia, Brunei, Hong Kong and so on.
SITE DESIGN AND LAYOUT
In the left hand side is the place for customer to choose whether to book what type of ticket ( One-Way or Return) and choosing the depart and destination. It also allowed customers to choose what is the date to have flight. And AirAsia also have member system which enable customers to sign up and booking their ticket online to keep their privacy. The member system also can help to advertise by sending promotion in newsletter to customers. In the up site of the website is Navigation of the webpage. Middle part is the promotion current provided by AirAsia. Most of the color using by AirAsia is red color and it has become the represent of it’s image.
AVAILABLITY OF SEARCH ENGINE
AirAsia also having search engine in their website which is on the right up corner of webpage that bring convenient to customers to find out what they want to. Besides, another important search engine in AirAsia is search for the flight time and line when customer choose on the date and place of depart and destination. AirAsia will provided flight time to customer and the price on that time. On the other hand, speed of searching and downloading the website is very fast. It just take around 30 second to display the webpage.
NAVIGATION
The navigation available in the webpage as well which located on the upper site. It include convenience service which can bring customers to Bookings details, Flight Info, Product and Shipping, Travel Services, Corporate Services, About Us and Help Info. All of this details can bring customer to different webpage to satisfy customers need. For examples, checking out the flight info about where is the destination that AirAsia provide and check out the Help Info for FAQ (Frequently Ask Question). All of this are almost related to customer services. Customer can check out the payment system that provided by AirAsia so that customer can easily make booking through internet.
In conclusion, all of the feature that having for an e-commerce website is very important. First of all, must let customers know what product or services is available on the website. Second is having a well structured site layout that easily for customers to navigate and find out more information. Search engine is important for customer to compare the price.