E-COMMERCE
iVenus to offer on-line share trading
04-10-2000
by Joe Lynam
Irish women's portal iVenus is set to launch an on-line stock trading facility on its Web site in the coming months.
The Smurfit Group-owned site, launched earlier this year, will provide the service as part of a new financial package, executive director of operations Paul Cash told ElectricNews.Net at the Internet Show 2000 in Dublin on Wednesday.
"We already provide a hotel reservation service to our customers with Clickandgonow.com. We will move to announce an on-line flight reservation service soon as well as personal finance and on-line share trading on the FTSE and ISEQ indexes," said Cash.
iVenus also launched a new shopping service as part of its continuing expansion programme. Products now available on the site, which attracts 1.4 million page impressions per month, include menswear, gifts, baby goods and accessories.
iVenus.com is visited by more than 90 percent female users and has targeted the growing female Web market. Female Web usage is at 60 percent of the total market in the US and at roughly 50 percent in Ireland.
"We have targeted and are getting ABC1s," said Cash. The typical user, he claimed, is between 22 and 35 years old, which is the ideal demographic profile for on-line credit card sales.
iVenus.com is partnering with Tridion and iLux from the USA to provide full solutions to companies in terms of software and content design as well as Web site creation and management. All three companies are represented at the Internet World 2000 trade show in the RDS.
iVenus.com, which employs 22 full-time and 38 part-time in Dublin, is ranked 24th in the latest Medialive figures for most visited Web sites in Ireland and creates 500 pages of original content every week.
iVenus.com's new e-commerce features are powered by Bank of Ireland's Clikpay system and include products from both on-line and high street stores such as Brieflook.co.uk and McCabes Pharmacies in Ireland.
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