Internet News & Views

Sell safely online.

2009-06-10T15:02:00.001+01:00

With the Internet becoming an ever more popular place to shop, we’re looking at ways to make that experience as safe as possible. In last months issue we looked at points to note to make it safer for you when you purchase items on line. This month we look at how to make the selling process safer.

Taking the step to sell online is a big decision for most companies. Cost is usually the biggest factor - although getting a professional and reliable web-based shop is, by far, the cheapest way to get a 24/7 presence - and security the next.

In addition to a website, you’ll need an online merchant account and a payment gateway before you can sell online. The merchant account allows you to get the cash into your business and the payment gateway manages the card verification process. Some services like Paypal offer an integrated account but fees can be higher than separate accounts so you’ll need to look at your product ‘ticket prices’ and the number of transaction and then work out the best arrangement for your business.

For the vast majority of businesses, selling safely online means reducing your risk of taking a payment from a fraudulent (generally stolen) credit card. If you are a very large company that has thousands of client records saved on your severs, you will also need to take precautions against identity theft as personal details are of great value to online fraudsters.

A purchase fraud against a vendor invariably involves using a stolen credit card to get a product shipped to the fraudster for them to then subsequently on-sell for cash. The vendor will, at some point, need to refund the fraudulent transaction and will have already shipped the product, therefore losing out on the cost of the shipped product.

Knowing the type of fraud you can expect can help you take the appropriate precautions for your business.

The first stage is to correctly set up your payment gateway to reduce the risk of accepting fraudulent cards. In general, the tighter the security checks you specify, the lower your risk of getting a fraudulent transaction. However, the tightest levels can also risk you rejecting valid cards and losing a sale. The biggest issue here is 3D secure. Payment gateways recommend that this protection is enabled but few customers either have this enabled or can remember their password.

When you have received a sale, the most important factor in protecting you business is to be vigilant. If it’s only one person running your website, this is relatively simple, if it’s a team, make sure that they are all trained to notice the obvious signs and to be wary of strange looking orders. The top points to look out for are:

Buyer location. Some Payment gateways identify the physical location of the buyer at the point the transaction was completed, often referred to as ‘IP address location’. If this is not the UK and you are only shipping to the UK, then beware the transaction.

Delivery and billing address: Fraudsters will not get a product shipped to a card holders home so if these addresses are different, there maybe an issue (there may also be legitimate reasons for this such as shipping to a second home).

Unusual order. If an order is an unusual mix of products or sale value, think before you ship.

If you do suspect that a transaction is fraudulent, don’t panic; You’re very unlikely to lose anything until a product is shipped. Contact the card issuer to see if the card has been reported stolen and also your payment gateway provider to check if there have been any other occurrences of the card being fraudulently used.

Ultimately, selling online need not be any more open to fraud than selling through a traditional shop. Remain vigilant and aware and keep up-to-date with notices provided by the banks and police. If you are ever in doubt, ask advice.

Are you a Twit?

2009-05-11T18:59:00.002+01:00

... we're referring, of course, to the colloquial name for those who Tweet on Twitter.

We've been doing some playing and testing on twitter and can today announce that we too can be followed on twitter.com.

Twitter is a kind of micro-blog and a great way to share snippets of information (tweets) with your customers. As well as posting tweets through being logged into your account, you can text and email updates and can even post photographs through services like tweetpic.

Go and check it out and, if you need more information, follow our tweets or get in touch.

Google Chrome taking hold

2009-04-06T15:54:00.003+01:00

Although Internet browsing experience is dominated by Internet Explorer and Firefox, Google Chrome is showing signs of starting to take hold. If you have a pc and want to try a different browsing experience, go and download your free copy of Google Chrome.

There are some neat features including an integrated url and search box. If you browse web pages with a lot of Java script, Chrome also makes the experience super fast. Some early stats are showing that as many as 1.5% of users now use Chrome. Go and take a look..

How Search Engines Work

2009-03-26T20:15:00.001Z

When it comes to finding information, and promoting your business, Search engines are the most important aspect of the Internet. The best-known, and most frequently used, search engines are Google, Yahoo! and MSN and, in the English speaking world, these account for around 95% of the monthly searches.

Search engines allow you to find documents and resources on the web by matching your search keywords with the closest, and most important, matches in their database.

The easiest way to visualise a search engine is to think of it as a traditional card index system where records are kept alphabetically. All search engines work in much the same way and they are based on three main pieces of software

1. The Spider
The spider ‘crawls’ the Internet, moving from site to site, collecting information about each and every page that it visits. Spiders have to visit billions of web-pages every hour so they tend not to spend too long on each site. They collect information about the content of each page – words and pictures, which sites link to each page and to where each page links.

2. The Index
The Index organises all the content that the spiders collect and files it into some structure so that it can then be easily retrieved. The more information The Spider can collect about a certain web-page, the more chance The Index has of correctly filing that page. Search engine indices are massive with the Google index alone containing an estimated 25 billion pages.

3. The Search
The Search is the consumer facing interface that all Internet users are familiar with. It’s the simple looking rectangular box where you type your search query and then ‘web search’. The Search function matches your search query against pages listed within the search engines index, ranking the most appropriate phrase first, the next second etc.

There is a further search engine functions that is responsible for the growth in Google from being a small search engine started by two mathematicians to being a Fortune 100 company in less than 10 years. This function is the Pay Per Click search where you can pay to be at the top of search results for your chosen key search words. We’ll take a look at Pay Per Click in more detail in a future article,

This explanation is a massive simplification of a hugely complex machine that processes billions of web pages in a fraction of a second every time you do a search. If you run a business, getting towards the top of search results for your search terms can mean the difference between make or break.

Great Quote

2009-03-17T21:01:00.001Z

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others - Blaise Pascal

Get Found, Be Seen

2009-02-14T12:45:00.000Z

The old saying ‘you have to be in it, to win it’ has never been so appropriate as when referring to wining the search engine game. With typically 80% of the visitors to any website coming from search engine referrals, if your website is not ‘in’ their index, you won’t get those crucial referrals.

Building your website so that it is search engine friendly is a specialist skill and you should talk to your web-developer about it to make sure that they have done the best they can for your website. For reference, the process of making your site as attractive as possible is called Search Engine Optimisation, often abbreviated to SEO.

Once your site has been correctly constructed, you can help a lot by writing interesting and unique content for your website, and then regularly updating it. The more relevant, unique and changing your website is to your project or business, the more interesting it is to search engines to have in their index. Then you are more likely to get referrals from them with people looking for the service or product you are providing.

You can also help yourself by getting other people to link to your site. Links from other sites to yours act as a positive vote in your favour and, the more votes you get, the better your chance of winning.

These activities will help your website appear in natural or organic search engine results listings – the list of results you see when you do a search. The more you can do to keep your site fresh and to get large number of links from other sites, the better your chance of appearing towards the top of these results.

Optimising your site is a process that can take many months to achieve and a lot of effort to retain. In the interim, there is another option that you have; buy your way to the top.

You’ll notice within search engine results that there is a narrow right hand column next to the main left hand column. These are paid for listings and you can place your business in these positions for phrases that are relevant to your business.

It costs nothing do be on the list and you only pay when someone clicks on your advert, hence the term Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. This method can be a cost effective way of buying visitors to your website and you only get visitors for the searches that you want to be found for. You specify the words that you want to appear for (keywords) and the amount you are prepared to pay for a click (click bid value).

Let’s look at an example. Say your business sells pet accessories; you may want to get some visitors looking for a ‘brown leather dog collar’ and you’d be prepared to pay 20p per visitor (much cheaper than the cost of a stamp and brochure). When someone types the phrase ‘brown leather dog collar’ into search engines, your advert will appear and, if they then click on your advert to visit your website, the maximum you’ll pay is 20p. As you can specify which keywords you want to appear for and the budget you want to spend, you have complete control over the type of visitor you attract.

Getting found in search engine listings is crucial to the success of running an online business. An effective online campaign will have a mix of optimised searches and PPC advertising. One thing is sure, the more effort you put in, the more you’ll get back: another old adage that still applies in the digital age.

(Article originally written for Out and Out Magazine)

Happy Birthday Apple Mac

2009-01-24T08:44:00.002Z

The Apple Mac was first shown to the world 25 years ago today and a computing revolution began.

There's always the debate amongst 'techies' as to which pc systems is the best; Microsoft based or Apple based. Whichever camp you're in, there's no doubting the simplicity of operation of a Mac, the reliability of the applications and the fun element associated with them.

The Mac converts amongst us will never go back. We love our Macs, in all their shapes and forms and we wish you a very happy birthday.

What can we expect on-line in 2009?

2009-01-01T20:42:00.001Z

Looking forward and forecasting what's likely to happen in a sector that's still growing faster than any other is always a risk but we're going to stick our neck out and suggest the following areas to look out for.

Yet more etail.
The continued growth in on-line shopping at the expense of traditional retail is a trend that is expected to continue well beyond 2009 and the credit crunch is likely to further accelerate this trend as consumers shop around for bargains.

If you're a business owner, you should take advantage of this by making sure that your products are available on-line through a well designed and managed website. The Internet is very often a buyers first point or research and businesses are now expected to have an on-line presence. If you have a website, great, just make sure that potential new customers can easily find you. If you don't have one, you'll be losing out on the inevitable continued growth.

If you're a consumer, shopping on-line has never been easier or better. Shopping around for bargains is easy, quick and safe - just make sure you keep to safe sites and follow safe shopping guidelines.

More interaction.
The World is becoming smaller and more accessible every day and it's not uncommon for us to have a network of friends spanning the globe. Social media sites make it very easy and enjoyable to keep in touch with friends wherever they may be. If you've not experimented with these sites, we suggest you have a go. The main sites make it easy to open an account and are free so you have nothing to lose by trying them out.

Spams, scams and viruses.
On-line accessibility inevitably brings with it the crooks that seek to cream off a percentage of sales, hack into your computer and steal personal information or seek to take control of your computer with bad intentions. As more and more people use the Internet for personal tasks like shopping and banking, the greater the risk to consumers and the greater the prize to the hackers. Hackers will not go away so you need to take care, be alert, keep anti-virus and spyware up-to-date and never open suspicious looking emails from people you've never heard of.

More mobility.
Data transfer was the largest growth area for mobile 'phone operators in 2008 and that came from more people using mobile devices to gain access to the internet and email. Apple are now the world's third largest mobile phone manufacturer (by sales) and Google believe that revenue from mobile media advertising will reach $1.8bn by 2012.

These changes in the way that we access and use the Internet have become possible thanks to high-speed data services like 3G and always on, always present devices like the iPhone and Blackberry. Small screens make complex surfing awkward but new applications are being launched daily that change the way that we access the Internet and email. Next time your near a mobile 'phone shop, pop in for a demonstration of the newest devices and imagine the future as portrayed by the Star Trek communicators.

More fun.
Widespread, relatively cheap, broadband access has allowed gaming manufacturers to develop applications that allow multi-player games to take place all over the world. Sony and Microsoft are slugging it out at the hardware level with their Playstation and X-box products and you can now play against another player in Japan as easily as someone sitting next to you.

But it's not just gaming applications that benefit from this technology; we've had music downloads for years and the service is now extending to video-on demand services so that we can watch any film we want, when we want to watch it. For a glimpse of how this can work, take a look at bbc.co.uk/iplayer. It's currently only available for programs that have been televised during the past 7 days, but it's only a relatively small step to cover any program that's ever been broadcast, or any film.

The applications for the Internet really are only limited to developers imagination and budget. For us consumers, it offers a virtually unlimited list of activities that are, one the whole, free and safe to use. It's never been a better time to surf the 'Net and to try out new services. For 2009, go and have a play!

Article originally written for Out and Out Living Magazine. January 2009

Social Network Bookmarks

2008-12-30T09:34:00.001Z

Adding a social network bookmark makes it easy for you, and your blogs readers, to bookmark and share content. For convenience, we've added this facility to our blog in general (see bottom right menu below Atom feed) and also to individual blog postings.

Shopping more popular than church this Xmas

2008-12-25T19:14:00.005Z

Firstly: Merry Christmas everyone!

A recent survey concluded that more people would be shopping online today, Christmas Day, than will be going to Church!

With retailers trying harder and harder to get their sales figures up, consumers will benefit with some retailers starting their sales as early as last night! The survey continued that the total value of online sales today, in the UK, would be £103m, up from £80m for Xmas day 2007.

Highest retail sales day of the year

2008-12-20T22:31:00.002Z

Today, the last saturday before Christmas is forecast to be the highest spending day of the year. Forecasts estimate £750million will be spent in retail outets across the UK.

Five things to do, online, over Christmas.

2008-12-11T20:11:00.000Z

The Christmas break is a great time to take stock of life in general and to try and learn a few new things with less time pressure that usual. Here’s a handful of things to try online:

1. Google yourself, your friends and your exes!
With more than 10 billion web pages in its index, the chances are that there’ll be a reference to someone you know listed in Google. If there’s not a specific reference you yourself, you may well have a namesake living somewhere else in the world. If there is, drop them a note, they’ll more than likely be pleased, or at least curious, to hear from you. You can extend your search to friends, work colleagues, old school mates and even exes, you’ll be amazed what you can find out!

2. Get Flickr’ing.
Most people now own, or have access to, a digital camera (nearly all mobiles have one these days) and have thousands of digital images clogging up their computers’ hard-drive. One of the joys of photography is sharing your photos and memories and flick.com is a great place to do it – and it’s free!

You can create your own online albums, upload images to them and then share them with the world. Guests who view your photos can also comment on them and you can get some great feedback on what’s great about your pics and how they can be improved.

If you fancy yourself as a critic, you can also comment on other people’s photos. Flickr.com has an estimated 4billion photos that should keep even the harshest critic busy for a few days.

3. Get a new Notebook.
We’re not talking about a new laptop here but referring to a great online service that helps wean you off post-it pads and start using a digital version instead. www.evernote.com lets you post notes, pictures, videos, screen-shots, web-pages and just about anything else you can think of to an online site that allows you to retrieve your notes wherever you have internet access, including your mobile. And it’s free!

The concept of saving ‘post-it’ notes online takes a little thinking about but once you’re over that, you’ll ever go back. You can organise notes into different notebooks – home, work, projects, hobbies etc and tag them (e.g. articles, shopping, technology) for easy searching, retrieval and amending. If you have mobile Internet access, try the mobile application, it’s great for capturing your notes and thoughts while on the go.

4. Entertain yourself with Youtube.
We’ve all spent hours over Christmas watching reruns and boring TV but with Youtube there’s no longer any need nor reason to get bored. There are more hours of entertainment uploaded to Youtube every day than the movie industry produces in a year. You can watch everything from the latest X-factor contestant to an explanation of how a rocket engine works, and you can watch it when you choose to watch it. So if there’s nothing that grabs your attention on the TV, power up you PC and have a surf around Youtube. You will be amazed as to what people will film themselves doing!

As a bit of fun, if you email you favourite Youtube link to youtube@webnetmarketing.co.uk, we’ll publish our favourite online for the next edition of Out and Out Living.

5. Check out the sales.
Shopping online has always been about bargain hunting so, for the sales this January, don’t get up early and camp outside in the pouring cold rain; log-on early, grab yourself a nice cup of coffee, turn on your pc and surf in the warmth and comfort of your own home.

‘Etailers’ (online retailers) know that people want to enjoy the sales online and often provide early notices for their registered customers. Get registered for advance notices and get a lead on the other bargain hunters.

For many people, Christmas can often be a long and arduous forced break. However, with so much happening online, it could also be educational, entertaining and profitable.

Nadolig Llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda

Google alerts!

2008-12-02T08:00:00.002Z

If you have a special interest, a hobby or are involved in research in any way and you want to keep on top of what's being posted on the internet, Google alerts is the service for you.

Let's say your area of interest if 'weight loss'. When you sign up to Google alerts and enter the selected phrase 'weight loss', Google will notify you, by email, every time it finds a new page with reference to your keyphrase. It saves you hours of researching and keeps you bang up-to-date with what's being published on the Internet.

Give it a go. It's free!

Google's Keyword Tool

2008-11-24T17:11:00.002Z

Following the demise of the Overture keyword tool, that many people used as their starting point for keyword research, there has been a distinct lack of some suitable, free, alternative.

Well, that's all changed now; enter Google's search based keyword tool. It currently looks and functions a bit American centric but it's a great starting point and we're sure that, with the UK being Google's second largest market for their Adwords program, a more UK centric version will become available soon.

Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé

2008-11-20T08:19:00.003Z

The third thursday of November every year announces "Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé".

It's a remarkable marketing story that dates back to 1951 when Georges Duboeuf saw the marketing potential for selling a lot of 'vin ordinaire' at a decent profit and, in the process, help the cashflow of wine producers who would normally not be able to release their new wine for sale until the 15th December in the year of harvest.

After a relaxation of these release rules, Beaujolais Nouveau was born and since George Duboeuf's first race to Paris, the event has an gathered an International following with annual events organised to get the first bottles afar a field as North America and Asia.

In 1985, in keeping with the marketing opportunity afforded by the event, the official release date was changed from 15 November to the third Thursday in November to take best advantage of marketing in the following weekend.

Barack Obama Does Social Media

2008-11-18T20:25:00.002Z

There are many many stark differences between George W. Bush and Barack Obama and one of interest to us here is their embracing of technology to communicate directly with people; or not, as in George W's case.

Whereas George W allegedly doesn't even have a pc in the oval office, Barack Obama has launched a weekly broadcast, on Youtube.

Obama made good use of the internet and modern technology throughout his election campaign using social networking sites, like Youtube, Twitter and facebook to get the vote out. Rarely seen without his BlackBerry, Obama now has a Youtube channel; http://uk.youtube.com/barackobama and he seems determined to follow a former US president, Franklin D Roosevelt, who boadcast his weekly message to the electorate by radio.

Retail or Etail?

2008-11-11T15:55:00.002Z

Retail sales figures published today show the extent that traditional retail is failing to attract and retain consumers.

Retail sales in October 2008 were 2.2% lower than 12 months ago. If you couple this to a 3% rise in prices over the same period, the real fall is more than 5%. Like-for-like sales have now fallen in seven of the past eight months with every sector down on a year ago (except food and footwear).

Compare this with online sales where etailers have seen a year-on-year growth of more than 16% and, with the Christmas boom-time still to come, it looks like being another good year for those businesses that sell on-line.

A quick poll earlier today of our etail customers suggests the main reasons for the growth in etail sales at the expense of traditional retail are:
1. Consumers looking for a bargain
2. Convenience of on-line shopping over retail
3. Growth in reliability of on-line stores.

We'd also add the fact that there are no limited shopping hours, no pressure from pushy shop assistants and the comfort of your home is much nicer than braving the aweful weather we're having this year.

Do you do ecommerce?

2008-11-05T08:03:00.003Z

We had an enquiry the other day from a prospect asking if we 'did' ecommerce sites and what would it cost?

It's virtually impossible to price a development without knowing what you're going to develop so I started to ask some starter questions; what would they be selling, target customers, forecast volumes, product options and accessories, shipping rules...Nothing too taxing, you wouldn't have thought.

No answers were forthcoming so I helped them through a few points to think about that I subsequently realised maybe of some general interest.

Visualising your online shop as a bricks and mortar shop can help you think through what you want to achieve and how you're going to achieve it. With a traditional shop, you'd think about what customers see and think when they walk into your shop; what products you'd show them, how you'd stack shelves and group products, how would you up-sell accessories, what additional products would you have on display at checkout, what payment methods would you accept and how would you entice the customer to come back and buy some more.

The same thought process needs to be applied to an online shop. Thinking through these points will give you a better feel as to what you want to achieve and will help any developers to give you what you want in the most cost effective and efficient manner.

Free Office Software

2008-10-30T10:34:00.007Z

For those looking for a real alternative to Microsoft Office as a wordprocessor/spreadsheet/presentation/database application, the newly released OpenOffice 3.0 is a fantastic product. And it's FREE!

The user interface is far neater and cleaner than Office (in my opinion), it's a genuine all-in-one application so moving data and content between functions is just neater and it's now available for Windows and Mac operating systems.

If you're hesitant about switching, try the two in parallel for a while and see which you prefer. OpenOffice can import and save Office documents so you won't have any issues with other people opening documents that you have created.

If you want to be picky, there is no integrated email and web-browser but Mozilla Thunderbird and Firefox are equally free and equally as good (better in some ways).

Go ahead and give it a go. It's free, so what do you have to lose? If you feel guilty about downloading free software, you can always make a donation to keep the development going...

Ever tried a podcast?

2008-10-29T18:25:00.003Z

No longer just a geeky way of listening to 'new marketing gurus', podcasting is easily accessible to the masses, is fun, and allows you to listen/view what you want, when you want to.

What is a podcast? A podcast is a series of audio or video files that are distributed over the Internet through Web feeds, to portable media players (like ipods) and personal computers.

Unlike Broadcasts, that send out a radio or tv programme at a pre-determined time, podcast can be downloaded and listened to or viewed at any time. All you need is a computer and Internet access and you can choose and download, mainly free, programmes to listen to at your leisure.

If you have a portable media player, you can listen to these podcasts wherever you are: at home, in the car, on the beach. Anywhere.

We'll be looking at podcasts and podcasting in more detail. When you've tried them and got the benefits, you'll be hooked.

Thoughtful stuff

2008-10-28T14:56:00.003Z

Blogging has come a long way and there are some great bloggers out there that are happy to share their wealth of experience and knowledge with you.

One such person that I've recently come across is David Meerman Scott and his blog at http://www.webinknow.com. David knows a lot about how to use the 'net for marketing and PR and I'm currently working through his book 'The New Rules of Marketing & PR'. I'll post a review when I've worked my way through it.

It takes some self belief to put your name and personal brand out on the Internet. David has done so very successfully and his blog and books have some great tips that can help you and your business. Go and take a look..

We'd love one each. Please.

2008-10-27T20:50:00.005Z

Sometimes, something comes along that you just need to get your hands on. Mobile browsing is very much in vogue but a pc in a phone is just too much of a compromise for me. To enjoy the Internet, you need a screen and a keyboard. So that you can see and type.

This little fella has been about for a while and, in it's latest form, it really does look the must have accessory this Xmas. If anyone feels generous and would like to send some our way, please feel free to do so. If you just want to read more about a fabulously useful gadget, look no further than here.. http://pocketsurfer.co.uk/

Kerry Katona's YouTube fame

2008-10-24T08:50:00.004+01:00

I know that Kerry has enough fame and she has loads of media interest but this week's interview with her on This Morning and the subsequent YouTube activity is worth a mention.

It's difficult to get viewing figures for This Morning but estimates are around the 2million viewers (please do let me know if you have more accurate information). Whether Kerry was drunk, drugged up or just sleepy is not the point here, you can read gossip mags for that story; what's interesting to me is how quickly the interview appeared on YouTube and then the subsequent growth in viewing figures.

This Morning broadcast the interview on 22.10.08 and, within hours, the first clip was published on YouTube. A quick scan through YouTube results indicates that there are over 50 other postings of the same interview.

When I came across it on YouTube yesterday morning, the day after the broadcast, the total number of views for the clips on YouTube was around 100,000. I have just checked again this morning and the total views total over 3million! That's 50% more people than may have see the original broadcast.

If you've not seen the interview yet, here's a link to one of the postings : Kerry Katona on This Morning. At the time of publishing this blog, the views for this post stood at 1,026,762.

Another great example of content on demand and the power of viral marketing.

We love iPlayer

2008-10-23T10:21:00.002+01:00

For those of you that haven't come across it yet, BBC iPlayer lets you view previously broadcasted programs at your leisure, when you want to to watch them.

For those with busy lifestyles or bad memories as to when programs are broadcast, it is, on the whole, a great service. Some people have criticised the user interface and others the fact that programs are only available for 7 days.

But is this not just being massively critical?

We take our hats off to the Beeb for launcing and developing this service and it gives us a real glimpse as to what WILL be the future of content delivery. If the service is extended to archive content as well as current programs, we'll trully be entering the age of any content on demand.

For anyone not had a chance to view the future yet, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ and get yourself hooked.

Free Notebooks

2008-10-22T14:09:00.002+01:00

You know, the web is just a great place to get lots of free stuff and one of the best I've come across recently is giving away Free Notebooks.

We're not talking laptops here we're talking online notebooks, a place where you can store all your really useful notes, comments, web pages, screengrabs, photos and just about anything else that you like really and you can then access those notebooks from anywhere, pc, mac, mobile..

The site is evernote.com and you can get going in minutes. You have a massive monthly allowance and can upgrade to a pro-service for $5 a month. Just try the free one and see how you go. I'm hooked, let me know how you get on.