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In 1961 President John F. Kennedy gave America a tough goal. In the now famous speech he told the assembled Congress that before the decade was out America would land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth. It was an inspiring speech and it captured the imagination of every American, whether they believed the task was possible or not.

One of my favorite stories, and I am sure you have heard it, is about the time President Kennedy visited NASA. During one trip he came across a cleaner, and asked him what his job at NASA was. The cleaner replied "My Job is to put a man on the moon, Sir."

Now I don't know if the story is true, but it's inspiring. In a facility full of high-powered individuals and great minds, even the cleaner was completely on board with the strategy.

While we may not be planning to put a person on the moon, we can learn a lot from the story. It may sound ridiculous, but our businesses need to be a little like NASA. Every organisation needs to have a clear goal. It's been said that blessed is the man that aims at nothing as he always hits his target.

Distilling this further, there are two clear things every individual within your business should know: what is your strategy and what will it take to get there?

In a previous life I spent 15 years working for various huge multi-nationals. The largest employed 150,000 people worldwide. At the time I was a 16 year old apprentice, just learning my trade. I didn't know what the guy sat next to me did, let alone the core aims of the business. Not understanding how you are benefiting the greater good of the business is disempowering and inefficient, and doesn't lead to commitment.

At my present company, Actinic, our goal is very simple. We want to be the market leader in our chosen field. It's an ambitious aim, but to achieve this there are four values driving everyone in the company:

• Being friendly and approachable
  
• Providing good value
  
• Providing excellent quality
• Being innovative

Now our goals are not just a bunch of soundbytes we dreamt up over lunch. They are the result of working with, and talking to, the team. Everyone in the business has had input, everyone's opinion is valued. Having a defined set of values and goals is incredibly liberating. It helps with every business decision we need to make.

Now we are far from perfect. Working within our business is not a wonderful Utopia, but there is participation, and the goals are clear for everyone.

I think the need to know what you're aiming for applies to every business. So, how about yours, is Mars your next stop, or is it the next town? One thing's for sure, if you don't know, you won't be getting there soon.

By Ben Dyer. First published in www.businesszone.co.uk

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I love the internet; in the last 50 years has there been a more important development in the history of business? People compare the net to other important media developments, such as the printing press, the TV or radio. Wrong. The internet is bigger than all of those put together.

For business the internet is the ultimate leveller. For the first time we have a platform that allows the small guys, the spare room businesses and entrepreneurial spirits to compete with the big goliaths. And competition generally has intensified. As a software and services provider I can tell you it has forced the entire industry to up our game radically.

The internet makes it much easier to find all of the products and services you need to start a business. Much of your business can be run online and you can even access cheap but talented resources from across the world. When your product or service is ready, you can let the world know too.

Ten years ago I recall working for a mammoth international TV and media company that invested millions of both time and money into its billing and subscription platform. All it wanted to do was ensure no matter how or where you subscribed, it all came into a single system. This wasn't rocket science, but at the time it was complex to stitch disparate software and web systems together, and it came with a suitably horrible price tag.

The internet has turned this problem on its head; you don't need a million bucks any more. There are hundreds of free or low cost solutions available to help you run a startup professionally.

My own company, Actinic provides functionality out of the box for controlling multiple retail channels (e.g. web, shop, phone, mail). Ten years ago this concept wasn't even around. Today you can buy standard applications and services at a commodity price.

So, this is a very exciting time to be starting a business. The tools are out there for you to create both great products and services. For once you don't need an IPO to afford them.
What are you waiting for?

By Ben Dyer
Originally published in http://startupdonutblog.co.uk/

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The customer may always be right, but are they the right customer?

One of the customers of my company was incredibly picky about how their business wanted to use our software. We are a mass market, low price supplier and we've sold tens of thousands of products and services, so we normally can't make changes for individual companies who typically pay a few hundred pounds each. However, this particular customer was very persistent. So one of our product managers contacted them, spent ages discussing their requirements and subsequently we agreed to make some changes. Responding in this way was exceptional and it cost us much more than we could ever make in sales from the particular guy.

But this customer isn't at all grateful. In fact, recently they have become even more critical, and have continued to cost us more in support than almost anyone else. Would it have been better if we had said "no" in the first place?

Without sounding too critical, the customer in question doesn't appear to be particularly successful, and I'm sure it's not a coincidence. If someone can't understand the business needs of their suppliers, they probably don't know how their own customers tick either.

Some clients are very demanding, and whatever you do they are never satisfied. I'm not talking about customers upset with poor service, who need helping. Nor am I talking about customers that need a lot of handholding. Nor about customers who buy the wrong product, who should have their money returned. I'm talking about customers who fundamentally don't understand the trade-off involved in human and business interactions.

Although the circumstances I've described are rare, they aren't unique. My guess is that this applies to maybe one in two hundred customers. The cost in time and demoralising impact on staff makes it more difficult to give good service to everyone else. As a result, I am coming to the conclusion that for this small minority, we would do better to suggest that they do business with our competitors!

It's critical not to provide our customer service team with any excuse for bad service, so there are some dangers in adopting such measures. However, applied incredibly carefully to a very small minority, surely it's time to review the relationship with this sort of customer?

By Chris Barling. First published in www.marketingdonut.co.uk

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I have to admit I find Yahoo one of the most frustrating online companies I have ever encountered. However, I also consider it the biggest innovator, and that's the frustration. The labs division of the company produces many fantastic products and services, yet only a small percentage of these ever get air time.

The latest product to come from the Silicon Valley beast is Yahoo Neighbors, a mashup between local search and social networking. Currently only available in the States, Neighbors is in effect a message board for local communities. If implemented correctly, this will provide a fantastic real time view of "the word on the street" to Yahoo searchers. I think a good description for this is "the conversation layer".

Having spent some time playing with Neighbors I have to say it's brilliant. Its contents are categorised into sections that really matter locally, such as business recommendations, education and even restaurant reviews. While we may discuss how social networks and presence management are essential for business (and they are), often the same thinking doesn't translate for local businesses. This is where Neighbors could potentially help. Small businesses could exploit the service in numerous ways, from basic exposure, to the creation of a "linked-in" style authority status, but at a local level.

Yahoo Neighbors is pretty awesome, and the concept of the conversation layer doesn't just apply to the larger and more web savvy businesses. This is a service that seems to bridge that gap between large and small extremely well.

I just hope it's not another bright idea that gets stifled due to lack of business support from the big Purple. Oh, and I also hope that it eventually finds its way over the pond to us!


By Ben Dyer. First published in www.marketingdonut.co.uk/blog/

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You may recall back in January a scheme by Belkin employee Mike Bayard was found out. Bayard used Amazon's Mechanical Turk (a site designed to hire workers for online tasks that can't be automated) to recruit people to provide positive reviews of a Belkin product. Bayard was offering 65 cents per positive review as well as asking reviewers to down-rate any existing negative reviews.

For Belkin this was a PR disaster of the highest order. Popular blogs such as Engadget and Gizmodo pounced. Amazon even suspended Belkin listings for a short period. However, to Belkin's credit it did post an official apology within 48 hours and it did appear to be an isolated incident.

The Belkin case, and the others that have come to light, illustrate that online review systems have both become important and dangerous for companies selling across the web. Product reviews provide a critical element in the decision-making process for consumers. Research recently carried out by one of the UK's largest electrical retailers has revealed that reviews have increased conversion rates by up to 14%. The retailer selected three products and randomly served site visitors a page with or without reviews over a five month period. The results were conclusive; the products with reviews experienced a significantly higher conversion rate.

Further research by Jupiter has also demonstrated the effectiveness of customer reviews. In a recently conducted study, 97% of UK consumers indicated their willingness to trust reviews, with two thirds of those asked agreeing that they play a significant part in selecting a product or supplier online.

However, it's worth remembering that customer reviews can take many forms from a comment and rating system (such as on Amazon and eBay) to sponsored blog posts and even fake product blogs or "flogs".

According to the blog index site Technorati, there are approximately 100,000 bloggers using their sites to indirectly generate income and an elite group earning enough to make it a full time job. Companies such as Chitika.com, ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com are supporting the growth in blogging as a business by connecting bloggers with companies willing to pay for reviews.

The model generally works in a similar way to PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. Bloggers write product reviews, embed images and links and are paid a small amount each time a visitor is passed to another website of the product, often an online affiliate.

By Ben Dyer, Development Director of Actinic. First published in www.businesszone.co.uk.

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The two most common complaints in business are that no one asked me and no one told me. While, in my experience, it's impossible to ever fully eliminate these complaints, making a concerted effort at addressing them can lead to a big boost in team morale.

As a manager, I feel that if I don't tell people what's going on, I can't complain if they fill in the gaps with negatives. And if they don't feel that their input is taken seriously, they will become de-motivated and probably work less hard, as well as putting up with things that frankly, they should be screaming about.

In fact, listening is the key to continuous improvement. I do try to practice what I preach and I interview all staff, including those in junior roles, on a regular basis. It doesn't take all that long, it's amazing what you find out, and the very act of listening leads to a big improvement in morale.

Another angle that we have tried is to hold a series of workshop sessions with all staff whenever we review our strategy. These enable us to get useful input on the broad thrust of the strategy, and identify many of the potential pitfalls. It also means that we communicate and get buy in as we go along. By the time the strategy is completed, everybody is on board and starting to act on it. This is hugely better than a brilliant strategy done by outside consultants but that sits beautifully documented but largely untouched on the shelf. With that sort of strategy, you wonder a year later why the business isn't really following it, and why it faces resistance at every turn. The lesson is that it's important to explain where you are going to everybody even when you are a small company.

In most businesses, money is not a great motivator, but can certainly be a great de-motivator. So it's important to try to be consistent in how you reward people, and also to explain pay policies so that there is a degree of buy in. Sometimes, it may be better to reward with bonuses rather than pay rises, as rises institutionalize pay differentials in ways that may become unfair over time, They can't easily be unpicked and when discovered will destroy morale.

Motivation is a funny thing, and is pretty hard to achieve. I hope that some of the ideas here will stimulate your further thoughts.

By Chris Barling, CEO, Actinic. First published in http://startupdonutblog.co.uk/.

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Fraud is the curse of any e-commerce operation and it seems the scammers will try anything to rip you off, from supplying someone else's credit card details to claiming refunds on allegedly incomplete deliveries. Chris Barling explains how you can go about combating fraud in your online retail business.

It's easy to prevent fraud. Just don't ship any orders. This somewhat silly statement perfectly illustrates the problem with web fraud. The challenge is not simply to reject suspicious orders, it's to find the right line between fraud prevention and losing good business.

Not all online merchants suffer from fraud, as the incidence varies greatly between different categories. With known-buyer fraud, the buyer tells lies about the product they received in order to get free goods by charging back the cost or demanding a full or partial refund. With straight fraud, you are dealing with an unknown person who is using stolen card details.

Measures to combat online fraud

The big change in the last few years has been that banks have started to take online fraud seriously. There are now a range of services such as address verification service (AVS), CV2
(the code on the back of the card) and 3D Secure (also known as Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode) . Banks have also introduced the payment card industry data security standard (PCI DSS) which tries to make it more difficult for scammers to acquire big treasure troves of card details.

Alongside this we have seen the rise of independent anti-fraud services like The 3rd Man , which now checks more than 20 million online payments a month, claiming to detect around 97 per cent of all fraud. Actinic has recently integrated The 3rd Man into its payments service.

How can small firms prevent online fraud?

The approach adopted by a merchant really needs to combine the technical weapons in the armoury with some sensible internal policies.

With a policy-based approach, you should be defining what to do when fraud is suspected, which in turn may be flagged by technical indicators or orders over a certain value. Contacting the buyer by phone or email can be very effective, as may asking for details of "the order". If the fraudster has placed multiple orders, they won't recall a particular one very easily and they don't want to talk to the merchant anyway.

A second line of defence can be adopted if the merchant is still uncertain of the genuineness of the order. Simply ask for payment by an alternative means, such as cheque or even a different card, which would need to have the same billing address.

In order to implement these checks, you need a payment service provider that supports them. So make sure that your payment provider supports 3D Secure, AVS, CV2, preferably one of the independent fraud checking services and of course is PCI DSS compliant. When you have these services up and running, mention them on your website as they boost trust.

It's a fact that there can be a gain competitive advantage by controlling fraud. When we are all struggling to increase sales by small margins, getting the fraud percentage down while rejecting few good orders can provide a small but genuine edge.


Originally published on www.marketingdonut.co.uk

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In the second of a two-part series, Chris Barling, CEO of Actinic, shares his top tips for successful online selling.

11 Make arrangements for the shipping of orders
Shipping is not as difficult as you might think, because there are many specialist firms to help. Many ecommerce merchants ship abroad without any problems. The big boys are UPS, Fedex, DHL and ParcelForce, but there are many others. Ask for advice from local businesses that also ship goods.

12 Be legal and decent
Like most aspects of business, ecommerce has its share of red tape and regulations. Any slip-ups are there for the world to see, so it's doubly important to be legal and decent. The following five tips try to cover some of the areas that you need to consider and understand. They are not definitive – but they are a good place to start.

13 Comply with the EU Distance Selling Directive
Under the EU Distance Selling Directive, you must make clear who you are by providing full contact details, including an address and phone number. This is also good practice for building trust. Under the same Directive, you must accept goods for return for any reason within seven working days. Why not make this a selling point?

14 Get your tax right
If you are VAT-registered, you should charge VAT at your usual rate when selling within the EU. But if you exceed the individual VAT threshold for Germany, France, etc, you should charge VAT at the appropriate national rate when selling to that country. Non-UK business customers in the EU who are VAT-registered in their own country should be allowed to quote their VAT registration number and be exempted from tax. You don't have to charge VAT when selling outside the EU.

15 Allow for visitors with disabilities - it's the law!
You are required to take 'reasonable' steps to provide access to people with disabilities - and this includes your online store. In particular, all images should have alternate text ('Alt') tags so visually impaired people can navigate your site.

16 Privacy matters
You will need to register with the Data Protection Registry. Registering takes a few hours of work and thought, but it is essential.

17 Comply with the rules on sending email
You may only send direct email marketing to individuals who have explicitly agreed to receive it. If you obtained their details in the course of a sale or sales enquiry, however, you may communicate with them by email unless they opt out. You must include an 'unsubscribe' option or email link in every email. Make sure you implement opt-out requests.

18 Turn burdens into a benefit
Assuming that you are legal and decent, let the world know. Anything that adds to your credibility will help online. Why not list everything you have done to comply with legal and tax requirements?

19 Avoid fraud
Fraud is a potential problem when selling online. But don't get things out of proportion. No one has managed to eliminate shoplifting yet, either. Unfortunately, some countries generate more fraudulent orders than others. If in doubt, stick to orders from Western Europe and North America.

To help avoid fraudulent orders look out for these indicators. They tend to:

• be big orders and use the most expensive shipping method
• choose the most expensive products
• use free email addresses

Good payment processors, provide a great range of fraud indicators. You should contact buyers suspected of fraud, because rejecting genuine orders is obviously a bad idea. Most fraudsters give up at the first hurdle and you don't hear from them again.

20 Go for it
You may be wondering whether ecommerce is really worth it. Thousands of online businesses are convinced that it is. Ecommerce is a growth industry and online sales are rising rapidly, while conventional retail is, at best, static. What's stopping you getting your share?

Did you miss part one of this feature? Read it now >>


First published in www.startupdonut.co.uk/

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First class set of tips!

# posted by  fimo : December 5, 2009 7:10 AM

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Christmas underpins profitability for the whole year for most stores. When it comes to preparing for the Christmas season online, "the early bird catches the worm" as they say. Before you know it, the rush to service orders has replaced any consideration on how to optimise sales. Here are some seasonal tips from Actinic and some e-store owners to help you get ready.

Prepare marketing ideas early
Whatever your Christmas marketing plans, run some small-scale tests soon. Establish what works, and refine it. If search engines matter to you, optimise in plenty of time.

Keith Milsom at www.AnythingLeft-handed.co.uk advises, "We plan ahead for promo emails to various customer groups as they take a while to prepare. We also boost PR with a press release in September."

Can you handle the extra traffic?
If there is anything worse than having no orders, it's having more than you can handle. This just produces dissatisfied customers.

The average etailer gets 30% more orders in November/December. Make sure you can cope with the increase. This includes web hosting, and extra staff for packing.

Bill Stevenson of www.spicesofindia.co.uk advises ordering extra stock and advertising for temporary staff in September. "Last December visitors fell, but conversion rates tripled. We ran out of many Christmas gift sets and could not get new stock. This year we will order a lot more."

Sort your logistics
Make sure your logistics supplier can cope. To avoid missed deliveries, let customers select delivery to their work address.

Robert Johnston of www.gentlemans-shop.com adds, "We email customers their parcel tracking details and confirmation of delivery date. This dramatically reduces calls about deliveries."

Seasonal promotions
"Don't be a bah-humbug! Decorate your site and get into the Christmas spirit," says James Auckland at www.lunaspas.com.

Find creative ways to mark the season. Put gift ideas on your home page, and stock Christmas-themed items. Remember to change the pages on Boxing Day.

Last minute shoppers
Cite a final ordering date for Christmas delivery on every page - highlight when the deadline has passed. You'll need different dates for home and overseas orders.

Drop customers a reminder email, e.g. must order by end of tomorrow for delivery outside Europe.

Customers in a rush
Most online shoppers are in a hurry, particularly at Christmas. Help them out with a search capability that can match by category and price. Text-based searching is no help when you want a gift for less than 10 for your eight-year-old niece.

Another aid for rushed buyers is a gift-wrapping service. It can also increase your margin.

Upsell to maximise the opportunity
Where gifts need additional items such as batteries, ensure they can be ordered together. Suggest similar gifts, and incentivise extra purchases with offers like 'buy two and get one free'.

Thank regulars
James Auckland again: "Thank your suppliers, as well as your regular customers." Good supplier relationships can help resolve problems. Consider offering discount during January to suppliers and good customers.

Keep a sense of humour!
Robert Johnston once had an irate customer repeatedly phoning on Christmas Eve, "about the delivery of his father's missing present. He accused me of 'ruining his Christmas'. Just as we closed, he called to apologise. His sister had signed for the parcel, and dad's present was already wrapped and under the tree."

Advertise January sales
Plan your January sale early. It gives 'value shoppers' a chance to clear all that dead stock for you.

Finally, book a well-earned rest for February. You will probably need it. Just beware of tour-operators trying to up-sell you to something more expensive!

By Chris Barling
Originally published in http://startupdonutblog.co.uk/

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I was recently reading online about the activities of a competitor. The person making the post was complaining that when they had made some (in their opinion highly justified) criticism of the organisation on the company forum, their posts were deleted and their online store was cancelled. Hardly great customer service.

While this example is pretty appalling, it's very easy to be tempted to behave in a similar way. None of us like to hear negative things, particularly if they reflect badly on us.

While there are some negative people around who always see problems with everything, there is also rarely a disaster where somebody wasn't pointing out the problem in advance. The Bernie Maddoff fraud? The Securities and Exchange Commission in the US was tipped off years ago. Financial Crisis? It was all predicted by many people. For an example try searching for "Peter Schiff was right" on YouTube. He foresaw the whole pack of cards coming down and was laughed out of court for his pains.

None of us like to be criticised, but the critics frequently hold the truth that we lack. It's a sad fact that there are some constant naysayers around, and they may have to be ignored. However, we dismiss all criticism on that basis at our peril. If that's us, our egos are probably getting in the way.

If we want to be really successful in business, we need to be open to criticism, especially from our customers. As well as exposing specific problems that need to be fixed, customer complaints are a great opportunity to learn and improve. They should not be buried away and forgotten, but analysed. That way the negative becomes constructive, and we will improve performance as a result.

In my business life, I've tried hard to listen to criticism and adjust what I do in its light. It's not always been easy, but I strongly believe that I'm a better business person as a result. Surely there's no better motivation than that.

By Chris Barling, CEO, Actinic. Originally published in www.businesszone.co.uk/blogs/chrisbarling/ecommerce-amp-beyond/embracing-criticism

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Chris Barling, CEO of Actinic, shares his top tips for successful online selling.

1. It's about product - not technology
Internet technology enabled the whole ecommerce revolution to happen, but focussing on technology will never bring commercial success. Normal business rules still apply when you go online. You must provide things that customers want to buy on the web, at a price they can afford. Then tell them about it. Simple as that.

2. Marketing, marketing, marketing
To help customers find you, you need to know how they are searching. What are the key phrases they use to search for your type of product? Use them prolifically in writing your web pages. What other ways do customers search? Talk to people and try to find out. These sites can help you: http://www.searchenginewatch.com, http://searchengineland.com, and http://www.webmasterworld.com (look under 'Ecommerce' and 'The Marketing World').

3. Market offline
It's true that all of your prospects are online, but they spend more time offline. You need to consider whether traditional marketing such as PR or direct mail can help. Sometimes the answer will be no, but you can't afford to assume that. Somewhat ironically, my own company built initial awareness almost exclusively offline.

4. Build trust
Buying online is impersonal and involves a lot of faith. How does a visitor know that the goods they ordered will arrive? Reassure them as much as possible, for example, by having a good photograph of you, your staff or your office on the 'About Us' page, and join at least one merchant accreditation scheme, such as ISIS, TrustUK or SafeBuy.

5. Remember your existing customers
Once you are up and running, remember that existing customers are your best customers. Use special offers to encourage them to visit your site - keep them informed of what you are doing. And try a loyalty or affiliate scheme.

6. Use proven technology
Use technology that works, not something that's a work in progress. As an ecommerce vendor, I must admit to a degree of bias, but why bother debugging software from a start-up or paying thousands for a bespoke solution that leaves you reliant on the designer? Use a package that is already working on thousands of online stores, one that is in constant development.

7. Sell from the second they arrive
Once someone arrives at your site, the selling should begin. Leave the smooth talk out, and show them your products. Don't ask them to register before they can browse. There will be time to get their name and address once they decide to buy.

8. Make sure your site works for you, not your designer
The Direct Line red telephone continues to be used because it works - however irritating it is. The same principle applies online. Don't let a fantastic design spoil your business because, for instance, it takes so long to load that people just click away. Make everything the servant of the business objective – to make sales.

9. Get a good online payment provider
You need to be able to take payments online, and it makes sense to team up with a good one. There is a list of good UK payment providers at www.actinic.co.uk/services/occs.htm. Check out who offers as service to spot fraudulent payments.

10. Sign up with a good hosting company
Your online store needs to be hosted somewhere, and there are plenty of great deals for good, low-cost web hosting. Type "Web Hosting" into Google to get a list. Personally, I'd recommend using a hosting specialist, rather than a jack of all trades.

Originally published at www.startupdonut.co.uk

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• How can social networking through Twitter, Facebook etc benefit your business?
• Social networks allow entrepreneurs to track down their target customers
• Using the websites you can also improve your sales and customer service
• But it's important that you listen to what your customers are telling you

I'm sure you've heard about social networking websites. Chances are even better that you're on a social network yourself, especially as you consider that Facebook alone has 250m active users. Putting that into perspective, if Facebook was a country it would be bigger than the UK, France, Germany and Italy put together, and growing at about one million users per day!

This is a staggering level of growth. The average Facebook user has 120 contacts and 5 billion minutes are spent on the site each day worldwide. That's a lot of socialising.

So, how can businesses use social networking effectively? In this article, I explore some of the possibilities for leveraging social networks in order to build sales and improve customer relations.

So, what does this mean today?

Obviously social network sites give users the ability to communicate with each other and share information, but they also enable users to find like-minded thinkers. In contrast to traditional communication tools, it's much easier to expand your network with relevant people, or communities based on mutual interests. These communities have brought an almost unparalleled amount of power to individuals. It potentially heralds a seismic shift from company to consumer.

The growth of social networks demonstrates that business can no longer rely on the traditional mediums of print, TV and radio. Whether it's to sell, support or market products, enforcing the company view of the world has become a whole lot harder.

However, it's not all bad news. Used correctly social networks can become a real business enabler, helping you to find and identify current and future customers and respond to problems quickly and effectively.

Find your customers

The first thing any business needs to do is research. No doubt you already know, but social networking can be a time sink. Researching using the medium takes real effort, so make sure this effort is concentrated in the right place. Check your demographics and find out if your customers use social networks, and if so which ones? Chances are they are on Facebook, but don't forget LinkedIn, Twitter or FriendFeed. Ask customers what they use.

Don't talk, listen

Once you have found your customers sit back and listen. Social networking is renowned for its real time opinions, use this to your advantage and employ search engines to find people talking about you or your company. Even better take it a step further and listen for your competitors' names, or search phrases that relate to your products or services.

Depending on the size or type of business you're running there will be a lot of information, often too much. The challenge is to identify the wheat from the chaff and to capture good information in such a way that it benefits your business.

When you do talk, be smart

A person's online social space is sensitive; respect it by being smart and polite. You wouldn't expect to barge into a normal conversation with blatant advertising, and social networking is no different. Instead, join in the conversation and offer advice that's practical. Within my business we actively spend time helping customers. We direct people with queries to our own online resources such as our knowledge base and advisory articles.

Realise the potential

Social Networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and FriendFeed are brilliant for asking questions. The open nature of these communities allows for anyone to ask, view or respond, so the potential for sales is obvious. Once again it's important to play by the rules. Companies such as Ford and Dell do this incredibly well, building relationships and being proactive. Helping with enquiries boosts the perceptions of your brand, or service.

The key is to remember the connected nature of social networks, recommendations prove to be the best type of sales lead and social networks can act like a mega phone for both praise and condemnation.

Despite the obvious opportunities, many sales professionals I talk to remain very uncertain about social networks. While it's true that traditional sales methods don't always apply in this brave new world, it's important to remember the art of a good sales team is to identify and leverage the next competitive advantage. It may feel like it is taking focus away from core sales activity, but social networks allow both a greater insight into a prospect and an alternate method of communication. When I receive a cold call I am instantly put out. However if I am introduced via a common contact I am much more receptive.

Summary

It's important to realise that web-based social networking is not a black art; it's really about common sense. Often the first hurdles to be overcome can be one's own preconceived ideas. If your business is still questioning the relevance, let me ask a question: Do you want to be part of, and influence the conversation that's already occurring about your market place right now, or do you want to be left to one side? If you engage, sales will follow. If you don't, your competitors will be making the running.

Benjamin Dyer is director of product development for Actinic


Originally published on BusinessZone, Wed 02/09/2009

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I was reading some research recently which indicated that 60 per cent of Online Retailers do not know if they are currently PCI DSS compliant.

So I thought it was worth explaining why PCI DSS is important and how you can achieve compliance, and highlighting this and some of the other security measures provided with Actinic Payments.

PCI DSS
PCI DSS addresses security concerns in relation to the storage of payment card data. It is a single standard supported by all major players including Visa and Mastercard.

Three factors make PCI DSS compliance important for your business:

• PCI DSS compliance is compulsory for all merchants who accept card payments.
• You must be compliant whether you handle, process or store payment card details, on computer or on paper.
• There are severe penalties if card information is compromised as a result of non-compliance.

You can become PCI DSS compliant in one of two ways.

1. You can become compliant yourself. In practice, this is rather complicated, difficult and expensive.
2. You can have your customers and staff enter card details only into sites and systems supplied by a third party who are themselves PCI DSS compliant.

If your buyer enters card details into a page of your own web site, your web site must be PCI DSS compliant even if those details are passed to a compliant payment processor. This is because any compromise of your web site could lead to a rogue third party being able to acquire the card details.

Using Actinic Payments ensures that all servers where you or your
customers key in payment card details are PCI DSS compliant. The Creditcall infrastructure (which powers Actinic Payments) has been accredited by qualified assessors to the highest possible standard available under the PCI DSS scheme.

3D Secure
3D Secure is the online equivalent of Chip and PIN. Buyers are required to enter a password whenever they use their card online. The password is sent directly to Visa (Verified by Visa) or to Mastercard (Mastercard SecureCode) for approval or rejection.

Just as a Chip and PIN card can't be used without a pin number, a card protected by 3D Secure cannot be used without the password. The banks are so confident in the system that they accept the risk even if the cardholder claims not to have taken part in the transaction.

Actinic Payments is fully compliant with the 3D Secure standard.

The 3rd Man Fraud Prevention
The latest release of Actinic Payments also provides automated fraud screening by the 3rd Man for every order you receive.

The 3rd Man is Europe's leading fraud screening company. They automatically check card orders against a wide variety of factors and provide a simple red or green traffic light to indicate whether an order is safe or not, together with supporting data.

Video Presentation
If your company is serious about online protection for your customers' data, you will benefit from this short video presentation of Actinic Payment and its integration into the Actinic ecommerce range:
http://downloads.actinic.com/Payments-Flash/actinic-payments-demo.html.

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Now that the Bank of England has announced, to no-one's surprise, that the UK is 'probably' in a recession, there is even more pressure on businesses to get prepared. During the downturn, selling online should become even more attractive. There are a number of reasons why the internet is the best place to do business in a recession.

1. Lower costs
   It's possible to start selling online for just a few pounds, and the degree of automation means that running costs can be kept to a minimum as well.


2. Continued growth
   In contrast to the high street, the online sector is still growing. Year on year growth in UK online spending was 15% in September, and is expected to continue at that level right through the Christmas period (IMRG).


3. Global reach
   The internet enables businesses to connect with a far wider audience, offering the potential of greater reach, greater market share and increased sales. Even language need not be a barrier, because English is the most widely used language of the web, and English language sites are read and used by people all over the world.


4. Presentation
   The internet enables even a very small company to present itself as though it were much larger. Admittedly this is an advantage for scammers, but it's also an advantage for genuine businesses looking to gain the confidence of online shoppers.


5. Targetting
   The internet is particularly good for niche businesses and highly targetted marketing campaigns. Through cultivating relevant web links and focussing on search engine marketing, you can attract highly targetted visitors to your site at relatively low cost.

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Google has certainly caused a flurry of excitement with it's new Chrome web browser. But could this be their opening salvo in an all-out war with Microsoft?

Here's why I think it could be.

Google Chrome's multi-processing feature, which enables misbehaving web processes to be isolated and closed without shutting the whole browser down, is potentially quite useful when surfing; But it's of far greater use, and probably indispensible, for running web applications. And who is the current king and major exponent of web apps for the average user? Well surprise, surprise - it's Google! In fact, Google openly touts the provision of desktop shortcuts for web apps as a key feature of Chrome.

If Google Documents and Spreadsheets is ever to supplant Microsoft Office as the business application of choice, something like Google Chrome was necessary and inevitable. So forgive me for thinking that this is it's true raison d'etre.

Google and Microsoft have been sniffing around the periphery of each other's businesses for some time, but this is the first time that Google has taken on one of Microsoft's core applications head to head. It will be interesting to see just how far they can go with it.

The one thing Google still lacks in its portfolio is an operating system. Oops, I almost forgot. The first mobile phones running their Android OS are coming out this year. And Google co-founder Sergey Brin has already indicated that elements of Google Chrome will form a key part of Android in future(http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10031318-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20).

So Google now has the capacity to cut Microsoft right out of the mobile party.

Both Chrome and Android make use of Apple's open-source Webkit; and Chrome also uses elements of the Firefox code. So Google have already hung their flag on the open-source mast. Adapting Android for the PC would be a huge development - but could we yet see a version of Linux with a Google-built front-end, to take on Windows on the desktop?

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Will Actinic integrate the inline preview with Chrome? The multi-thread handling of process could resolve a lot of speed issues compared to using the IE engine

# posted by  Anonymous : December 23, 2008 7:36 AM

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For online businesses in general, and online marketing in particular, web analytics is one of the most important things to know about. Even a free analytics package such as Google Analytics can give you crucial information about the performance of your site and how to improve it - which can make a significant difference to the bottom line.

One of the most-used statistics that analytics provides is the 'bounce rate'. If you're not familiar with the jargon, a bounce is when a visitor arrives at a web site, views the page they land on, then leaves without clicking through to any other page. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who bounce.

A bounce can indicate many things, from a poorly designed web page to a mis-directed search, and every site will experience them. The question is, what bounce rate ought we to expect? Unless you know what's reasonable and what's unreasonable, it's hard to know what a bounce rate of x% actually means.

So I did some searching around and came across this very useful survey that produced some average bounce rates for different types of site:
http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/03/typical-bounce-rates-survey-results.html

The writer doesn't indicate the sample size or how the survey was conducted, so I don't know how scientific it was. But it's definitely better than no information at all.

Our site has a bounce rate of around 47%, which is average for its type. Average is not really good enough for us, so there's still work to do. But knowing roughly where we stand helps me to set realistic targets, and to prioritise the work against other tasks that offer more (or less) promise for improvement.

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I think it is important to know your traffic, how it is finding you and which pages they have visited on your site, this helps you to improve your site and your bounce.

# posted by  affiliate marketing : September 23, 2008 5:53 AM

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Traditionally the use of video in marketing has been quite costly and beyond the range of most businesses. But YouTube and similar video-sharing sites have brought this medium within the reach of even the smallest.

Firstly, these sites impose very tight limits on file size, and therefore on quality. This levels the playing field technically for everyone. With a budget digital camcorder, a copy of Movie Maker (a free download from Microsoft, included with recent versions of Windows) and a bit of practice, almost anyone can produce a YouTube video that stands up alongside all but the very best.

Secondly, sites like Digg, Facebook and Myspace make it extremely easy for users to share videos, particularly from YouTube. This means that if your video is in any way interesting, amusing or fun, it can start circulating virally at no extra cost to your business. You don't even have to pay to stream the video - YouTube handles it all.

The hard thing is coming up with a creative idea that people are likely to circulate, and that subtly promotes your business and enhances your reputation. This is what companies pay ad agencies millions of pounds for. But you might actually achieve similar results using creative family members - or maybe by working with the creative department of a local college.

The cardinal rule is to be up-front and not pretend the movie is something it's not. Several companies have been burned when they tried to pass off their professional marketing videos as amateur, and got found out.

YouTube cross-promotes videos, and you can take advantage of this if your competitors advertise there too. See this excellent blog posting to find ou how to piggy back on your competitors videos - or how they could piggy back on yours! http://egil.biz/highjack-youtube-marketing-videos/

Comments:

Thanks! Interesting article. Maybe we should look into this. As you say, producing videos nowadays is a piece of cake ... now all we have to do is come up with a visual idea as daft as the written ones on our Blog :-)

# posted by  Keith : August 19, 2008 3:25 AM

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Microsoft released some research recently that seems to promote the value of banner advertising when combined with search.
http://advertising.microsoft.com/uk/advertising-case-studies-display-search-together-more-effective-finance-uk

The research, conducted with comScore for a leading high street bank, compared the effectiveness of banner advertising and search advertising when used separately and in combination. Search advertising proved twice as effective as banners. But the combination of banner and search was three times more effective than search advertising alone, and seven times more effective than a banner ad without search advertising.

The results no doubt leave MSN's ad sales team rubbing their hands with glee, but they need to be treated with great caution, for several reasons.

1) The adverts were specifically for financial services, and there is no guarantee that the same results would be repeated in other sectors
2) Microsoft only has about a 3% share of the UK search market. The market leader, Google, does not accept banner advertising. So the results are only relevant to a tiny minority of traffic
3) Both banner and search advertising were on Microsoft's own sites - so the results cannot be applied to banner and search advertising generically
4) The advertising was conducted by a recognised household brand, and would undoubtedly have been much less effective for a smaller, less well-known business

All in all, most companies will - and probably should - take the results with a huge pinch of salt.

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Affiliate marketing specialist Affiliate Window recently announced the release of a new Facebook application called Wishlist, that will enable retailers in the Affiliate Window network to promote their products through the UK's most popular social networking site:

www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=13696735276

So is this good news for retailers - and how will it be received by users?

Facebook has already shown how it intends to monetise its massive user base, by introducing discrete adverts into its pages and feeds during the course of last year. So far there has been little push-back from users, who no doubt recognise that they are getting a lot of functionality for free, and have mostly accepted the inevitable. But neither has there been much response to the ads. Recent research suggests that it is currently the least effective form of advertising in general use.

The Affiliate Window application, however, uses a more subtle approach. By enabling users to create both a wish list of their own, for friends and relatives who might like to buy them gifts, and a list of recommmendations to others,it creates a much better fit with the whole social networking ethos. The enormous growth of this medium in recent years means that it has the potential to be the next big thing in online marketing.

If you are not using Affiliate Window already, then the Facebook application alone will not repay the cost of joining - at least until it achieves critical mass. But if you are, and if you have the kind of products that young people gossip about and recommend to their social network, it may well be worth giving it a go.

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On the 8th May, Google announced that they are now using landing page load time as a factor in assessing the quality score for Google Adwords ads.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/05/landing-page-load-time-now-available-on.html

This means that it you advertise on Google Adwords, it may cost you more to maintain the same ranking on Google if your pages take a long time to load.

It also suggests that the same may well be true for Google's organic listing. So even if you don't advertise, now would be a good time to check your page load times and try to make improvements.

Firstly, you can use a tool like the 1&1 Site Checker, http://sitechecker.1and1.co.uk/analyze/?ladezeit, to find out how long your pages take to load and compare them with your competitors.

If your performance is poor, you will need to find out why. There are several factors that may be involved.

1) Latency
If your web site is on a server in a different country, the pages will take longer to load because of the distance and, more importantly, the number of different steps in the connection between your customers and your web site. Consider relocating your site to a server that is in the same country as most of your customers - even if it costs a little more.

2) Server performance
Cut-price web hosting that crams a large number of sites onto a single server is a false economy. Performance will inevitably be affected, especially at peak times. Upgrading to a proper ecommerce web hosting package will greatly improve the browsing experience, and almost certainly increase sales.

3) Images
Large images greatly increase the amount of data that has to be delivered before a page is fully loaded. Use smaller images that open larger versions when you click on them. Make sure that jpegs are compressed as much as possible, consistent with the image quality you need to achieve. In general, 5% compression will not produce noticeable loss of quality, and will significantly reduce the file size. Anything over 20% is likely to be highly noticeable, and won't deliver much saving in size.

Wherever possible, use CSS styles instead of images for the site design. A lot can be done with CSS to add background colours, borders and other effects, without the need to use images.

4) Code
If all else fails, go through the code and eliminate unnecessary content such as Comment tags. For Actinic-based ecommerce pages, make sure Actinic is set to Compact the code before uploading.

In general, a tableless CSS-based design will be noticeably more compact and faster to load than an equivalent design using more traditional methods. Some effects that in the past required Javascript, such as pop-up menus, can now be achieved far more efficiently using style sheets.

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Whenever I ask delegates on our Search Engines and Online Marketing course which is the most important search engine, they invariably name Google. But they are always surprised when I show them exactly how important Google is to their business.

For example, web-tracking company Hitwise announced recently that in March 2008, over a third of all traffic to UK web sites came from a Google-owned site. 36.55% to be exact. That's an increase of over 6% compared with the previous March - and it's an awful lot of traffic. (www.hitwise.co.uk/press-center/hitwiseHS2004/uk-google-websites-one-third-uk-traffic-28042008.php)

When it comes to search, Google's dominance is even more impressive. Hitwise state that in the same period, about 88% of all searches in the UK were carried out on Google. That's even higher than figures published last year by Forrester Research. (www.hitwise.co.uk/datacenter/searchengineanalysis.php).

Given that search engines in general are the number one source of new visitors to web sites (and therefore, of new online customers), getting prominent listings on Google should still be the online marketers first target.

For some hints as to how to start doing this, check out Actinic's Search Engines White Paper; or buy or download our free Top Tips book and read tips 37-47.

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This is a nice posting . I really like this post .

# posted by  Amit : July 25, 2008 12:12 AM

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Google recently announced that it is changing its policy towards trademark holders. In the past, if an Adwords advert for a competitor appeared in searches for a trademarked term that you own - such as your brand name - you could submit a complaint to Google, and they would remove the ad. From 5th May, that will no longer be the case. See www.google.co.uk/tm_complaint.html for Google's official statement.

The change follows a High Court case brought against Yahoo! for exactly this type of advertising, in which the case went against the trademark holder. For a summary of the legal ruling, see www.out-law.com/page-8916.

Although companies in the UK and Ireland will no longer be able to stop competitors from advertising against their trademarks, Google does still offer some protection in the form of its Quality Score. Competitors' landing pages will, by definition, have low relevance to searches for someone else's brand, and Google takes this into account in ranking the ads. To outrank the trademark owner, the competitor would have to compensate for this by significantly increasing their bid - probably to an uneconomic level.

Shutting competitors out

In the case of Actinic, we have already seen a couple of competitors trying to take advantage of this change. But in our case, we not only bid on our own name, we allow any of our recognised partners to bid on it too. Because their sites are also relevant to the search, they have a better quality score than the competitors - and the competitors appear at the bottom of the list.

The mathematics of this means that if you and nine partners such as resellers or affiliates all bid on your brand name, you can push your competitors completely off the first page of search results.

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A broken link is a link on a web page that points to something that doesn't exist. This can be caused by an error in the link; or by the removal of (or failure to upload) the object it points to.

How much do broken links matter? One broken link on a large site may not seem to matter all that much; but it matters to the person who clicks on it! Left unmanaged, though, broken links will multiply over time and can significantly degrade the quality of the site.

Broken links = lost business

In the long run, broken links result in lost business, because they have several negative effects on the site.

• Lost Page Rank. A link is the means by which one page donates page rank to another. If a link points to the wrong place, the intended destination page won't inherit any page rank from the page the link is on.


• Search engine penalty. A page containing a broken link may have its page rank reduced. A site with a lot of broken links may be downgraded by the search engines as being of poor quality.


• Lost listings. If a link is faulty, search engines will be unable to follow it to the next page. This may result in the search engine not updating its index for that page, or worse, not listing the page at all.


• Lost visitors. Search engines are the number one source of new visitors to web sites. Anything that damages your profile on the search engines will reduce the number of new visitors you attract.


• Lost customers. Visitors to your site who click on a broken link will be redirected to your error page, if you have one. If not, they will just get a 404 'Page not found' error. Most of them won't waste time hunting around your site for the thing they wanted. They will go and look elsewhere.

Dealing with broken links is quite easy. You can either download and run a software link checker like Xenu's Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html), which is free and widely used; or you can use an online service that does the same job – such as the one provided by Webmaster Toolkit (www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-checker.shtml),, which can also check for missing images.

If you've never done it, you may be surprised at how many broken links your site has, and it may take a while to work through and fix them all. Done regularly, though, it is not an onerous task; and will improve both the quality of your site for visitors, and its search engine performance.

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Your online brand is under threat from people who want to use your hard-earned brand equity for their own profit - or just want to cause trouble. But with some simple precautions, you can eliminate 95% of the risk. The other 5% probably isn't worth worrying about.

1. Trademark your brand
Trademarking your brand protects your legal ownership. The biggest name on the internet, In the UK, trademarked terms are protected online under law, and the law has teeth. The biggest company on the internet, Google, was unable to use its 'Gmail' brand in the UK because someone else already owned the name here. So if you haven't already done so, do trademark your brand.

2. Brand your domain
Your www. address should ideally be the same as your brand name. If that domain is taken, choose another that contains your brand name. Purchase relevant 'top level’'domains, such as .com, .co.uk, and .eu, to prevent 'cybersquatting' - their use or abuse by someone else.

When PricewaterhouseCoopers rebranded themselves Monday a few years ago, they only bought the domain introducingmonday.com. For years, introducingmonday.co.uk displayed a photocopy of a hand performing a rude gesture, and proclaimed 'We’ve got your name!' Don't fall into the same trap. On the other hand, don't be conned into purchasing loads of obscure domains that you don't really need.

3. Lock your domain
'Locking' your domain with your domain registrar prevents unauthorised transfer requests. Otherwise, someone else may gain temporary control of your domain by persuading your registrar that you have left the company and they have taken over.

4. Block the hackers
Being hacked can harm your business and damage your reputation. If hackers gain access they may deface or replace your home page, or delete files on your site - which could include your latest batch of orders.

Make sure your web server is always up to date with the latest security patches. Use secure passwords that are not in any dictionary; make them hard to guess, and don't write them down. If any staff leave who know your passwords, change them. And use a secure ecommerce package for ordering, so that credit card details are encrypted. Then if your site is hacked, your customers will still be secure.

5. Stake your slaim
Claim your brand, and demonstrate your intention to protect it. Include your brand name and logo on every web page and in every downloadable document, and use the TM or ® logo where appropriate.

6. Protect your copyright
Put a copyright notice on every site page, and every downloadable document. Search Google for unique phrases used on your site, to see if anyone has copied them. Unless they are partners or resellers, contact them with instructions to remove the content. If they refuse, get a solicitor to write a legal 'cease and desist' instruction.

One online vendor copied images wholesale from The Gentleman's Shop (www.gentlemans-shop.com). When challenged, he insisted they were his own. Site owner Robert Johnston pointed out that the image sizes and names were the same as his own originals. "The show stopper," Robert explains, "was that some images had our garden as a backdrop!" Faced with the evidence, the offender removed the images.

7. Monitor search advertising
Your competitors may pay search engines to display their own advertisement to everyone who searches for you by name. This can be confusing for customers, as John Sollars of Stinkyink (www.stinkyink.com) discovered. "At one time, if you typed 'Stinkyink' into Google, an advert for one of our competitors appeared at the top", he recalls. "We had customers phoning up asking where their order was, when they had ordered from the competitor."

In the UK you can prevent advertising against your registered trademark, and Google, Yahoo! and MSN have procedures for dealing with infringements.

8. Top the rankings for your brand
Unless there are bigger organisations using the same name in different markets, you should be able to come our top in search engines listings for your own brand. Optimise your home page for your brand name. Use it at least 3-4 times in the text of the page. Include it in the page title, meta description and meta keywords tags, and in text links pointing from other pages to the home page. And make sure

Protecting your brand is important to building your reputation and maintaining trust. So don't let the pressure to win more customers and make more sales push it right off the agenda. Give it the priority it deserves.

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The first Christmas trading results are beginning to come in, and it looks like another bumper Christmas for online businesses, and more misery for the high street.

An email poll among our own users – mostly small and medium businesses in the retail sector – found a 27% rise in the number of people buying online, and a 46% increase in revenue (www.actinic.co.uk/news/080102.htm). So not only are more people shopping on the web, but they are spending more as well.

Other results suggest that small and medium businesses did at least as well as their larger counterparts. DSG, representing Dixons and FotoVista, reported a 31% rise in online sales – somewhat less than the smaller businesses represented in the Actinic poll. And Next, who at the time of writing have yet to report their online results, recorded an overall increase of a miserly 0.3% (www.internetretailing.net).

The biggest rise of all was reported on Christmas Day itself. Research by the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) found 4.4 million people spending £84 million ordering goods online on the 25^th December – up a massive 269% on the previous year. (www.imrg.org).

In comparison, the high street may have done appallingly badly. Both DSG and Next recorded an actual fall in like for like sales in their stores in the pre-Christmas period – of 0.3% and 1% respectively.

So however you cut the statistics, the message is the same. The future for retail business is bright – so long as you’re online.

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One of the great things about the Firefox browser is the huge range of add-ons available, including several that are very useful for Marketing purposes. In this respect at least, Internet Explorer doesn’t come close. These are the ones I use regularly – feel free to comment, and add any others that you find particularly helpful.

1. SeoQuake

Invaluable for competitive research, it displays useful information about each site underneath its entry in Google’s listing -- like this:



Information provided includes the age and size of the site, links, traffic, and the number of people who have bookmarked it. You can select which items you want displayed, and you can also have the results on the page sorted according to different parameters. Great for identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your site in comparison with your main search competitors.

www.seoquake.com



2. Google Global Firefox Extension

Allows you to compare your search performance on different Google regional search engines. Right-clicking on a Google results page allows you to display the results of the same search, as seen in a range of different countries. By default it offers the USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa; but you can add any Google regional domain to the options.

www.redflymarketing.com/blog/google-global-firefox-extension



3. Social Media for Firefox

In the browser status bar, shows how many times the current page has been bookmarked in the main social bookmarking sites, and allows you to post to each of them. Currently supports Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. Very useful for social networking and link building.

www.97thfloor.com/social-media-for-firefox



4. Google Blogger Web Comments

Allows you to see quickly whether any comments have been posted on Blogger about the current page, how many, and what they are. A right-click on the Web Comments icon brings up the first few words from each blog; allows you to click through and read what is written; and allows you to post your own comment to Blogger. Can also pop up a box automatically with the list of comments.

www.google.com/tools/firefox



5. IETab

A Firefox add-on that allows you to use the Internet Explorer rendering engine from within Firefox . This enables you to ccompare how your web pages will display in both Internet Explorer and Firefox by simply toggling between the two in the same Window.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419


6. SearchStatus

Displays the Google Page Rank, Alexa Traffic Rank and the Compete Rank for the current site in the status bar. A pop-up menu offers an array of information about the current page and its site, including Whois information, robots.txt and meta tag listing, nofollow links and keyword density.

www.quirk.biz/searchstatus

Labels: add-ons, blog, blogging, blogs, bookmarking, browser, competitive, engine, extensions, linking, links, marketing, media, networking, optimisation, plugins, research, search, seo, social

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Alexa ranking has its own significance in the ranking position of website in the search engines. The ranking in Alexa.com serves as a criteria for the Webmasters, advertisers and ad networks as a gauge to determine the worth of a link on your website. If one depends on link or site selling as a form of monetization one will definitely want to increase their Alexa rank because it’ll increase bargaining power when it comes to ad pricing. Here we are taking into account the ranking of Social media. Social media is an Internet media that allow people to interact in some way. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet Forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. The basic services provided by these sites are interactive connections. The 10 social media sites stated below are ranked high in Alexa.com. These are:-

1. Yahoo
2. Microsoft Network
3. Google
4. You tube
5. MySpace
6. Orkut
7. Facebook
8. Hi5
9. Blogger.com
10.Friendster

Like Orkut.com is the online social networking services operated by Google. Here people come into contact with each other and build up relations whether personal or business.

# posted by  Anonymous : February 14, 2008 10:46 PM

Only IETab and SearchStatus are currently compatible with the new Firefox 3. Hopefully the authors of the other extensions will update them shortly.

# posted by  Bruce Townsend : June 18, 2008 4:55 AM

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Used properly, email can be an effective, low-cost way of communicating with customers. It also gives you the ability to direct the recipient to a relevant page of your web site with just a single click.

On the other hand, junk email is a huge turn-off. The trouble is, one person's junk is another's treasure. It's all about relevance. Email that is targeted towards the recipients' interests or needs is more effective for the sender, and avoids irritating the receiver. Here are a few suggestions for using email in conjunction with data about your customers' purchasing behaviour, to identify likely interest and maximise possible sales opportunities over the Christmas period.

1) Target last year's shoppers

Customers who bought Christmas gifts from you last year, assuming they were not dissatisfied, may have a higher propensity to purchase gifts from you this year. Send an email specifically to that group of people, with information on this year's Christmas range and links to your site for more details. Obviously, you must exclude any who have opted out from receiving your emails already.

2) Reward your biggest spenders

Higher spending customers are your best friends - their Christmas orders are likely to be worth more than the average. An email offering a free gift with their order may encourage them to come back to you rather than looking elsewhere.

3) Target by product interest

People tend to give presents that they themselves would like to receive. They also tend to acquire friends who have similar interests. So it's a good strategy to target people who have already bought specific types of product - like DVDs or perfume, for example – with related Christmas promotions.

The Mailing List feature in Actinic Business enables selective export of customer data according to all these types of criteria and more, for use with your email client (in the BCC field), GroupMail, or another mass email package. To see the options available, select 'Mailing Lists' from the 'Marketing' menu.

4) Use hyperlinks to trigger offers

Many sites manage offers and discounts by giving some customers a 'promotional code' which they type into a box at the checkout. Unfortunately, this tells other visitors that some people are getting a better deal than they are - which can increase cart abandonment and leads to lost sales. Use email links to trigger offers, and you can reward whom you choose, while keeping the others blissfully unaware.

5) Set time limits

Customer procrastination costs you orders. Putting an expiry date on every offer will encourage customers to make a decision now, rather than putting it off in favour of something that seems more urgent.

6) Encourage the price-sensitive

Price-sensitive shoppers are looking for low prices and high value. You, on the other hand, are looking for the most possible revenue and the best possible margin. You can serve the interests of both parties by offering a little more to those who spend a little more, with offers like '3 for the price of 2' and '10% off orders over £xx'. This gives more value to the purchaser, while increasing your overall revenue. You can offset the reduced margin by selling more and getting a better deal from your suppliers.

Special offers are managed in Actinic Business through the 'Discounts and Surcharges Settings' option in the 'Marketing' menu (you must first select 'Product Groups' and set up a group of products that each offer will apply to).

In 'Discounts and Surcharges', select 'Cart Contents' and set up your offer. Tick 'Requires Coupon Code' and enter a code, then 'Copy URL to Clipboard'. This generates a hyperlink that you can paste into your email, which will trigger the offer when it is clicked. To set time limits for the offer, go to the 'Restrictions' tab.

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Whenever people ask me how they can get higher rankings on Google for their web site, the first question I ask is, "Higher rankings for what?" Anyone could get a high ranking in Google for 'Purple venusian cucumbers' - but what's the point? They don't exist, and nobody is looking for them.

Rather than wasting time on guesswork, the first step in achieving better results on Google is to find out what 'key phrases' people actually use when they search for the type of things you sell. Incorporating these phrases in strategic places within your web pages will greatly improve your chances of attracting visitors who are searching for them.

1) Build A Seed List

There are a number of tools that can help you, but first stage you need a seed list - a very broad list of all the words and phrases you can think of that relate to your business and products. This should be as comprehesive as possible, and you will need to think a bit outside the box to be sure of covering all the bases. For more ideas, check out Aaron Wall's article on the SEO Book site.

2) Find The Most Promising Niches

Next, take a look at Wordtracker, http://www.wordtracker.com/. You can use the free version at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/. But £14 will give you access to the full version for a week. This will give you more comprehensive results, and also automate parts of the process and save you hours of time.

Wordtracker searches its own Thesaurus and also interrogates the search engines of your choice to find literally hundreds of search phrases that are relevant to your business. It finds out which are the most popular key phrases, and also counts the number of web pages that each search term returns. In this way it identifies niches where there are plenty of potential customers, but not too much competition.

SEO Book (http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/) is another tool that can provide relevant UK-based search data, but for Google and MSN it only delivers estimated results.

3) Where Is The Money?
Having identified which key phrases are most popular, and which ones attrach the least competition, you need to decide which ones will deliver visitors who are most likely to make a purchase. You can probably make a first pass through your list and eliminate some that are clearly irrelevant, or seem unlikely to represent a potential customer - searches that are plainly of an academic nature, for example.

4) Check Out The Competition

Next, you can do a bit of competitive research. What terms do your competitors think are important? Go to Keyword Count (http://www.keywordcount.com/) and type in the web address of your main competitor, and it will tell you which words and phrases are the ones most used on his home page. Take the top ten or so phrases, then repeat for a few other competitors and make a master list. Compare this list with the one you got from WordTracker. Look for popular phrases that seem relevant to what you sell, that are not widely used by your competitors. These will hopefully point to a quiet but profitable niche where you can start establishing yourself. (You might choose to take on your competitors head to head for the most popular terms, or you might want to wait until you are in a stronger position).

5) Get To Work On Your Pages

Choose some relevant pages and optimise each one for 3-4 key phrases, optimising your home page for the most important ones. A good place to start is to search Google in the format 'site:www.yoururl.com key phrase'. This will list all the relevant pages of your own site, ranked for that phrase. Other things being equal, the easiest page to optimise for a given phrase will be the one that ranks highest already.

Provided you also have a reasonable number and quality of links pointing from other relevant sites to your own, this process should significantly improve the traffic you get from the main search engines.

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http://www.keywordcount.com seems to have stopped working. Well it isn't as of now! Shame.

# posted by  Jenny : October 3, 2007 9:27 AM

Hi

As with WordTracker you can also try the KeywordDiscovery - Keyword Research Tool which has a much larger keyword database. Great for tail end and niche keyword research.

Cheers
Nicole

# posted by  nicole : October 11, 2007 7:10 PM

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