teclan recommends that all our customers utilise Google Base to keep their products prominent in the Google rankings under the Shopping option. This has proved to be very successful for increased sales and company recognition. It does not cost anything. It also helps competitiveness with pricing as the same or similar products will be listed alongside yours.

To be continually successful with Google Base however, you need to keep tabs on your own Google base feed. We recommend that you check your Google Dashboard daily if possible, to check all your products are still active and that none have been disapproved. Google have very strict guidelines and just an extra mention of ‘free shipping’ in a description can lead to a product being disapproved.

A few of our customers have experienced problems when the Google Base feed is set to upload automatically once a month. Unless set up meticulously, Google will scan the live site, be unable to match the data and disapprove all the products. If this is not checked, the customer will quickly see the red line forming which shows the products dropping off.

An option is to manually upload the base feed each time, which will keep you in control and you can ensure all the latest updates to your site are in there, but you will still have an expiry date that you need to remember each month – there are no email reminders.

To upload your Googleproduct feed file generated by Actinic to your site please action the following -

1- Generate your Google product feed by going to

Marketing > Export Google Product Search Data feed > Browse > Name the file to something similar to that of “Googleproducts” > save this file into your site1 folder

2- Attach the newly generated file in actinic

Design > Additional files > Add the newly created file in step 1 by clicking “Add”

3- Upload your site as normal

Publish to web or web > refresh website

4- In your Google Base account make sure the Feed URL is pointing to the where the file was uploaded to.

** Please note the above instructions are for guidance purposes teclan will not be responsible for any issues which arise from following the above instructions **

Teclan can Help

If you would like to set up Google Base for your website or feel you do not have enough time to manage it yourself, teclan can help. For a small charge we can set this up for you, monitor your base feeds and check for any errors or warnings. If you would like to speak to one of our Google Base experts, contact us at info@teclan.co.uk or on 0845 8689380.

After Panda update and subsequent panda releases, Google have released a new update called a Penguin Update.

Below is the post from Google: Source- Google Inside Search blog (http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/)

“….Google has said before that search engine optimization, or SEO, can be positive and constructive—and we’re not the only ones. Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find. Search engine optimization includes things as simple as keyword research to ensure that the right words are on the page, not just industry jargon that normal people will never type.

“White hat” search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines. Good search engine optimization can also mean good marketing: thinking about creative ways to make a site more compelling, which can help with search engines as well as social media. The net result of making a great site is often greater awareness of that site on the web, which can translate into more people linking to or visiting a site.

The opposite of “white hat” SEO is something called “black hat webspam” (we say “webspam” to distinguish it from email spam). In the pursuit of higher rankings or traffic, a few sites use techniques that don’t benefit users, where the intent is to look for shortcuts or loopholes that would rank pages higher than they deserve to be ranked. We see all sorts of webspam techniques every day, from keyword stuffing to link schemes that attempt to propel sites higher in rankings.

The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded. To that end we’ve launched Panda changes that successfully returned higher-quality sites in search results. And earlier this year we launched a page layout algorithm that reduces rankings for sites that don’t make much content available “above the fold.”

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

Here’s an example of a webspam tactic like keyword stuffing taken from a site that will be affected by this change:

Of course, most sites affected by this change aren’t so blatant. Here’s an example of a site with unusual linking patterns that is also affected by this change. Notice that if you try to read the text aloud you’ll discover that the outgoing links are completely unrelated to the actual content, and in fact the page text has been “spun” beyond recognition:

More can be read on the Google Inside Search blog on http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/.

The update is now live and has affected many websites. At teclan, we are also researching and discovering new ideas that will help our customers to still reach to their audience through good and ethical SEO techniques.

The development of online payment systems in the mobile commerce age:

Remember a time when the internet meant connecting to a couple of basic websites on an archaic desktop machine using Internet Explorer 4 or  5? Ecommerce was simple – one browser to design for, one shop with checkout to build, one platform to market.

Fast forward to the present; Laptops, Notebooks, iPads, Smart phones, Tablets, Kindles, Web enabled TV’s, Web enabled gaming consoles, web enabled fridges!!……..

The list of technology that is enabling users to connect to and buy from the internet is ever expanding. The days of everyone using a desktop with 1 or 2 browsers has long disappeared.

A little over 2 years ago I recall sitting in a room of ecommerce merchants, developers and industry experts discussing our thoughts on the future of ecommerce. I made a forthright statement then, which I stand by now.

“Mobile phones will become the “new credit cards” of tomorrow!”

So, what does this mean for the online merchant of today? What are the opportunities for the small, medium and large merchants? What are the costs and implications?

Firstly you need to take stock of the emerging technologies for allowing people to purchase online. Not an easy task. There are new technologies every day. Here are a few of the current available options:

• NFC – Near field communications. The ‘wave and pay’ with your mobile phone e.g. BarclayCard
• SMS Premium payments. You may using SMS from your phone e.g. Boku
• Simply Tap  - register based payment app
• Custom Merchant apps e.g. Starbucks Payment App

 

Let’s discuss each one and the impact for merchants:

NFC – Near Field Communications
This is the “wave and pay” technology where your mobile device can communicate wirelessly with a terminal within a store to enable a payment transaction from your phone to the store for goods. Recently trailed by Barclay’s bank with some success, using a small “paytag” stickers attached to the back of participants mobile phones. Blackberry were there first mobile producer who installed NFC by default onto their devices. This trend is sure to continue across other devices as time goes on.
For online merchants this technology does not directly impact unless you have a “bricks and mortar” store, where NFC could indeed become a significant method for payment the next few years.

 

SMS Premium Payments
Imagine your customers arrive at your checkout (through whatever means) and all the simply have to do to process payment is enter their mobile number. They then instantly receive an SMS message asking to confirm the transaction. Viola! The process the payment against their mobile account and you receive the money through the electronic transfer process via their Mobile Phone Network acquirer.
This is a simple and elegant method of payment that rivals existing PSP (Payment service providers). It is widely used in many other countries, particularly in Asia.
For online merchants this presents a real opportunity to increase the options for customers and to enable their customers to easily buy from anywhere, whether they do or do not have a credit card,  bank account or debit card.

Simply Tap – www.simplytap.com
Simply Tap™ is an instant mobile checkout app that makes shopping on your phone quicker, easier and more secure. Once your customers have registered with Simply Tap and have the app installed on their portable device then they can literally buy your product (assuming you have signed up with them) wherever the see it by either scanning the QR Code, Taking a photo of it, or entering in the code.
As services like these grow the opportunity for customers to increase their impulse purchasing increases massively, allowing customers to buy their products on impulse whenever and wherever they find them.

Retailers can see an example of the benefits here: http://mobilemoneynetwork.com/how-simply-tap-works/retailers

Custom Merchant apps
For the larger, heavily branded retailers with large customer bases (think big nationals), the cost of having a company develop their own mobile commerce app (tens of thousands of pounds!) is offset by the kudos, marketing potential and additional sales revenue that comes from having their own app. e.g. Starbucks – the coffee company has developed it’s own app which allows loyalty card members an option to pay, directly from their loyalty account, using a simple mobile app.
Smaller merchants may not ever see a benefit to this. They may simply not have the type of customer base that would utilise this, however there may be some business models with smaller client bases where this does work well. I am sure that when prices of developing bespoke apps integrated with some global payment provider fall there will be more businesses taking up this option.

Finally a word on design. Designing websites has always been a challenging business, with a multitude of browser versions and browser platforms to cater for. Now added to this cacophonous mix of variables is the multitude of platforms with which to design for.
It is clear to us at teclan that, whilst the majority of mobile devices display websites normally and perfectly sensibly, it is in the interests of web developers to deploy reactive design techniques to allow websites to adapt to the device they are rendered on. It is also beholden on the business in question to opt for a design that can be trans-platform and trans-device safe, displaying effectively across all versions whilst keeping the focus on giving the customer the best possible experience they can have.

The future?
Well, as more technological developments occur the mix of options will simply thicken. I do not feel we will see an entire sea change to one technology or another. More a case of a more diverse range of options available to the consumer about how to shop and how to pay.
One certainty is that shoppers will want to continue to shop and pay. It’s up to the merchants to ensure they can do that easily and simply.

Making sure you back up your site and compact your database regularly ensures peace of mind if anything goes wrong with your site and helps Actinic run more smoothly. teclan recommends that you carry out these tasks at least once a week.

Additionally a lot of Actinic issues can be resolved by completing a compact and repair.

Backing up your Actinic site

Click File / Snapshot
Click Export site

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This starts the ‘Backing-up a site’ wizard. The process of creating a snapshot is as follows:

1.  In the first screen of the wizard, read the information and click Next.

2.  In the second screen of the wizard, read the information and click Next.

3.  In the third screen of the wizard, click Browse to select a folder on your PC (or network) to create the snapshot in. The default is the SiteBackups folder within the Actinic v11 folder. Enter a filename for the snapshot in the File name field and click Save. Then click Next.

4.  On the fourth screen of the wizard, click Next to start the snapshot creation

When the snapshot is created (or stops for any reason) you will receive a summary report. If there are any warnings or errors, click the Detail button to see the details.

To compact and repair follow the below instructions -

First ensure you have made a back up of your Actinic site as above.

Then select Housekeeping from the top menu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click Compact Databases.

Tick both Catalog and Shipping boxes.

Click OK

 

 

 

 

 

 

You will then receive a message that Actinic will close to compact the database.

Click OK

 

 

 

You will receive one last message to advise that the compact was successful.

Click OK

If compact was not successful for any reason note down the error and mail the teclan team at info@teclan and we will investigate the issue.

From Jackie Hendry, More4Dogs.co.uk

Handling my own Googlebase Feed was quite a learning curve for me, but once I had sussed what it is that Google wanted, it was pretty straightforward.  The aim of a successful data feed is not to get any errors or warnings.  To eliminate these make sure you have done the following:

When you download your file from Actinic with all the product information, ensure there are no blank columns in-between and that all the titles are the same as Google request, eg Availability – if you change this to ‘in stock’ as a title, this will not be recognised.

Missing Attributes:

Brand – most products will have to have a brand that can be recognised.

mpn – or product identifier, what is the product’s code?

There may be other warnings which Google recommend that you add, but Google should still upload your products if you do not have them, eg product category and product type.

One error which must be resolved is tax and shipping.  If these are not stated the products will either not be uploaded or will be quickly disapproved.  This is easily rectified by going into Settings on the Dashboard and then Tax and Shipping.

Google have comprehensive instructions on what is required and there are clear links to navigate to these pages.  Critical errors should be dealt with as soon as possible to prevent your products from not showing in the search results.

To insert a new data feed, click New Data Feed, choose a name for the feed, set the monthly upload frequency and then click Manual Upload.  It will say ‘processing’ may take up to one hour.  If you do have errors you will be quickly sent an email to inform you of them.  At this point you can cancel the upload to make the amendments to your products file and try again.  If it is successful, you should not get an email, the Dashboard will indicate when the upload is complete.  Use the Dashboard to monitor your click activity on your products.

If any of your products go out of stock for a time, they can be deactivated under ‘Products’ – tick the relevant box and ‘Deactivate’.  Google request that all products listed are in stock unless stated otherwise, ie ‘available to order’.

Finally, keep a regular eye on your Dashboard as this will be any indications of errors or warnings which may crop up.

For more on Google Base see our previous blog http://www.teclan.com/blog/latest/update-google-base-feed-for-actinic/

 

At teclan we frequently receive requests asking whether certain emails, phone calls and orders that many clients receive are real or potentially fraudulent.
With this in mind we want to take this opportunity to remind our clients that fraudulent activity within the ecommerce world is common and that you should always be vigilant and on your guard to ensure you do not get caught out.
Human instinct is generally very good and most often if something looks fishy, seems too good to be true or just doesn’t ring true then there is a justifiable reason.

On the internet, as far as ecommerce is concerned, there are several common scams you should look out for. We also recommend some techniques for double checking your intuition and confirming if such events are fraudulent or not.

Common Scams and fraudulent techniques:

1. Email Phishing – Emails purporting to be from your bank or service provider attempting to fool you into revealing sensitive information.
2. Large order values and/or quantities – most often from foreign shores, however always check unusual orders as fraudulent cards may be in use.
3. Suspicious overseas details – Many common scams and frauds are attempted using overseas addresses e.g. from African sub-continent.
4. Anyone requesting ALL your bank details – they do not need ALL these details to transfer money. If they are legitimate then alternate payment methods can be discussed.
5. Suspicious phone calls requesting bulk deals – again, as with overseas online orders.
6. Purchases using credit cards with different delivery address – a  common fraud attempt to use stolen card details to obtain goods by deliver.

Techniques we recommend  you use to check and combat the fraudsters:

1. Google any generic seeming email subjects, email content, address info. If this is a scam it will most likely not be the first time it has been perpetrated therefore there is a high probability that someone has already reported this online. A quick Google search could yield a quick result to confirm your suspicions.
2. Use 3rd man and  all other available fraud screening technologies available to you.
3. Check any phone numbers used against  http://whocallsme.com to see if this number has been previously reported e.g. 971-55-6874623
4. Use common sense. Does the order/query raised sound suspicious or too good to be true. Don’t let pound signs blind your judgement.
5. Google again for any relevant information to find any online record of similar activity online.
6. Once a scam or fraudster has been confirmed report it online e.g. at “whocallsme.com” to further aid others in their own searches.

 

Above all be aware. Vigilance and common sense can prevent you falling foul of these scams and fraudulent activities.
If in doubt then research, check and then get in touch with the team at teclan to help where required.

Do you use Google adwords and promote your phone number in the ad text, then read on, some interesting changes are coming in place in coming weeks.…

Google Adwords Team are calling this “Click to Call Enhancements”. Basically if you promote your phone number in your Google adwords ad, it will become a clickable call number. So someone clicks on your phone number from their mobile device, you will get a call. If you get a lot of leads through adwords, then this gives you ability to track and get some data on how many call leads do you actually get through your Paid Search Campaign.
Then read on…. This is a official announcement from Google adwords team…

If you currently have a phone number in your ad text or have plans to start adding your phone number in an ad, in coming weeks, Google Adwords  will be launching a new enhancement to AdWords ads that will impact charges on clicks to these numbers.

To help our mobile users connect more easily with advertisers, all non-clickable phone numbers displayed in AdWords ad text will be automatically converted into a Click-to-call number.  Currently when advertisers enter a phone number directly into their ad text instead of using Call Extensions, the phone number is not clickable and will not generate a call. This can be a frustrating experience for mobile users who attempt to initiate a call to this phone number.

The new Click-to-call enhancement  makes sure that all the phone numbers that are displayed in Google ad text will be clickable.. This is particularly useful for users to make calls with their mobile devices.  If your ad text includes a phone number, you will begin to receive clicks and calls on this number once the enhancement is enabled in your account. As with phone calls placed via a Call Extension, you will be charged for clicks on your phone number that result in a call.

The adwords policy, does not allow the phone numbers to be inserted into ad headlines. As with all Click-to-call ads, advertisers will be charged when a user either clicks on the headline or the phone number listed in the ad. Please see below for additional information regarding this change.

Which phone number shows?

If you are currently using both Call Extensions and a phone number in your ad creative, only the newly clickable phone number in your ad creative will show. This is done to save the user from seeing two different phone numbers in the same ad.   If you would like your Call Extension number to display, simply delete all phone numbers from your existing ad text by following these steps. You’ll also receive an additional line of ad text displaying your phone number if the Call Extension is used.

Measuring results

You’ll be able to review how many calls you receive on the clickable phone number listed in your ad text for each campaign, ad group, keyword and ad on the ‘Campaigns’ tab in your AdWords account. Just select the ‘Click-type’ option under the ‘Segment’ drop down and view your report.  Please note that since these are not calls generated from a Call Extension, they will not be reported in the Extensions tab reports.

Recommendations for featuring a phone number

You can simply leave your phone number in your ad text and benefit from this change which will automatically make your phone numbers clickable and enable users to call you. To get most value out of this enhancement, its better to have “Call extensions”.  This has several benefits. With a manually created Call Extension your number will appear as an additional line of ad text which frees up space in your ad creative for other promotion. In addition, when you create a Call Extension, your phone number appears on a separate line in the ad, and you’re able to take advantage of other powerful enhancements such as Vanity Numbers, Call-only and Call Metrics reporting.

 

More information on Call extension can be found here:

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173346

This post also gives more information on Vanity numbers, Allow only clicks-to-call numbers.

teclan’s take on this:
We think that this will help a lot of small businesses as so far it was very difficult to measure ROI if they were getting call because of the paid clicks. Now because of the available metrics and easy to follow anlaytics data this will become simpler and easier.

Do you want to implement Google adwords campaign for your business, get in touch. Call us on for a chat.

 

 

Getting Started with Secure Payments

One of the most important aspects of your online business is a reliable, secure link between the customer and the bank in the form of a secure payment gateway.  A Payment Service Provider (PSP) will deal with the authorisation and security checks on your behalf to help prevent fraud.  This will give your potential customer security and reassurance and may be the difference between a sale or a ditched shopping cart.

Getting started

Before you can set up Actinic or Sage Pay secure payments you need a Internet Merchant ID number.  In the case of PayPal, this is not required.

An Internet Merchant ID is an electronic merchant number generated by your bank specifically for your business to be able to process online transactions.

If you do not have an Internet Merchant ID you need to contact your bank and advise what you need it for and what company will be collecting the card details.

Please see the following for examples of the different payment plans and the card collecting companies

Pay Pal takes a percentage of every transaction. Actinic and Sage Pay only charge for transactions after a certain amount of transactions.

Example of Actinic Payments 20
Set Up Fee	£50.00
Monthly Fee	£20.00
Over 350 Transactions per Month	£0.10
Card Company	Credit Call

Sage Pay
Set Up Fee	None
Monthly Fee	£20.00
Over 1000 Transactions per quarter	£0.10
Card Company	Sage Pay

Example of Pay Pal Website Payments Pro
Set Up Fee	None
Monthly Fee	£20.00
Total Monthly Sales	£1500.01 – £6000.01
Per Transaction	2.9% + £0.20 GBP
Transaction Price Example	You pay £3.1 on a £100 transaction
Card Company	Pay Pal

At this point you will find out about any additional charges from Streamline and your bank, i.e. a one off administrative charge and a monthly charge, depending on how many card transactions are processed. If your company is outside the EU there may be additional charges.This process can take up to 2 weeks to set up.

Once you have your Internet Merchant  number, you are now ready to go ahead with purchase of your Payment Service Provider.  Please call a member of the teclan team on or click here.

Update Google Base Feed for Actinic

If you are not already listing your products on Google Base then you are missing out on sales, however please note the rules for submissions to Google Base have recently been updated.

Google base allows you to freely list your products in Google’s shopping search results.

The Google base feed creator in Actinic V10 and V11 is currently missing some vital, required fields which will result in your submissions being rejected,

teclan have developed and tested a solution to both Actinic V10 and V11 for this problem and we are making this exclusively available only to teclan’s Actinic customers.

Note: if you are not on V10 or V11 and wish to upgrade then please contact the team to help you upgrade.

Please read on for more information on the main missing fields (availability & google product category) and how teclan can help.

The V11 update has received lots of positive feedback from our customers.

Here’s what the press think

Actinic Business v11 (Extract from The Telegraph)

This ecommerce software is an improvement on earlier versions and sophisticated enough to suit most online retailing needs

So you’ve set up a decent website, but you want to sell things online rather than just directing customers to your stores or call centre?

Actinic aims to provide all the ecommerce and shopping cart solutions you need, and works for single sites or multiple sites for bigger companies.

I’ve reviewed Actinic’s products here before, but over the years the company’s software has slipped behind competitors in terms of online functions. For instance, live stock levels weren’t included, so your customers might order something without knowing you’d just sold the last one.

That live stock information was finally introduced in last year’s version, and designed so that online and desktop application stock levels are synchronised handy if you sell via a website as well as in your shop, say.

This year, things have been made simpler still. So the software can automatically create customer accounts and makes managing these accounts online easy. Customers can also track orders and see their order history.

Checkout was an issue in earlier versions, with customers finding that they had to click through multiple pages to order and pay for items. This is now improved, and all on one page.

There are Actinic products for smaller enterprises starting at £19.99 a month, and pricier options if you need them. Actinic Business Plus, for instance, is the next level up and makes it easy to integrate data with Sage 50 Accounts software.

Actinic Business falls in the middle of the range and includes marketing options to use on the site, such as buy-one-get-one-free offers, coupons and discounts, along with lists to show what other customers bought.

Setup is through a series of user-friendly wizards and the product catalogue is managed through a drag-and-drop interface. There are pre-designed themes and styles which you can customise as you build the site.

The strength of Actinic’s program is that it’s a comprehensive one-stop shop with a lot of features, and the latest edition is the most useful yet.

4 stars