Solving the puzzle
of internet retail

Digital Spam - Yum Yum.

…and everyone sing “SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM, SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM……..”

Anyone with an email address and working on the internet today experiences the annoyance and frustration that is  SPAM on a regular basis. What most people may not appreciate or understand is the true cost of SPAM to the internet, businesses and individuals of this virulent, abusive form of email.

In this article we want to expose some of the less well known facts about SPAM, discuss the damage that SPAM does to us all and we also hope to give you guidance and encouragement on what you can do to help reduce the impact it has on our lives.

How big a problem is email SPAM?

To give you some context of the numbers involved it is estimated that up to 95% of ALL emails sent today are unsolicited (SPAM).
That is a HUGE volume of SPAM emails sent every second, minute and hour of every day. This traffic clogs up our internet data networks, reducing network speeds, slowing down our connections and forcing the cost of bandwidth and internet costs up.
Some are frivolous nuisance emails, some are specifically for phishing purposes and many are simply trying to spread malicious code and viruses.  One of the most powerful features of email; low cost and efficient method to deliver a message, is also it’s greatest drawback. Abuse of email systems has been growing and growing with cyber-criminals and cyber-vandals finder ever more clever and automated ways to utilise SPAM for their own ends.

It has been estimated that the authors of the Viagra SPAM emails anticipate a return on one in ever 10 million emails sent. That means that it only takes one person in 10 million to click on the email and purchase their product to make it worth their while to continue their spamming exploits.

The industry is trying to respond.
In February Microsoft won court approval to shut down a virulent BotNet which it claims was sending more than 1.5 billion SPAM email messages every day!
[source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8537741.stm]

In New Zealand last year a SPAM trafficking group was given a fine of $19 million in an attempt to lay down the law to all SPAM creators.
[source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/30/spam_fine/]

Unfortunately although some battles have been won, the war on Spam continues as the perpetrators find new, improved methods to spread their messages across the internet.
e.g. Spam levels bounce back after BotNet Takedown – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/02/3fn_takedown/

What can you do?

“Is there anything we, as individuals, can do to stop SPAM? Should we be resigned to the fact that SPAM at this level is just ‘the way it is’ and simply become silent victims?” -  Well, Yes and No!
- We can use SPAM filters.
- We can persuade our ISP and email providers to use BlackLists
- We can apply political pressure to the Government to instruct ISP’s to deal with this issue with more control
- Make sure your email address is not displayed online in a format that email harvesting bots can scan.
- Ensure your computers are fully virus and malware protected
- Employ better techniques and forms for allowing emails to be sent through your website (See below)
- Utilise DomainKeys email authentication
- Implement and utilise the Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

You can also ensure that any forms on your website that collate and email information to and from your website are suitably protected to stop malicious use of the code that sends the email.
You can implement the most up-to-date formMail scripts.

Another common method to avoid SPAM being sent through form scripts is to use a form of Captcha
Captcha: http://www.captcha.net/
Recaptcha: http://recaptcha.net/

By working together, implementing the latest standards to counteract Spam, being ruthless about prosecuting Spam perpetrators and using a large dollop of common sense we may be able to go a long away in trying to rid the internet of this scourge.

The use of the htaccess file is frequently questioned online in various hosting related forums as support FAQ’s.
The majority of problems experienced is by people using poorly documented examples without a real understanding of the code and the server technologies they are trying to implement.

-”How useful is htaccess?” Very!

-”Can I use it myself?” Yes – with a little help, and that’s what this article is about.

- “What can htaccess do? Give me some examples?”

• Redirect traffic to and from your website
• SEO friendly redirects
• speed up your site with cache control
• set access authentication for files and folders
• implement security for files on your site
• redirect non-www traffic to www
• redirect https to http
• deny robots, IP’s or complete networks
• control access by time of day
• set server timezone
• prevent browser caching
• change PHP memory limits
• and many, many more

We have located for you a very useful list of the most commonly requested features, with examples, that the htaccess can deliver for your website.
You can read it at Google Groups online.

Typos, Lits and Bad Spelling.

The common belief is that a few typos on any website is to be expected. But why should that be, with the many spell-check programmes freely available now? And does it really matter?

Spelling should be accurate no matter what. There is no excuse for poor spelling, which on a website can negatively affect that company’s image 100%.

Poor grammar and misspellings severely compromise the value of a work, and marketing material or websites containing such can be interpreted that the business is an organization that does not take pride in its work. If the marketing contains errors then what does that say about the quality of their product and services?

Any communication that goes to customers and the general public must be correct. Good spelling is essential when wanting to create an image and being able to put your message out in a way that is the most appealing.

So the importance of proper spelling is not only key in getting your work read but also affects the manner of presenting yourself to people. Spelling errors can cause your business to be seen as less than professional and even just a handful of typos on a page could easily turn off potential clients. It is difficult to ascertain how much business might be potentially lost by having errors on the site, but it is important to properly use the language in business communication.

Corporate communications should be flawless in both grammar as well as spelling since the language used by an institution, company or person can be seen as a reflection of their attitude, capabilities and skills.

True, there are people out there who don’t notice spelling errors, but just to be sure that you do not negatively influence perception of your company, you have to get your communication right. An over abundance of mistakes will convey a very amateur impression of your website and like any professional writing, these corporate communications represent the company. It won’t matter who the audience is – incorrect grammar and spelling will reflect that the company doesn’t care about their corporate image.

So do spelling errors, typos and lits really matter?

They’re critical!

QR (Quick Response) Codes – have you seen them?

The basic premise is that with a suitable camera/device e.g. mobile phone with QR reader, you can instantly take a snap of the QR code and reveal the hidden information which could be some promotion text, a link to your website or even a phone number which the phone device could then call.

How could you use this for your ecommerce business?
The use of QR codes is growing, as is the accessibility of  devices which are enabled to decode these visual messages. More and more people who are switched onto this technology are looking for these QR codes and you can take advantage of this curiosity factor.
Create a poster promoting a product with a link to the product on your website. Publish a newsletter article with a QR code offer a discount code for use on your website. Use a QR code in traditional marketing formats e.g. newspapers, magazines and printed media.
Use it in branding products e.g. T-shirts, flyers etc to communicate your contact details.

Create your own QR Codes for your business.
There are many useful online resources for creating your own QR Codes.

Visit http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ for example where you can choose from encoding a URL, SMS, text or phone number into the QR Code.

It presents another fun opportunity for you to get your message “out there” to your market audience.

Actinic have finally released the latest version of their award winning ecommerce software – Actinic Version 10.
After more that 2 years of development the latest version of Actinic has hit the shelves in time for retailers to gear up their websites and take them into the summer selling season with many new, rich ecommerce features.

Actinic V10 Launch

What are the key features?
————————–
* Real Time Stock (including an automated order download system)
* Simplified Checkout Flow
* Recently Viewed Products
* Product Reviews / Feefo
* Google Checkout
* Automatic Card Number Removal
* Quick Order Find Tab
* Start Up Site Selection Dialogue
* Send Emails Immediately on One Click Order Processing
* Handling Components Independently
* New Themes

Actinic have answered and delivered on many oft requested features of the Actinic platform and they have delivered this release through one of the most detailed and intense quality checking procedures in their history, making this version the most stable version to date.

If you are new to Actinic or already use Actinic then have a look by downloading the free 30-day trial of the software.
Download Free trial

If you want to buy the software then you can either call us on 0845 868 9380 or visit our website at www.teclan.com

1. Make sure you register your brand name ASAP! – with the popularity of Twitter

increasing at a phenomenal rate, it’s vital to claim your ID before someone else gets it first.

2. Write a biography – think carefully about what you want to write in the biography section;

this is your opportunity to sell yourself.

3. Add your logo and design a background – creating a customer Twitter background and

featuring your branding and logo will help to strengthen your online identity and

encourage recognition in the busy Twitter ‘market place’.

4. Use hash tags in your tweets – users can track tagged keywords (eg #iPad), so if you use

a relevant tag that is trending you will increase the likelihood of people coming across

your content .

5. Encourage ‘retweeting’– getting your followers to retweet your posts is a great way to

spread your influence. Keep your tweets short and engaging to maximise retweet potential

and don’t be afraid to ask followers to retweet a post.

6. Engage – rather than using Twitter solely as a broadcast tool, don’t be afraid to engage

with followers. Use @replies to respond publicly (this will notify the original poster of

your response and thread it so other users can follow the conversation), or direct

messaging to respond to something privately, for example if you receive a complaint

or query about a specific order.

7. Get ready for customer service enquiries – it’s highly likely you will be contacted via

Twitter with customer service questions. These shouldn’t be ignored. Be prepared for your

reader to tell you how best to deal with them.

8. Special offers work – Dell generated $6.5m of revenue on Twitter alone by using offers!

We all love a discount and what better way to spread the news of your offer than on

a social network.

9. Be generous – retweet or comment on tweets by other people and show them you’re not

just interested in what your brand has to say.

10. Monitor – make sure you monitor what tweeters are saying about your brand or your

industry so you can pick up the positives and negatives and handle them effectively.

Twitter search or Tweetbeep are great applications for this.

And a word of caution…

Be aware of Twitter ‘follow bots’ – some companies use bots to automatically follow users

(sometimes randomly, sometimes targeted to demographic data or use of key words) in the

hope that users will follow them back. This may have some small value in increasing your base

of followers, but is seen as annoying and intrusive by most users and may earn you a poor

reputation.

[16/04/10 edit: The production release of Actinic V10 is now here]

Actinic have just announced the public BETA program of their Actinic Ecommerce software for Business.

Building on their 10+ years of providing market leading ecommerce solutions to Internet retailers, Actinic have released the much anticipated version 10 of their award winning software into Beta. This Beta program allows existing and new users to Actinic to view the latest release from Actinic in advance of it’s official launch of the final production release.

The Beta program was established to allow Actinic users the chance to check and test upcoming features and functionality on their own existing Actinic stores, primarily to identify any possible bugs and problems that would be encountered in the “wild” and have them resolved and removed from the final production version, thereby benefiting all concerned.

Actinic V10 Beta – Key Features

• Real Time Stock
  Actinic version 10 introduces Real Time stock control online. Merchants can choose to enable online stock control, enable stock monitoring as it was in previous versions, or disable stock control completely. If online stock control is enabled, a customer adds a product to cart online , then completes the checkout, the item(s) will be decremented from stock. Any orders taken offline through Actinic and indeed EPOS are reflected online.
• Simplified Checkout Flow
  Actinic version 10 introduces a new simplified checkout flow. Customers now no longer have to select their country on a separate page to their invoice / delivery address details. Also if a customer specifies a separate delivery and invoice address, they can enter their details on one page, rather than two, provided they have JavaScript enabled. Version 10 also limits the amount of scrolling which is required in the checkout, bringing it into line with some of the major online retailers. The PSP bounce page has also been replaced with a more logical ‘Confirm Order’ page. There is also a new ‘Confirm Email’ function to help prevent customers entering an incorrect address.
• Recently Viewed Products
  The Recently viewed products feature shows your customer what products they have been viewing in a thumbnail format whilst they have been browsing your site. The customer can then click on these thumbnails and be taken directly to the product they have just clicked.
• Product Reviews / Feefo
  Feefo, or Feedback Forum, enables your customers to solicit feedback, both on your products, and your business as a whole. Feefo is independent from your site, and surveys have shown that customers tend to have a greater trust in feedback from 3rd parties, rather than feedback that has just been copied and pasted into your own site. A list of the further benefits of Feefo are provided at http://www.feefo.com/feefo/page.jsp?page=a7
• Google Checkout
  Google checkout is different to the majority of Payment Service Providers (PSPs) that ship with Actinic. It is actually a ‘checkout replacement’, if a customer chooses to pay via Google Checkout, the Actinic Checkout is bypassed. It is not too dissimilar to PayPal Express Checkout.
• Automatic Card Number Removal
  If you use the payment method ‘Credit Card Details Captured for Later Processing’, you can have Actinic automatically obfuscate part of the card number and delete the CVV2 (the last 3 digits on the back of the card) after the order has been processed.
• Quick Order Find Tab
  If the site contains a large number of orders, it may take some time for Actinic to load in all of the orders. Also it can be hard to find a particular order from a list of 1,000s. In version 10, we have introduced a ‘Quick Find’ tab within the ‘Orders’ tab.
• Start Up Site Selection Dialogue
  If you are using Actinic Business Plus or above with multiple sites, you can decide which site opens on startup.
• Send Emails Immediately on One Click Order Processing
  In previous versions, the ‘One Click Complete’ function for completing orders did not automatically send mails, it queued them, and the merchant had to click the ‘Send Mails’ button in the toolbar to complete the process. Version 10 can be configured to work as in previous versions, or to automatically send mails upon completion
• Handling Components Independently
  With version 10, it is possible to ship components separately of their main product. For example, you may have a computer that is made up of a base unit, and a monitor. You may have the base unit in stock, but not the monitor. With version 10, you can choose to ship the base unit now, and the monitor later
• New Themes
  Three new themes have been included with Actinic version 10. These are: • Bobcat • Minimal • Silver

(There are a few Actinic Enterprise version specific features as well, not listed here)

You can obtain a copy of the beta software from our website here:
Download Actinic V10 Beta

Feedback:
Actinic themselves are actively encouraging people to become interactive with this Beta program and are asking for your feedback on their GetSatisfaction website.

A "little" snow on the car

I awoke today to find that, in my isolated neck of the woods where I live, Mother Nature had decided to drop some snow around my car.
Having already had a huge amount of snow over the Christmas period, it was not a very welcome sight to see the car completely submerged.
After an abortive attempt to dig the car out I trudged back to the house to see what I could do from home. In these days of internet connectivity wherever you go I was easily able to work from home, accessing emails, redirecting phone calls, working on the intranet and all the other daily work tasks – minus having someone else making the coffee!

This also got me thinking about how the internet has enabled more and more of us to perform more and more tasks and jobs from home. Shopping online – Internet Retailing – is an obvious example. A sector still experience growth when other areas of commerce are suffering.

The latest statistics out from IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Index show that even in the teeth of a recession Internet Retail has shown a like for like growth of 5% for January – a massive total spend of £4.3bn.

Certain products like high-end electronics and luxury items did not see a great deal of growth, however clothing and footwear were out in front with 10% like-for-like growth.

It shows that, when the weather turns bad, and money is a little tighter,  people like to sit down at home in front of their PC/Laptop/iPhone/NetBook/NetTV etc and order up something nice for themselves online. It is with this in mind that Internet Retailers should take heart and be looking to drive their online businesses further this year and look to be part of the continued growth of Internet Retail.

As for myself, I’m currently searching for a company that sells snow shovels and delivers via 4×4!

1. Study the web analytics for your blog site – which posts pulled a high volume of traffic or

generated the most comments? This will help you create the most compelling content

for future posts.

2. Shorter is better – writing for a blog requires different skills than normal copywriting. Take

a leaf out of the book of tabloid newspapers and keep your sentences and paragraphs

short and to the point.

3. Publicise your posts on social media – make sure you notify Twitter or Facebook followers

about your latest posts to drive traffic back to your site.

4. Don’t make your posts too commercial – it’s not all about sell, sell, sell! Your readers

are likely to come back if there is plenty of useful content that resonates with them without

pushing products too heavily.

5. Make your headlines snappy – keep your headline short and intriguing to encourage

visitors to click through and read the full post.

6. Always respond to comments – if someone leaves a comment – good or bad – always

reply. This will let users know you care about feedback and encourage real engagement by

generating rapport.

7. Embrace the blogosphere – a great way to increase awareness of your blog is to read

other blogs, making sure you leave a comment so others know you are active in

the blogosphere.

8. Invite guest bloggers – why not invite a customer to blog, or even a partner or supplier? It

will help to keep content varied and high profile names can attract new followers.

9. Include keywords in your posts – use your blog to drive SEO. Ensure your blog site is

hosted on a seperate IP to your ecommerce site and include plenty of keywords with links

back to your main site to help drive SEO.

10. Blog often – infrequent blog posts aren’t really going to cut the mustard. Blogging on a

regular basis will help build up and maintain a following.

With Google’s much publicised Caffeine update Google is shepherding in new rules and algorithms regarding how it will rank websites, again. But what does this mean for Internet Retailers? How can you gain the competitive edge?

The latest issue to surface is surrounding Google’s Page Speed. Google  is striving to reduce page load speed and “speed up the web”. The logical outcome is that Page Speed will be a factor in determining ranking and search engine placement. This means websites need to look to maximise Page optimisation, server hosting speed, browser caching, Javascript minifying, gzip compression, parallelize downloads and many other facets within web technology!

In today’s ultra competitive marketplace the difference between winners and losers can be slight. With so many online retailing companies looking for that competitive edge there is often a feeding frenzy surrounding the latest rumours and announcements about any Google ranking algorithm changes. Often business owners can feel pressured to jump on an already unbalanced band-wagon, lost in the trees, instead of stepping back and taking a good look at the woods.

So what do you, as a business owner, need to know, and what should be your focus?

Relevant, compelling content effectively optimised should still be the priority for all websites. Targeting your market and the search engines with pages filled with relevant content, well laid out and well presented should still be the priority.

There are many, many other factors that you should be aware of when it comes to designing, populating, hosting and promoting your website. Tackling all of these at once can be overwhelming, so we recommend a step by step approach.

If you use any outside assistance for your website, for hosting, design, software etc make sure they can qualify their knowledge and experience regarding search engines and internet marketing. You do not want to have to undo work you have paid for.

OK – so let’s assume your website is online, fully propagated with thoughtful, well written, relevant content aimed at your customers and target audience.After all that should be your priority…..

… and then we can tackle this website speed issue.

Page Speed
Your website should be designed with speed in mind. That means optimised images, optimised HTML, CSS and Javascript. Your web designer should build your website with this in mind, using all the available tools including:

- WebSite Optimisation
- Google Page Speed Browser plugin

If you feel your website is not up to scratch then get in touch. We can certainly help.

Hosting Speed
Your website should be hosted on a fast server with fast hardware, housed within a fast data-centre with fast networking. This gives your website the best chance of being delivered quickly to the browser, well…. fast!
In your Google Account you can view your website speed performance (including network speeds).

Hosting Configuration
Your hosting company should have enabled all the relevant speed optimisation modules e.g. gzip and deflate.If you are unsure about this or want to see about getting a host that is optimised and ready for these challenges then click to see teclan’s Ecommerce Hosting

If you are needing any further assistance with this then feel free to get in touch with teclan and see how our design team, our hosting team or our marketing team can assist.

Link Building
Another vital element in the Search Engine Optimisation tool box. Getting the largest number of quality inbound links to your website is an essential ingredient in search engine ranking (Page Rank) and in footfall through to your website.
If you don’t want to expend the time and effort yourself, then allow our team of experts to deliver professional link building for your business.

Above all, remember and focus on the most important priorities first, and don’t always throw yourself straight onto the internet “fad” bandwagon. It might be the difference between a good decision or a waste of your valuable time.