WebServe Development

Ebay boycott MAY 1st

2008-05-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

EBay is facing a backlash from its users in the form of a global boycott on May 1

Founded in 1995, eBay last year generated £3.8 billion in revenue. However, president and chief executive John Donahoe, who joined the company in March this year, has implemented a number of changes that have made users so disgruntled they have resorted to boycotting the service for one day.
Previously, sellers were able to leave comments about buyers. Under Donahoe's new rules, however, sellers can only leave positive but not negative or neutral feedback. Although some users are concerned that these changes will make it difficult to alert other users to fraudulent or malicious buyers, eBay claims it will make it easier for sellers to report 'bad' buyers and will remove unfair feedback.
[ Learn more about the changes made to eBay's policies and standards, and sellers' reactions to those changes. ]
And while users have seen listing fees reduced, the fee eBay charges on completion of a sale has risen to 7.25 percent of the total sale price, from 5.25 percent.
"We are a marketplace founded on trust. If people have a bad experience on our site, caused by a poor seller, then they will no longer use the site. The changes we announced recently are unashamedly focused on protecting buyers," an eBay spokesman said .

Ebay have to remember that without sellers the customers will have less choice and will altermately leave!! And when the buyers do leave so will the rest of the sellers.
The importance for professional ebay sellers to own a highly effective ecommerce website must be more important than ever.

Touch Local do not make guarantee's

2008-05-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

After my earlier article about saving money online through ineffective advertising companies a touch local representative contacted me asking for details and that they wished to sort out the problem. Alas after giving them the said details not further correspondence has been made.
So i thought that i should contact them to see what had happened, It seems that the company doesn't guarantee its service, which is not mentioned is their sales pitch. Quite simply they fail to recognise that responsibility should be to supply what the sales team say. The need for telephone sales team is obviously key to their success as they use this as a way of wriggling out of giving value for money.

Expect to pay £1 per click from Touch local, whilst this can be obtained much cheaper by using adwords without the dumb telephone calls or devious tactics.

Alternatively go for some good website optimisation and a seo package as it will save you ££££ in the long run.

Women to shine on Yahoo

2008-04-07T02:09:00.000-07:00

Yahoo Shine, the new website for women, hopes to attract an audience by bringing content straight from the magazine rack to the web.
Yahoo has reached deals with major publishers like Hearst Magazines (Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping), Conde Nast (Glamour, Allure) and Time Inc. (In Style) to provide original copy and videos to the site, as well as interactive blogs, all in the hopes of attracting the female 25-54-year-old demographic.
Brandon Holley, editor in chief of Yahoo Lifestyles, told MediaWeek that Shine will feature extra doses of sass and humor, separating it from the rest of the women’s website pack.
“I looked at men’s magazines and the way they’re presenting things, and hopefully that smart, provocative humor comes out,” Holley said.
Yahoo drew 40 million female visitors in February, but it ranked sixth among health and fitness sites and seventh among cooking sites, according to Nielson Online data.

Google Wants National Wi-Fi free of charge

2008-03-31T06:26:00.000-07:00

Nationwide WiFi for Free. Yes your ears are hearing rights and its not a figment of your imagination

Google is lobbying the FCC for some of the wireless spectrum that will be freed next year when television will cease analog transmission. Google’s plan? “Wi-Fi on steroids.” Late Friday, Google submitted a six-page letter to the FCC outlining processes and tests to avoid interference on the frequencies in question. Google also promised to reserve some frequencies not for wireless Internet and provide free tech support for people using their Wi-Fi. Presumably, this would dovetail well with Android-enabled handsets, due out later this year.
This year’s wireless spectrum auction sold license to frequencies formerly occupied by UHF transmissions (ultra high frequency) television channels 52 - 69. The ultra high and very high frequencies used by television channels 2 through to 51 will no longer be used after February 17, 2009. Google planned to deliver sometime in Q4 2009.
If Google succeeds in convincing the FCC to sign on, there will be some major concerns with free Google WiFi, and rightfully so. Aaron Wall points out that as an ISP, Google will have access to massive amounts of user data that they could use to influence SERPs. And if they did provide wireless for free, many people would probably be willing to part with this information in exchange for Internet access, which was probably costing them anywhere from $10 to $100 a month.
There are also some concerns over the wireless network itself: would connections be secure enough? Would they be fast enough to make it worth the while of heavy Internet users? Would anyone but the Extreme Internet users care if their connections were slower, but free?
Connection prices though are expected to drop significantly over the ment few years as competition hots up and the likely intervention of mobile phone companies adding to this would there be any need for free Wifi? When the possibility of a fast service comes at a low cost. Although this would bring prices crashing down much faster.
This also illistrates that the internet has some way to go before it is at full strength and businesses need to start getting there websites sorted out by a good Web Developer soon for this revolution.

Web design and development

2008-03-31T05:20:00.000-07:00

Professional Website Design for your business is essential to Promote your company especially now that more and more customers search online for their needs. The computer 5 years ago was limited to a few, but now can be found in many households, it's just a matter of time before everyone has one just like television.
Clear, Clean sites that are fully optimised and can gain good positions on the search engines will bring your company those fresh enquires, but it seems many establish companies do not understand the full concept and power of the Internet. This may in the future create a new stream of young companies with Internet savvy and vision though to the forefront of business, whilst the old dinosaur flags behind dismissing it or not wanting to understand it, but with hindsite finding themselves unable to catch up.

A professional image, creative design and simple to use website are effective websites. But the use of professional Website Developer who have good Search engine Optimisation skills "that can get your website seen" is imperative to achieve online success, knowing that your developer has achieved this an a grand way is the only way that you will be sure that they can do it for you.
But you also need to ask the question about the company/s they promoted, "What amount of investment was used to achieve it".
If for example it was Barclay's bank then you will know that they would have invested heavily to achieve the results.

Many companies fail online because the fear changing developers or talking to others about there targets, this is a mistake and a good developer should achieve results with existing websites which give good web presence within 12 months. So if your website is much older than this you do have to ask yourself is it time for a change.

One main reason companies should be taking the Internet seriously is, because with the possibility of a recession looming and existing customers tightening there belts now would be a good time to reach out further and acquire extra contacts or sales though new customers, this would lessen the impact of this and would leave companies who use this approach with a stronger hand when the better times come again.

It once again illustrates the need for good Web Development companies that can achieve great results. There's no shortage on advice regarding what people should do to improve a web site's position in the search engine listings. It is easy to become confused when you consume all the information that is available, because some people agree with others while some totally disagree and offer other advice.
You should be extremely suspicious of any advice given by someone that tells you to use search engine submissions, employ traffic exchanges, or use FFA sites. That is so out of date it really is not funny.

Facebook is about to pass Myspace in the traffic ranks

2008-03-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

Facebook is about to pass Myspace in the traffic ranks according to comScore's estimate of unique visitors per day, which increased for both social networks: Facebook was up 2.6%, from January to February, while MySpace grew 3%.

MySpace

Total Uniques: 68 million. Down 1%
Average Daily Visitors: 17.7 million. Up 3%
Average Minutes Per Visitor: 242.9 Up 19%

Facebook

Total Uniques: 32.4 million. Down 4.2%
Average Daily Visitors: 8.6 million. Up 2.6%
Average Minutes Per Visitor: 161.3 Down 6.2%

But things look really interesting when you analylise the 2 websites international traffic. Facebook continues to close on MySpace's visitor total: At 100.7 million unique visits in January, Facebook is now about 8% smaller than MySpace' 109.3 million. A year ago, MySpace's worldwide lead was nearly 4 time that amount.
In terms of unique visitors per day, Facebook has already eclipsed MySpace. It did this in November. Its easy to see why Facebook keeps playing up its international growth plans, which have only just started to kick in.

Unique content for Your website...tips

2008-03-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

With any website good unique content is required that engrosses the reader but also encourages them to look deeper into your content and hopefully use your services or for the more difficult tasks will become confident in what you say to purchase a product or service.
Unique content though has had me thinking back to all those times at school, when we had to write essays, god did i hate doing that and i was always last to hand in the homework essays... remember what they said you have a, start, middle & finish, it's just the same with unique content it's just an essay on a chosen topic. But here we are a few years later and i'm writing regularly, not that i feel that i'm some kind of expert writer by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it is unique, it just takes practice . The more you practice the better you will get at it ( well i hope i do anyway)... It's so easy online nowadays to just copy and paste but when someone else writes your content you can loose the personality of the website. Its also important to keep your content interesting and relate what you are talking about to different things or different times, this allows you to expand on your topic. I always say that if you take the time to do it people will read it, as you are now. Some people will like it, some won't but as they say "you can't please all the people all the time, but you can please some people some of the time".
This article shows exactly what i mean as it is about a relatively boring subject of "unique content" when i first looked at this an thought what do i say about it suddenly it dawned on me there really isn't a lot to say, as it does what it says on the tin, so to speak. I ended up writing about it in a different way where i'm talking around the subject.
It reminds me of a of something i used to scribble on the blackboard as a kid, it went like this:-
"If you have noticed this notice, you may have noticed that this notice was not worth noticing".
My point is that even the most boring subject have something to say and all the time you will be building up keyword density which can help with website optimisation and from blogs like this helps with links but that's another subject.

You can Get Google Ads Free too, If you like!!

2008-03-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

Get Google Ads Free! Don't waste your money on this as it waffles on about how to sell space on a page thus paying for your adwords, see it can be said in one line, you can check how long they explain it on the page they advertise, It may sound very inviting and in theory it would work but alas you will do what everyone does and join its affiliate service so you can get your money back and more by selling to other unsuspecting people, this is available a click bank and they also have many more affiliate schemes.

Verdict If you have time and nothing better to do with it then this should keep you entertained.
You may even earn a few pounds, who knows that bit is down to you and where you place it.

Did I do it? No of cause not, this was sent to me via a family member who wouldn't listen, but the up side to it is that, I really enjoy those family gatherings now..

Protecting Your Brand name Online

2008-03-18T17:45:00.000-07:00

In today's competitive environment, many advertisers resort to using competitor trademark names as keywords in paid-search advertising. These trademark names appear in the search engine results pages for Google, Yahoo! and affiliates and partners when you buy Google AdWords or Overture Precision Match sponsored listings. Therefore, it's possible for your competitors to drive substantial traffic to their web sites by virtue of your trademark name, using your reputation to attract visitors.
A fine example of this is the sticky situation with Google AdWords. In an Internetnews.com article titled "Google Adwords Under Further Trademark Scrutiny," Google was quoted thusly:
"As stated in our Terms and Conditions, advertisers are responsible for the keywords and ad text that they choose to use. We encourage trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with our advertisers, particularly because the advertisers may have similar advertisements on other sites."
I can certainly understand Google's position. Can you imagine what would happen if it were forced to reverse its policy allowing advertisers to buy keywords containing trademark terms belonging to others? This would severely impact Google's revenue, and no doubt would require exhaustive efforts on their part to prevent such activities from occurring.
It's interesting to note that originally, Google AdWords did not sell trademarked keywords. However, it currently sells trademarked keywords in the U.S. and Canada (but not internationally) with the proviso that the trademark name can't be used in the ad copy itself.
The Best Defense is an Offense
Is there any way to protect yourself from competitors raiding your trademark? One way is to hire an SEO vendor to help identify your competitors and then research their search engine advertising activities. Your legal department can subsequently use the SEO research data to protect your trademark and reputation. This step will prove invaluable toward defending your future and ongoing business.
Most often, it will be the smaller, "wannabe" companies riding on your coat tails by using your trademark terms as keywords in their advertising. These companies will generally avoid the threat of legal action upon receipt of a cease and desist letter. Not only are you protecting your name and reputation, you are crushing the competitors that you don't want representing your firm.
Building Your Marketing Network
Another benefit of mining this competitor data is to assist those whom you do want to benefit from using your trademark name. For instance, you may have affiliates, resellers, and a number of associates with whom you can negotiate on a recurring basis. These are the folks you trust with your trademark and reputation -- your friends and family marketing network. There's something in it for you when they profit from your success.
Knowing who is using your trademark in keyword search advertising or in the body text of their web site has a directly positive effect on managing your brand, your trademark, and your reputation. Make sure your SEO vendor covers this critical marketing aspect for your online success.
A Word of Caution
It goes without saying that you don't want to use trademark names other than your own in keyword phrases. Profiting from the use of another company's trademark or brand without relevance or permission is unacceptable and could even result in legal action against you.
Reviewing the above information on trademark term research while interviewing SEO vendors will help you to identify those vendors who provide added value to your search engine marketing and website optimization campaign.

Marketing online save £6000 + VAT

2008-03-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

The internet provides people with a great tool in which they can publicly present their services or products, this has inevitably produced Companies that offer advertising online through various means. It should be made public knowledge that some of these companies produce very little for the charges they set. My latest Experience was with Touch Local where the sales representative promised all sorts to obtain the order. Only to leave the company and the company choosing to ignore the my complaints of poor performance.
As a web development company and online retailer I feel that sometimes companies out there should be give a chance to see if they can produce on there promise..some you win some you lose but overall these companies rarely produce.
My latest conversation was with a guy at handbag.com who did his best to convince me that £4500 per month for an advert was good business... "how do they brainwash these representatives? when i told him i could get between 50,000 - 80,000 keyword targeted potential customers for this amount the conversation quickly ended. As you can imagine as a high ranking website that has been highly optimised i get many calls, so now it seems fair that I should promote some of these private conversations from these salesmen/women.
Good Seo and online marketing is about knowing whats available and who would benefit your service or product.
See this article has just saved you over £6000 + vat.

Internet shopping predicted to command half of sales by 2018

2008-03-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

Internet shopping could account for half of Britain’s £300 billion-a-year retail market by 2018 after coming of age this Christmas it was predicted yesterday James Roper, the chief executive of Interactive Media in Retail Group, the internet retail monitor, said that the pace of change would be unprecedented over the next decade, as stores have been left with little choice but to improve significantly their online offering to protect sales.
He argued that town planners were already taking the www into account, given the potential need for parcel distribution depots on the outskirts of cities and big towns.
IMRG believes that consumers have spent a record £53 billion online this year, up 75 per cent on last year and a market share of 17 per cent. More than £17.5 billion has been spent online since the start of October alone, another all-time high. IMRG includes leisure and travel spending in its calculations.
Brian McBride, managing director of Amazon UK, said that stores needed to “shape up” or face being squeezed out as a result of the internet revolution. He believes that the online retail market will double or treble over the next two to three years.
He said: “Being mid-range is no longer going to cut it. You’re going to either have to offer value like Primark or great service like John Lewis or Marks & Spencer on the high street. The internet has certainly come of age this year.” Experts believe that this year has produced a breakthrough for the internet, as the growing use of broadband has coincided with not only an increasing confidence in buying online but ever more time pressure on consumers. Half of all homes in the UK – about 13 million – now have broadband internet connections.
Mr Roper said: “Four factors have come together at once: familiarity, availability, confidence on the part of consumers and investment on the supply side. This year has been a great surprise to us. The market has been growing at twice the level we expected. We were looking at the internet taking a 25 per cent share of the retail market by 2011 or 2012, but we’re having to bring these targets forward. Half of all transactions could be online by 2018.”
Marks & Spencer was one of a number of high street chains that kick-started their traditional Boxing Day sales on the web on Christmas Day. M&S relaunched its website in March after bringing in Amazon to improve functionality, and traffic on the site was up 60 per cent last month on a year ago.
Choosing the right Website developer and Seo team has never been more important.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) believes that more than two thirds of the population – 68 per cent – will be shopping online by 2011, compared with 54 per cent today, as more over50s use the web for the first time.
Mark Hudson, the retail and consumer leader for PwC, said that it was impossible to predict how big the internet could be, but he put the size of the online retail market at 5 per cent of the total now and predicted that it would double to 10 per cent by 2011.
He said: “The internet is experiencing rapid growth, but there are constraints, given the extent of retailers’ current operations on the high street and the costs of distribution, logistics and problems with the delivery infrastructure.”
Amazon led the internet revolution in the UK almost a decade ago when the US-run business bought Book-pages. It is still the UK’s most popular website, in front of Play.com, the CD and DVD website.

Popular websites market share

2008-03-10T17:02:00.000-07:00

Here is some interesting facts how and where your marketing on should be directed.

Rank : Website: Market Share
1. http://www.google.co.uk/ 7.73%
2. mail.live.com 3.12%
3. http://www.ebay.co.uk/ 2.73%
4. http://www.facebook.com/ 1.9%
5. uk.msn.com 1.72%
6. http://www.google.com/ 1.71%
7. http://www.bebo.com/ 1.45%
8. http://www.youtube.com/ 1.23%
9. news.bbc.co.uk 0.95%
10. http://www.myspace.com/ 0.9%
11. uk.mail.yahoo.com 0.86%

66 in every 100 Searches in February belong to Google

2008-03-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

66 in every 100 Searches in February belong to Google

February was a strong month for Google - the number of searches to the site was up one percent to equal 66.44% (to be exact) of searches in the U.S. I believe this is a new high, because according to HitWise, Google reached their highest share of searches in December 2007 - at 65.98%.
Again Google takes the majority and the other search engines don’t come close. Yahoo! Search had almost 21% of searches, MSN Search got almost 7% (so if you could perfectly combine the two top competitors as Microsoft hopes, you’d be closer to 30%).
Ask.com had 4.16% of searches. As far as the long tail, it was really long - every other search engine (46 total) together accounted for just 1.87 percent of U.S. searches last month.
HitWise also looks at categories and compared February 2008 to February 2007. During the year searches to travel, entertainment, business and finance and sports categories had double digit increases in the percentage of traffic coming directly from search engines. Sports was the highest with 22% of searches coming from search engines.
The figures are based on a sample size of 10 million Internet users. This shows the importance of optimisation towards Google.

Getty Images Inc, agreed to a $2.1 billion buyout

2008-02-29T03:59:00.000-08:00

Getty Images Inc. the leading seller of stock photography and video footage, said Monday it has agreed to a $2.1 billion buyout from the private equity group Hellman & Friedman LLC.
Ten-year-old Getty, whose nearest competitor is privately held Corbis Corp. put itself up for sale in January after taking a beating on Wall Street for two years.
After reaching a high above $94 per share in November 2005, Getty's shares tumbled 77 percent to $21.80 in Jan 18th of this year, as higher costs ate away at profits.
Four days later, the Seattle-based company said it would consider strategic alternatives to boost shareholder value.
Troy Mastin, an analyst at William Blair & Co. said Getty's core business of selling more-expensive photographs to newspapers and magazines had declined as those media struggled with the rise of Internet content.
Sales to direct mail and brochure customers also cooled.
At the same time, though, Getty's newer businesses grew faster.
The company bought iStockPhoto.com, which sold images for as little as $1 for unlimited use, in 2006.
Mastin said customers who once bought the low end of Getty's core stock photos moved over to buy the even cheaper royalty-free photos and Getty's editorial offerings _ news, sports and celebrity photos for the media _ grew, as did its video footage business.
While Getty didn't give a specific reason for its January decision to seek a buyer, Mastin said it was likely because Getty felt Wall Street was paying more attention to the stagnating core business than to its emerging segments."Public markets didn't seem willing to consider (Getty's businesses) separately," Mastin said.
Jonathan Klein, Getty's chief executive officer, said in a statement that "Hellman & Friedman brings specific industry expertise and support for the vision of the company's management team.
"The private equity group has invested in other rapidly changing digital businesses, including online advertising company Digitas, acquired by Publicis Groupe, and DoubleClick, whose buyout by Google Inc is pending regulatory approval in Europe.San Francisco-based Hellman & Friedman offered $34 per share in cash for all of Getty's shares, a 39 percent premium over Friday's close.
Based on Getty's 61 million fully diluted shares, the cash offer is worth almost $2.1 billion. The buyer is also assuming about $300 million in debt, pushing the total value of the transaction to $2.4 billion.
Getty's board has approved the deal, but shareholders still need to sign off. Closing is expected in the second quarter. The company's shares jumped $7.22, or 29.5 percent, to $31.67 Monday.
On the Net:
Getty: http://www.gettyimages.com/

Microsoft Offer For Yahoo is Firm

2008-02-25T04:20:00.000-08:00

Just in case you wanted to read more about Microsoft’s bid to buy Yahoo….

Rather than upping their bid to buy Yahoo, as many speculate, Bill Gates said Microsoft’s offer is firm.
This came from an unrelated phone conversation yesterday. The call was about giving students free access to some of Microsoft’s software.
Gates said Microsoft’s offer of $31 a share was a fair offer that Yahoo should seriously consider. Yahoo is said to believe they are worth at least $40 per share. Meanwhile Microsoft share price has dropped 12.8 percent, weakening the stock and cash deal. Somehow Yahoo may think that other deals discussed - with the News Corporation and Time Warner - may get a better price. It’s unlikely.
Last week, Yahoo vice president Bradley Horowitz resigned to join Google. He didn’t say what his position at Google would be and refused to speculate on how the Yahoo/Microsoft deal would play out in the future.
On his blog Horowitz noted: “I have no more insight into the current MSFT / YHOO discussions than any avid reader of the NYT, WSJ, etc.”
Meanwhile, the next strategy by Microsoft isn’t to raise the bid, but to stack the deck. Yahoo’s board of directors is up for nomination this year and they stated they’ll start a proxy fight. In that, Microsoft would try to persuade Yahoo shareholders to use their proxy votes (i.e. votes by one individual or institution as the authorized representative of another) to overthrow the board. They have a March 13th deadline to accomplish this.
It still shows that search engine optimisation ( seo ) should be directed at google.