For a bit of good sport, get sniping! What is sniping?  It is placing an auction bid (usually on eBay) in the last couple of seconds of an auction and thus depriving other bidders of the opportunity to re-bid (of course, if the other bidder has set their maximum bid at a higher price than your snipe bid, they will still win the auction).

You can snipe manually - that is watch the auction (and don’t forget when it is finishing, or answer the phone, or get distracted by the kids!) and time your bid so there is only say 6 seconds to go.  If you are on a dial up connection, you will need to allow about 30 seconds!  This method is fraught with dangers (internet drops out, computer crashes, you time it wrong, you forget!), but it is fun

The alternative is a sniping service like Auction Sniper. Set up an account (and you will get three free snipes to start).  You will need to give them your eBay username and password (so you really want to make sure that any company you deal with is absolutely trust worthy) so they can bid on your behalf.

Then, find an auction you want to snipe on, copy the auction number (top right hand corner of the listing on eBay), paste that into Auction Sniper and sit back and wait!  With the appointed no of seconds to go (usually 4), Auction Sniper will bid to your limit.  If you win, you pay Auction Sniper a fee. If you dont, better luck next time!  Auction Sniper will also monitor activity during the course of the auction - and if your max bid price (ie your snipe bid) is exceeded at any time, Auction Sniper will notify you.  Pretty cool, huh!

A client of mine recently introduced me to a very cool keyword research tool.  It is very cool for a few reasons:

1. It is easy to use.

2. Because it combines the data of quantity of searches (for a particular keyword) withthe level of competition - and for your research to have any meaning, you really do need both of these things.

3. Data is in both numbers and charts - Google keyword  tools only provide graphics and I find that it lacks relatively on the bar charts.

4. It shows you trend data for the keyword.

5. It provides benchmarks for what makes a good keyword (no of searches, level of competition). This makes it absolutely easy to see if you are onto a winner!

6. The data is provided by the very well respected Wordtracker - so you know it is reliable.

The tool I am talking about can be found here:

Wordtracker’s GTrends

 It is a version of Wordtrackers free standard tool, but it has the extra competition info plus some other great bits!  Here is how it works.

1. Type in your keyword (or keyword phrase):

2. You will then see the top 100 most popular searches using that keyword (or phrase), sorted by search volume.

3. Click on the graph icon, next to the keywords you are interested in to get more in depth info.

4. Devour the results!  And then repeat for all keywords you are interested in.

From this chart you can see that the amount of competition way exceeds (by a factor of 10) the recommended level of competition (less than 30,000), although the no of searches is about twice the recommended level. This would be enough for me to stay well away from this term! The data also shows that this is a new term that has reached its zenith in mid-2008.

5. If you are interested in pursuing this keyword, you can click on one of the research links to take you further into mining the data.

So, overall, this is a fantastic little tool - it will give you all the basic data you need to research a market, and to start optimising your website for good keywords.

You may end up wanting something a little more comprehensive, but as far as free starter tools go this is excellent!

It’s not every day that you can participate in a world record and we’ve got the certificate to prove it! OK, so there were 8,002,529 other people who also helped to set this particular world record (most no of software downloads in a single day), but we reckon it still counts!

And, Firefox 3.0 is wonderful!  It is a huge leap from Firefox 2 (and lets not even worry about Internet Explorer!). There are loads of navigation short cuts that make browsing quicker and some cool new tools.

If you are using Internet Explorer or an older version of Firefox, I highly recommend that you check out the latest Firefox release.  You are too late to join the world record team, but you are not the only one - there have now been more than 30,000,000 downloads of Firefox 3 (in about 3 weeks!).  It is a free download - so try it now and see the difference!  Just click on the button below to go straight to the FF3 download page - and enjoy the new look

Zen Cart will automatically number the orders that you receive starting at…you guessed it, No 1!  Imagine placing an order for a widget, paying for it with your hard earneds, then getting an email with “Order Confirmation No: 1″  - would that scare you just a little bit? It certainly makes your new Zen Cart ecommerce store look, well, new!  And it certainly doesn’t build credibility and confidence.

As always, there is a very easy way to solve the problem within Zen Cart admin.  To change the default Order No on your Zen Cart invoice, try this:

Admin > Tools > Store Manager >> and change the current number.

Reset Current Order ID New 1000 || Old ###

If you already have orders in the system, it would be smart to backup your database before you do this.  Otherwise - go for it - and make yor Zen Cart ecommerce site look like you’ve been round for years!

Well, it took a bit longer than we had anticipated (about a week all up), but we did get Constanze’s web page listed in the No 1 spot on Google and the No2 spot and yep - even the No 3 spot! Here’s the listing result now:

Who says SEO is difficult?? Getting ranked in the No 1 position for your name or your business name is really not difficult (unless your name is Bill or Mary Smith maybe!), so just watch out if an SEO consultant guarantees you the No 1 position (or a top 10 ranking) that they are not just referring to your business name. Whilst that is good to have, it is so easy to do you shouldn’t have to pay for it! Just use the strategies that we have used here for Constanze Völkel-Hutchison’s site. Here they are:

1. Make sure the page you want listed is optimised for that keyword (in this instance we used:

• Domain name
• Page title
• H1 heading
• Page Text

2. List in a directory/blog that is regularly indexed by Google.

3. Use the keyword and URL repeatedly in the listing (and we also used it in the blog title).

4. Wait!

If there is something that you would like to get quickly indexed in Google (OK - so a week isn’t exactly super quick!), please contact us at WebCare Solutions for a quote on SEO services.

We are now going to get Constanze’s page listed for the alternative spelling of her name - Constanze Völkel-Hutchison. That should happen within the next week as well. Normally though, we would not expect to get a super high ranking for this alternative spelling as the site is not optimised for it. The term is only used once. So, will be interesting to see if we can get a number one position for that spelling as well!

This is a test blog post to see how quickly we can get Constanze Voelkel-Hutchison’s web page indexed on Google. The website has just gone up (24 March 2008) and is not getting any traffic at the moment, nor is it listed in Google.

We are wanting to get it indexed for the phrase - Constanze Voelkel-Hutchison . This is the only place the site is being listed, and it is not being submitted directly to Google. Our expectation is that it will be indexed within 72 hours.

Constanze Voelkel-Hutchison attended one of the internet marketing courses delivered by us and is now a client of WebCare. Whilst we haven’t built her website, we do host it and are helping her to get it indexed as quickly as we can through this blog entry. We will post an update in a week to advise whether we have been successful in our effort to get this site indexed super quickly! You can visit Constanze’s website at:

http://www.constanze-voelkel-hutchison.com

They say that mechanics cars always need a service!  It probably follows then that web designers websites always need an update!  Well, we are very pleased to announce that we have finally launched the new look for the WebCare site - we think it is cleaner, neater and fresher, but it still has loads of info on it!  Let us know what you think of the new skin and the new logo.

There is still some work to be done on the new version, but we practice what we preach to our clients - get the site up and running and then you can make changes as you go. So - we will be doing that over the next few weeks.

If your site needs a makeover (or skin!) give us a call on 1300 656 902. We can talk you through the various options and breathe new life into your tired old website

Here’s a couple of examples of other sites that we have given a makeover:

Eurosport Automotive

 Curvaceous

WebCare

And for those of you who didn’t see the “old” WebCare site, here it is in all its black and green glory

Just heard about something extremely scary! If you already process credit cards online (ie your customer types their credit card no directly into your website) OR you are trying to decide what sort of credit card processing system to use online, then you REALLY NEED TO KNOW about this.

There is now a $10,000 minimum fine for small online merchants in Australia who do NOT adhere to the new PCI-DSS standards introduced in September 2007 by the Security Standards Council (SSC). Standards? What Standards?

You can download the standards here:

PCI- Data Security Standards v1.1

The upshot of this document is that there are a whole bunch of minimum requirements that an ecommerce that receives credit cards numbers (called PANs - Primary Account Numbers) MUST have in place. These requirements are:

• Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
• Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other
  security parameters
• Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data (ie encryption)
• Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks
• Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software or programs
• Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
• Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
• Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
• Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data
• Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
• Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes
• Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security for employees and contractors

If you are already doing all this. Wow! Great job! If you are not, then you might want to look for an alternative way of processing online credit transactions!

Here are some options:

1. Use a bank’s merchant facility that DOES NOT require the card no to be given on your website. In other words, the credit card details are given “off-site”. If the customer wants to pay by credit card, when they click on the “Pay Now” button (or equivalent), they are taken to the Bank’s Merchant Facility to enter their credit card details. At no stage are you, the merchant, in possession of or responsible for the customer’s PAN (ie credit card number). So, the PCI-DSS requirements do NOT apply to you! Examples of merchant facilities that fall into this category are:

• ANZ eGate
• NAB’s NSIPS
• Commonwealth’s COMMWEB

2. Use a third-party processor. Paypal is the most popular example of a third-party gateway in Australia. It is secure, it is free to set up and WebCare integrates PayPal into all of our ecommerce websites - free of charge! The only cost is the roughly 2.5% transaction fee. Yes, this is higher than you pay with a bank, but there are no other fees! So could be saving many hundreds of dollars in the first year alone (depending on the volume of transactions that go through your ecommerce site). Paymate is another example of this type of processor but their fees are significantly higher than PayPal (if you include the 3% fee they automatically charge your client!).

3 . If you have manual credit card processing facilities and you are authorised (or can get authorised) for “no-card present transactions” (including phone and fax), then you can use e-Path to gather the credit card details from your customer and to make them securely available for you to process manually. e-Path looks like a third party processor to the customer, but it does not actually process the card. Rather, it captures the details on your behalf. You then retrieve the credit card details from your e-Path account and process in the usual way. Because your website is NOT receiving the customer’s credit card number, you are not subject to the PCi-DSS requirements. Of course, you still need to treat those credit card details in accordance with your merchant agreement.

The other great advantage of e-Path is that you can then investigate the legitimacy of each order before processing the card (eg check country, delivery address, valid phone number, non-free email address (hotmail, yahoo, gmail etc)). This should reduce significantly the amount of credit card fraud that you are subject to. Yay!

4. Stick with non-credit card forms of payment - cheque, money order, direct deposit to your bank account. You won’t have to worry about any of these issues, and there are virutally no transaction costs. Any (or all) of these forms of payment can easily be added to your e-Commerce system but…and it’s a pretty big but…this form of payment is manual - your ecommerce system will not know that a payment has been made until you record it in the admin system.

If you are not sure which type of approach is best suited to your business, give us a call on 1300 656 902 to discuss. We will happily talk you through the advantages and disadvantages.

One of my students was thinking about adding online/web advertising to his website and asked for some info about how rates for online/web advertising is calculated. I thought it might be useful to post my answer on the WebCare blog:

Web advertising is a bit different to display advertising - but I suppose the principles are similar.

You can sell ads by:

• no of impressions
• CTR
• size
• location (top rather than bottom)
• sub-pages
• time
• etc

I was talking with a client yesterday who told me they looked at advertising on one big niche market site - start price is $20k!!!  So - they are advertising with the competitor of that big niche market!  But, they are not advertising on their site - but in the emails that get sent out to people on their mail list - and that is costing $900 per email just to people in one state!!  It is massive traffic that is driving these prices.

To my mind impressions and CTR are a much better measure than time - as you could buy a months worth of advertising that only gets 50 impressions and 0 CTR’s!!  CTR is better than impressions (which is why google adwords works so well) as you are paying for actual traffic rather than potential traffic! So, if you can guarantee advertisers on your site a certain level of traffic to their site (which is what CTR measures) then I think you are offering a much better deal than just impressions.

Wow!  According to a Dec 07 ABS Report, in June 2007, there were 2,011,770 businesses in Australia - or one business for every 10 people. 96% of these businesses (1.93 million) are small businesses employing less than 20 people and 1.2 million have no staff at all!

The good news is that  58% of businesses that opened in June 2003 were still operating in June 2007 (four years later!).  If a business is going to fail, around 1/3 of them will do it in the first year.

It is these 1.93 million small businesses (variously known as home businesses, SME’s (small to medium enterprises) and SOHO (small office home office) that are the target group for WebCare’s web design and development services. There were 2.4% more businesses in 2007 than 2006 - or around 48,000 new businesses.  All of these businesses need a website and WebCare’s fixed price packages suit start-up businesses with low capital reserves to a tee!

If you are one of the 10% of people in Australia with their own business, and you don’t have a website, give us at WebCare a call today.   We can talk through the options for your website - what sort of site you need, what is its primary purpose (attracting new customers, providing information to existing customers, selling services, selling goods etc), and what are the best options for marketing this site. Best of all - this consultation is free - a great way to canvass the options for your businesses website and to make sure you have enough information to get quotes on your new website.