Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

At last, WCAG 2.0 guidelines have been released!! So what?
Well a hot topic for quite a few years now has been the accessibility of website for the disabled, whether that be visually or physically impaired. The web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) where set out by the World wide Web Consortium (W3C) to standardise the way in which website were built for the visually and physically impaired - problem was that the requirements were so ridged (and in some case ridiculous) that it restricted creativity and functionality - many web developers were frustrated.
The good news is that the new guidelines take into account many of the new forms of media available and make a little more sense.
Find out more by visiting the web content accessibility guidelines online at W3C

Have a great Christmas

Merry Christmas

This could be my last posting for this year (I say could because depending on how the mood takes me I may publish something else). So Christmas is here again. Its been a tough year for the high street - the Internet has faired better but times will be more challenging - I'm not trying to be doom and gloom, there is enough of that about without me joining the band wagon - This is the first time the Internet has existed when a crisis has occurred and the country heading towards a recession. It is going to challenge a few, a few will give up, but I believe that this is the time for online business to really become creative and step up to the plate.

I predict that next year will be a tougher year for ecommerce - it will be more competitive and cut throat - but it is also an excellent opportunity to get really good at marketing your business. The Internet is still the place to be and think about it, if you make your self a strong contender now then when this is all over you will be in a really strong position.

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year. We will be back on 5th January and ready to help you implement your Internet marketing strategy.

Make sure you have your Products in Google Base!

There will be some of you who can remember when Google decided it was going to enter into the shopping comparison market. That is when you search for a product and a list of results for that product are presented to you with price comparisons against all the stores that sell that product. Googles version of this was called Froogle - which was a hit in the states, but struggled to get off the ground in the UK. Well now Google has Google Base - which is pretty much the same thing but is integrated into Googles Universal Search (or click on the Shopping tab in Google if you only want to search Google base results).

So what do you have to do to get into Google Base? Firstly you need to be able to export all of your products in to a csv file or xml feed. The information in here will tell Google the name of you product, the category it sits in and most importantly the price you are selling it at. It then makes this available for searching.

So for example, one of our clients sells PA Systems to the general public, bands and businesses - they have around 300 products - so we integrated a Google Base export. If someone now searches for a specific product that is in the company online catalog then it is like to come up in the Google search WITH the price next to it.

So why is this different to normal search engine optimisation (SEO)? well if you think about the mind set of the person who is carrying out the search - if she knows the exact product name she is looking for and when she searches not only is there a link directly to that product but there is a price as well - how much more of a qualified lead do you get? Should get pretty good conversion rates as long as your prices are competitive.

Give Google Base a go and see how it improves your ecommerce store.