The card payment industry has changed massively in recent years, with greater focus on online security and fraud prevention through the introduction of CV2 numbers, 3D-secure authentication and additional layers of fraud checking. These advances have meant that other payment processing options (e.g. PayPal, Sage Pay..) have become far superior to PGP, offering improved PCI-compliant fraud protection for the merchant whilst widespread implementation has minimised costs.

This article looks at 3 options available to you, to allow payments to be taken online:

1. Sage Pay

   Sage Pay (a subsidiary of Sage) provides secure online credit and debit card payment solutions for thousands of online and mail order businesses across the UK. When Sage Pay has been implemented on a website, the merchant no longer has to manually process credit card details and the secure disposal & storage of credit card details is no longer a worry.

   With Sage Pay, taking payments is as simple as it can be. A customer can get instant feedback as to whether their payment has been successful, whilst the merchant knows straight away that the payment has been taken, the fraud checking been passed and shipping address confirmed. Sage Pay is also integrated with PayPal Express Checkout (a 3-click checkout for your customers) giving you the opportunity to add a PayPal option to your payment pages.

   Sage Pay Go (Small Business Service) is available from £20/month*, with no additional costs for up to 1,000 transactions per quarter.

   More details can be found at sagepay.com and you can sign up to use Sage Pay at yoursagepay.co.uk

2. PayPal – Website Payments Standard

   Established as the number 1 payment network for auction websites, PayPal is now rapidly growing in use amongst e-commerce businesses. PayPal Website Payments Standard is simple to set up and does not require an internet merchant account. PayPal allows you to accept credit and debit cards, bank transfer and PayPal balance payments in minutes.  Your customers do not need to have a PayPal account to pay you.

   Charges for using PayPal Website Payments Standard are made on a per-transaction basis and there are no monthly or annual fees. Fees range from 1.4% – 3.4% + £0.20*, more details can be found at:
   www.paypal.com

3. PayPal – Website Payments Pro

   Website Payments Pro offers all the benefits of a merchant account and gateway with PayPal. You can accept credit and debit cards, bank transfer and PayPal balance payments via Express Checkout (a 3-click checkout for your customers), via an unbranded direct credit/debit card checkout, or via phone/fax and mail. Your customers do not need to have a PayPal account to pay you.

   Charges for using PayPal Website Payments Pro can be made on a per-transaction basis ranging from 1.4% – 3.4% + £0.20*. Alternatively, an unlimited amount of transaction can be made for a set fee of £20/month. More details can be found at: www.paypal.com

* Prices correct at time of publication (5/2011)

• 
  
  Hunnybums specialise in providing reusable nappies for your baby. As a new business, Hunnybums required a full marketing package; BF Internet provided distinctive branding, beautiful illustrations and eye-catching leaflets, in addition to an online shop with a unique & clever personal shopper.

• 
  
  PYD are a dedicated yacht delivery company, completing over 200 yacht deliveries a year in all of the world’s oceans. An existing customer of ours, we relaunched PYD with a new content-managed website showcasing the specialist services on offer.

• 
  
  Three Peaks Outdoor Leisure specialise in outdoor clothing and accessories, retailing for over 23 years. Their new online shop can cater for all your outdoor needs with products from all the big brands.

• 
  
  Amber Taverns have over 65 public houses across the North of England, Midlands and Wales. An existing customer of ours, we relaunched their website with a new design and a great new pub finder.

• 
  
  Yodel Internal Communications use communication to bring staff together to create conversations and shared understanding. As a new business, Yodel required a full branding and online package from scratch.

What is Google Product search?

If you’re not familiar with the name, Google Product Search gives online businesses the opportunity to have a presence in Google’s shopping results. Earlier this year we ran a blog piece talking about this service, if you missed it you can read it here.

So what is the new specification?

Google will be shortly issuing warnings to many Google Shopping feed owners that do not supply the following information alongside their existing feeds:

• Brand
• Gtin – EAN or barcode number
• Mpn – manufacturer product number

Any two of these three product identifiers must be displayed for the feed to stay live. If this information is not supplied then your feed will be suspended and if not corrected, deactivated.

As of 22^nd September 2011, further information will need to be displayed including:

• Availability – you must display whether the item is in stock or not.

This is required for all Google shopping feeds.

Other product identifiers such as Google category may also be needed depending on the nature of your business.

A full list of the other variations, depending on what items are being sold can be viewed here: Google’s summary of attribute requirements.

For your Google shopping feed to continue to run without a hitch, please contact us to discuss the options available. We can upgrade your website to incorporate new functionality, so that you can populate the new data into your feed.

It is a well-known fact that social media is fast becoming one of the most popular ways for people to communicate, socialise and network online. Businesses around the world are embracing social media and using these platforms to help reach out to their client bases.

Social Media Management can be an effective way to help your company spread news and information about your business, product or services. There are a wide range of solutions to choose from such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and soon Google Plus. We will look at a few of the most popular networks below.

Facebook

Why choose to use Facebook? The main purpose of having a Facebook business page is to improve your brand awareness. Facebook is the largest social networking platform in the world with currently over 500 million active users. Of these users, it is estimated that 50% log onto Facebook daily. On top of this, people spend around 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. Facebook business pages can be used to promote your services, events, competitions or products and allow you to have a presence on the largest social network.

As the demographic of Facebook users becomes older, these users are often the decision makers when it comes to online purchases or using your services. BF Internet can build a business page and update accordingly to promote your business and campaign. This will help to increase awareness about your brand and drive traffic to your main website.

Twitter

The use of Twitter continues to grow and grow with everyone from children, students, business people, celebrities and everyone in-between all signing up for an account. On average there are 175 million registered users and on any one day there are around 95 million tweets.

Although Twitter “tweets” are limited to 140 characters, this medium provides a great way to give your audience news about products, promotions or even just to create more awareness about your brand. Twitter posts can also appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) because search engines such as Bing and Google now look for real time results as part of their algorithms.

YouTube

The YouTube channel is the second most used search engine in the world. This means that if your business has video content then it makes sense to have a presence on this search engine.

Uploading your videos to YouTube will help to increase your online presence by allowing you to share your content and get the highest amount of impressions. YouTube videos appear in the organic listings too giving your message even more exposure too.

These are just a few of the social media platforms on offer. Here at BF Internet, we can help you with all aspects of your social media campaign no matter which platform you choose. Whether it is simply setting up a social media account on your behalf or managing a social media campaign, we are happy to work alongside you. To find out more contact us or telephone 0845 519 4727.

Having worked on web projects since 1996, we have a lot of experience of making a web project run swiftly and smoothly, whilst avoiding obstacles that cause delays. As an agency we constantly refine and perfect our process, but as our customer there are plenty of things you can do to help ensure the project is completed efficiently.

Any project – be it a house renovation, car purchase, or a bespoke web project – requires research, planning and strategy, all of which contribute to its success. These points should be considered in your planning now, to ensure your project is delivered successfully:

1. A web project requires your time too

Although you have commissioned us to plan, develop and deploy your web project, your input as the client is an integral part of the process. The number one delay in a project arises when client input is not available due to other commitments. As a B2B company we understand your company requires large amounts of your time, but we do advise you to consider planning a project aside of things that you know will demand your time – staff holidays, shows and events, seasonal increases in trade, other business projects, etc.

Some project tasks can be delegated to other members of your team, but you should consider how these items will fit into your team’s working week:

• The initial planning of your website, its function and its content
• The creation and supply of content for each page
• Your feedback and sign-off during the design stages
• Your final feedback and sign-off of the web project, once it is built
• An ecommerce site will require product images, descriptions and prices to be prepared and inputted. We can help you with this, but it can require a surprisingly large amount of your time.
• A CMS may require you to create pages and enter content (depending on the package purchased)

2. Establish your online goals

To ensure that your web site works for your business, clear goals and objectives should be set out – what do you want your website to accomplish? Are you simply establishing an online presence and promoting awareness of your company or brand, driving online sales, generating offline sales or leads, improving business process & efficiency or something else entirely? A clear overview of these factors in advance, as well as ascertaining your target market, will make it far easier to actuate your goals further down the line giving us a point of reference throughout the design and build process.

3. Plan your content structure now

Although we offer our advice and experience when planning and developing your content structure (the sections and pages), it is something you should think about from the outset. A clear and well thought out vision of your desired end result will form a basis for us to refine, polish and perfect with you.

If you’re not sure how to get started, we can help you with information architecture – allowing you to formulate an easily navigable and usable content hierarchy, thus ensuring you get the most from your investment. Remember, your website’s visual interface exists to generate interest in and guide users through your content, so the more you know about this in advance the better.

4. Provide content as soon as possible

Put some time in your diary now for content creation. The second biggest delay in web projects is the lack of content to go into pages. Depending upon the size of your project, the creation of high quality content could require many days of your time, so it is important to plan ahead for this. Collecting product information from suppliers, taking photographs, writing about your company and services often takes longer than you might think. You may wish to delegate some of these tasks, or talk to us about how we can help you.

Ideally, the latest your content should be supplied to us would be at design sign-off; typically 3-6 weeks after your deposit has been received. However, it is highly recommended that you have your website content available when the design team begin creating visuals ensuring the end result is more appropriate when we can see the content that is being presented.

Queue Jumper: The advance supply of content is so critical to a project, that we operate a queue jumper scheme; if your content can be supplied within two weeks of project commencement (when your deposit payment has been received) we will jump your project to the front of the queue, and begin work right away!

5. Make arrangements with third parties immediately

Delays on a project caused by third parties may be out of both our control, but by starting discussions as soon as possible these stages can be completed well before the deadline. There are typically two processes you can start now, in preparation for your web project:

Arranging your payment provider

The arrangement of a payment provider and online merchant account can often cause delays for your ecommerce project. Negotiations with your bank, the signing and returning of paperwork, etc. can all take time. Read more about taking payments online here, and then take steps to set up a payment provider today.

Transfer of your domain name and hosting

The transfer of an existing domain name, along with your email and website hosting typically takes between one day and one week. To avoid delays, the transfer arrangements can be made well in advance of your new website being ready, so that the final ‘go live’ process takes just minutes and significantly reduces the risk of a loss of service. Talk to us today about how to make these arrangements.

Now that you’ve read this article, why not take a look at these links too?

1. Read about how we go about building your website
2. Complete a website design questionnaire

If you sell products online yet you don’t use Google Product Search then are missing out. Google Product Search or Froogle as it was previously known was first launched in the UK back in 2004 and is a free service that allows companies to have their products displayed in the shopping results on Google.

For instance, if we were to do a search for the phrase ‘trilby hats‘ then you would see on the first page of results some shopping results for trilby hats. Typically, there are three or four listing with a small thumbnail image but these results can be expanded further by clicking the shopping tab at the top of the page or the text “Shopping results for trilby hats”. Doing so will take you to a whole section dedicated to shopping results powered by data uploaded to Google.

In order to get your products listed on Google product search, you will need to open a Merchant Center account with Google. This is a straightforward task and can be accessed from the settings link in your Google account. Once registered, you will be able to upload a product feed that will keep your product list up to date. The upload of the feed can be set to daily, fortnightly or monthly depending on the frequency your stock changes and you can specify what time you want the feed to run. Our Get-Trolleyed system can help you with this by uploading the automated product feed, we would be happy to discuss setting this up along with you on your behalf.

Once you have got your feed up and running, you can then turn your attention to optimising it to give your products a much better chance of being placed near the top of the list (remember, the top three or four listings appear on the first page of Google).

There are a few simple things you can do to give your product feed a better chance. Be careful not to overdo it though because this can be more harmful than doing nothing at all. Ensuring that you have some keywords in the title and description of each product can help to improve your placement in the shopping results. Also make sure that you all products in the feed have an image associated with them and if possible, the name of the image relates to the product.

If you are interested in setting up a Google Product Feed of your own and would like us to give you a quote, why not get in touch? Simply give us a call on 0845 519 4727 or use our contact form which can be found here.

You may not realise it but SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) plays a large part in how easily your website is found by potential customers on the Internet. Sometimes this happens naturally but in many cases, websites need help to improve their rankings in the major search engines.

Perhaps the best way for a website to rank well is to use content that is relevant to your niche market. By this we mean words or phrases throughout your website that are often searched for by people when are looking for a product or service into a search engine. Search engine spiders also crawl through these relevant phrases and use them as part of their ranking algorithm which ultimately determines where you are placed in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

What you are aiming for is website that appeals to both the search engine spiders in order to ensure that you rank well, while at the same time making sure that the website is equally as presentable to human users too. SEO is used to help increase your website’s rankings by using targeted keywords in the body of the text as well as in the META data. These keywords are usually determined at the start of a project and are based on how many people search for them on the major search engines.

Once the best key phrases have been determined, they can then be used throughout the website. Updatable content such as blogs or articles can then be created again using these key phrases and added on to the website. These new pieces of optimised content can then be crawled by the search engine spiders and be indexed accordingly. This helps to give your website more relevance online allowing users and customers to find you when they search on the Internet.

It is important however, to always remember that it is all too easy to get carried away and put too many key phrases into the website. Doing so could be deemed as spam, which looks bad to a human user and could result in a penalty from the search engines that would damage your rankings.

SEO is important for your website because without it your products or services may not get the attention they deserve. If your website cannot be found easily then users will go somewhere else. By ensuring that your website is properly optimised, you can give your website the edge over your competition.

To keep everyone up to date with how things are progressing at the new office, we have created a gallery of images to help show where we are at the moment. We will keep updating our gallery as the build continues.

We recently mentioned that we are going to be moving to our new office location in Sandside so we thought that we would take the opportunity to give a progress report on how things are shaping up.

When we first got our hands on the building it was little more than an empty shell but this did give us the scope to make it exactly how we wanted to be without any constraints from previous designs.

The first thing that was decided on was that a mezzanine floor should be factored in to the new design as this would better utilise the buildings height and provide a large open space for all the staff to sit and work together. This will be invaluable for collaborations on projects and allow information and knowledge to be shared much more easily.

Downstairs will provide a reception area, meeting room, office and staff area too. The offices will have a thoroughly modern feel to it that helps to reflect our professional work ethics. The meeting rooms give added space to entertain clients should they wish to visit the new office.

Work has commenced on the office and at the moment, much of the groundwork has been completed meaning that it should not be too long before the building is ready for us to begin the move. We will keep updating the news section in order to keep everyone up to speed with the progress. Here are a few images of how things are presently.