Google’s statement of these changes read ‘We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page‘. Previously Google had emphasised diversity as being one of the most important objectives when delivering it’s results. Google is now saying that results from the same site can still be diverse enough.

For webmasters of small to medium sized web sites this probably means that they will be able to dominate the search results for specific events and products. For example if we search for the Soloro Summer Sale we find that the top 7 positions are held by references to the Soloro site. As this company are running the sale and they are the main seller of their brand of shoes, then they are the most authoritative source on this subject and therefore rank at the top of the search results.

Just released in August 2010 is the DSE Online web system. This comprises an updateable web site and an online DSE  application. The site has been designed for Priority Safety Systems Ltd. who deliver cost effective online DSE assessments to organisations of all sizes.

Online DSE Assessments

Online DSE ensures compliance with the DSE regulations and at the same time offers time saving and environmental benefits. The system includes assessment management and issue resolution tools, that can be used by management to ensure their staff are properly assessed and that they have records to support those assessments.

Online sales grew by 18% in the month compared with a year earlier, the biggest jump since 2007, IMRG said.

UK shoppers spent £5bn online in July, more than in any other month this year, it added.

Figures published on Thursday showed total UK retail sales rising much faster than expected in July.

Sales volumes jumped 1.1% compared with June, the Office for National Statistics said, with almost all non-food sectors showing strong growth.

World Cup dip
 
The average UK shopper spent £81 online in July, with promotions and discounts also boosting spending.

Travel sales rose by a third compared with a year earlier, as people looked to escape the rain and head for sunnier climes, said IMRG, the industry body for global internet retailing.

This more than offset a fall in alcohol sales, caused perhaps by England’s disappointing performance in the football World Cup, the group said.

“Although online retail sales survived the recession more convincingly than High Street sales, the last two years or so have no doubt been shaky at times,” said Chris Webster, head of retail consulting and technology at Capgemini, which publishes the online sales index with IMRG.

“It is really encouraging to see growth levels returning to those seen pre-2007 and before consumer confidence was knocked by the financial crisis and the recession.”

The IMRG Capgemini Index tracks online sales at more than 100 retailers across the UK.

Reasons to integrate Sage with your Web Site

So as a business using both web and traditional routes to market why would you want to integrate your web site with your Sage 200 or Sage 50 accounting software? Well the most obvious attraction is the time savings available when recording sales details within your company accounts.

Most reasonably successful small retail web sites will deliver a large volume of low value transactions. Typically daily transactions might reach 70 / day, at busy periods in the year,  representing an unacceptable workload for manual book-keeping.

Business Inventory Management

When selling through multiple channels stock / inventory management can become problematic for many small to medium sized businesses. The use of a central system like Sage 200 or Sage 50 is a very good way to ensure that your business has all of the information it needs to properly manage stock, so that fulfillment issues do not lead to uneconomic work.

From a web site perspective Sage Integration will prevent the sale of items that are currently out of stock or discontinued. This will remove the need to process orders that cannot be fulfilled, thereby improving customer satisfaction and leading to a greater likelihood of repeat custom.

Direct Transfer of Customer and Order related data

Direct transfer of customer and order information, without the need to re-key that information across systems, will lead to better quality information. This will deliver a consequent reduction in lost staff time, resolving issues associated with these inaccuracies. Invoicing and other backend functions will be more efficient and allow orders to be fulfilled from stock more quickly and with fewer errors.

Sage Operations

Sage integration enables your company to run the day to day operations of it’s e-commerce web site direct from Sage. So that product promotions and discounts, for example, can be applied by changing product settings within the Sage software. This reduces the requirement for your staff to become familiar with additional online systems, consequently reducing training requirements and costs. However the web site administration functions remain available so that a fallback option exists to ensure the business is able to continue trading online despite any Internet connection issues outside the control of the business.

Management Information from Sage

Sage business software has been developed to provide management with an instant and accurate view of the business, so that you can make faster and better informed decisions. It contains powerful analytic tools that let you pinpoint exceptions and anomalies, highlighting inefficiencies and opportunities for innovation, productivity and growth. All of this functionality relies extensively on accurate data input. Sage web site integration ensures the accuracy of information supplied from the web site delivering more accurate Management Information.

Secure Data Transfer

The security of data is a very important issue for the modern business. Whether we are talking about Business Continuity / Data Recovery or unauthorised access to company and customer information (hacking). Failure to address these issues could be embarrassing or could cause major financial losses to your company. For this reason our Sage Integration process ensures that company and customer data is protected at all times, during the transfer between the web site and the Sage business system. Out Sage Integration techniques also ensure that the web site will continue to function if communication with the Sage business system is lost and the transfer of all order related data will recommence when the connection is restored.

Website Sage Integration Technical Support

Purpose Media believe in fully supporting our customer base with technical and web marketing support, to ensure their web site becomes and remains productive. When customers develop bespoke solutions to fulfill their Sage integration requirements they can reasonably expect on-going technical support for that system from Purpose Media. We will therefore fully support your system throughout it’s life to minimise the impact of any failures on your business.

Moving the search focus to Birmingham returns a different set of search results as shown below.

Keeping abreast of new developments, that may help are merchants, is what we do at Purpose Media to ensure our customers are at least one step ahead of their competition.

Over the last few weeks we have started to see the two set of search results start to coalesce with the Bing results starting to feed into Yahoo. Many users have found that their Yahoo position has been changing rapidly.

The future for Bing & Yahoo

The bottom line is that although there will still be a Yahoo, technically, the search results and ranking will be indentical to Bing. For all intents and purposes, by Q4 of 2010, Yahoo SEO will be Bing SEO.

Successful Websites & Sage Integration

Rob Marshall from Purpose Media will be delivering a seminar entitled Successful Websites & Sage Integration that will cover how everything from website product management through to order fulfillment can be managed directly through Sage. The seminar will include a case study and discuss how the system protects user and company information in this distributed system.

Purpose Media will be attending the Mansfield & Ashfield Biz eX 2010 on 23rd September 2010 at the Festival Hall in Kirkby in Ashfield. This event is organised annually by Nottinghamshire Business Venture and allows businesses to demonstrate their products and services to potential customers.

Search Engine Optimisation

One of the most important elements in Internet Marketing is Search Engine Marketing. Purpose Media have been invited to deliver a seminar on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to impart some expert tips to help those attending the show to improve their business’ search performance.

Google Indexing

Here is the video of Matt Cutts the head of Google’s Webspam team talking about these changes and what the differences will be for web site owners and webmasters.

Setting up an ecommerce website

Many business managers and owners believe that the best time to setup an ecommerce website is on the run up to the Christmas period. That way they hope to open at the busiest time of year and capitalise on this peak trading period.

Our own figures support this, suggesting that Q4 (October – December) is easily the busiest quarter for web sales and usually accounts for more than 50% of annual sales, for our own e commerce sites, as shown below.

What most people overlook is the time taken to design, develop, populate and market the website, so that they are in a position to take advantage of the peak period. Our experience shows that it can easily take 3 months to design, develop and populate the site, then a further month to put the basic web marketing actions in place.

So if your business is planning to trade on-line at the busiest time of 2010, now is the time to start talking to your web designers to develop a plan to ensure you are ready to sell when consumers are most likely to buy.