Google Analytics was once the core tracking system of any website, but was always at risk of being blocked on the viewers side by third party software. This was helped by the new controversial cookie law which means EU websites have to actively ask visitors if they would LIKE to be tracked with cookies and would be breaking the law if they didn’t. This perhaps will lead onto supermarket loyalty cards being banned because they do pretty much the same thing… but I highly doubt it.

Anyway, with all this new attention on cookies, many standard anti-virus and internet security programs are blocking cookies on your behalf making you invisible to website owners, if you own a website, this is terrible news! AVG (my defence of choice) is one of those perpetrators, and so no website using Google Analytics or similar javascript based tracking can see me.

Does this mean I can no longer track my visitors?

Thankfully no, you can still track, but certain Google-specific features like goal conversion etc will no longer be effective. It will help to show general patterns but if you want numbers, it will quickly become useless.

So what are your options to track without cookies?

Server Stats

Most servers log every page called and links it to an IP address. Using software which collates this information you can start to build a pretty accurate journey through your site for each user. (Interestingly enough companies can also share this information with other ad servers rendering the EU cookie law a complete and utter waste of time!) Most hosting packages come with one or both of the following (Zako Media naturally offer a choice of both!):

AWstats - http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
(http://awstats NULL.sourceforge NULL.net/)Webalizer - http://www.webalizer.org/ (http://www NULL.webalizer NULL.org/)

PHP/Coding stats

These are much more powerful, instead of asking the user’s browser to load a javascript cookie, they use your actual website to record who is doing what. They are a little less novice friendly because as well as installing the software, you need to add PHP code to the right pages. If using WordPress, it will go into your template’s footer file, flat html files will be more awkward. Again Zako Media offers a choice of both.

Open Web Analytics - http://www.openwebanalytics.com/
(http://www NULL.openwebanalytics NULL.com/)Tracewatch - http://www.tracewatch.com/ (http://www NULL.tracewatch NULL.com/)  (http://www NULL.openwebanalytics NULL.com/)

The best thing of course is you can use more than one to compare how the different systems perform and which give you the most useful information about your visitors, clients and prospects.

Happy tracking without cookies!

Your website represents your business or company and as such can lead to you being sued or fined if things aren’t right. If your website is tracking visitors, recording email addresses, taking orders, forwarding leads, you need to explain to your visitors where their data is going and what to expect as part of the contract. If you give out information, and someone acting on that information is sued, they will pass the buck. If your website gets hacked and starts sending virus’ to people’s computers, you will get sued.

The only way around this is with Terms and Conditions, Disclaimers, Privacy Policies, Linking policies, Anti-spam Policies, Cookies policies…. the list is endless, and that’s just for a basic website!

Officially you should have these drawn up professionally; but that just costs more money.

At a pinch, there are plenty of free T&C templates circulating the web so shop around and find one(s) to suit you. Be aware that all documents are subject to the same copyright as any photograph or text so do not copy and paste anything for which you do not have permission!

One good place to find free templates is www.website-law.co.uk (http://www NULL.website-law NULL.co NULL.uk/)

For custom legal terms and conditions, speak to my friend Sue at http://www.lawhound.co.uk/ (http://www NULL.lawhound NULL.co NULL.uk/) or a friend’s recommendation at http://www.legalfutures.co.uk/ (http://www NULL.legalfutures NULL.co NULL.uk/)

Photograph courtesy of ifindkarma (http://www NULL.flickr NULL.com/photos/ifindkarma/)

We all know that bad spelling can affect a customer’s opinion on your attention to detail, but sometimes it can have an even more painful effect. Today Chelsea FC not only embarrassed themselves by letting a 3-0 lead against Manchester United slip through their fingers, but also rather than advertise their own Chelsea Football Club merchandise on the boards, they instead misspelled their own club name and pointed budding fans to the cybersquatted site chelsefc.com (registered 2004)

It seems that the registrant of chelsefc.com has now blanked the page, but it was allegedly selling quit smoking products and advertising a Leicester city fansite.

Check everything at the design phase before signing the release, check it twice, thrice even! Sleep on it and check it again with fresh eyes! Ask someone else to check it. Once you have signed off any design, it’s done and you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Another thanks to Yahoo! (http://uk NULL.eurosport NULL.yahoo NULL.com/06022012/58/premier-league-chelsea-fc-spell-own-name-wrong NULL.html) for this one and the image.

If a £1000 item is advertised in a bricks and mortar store as being £100. A shopper may basket it and approach the checkout. The £100 price tag is not actually the retailer ‘offering to sell’ for this price, it is merely an ‘invitation to treat’. No contract is formed until you reach the till. An incorrect price on an item is therefore not legally binding. However, when the cashier asks for an amount of money in exchange for the goods you are intending to buy, he is making his offer and the consumer chooses to accept, negotiate or decline this offer. If the consumer accepts and hands over the money, a contract is established.

If a product is mispriced on the till however, this becomes the offer which a shopper can capitalise on regardless of the advertised price.

So what happens online? When something is mispriced on your ecommerce site and payments are automated?

When a consumer buys online, they rarely reach a human being who could spot the error. If you list an item at £100 which should be £1000, your customer will reach the checkout with only £100 in their basket to pay. Your website then makes the offer for the customer to accept or decline. This offer will contain the wrong price and the order will be placed, money will change hands and the contract has been formed. There is nothing you can do but dispatch or potentially face a lawsuit.

However there is a way to protect yourself, ignoring the terms and conditions, if the customer is told that their order has been accepted, whether on screen or by email; the sale contract is formed. Both you and the customer have accepted the deal and any attempt to cancel their order could be seen as a breach of contract.

However in this instance, we miss an opportunity to enter another contract (or amendment to the standard buy/sell contract). This contract is contained in your terms and conditions which a shopper should be forced to agree to as part of the purchasing process. In these terms and conditions many retailers get around the above problem by stating that no order has been accepted until dispatch and that payment will only ensure receipt of the offer but not the agreement of that offer. (Do not try to copy and paste this expecting it to be legally watertight as I’m a web developer not a lawyer.)

In other words the process has been re-ordered slightly. The customer is now being invited to treat, he then makes the offer to pay £100 for the items and it is up to the order processing staff or system to agree, negotiate or decline. This gives you the chance to intercept and correct.

It is therefore important that any post-payment messages on your website do not state that an order has been accepted. Emails and post-pay messages should declare that the order has been received or acknowledged and your terms and conditions should state why.

Human error is common, if you sell products or services online, don’t get caught out!

The inspiration for this article from Yahoo! Finance with real life examples can be found here (http://uk NULL.finance NULL.yahoo NULL.com/news/your-rights-when-stores-mis-price-items NULL.html)

Getting to the top of Google is every business’s dream, but often not enough is understood about Google to appreciate what this goal actually means. Get to the top of Google for a particular search term is great, but how many people search for it, and more importantly, how is Google adapting?

Lets bring this into real terms; Today I was looking to replace my office chair. Controversial as it is, I use a kneeling chair. Despite conflicting reports and dodgy marketing, I use it because it’s the only chair style to date which doesn’t result in back pain for me with long term use. The chair I have has worn at the knees and the gas lifting strut has leaked to uselessness. I picked the one I wanted and ordered.

I mention this story because while I’m a business, I’m also a consumer and rely heavily on Google in my day to day life. As such minor changes in Google’s algorithm and structure do not go unnoticed.

Many hours later, I was looking to replace the gas lifting struts for the boot of my car. I searched Google for ‘Gas lifter’ and saw this:

The search results I believe are organic, gas struts have a variety of uses from office chairs, cars, to heavy machinery. The Google shopping results though are noteworthy. Google has obviously taken my search terms and used information about my previous searches to determine my need.

Google has given my search context based on what little it knows about me, and even though I wasn’t searching for chairs, knows that I’m interested in them nonetheless.

When it comes to using Google to advertise therefore, simply ‘getting to the top’ isn’t enough because ‘the top’ is becoming very personal to the searcher.

So here are your new goals:

• If you sell stuff, make sure Google Shopping knows you’re there.
• Make sure you have ample content showing that you are THE go-to company based on your expertise.
• Consider the people searching for you, what are they looking for? Maybe they’re not looking for ‘Web Designer Swansea’, perhaps they’re actually saying “How to get my business online”. Do your research.
• Organic is best; If you don’t have the budget for seo experts, keep your content fluid and natural and try to avoid over using sales cliches. Google is there to give people the information they’re looking for and will only offer ‘BUY NOW HERE’ to people who search ‘WHERE CAN I BUY NOW’.

If you live in the northern hemisphere, it’s winter, cold and very nearly Christmas, Yuletide (and others). The days are short, and warnings of snow are being broadcast across the UK almost daily. If you want a very simple way of adding some festive snow to your website, I’ve found a simple script being distributed by Scott Schiller which has a nice simple install which makes adding snow to your website a piece of Christmas cake… or yule log… If you’re reading this in December 2011, you should see it’s effect on this very page. If not, then it’ll look a little dull and featureless.

To install snow on your website:

1. Download this zip file: snowstorm
2. Extract snowstorm.js and upload it to your web server (take note of any folders you add it to, it can go anywhere)
3. Add this line between the <head> and </head> tags of your template or page(s):<script src=”js/snowstorm.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>
   (substitute ‘js/’ for the folder you uploaded to, or remove it if it is in the same folder as the page)

   If using WordPress, you might want to include the file in the template url :
   <script src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_url’); ?>/js/snowstorm.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

4. Upload and check!
5. If using wordpress cache extensions, be sure to flush the cache before testing as like me you’ll waste valuable minutes debugging it when it doesn’t work.

Upload snow storm file, point at it, and you’re done! Snow on your website.

Uswitch released a report today studying UK boadband speeds vary throughout the day, and found a massive 35% drop between 7-9pm. The report suggests that to obtain maximum speeds, users need to be online at 3am.

What does this mean? Well actually in terms of speed, very little. But we can assume that speed is inversely proportional to Internet traffic. There is a significant drop in speed leading to business open at 9am, the line tries to steady out but does get progressively slower throughout the day. There is a trough as I would have expected as the children return from school, but not nearly as deep as I would have guessed. It then seems we’re using the Internet most between 9-10pm before everyone goes to bed.

So if you’re getting frustrated at 9-10pm at slow page load times and crashing websites, wait an hour or two or try again in the morning. While this isn’t a fair problem bandwidth limits are bandwidth limits so it won’t be going away any time soon.

I’ve become increasingly aware of how many people are permitting spam comments into their blogs. I do email people I find specifically with help but it would be good to include a general heads up as it’s on the increase!

So let’s start at the beginning; Mr Spammer runs a dodgy medication selling website. Mr Spammer is in a high competition industry so needs to be found in Google. He’s optimised his site but now needs some links back from other quality sites like yours to show Google that his is popular (which it’s not) and equally full of quality content (which it isn’t). Mr Spammer logs on to blog after blog commenting on as many articles he has time to and all he has to do is make sure he enters his web address into the ‘Your Website’ box. If the blog on your nice site is unprotected, (and sometimes even if it is), his comment will appear, more importantly his name will link through to his website, and Google takes that link as a ‘thumbs-up’ from you giving it a tiny bit more importance.

Here’s the worse bit; when Google realises that Mr Spammer is actually spamming, it may penalise the site in question, and worse penalise every site which links to it… including your own quality, innocent website. He’s made a few sales so happy to relaunch site number 24763 on a new url and you’re made to suffer.

So here’s what you should do:

1. Learn the difference between a genuine supportive comment and a spam one. If they have included a link, it should link to a genuine business website and the comment should add something to your reputation or article. If they link to medicines, abortion pills, weight loss pills etc. you can safely assume it’s spam. Anything in the middle is up to you.
2. Install some anti-spam solutions like the following:
1. WordPress Akismit is one good piece of software, I believe they charge for it now, but that’s evidence of their success. It will stop most spam comments getting in and allow genuine comments through.
2. Self-moderation is the next step, Built into WordPress and others are a number of filters, you can hold all comments for manual approval, or set those with links included for approval. The latter is best and saves you time. If they don’t contain a link, it’s almost certainly harmless. You just have to ensure you check regularly to approve good comments and delete spam.
3. Install a captcha, again free on Wordress and others, this is the box which asks you to type what you see in the picture. This won’t fool determined spammers but the majority of spammers are after quantity not quality so if they don’t get through easily, they won’t waste their time trying and will go elsewhere. If your site happened to be Microsoft, Apple, BBC etc. you would be in for a rough ride.
3. Set nofollow to all user links. This is usually an option in your blogging or site software which allows you to set user links to ‘nofollow’ which basically is a message to Google (and others) saying “Yes I’m showing this link, but I don’t want you to treat it as an endorsement, I’m just the messenger.”
4. Finally, go through your previous comments and delete any which you’ve decided are spam.

Our new branding has finally unofficially launched. When we’re split between paid work and our own updates, it’s obvious which gets shelved. Yes we’ve got some wording issues and typos to correct, some pages to beautify but we’re pretty much there! Be sure to check out and ‘Like’ our Facebook page (http://www NULL.facebook NULL.com/ZakoMedia/) for more updates, tips and tricks to getting your website noticed in the sea of indifference known as the Internet and hopefully attract some business in the process.