SEARCH CLINIC

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has recently publicised issues arising from online sales and how online marketers do and don’t deal with online sales properly, so Dr Search thought that I’d update you on staying the right side of the law.
Many of us think we are, but it can be a challenge to know all the detail of the legislation and to remember that what we say about a product – even before someone has bought it – can influence a customer’s rights.

For example, did you know that if you make a claim about a product that turns out to be incorrect – your customer then has a right to return the item to you? Or that people who buy sale or second hand goods have the same rights as people buying full price or brand new goods?

Still think you are clear on the law?

According to recent research, conducted by OFT, many of us aren’t. It’s not surprising because the main law that relates to customer returns – The Sale of Goods Act (SOGA) – has been significantly updated over the years and new laws and regulations have been added.

The Office of Fair Trading has worked in conjunction with retailers to create the SOGA hub (www.oft.gov.uk/saleofgoodsact) – a range of materials that explain the law and how it applies when customers want to return goods.

They include detailed explanations, practical examples, a quiz and a simple at-a-glance guide. You can also find promotional materials to help you let your employees know where the SOGA hub exists and where they can find it. Materials can be downloaded and printed for reference.

Knowing how the law applies can help you to deal with customer complaints, and it’s also helpful to know your rights when you are the customer and need to return a faulty item to a retailer.

Speed Kills- so say the road safety brigade, but the adage also applies if you have a slow website.

Recent research published by the Financial Times highlights just how impatient internet shoppers are becoming.

The amount of time customers are prepared to spend waiting for a website to respond to their clicks has reduced significantly over the past few years.

Six years ago in 2005 people would be prepared to wait eight seconds for a retail page to load.

Three years ago this patience had declined to four seconds.

Now forty per cent of people will not wait longer than three seconds and nearly half- 47 per cent expect a website server response in less than two seconds.

It’s not just a slow website which will kill your online marketing.

If you are donating to buy Google shareholders champagne at their AGM aka AdWords pay per click marketing and you have a slow website you are also killing your wallet.

As one of the four key determinant factors that Google use to rank the position of your ads is the download speed of your landing pages which you are trying to drive traffic towards.

You can check the download rate of your website with this free speed checker.

Dr Search summarises by emphasising the adage- because like running a traffic camera your wallet will lose out in the end if you ignore your speedomoter.

One of the Search Clinic’s group members- Health Direct who have been accredited by the Health on the Net Foundation since 2008 has been asked if you would kindly help them by completing a short questionnaire to find out your views on finding health information online.

A survey on search behavior conducted by HON for the KHRESMOI EU project What is your ideal search engine?

We would like to inform you that Health On the Net Foundation is currently participating in a European Union project KHRESMOI which aims to develop a search engine for health and medical information search to meet the needs of general population, MDs and radiologists. In this project, the Foundation and the Society of physicians in Vienna aim to better understand the needs of users (citizens and doctors) searching health information on the Internet. Currently a survey addressing the needs of the citizens is available online.

Help us by participating in our general public survey up until the 17th of April!

You can help us to promote this survey, few options are available here.

English version: Not happy with your online health information search results ? Please Participate in our survey. Our goal: 500 responses by the 17th of April 2011.

How do you search for health-related information on the Internet?

The proportion of websites secretly harbouring malware has reached one in 3,000 according to security firm Kaspersky.
They found a surge in the number of web based attacks in 2010, with more than 580 million incidents detected.

Risk was no longer focused on websites with illegal content, such as pirate films and music, the report said.

Instead, criminals were increasingly using legitimate websites, such as shopping and online gaming.

The malware writers target vulnerable web servers, with owners often unaware of the attack, said Ram Herkanaidu, senior security research at Kaspersky Lab.

“They will put a piece of Java code, for example, onto a website and scramble it so it is hard to notice.

“The Java code runs when you visit the site and redirects the user to malware,” he said. “Previously you could avoid these attacks by not visiting dodgy websites. Today the malware writers are targeting legitimate ones”.

Kaspersky’s figures are based on reports from customers who have joined its security network.

The rise in incidents of web based attacks far outstripped the number of new members in 2010, indicating the increasing threat, said Mr Herkanaidu.

“It has become the cyber crooks’ attack of choice,” he said.

The threat from cyber crime is being taken increasingly seriously by government officials.

Last week, Dr Search warned that the UK government published figures estimating that cyber crime costs the economy £27 billion a year in UK cyber crime costs £27bn a year claims government report

Dr Search asks you to think about to 1999- just before the millennium when the dotcom rollercoaster was on it’s climb. What would you have thought about ecommerce then? Today and tomorrow we’ll also look forward about the same time span. What will ecommerce look like in 2020?

Let’s look at what is actually happening in the USA- for which good statistics exist and which is a broadly similar market to the UK’s situation.

Since 2000, US ecommerce has had a compound annual growth rate of 19%.

Over the next ten years, Goldman Sachs projects that the ecommerce compound annual growth rate will be five times the rate of traditional retailing with 15% for ecommerce vs. 3% for traditional retail.

On that basis sales will reach $624.17 billion in 2020, as offline sales reach $3.64 trillion making ecommerce equal to 17% of total U.S. retail sales in 2020, compared with 5-6 % now.

The situation is likely to be similar in the UK where despite the economic slowdown 2008 ecommerce sales were recorded to be over £50 billion, which was an increase of over 25% from 2007.

But it’s not just the amounts that are striking it’s how it may happen. Things like changing tools and technologies.

Research into consumer behaviour patterns has shown the positive impact of peer reviews on purchase decision of customers.

Social media- peer reviews, ratings and other forms of user generated content will continue to influence online sales.

The technology itself is changing- In particular mobile ecommerce.

Tomorrow’s post the Search Clinic will examine the changes in mobile ecommerce.

Particularly over the past month Search Clinic has noticed that some of Google’s search results are becoming dubious- to say the very least.And it’s not just us who have noticed a marked deterioration is their results.

A number of of other bloggers have also noticed this downward trend who are critical of Google’s search quality.

Could it be that Google is getting greedy as spam results may force some lazy and desperate online marketing companies to resort to their notorious pay per click AdWords?

It isn’t that tricky to spot these rogue websites. Step forward SeoQuake, McAfee and a number of other free and paid for services which provide a checking facility.

While there doesn’t seem to be a single tipping point for these posts, many people are getting frustrated at spammy search results and the large number of content farms which have started to emerge.

The result, however, is awful. Pages and pages of Google results that are just, for practical purposes, advertisements in the loose guise of articles, original or re-purposed.

While the major problems with Google’s search quality appear to be the rise of content farms and review sites, some posts also mention a number of other black hat SEO tactics like link buying and doorway domains that are still working for some sites.

With the number of posts on this topic, I don’t think it will be long before a Google representative steps in to clear the air. In the mean time, what do you think about Google’s search results? Have you seen a decline in quality in recent months?

Let us know via the blog comments below!

Search Clinic wishes you a Happy New Year!Dr Search and everyone at the Search Clinic wishes you a profitable and Happy New Year.

Search Clinic wishes you a Merry Christmas!

Further to the Search Clinic’s post on Friday – Tweeting- Judge to issue guidance on court tweeter updates the Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales has ruled that Tweeting a live court case is allowed. For now.
He said live communication would be allowed as long as the judge believed it would not interfere with the administration of justice.

Lord Judge’s ruling was prompted after journalists used Twitter at the bail hearing of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to give live updates.

The interim guidance has immediate effect but a review will be conducted.

The interim guidance covers the use of mobile, email and social media such as Twitter, and internet-enabled laptops.

Lord Justice Judge’s ruling said: “The use of an unobtrusive, hand-held, virtually silent piece of modern equipment for the purposes of simultaneous reporting of proceedings to the outside world as they unfold in court is unlikely to interfere with the proper administration of justice.”

Recording sound or images during a court hearing is illegal, but sending electronic communications has not been.

Use of Twitter in court had been contentious because it is a form of public broadcasting and potentially readable by anyone.

At the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court hearing on Mr Assange’s bail application on Tuesday last week, journalists asked the judge whether they could tweet.

District Judge Howard Riddle said he had no objection and several reporters then proceeded to give regular updates as the hearing unfolded.

However, later in the week at Mr Assange’s next bail hearing at the High Court, Mr Justice Ouseley said Twitter could not be used.

Legal analysts say the practice has been going on “quietly and surreptitiously for some time”.

In contrast to Dr Search’s post of yesterday Yahoo cutting its workforce by 4%- 600 people the relative new kid on the block- Twitter is going from strength to strength with another round of fundraising.Twitter has raised $200m (£129m) in new shareholder finance, in a deal that values the social networking website at around £2.5 billion.

It said the investment had come from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, and existing investors.

Twitter is also adding two new board members, including David Rosenblatt, boss of digital advertising group DoubleClick.

The moves come two months after the US firm said it was increasing efforts to make itself more profitable.

The announcement in October saw the company’s co-founder Evan Williams stand down as chief executive to focus on product strategy.

Mr Williams was replaced as chief executive by Dick Costolo.

Also now joining Twitter’s board is Mike McCue, chief executive of digital social magazine application FlipBoard.

Twitter claims that it currently has 175 million registered users and 300 employees.