Now it’s not that they will always achieve terrible results but they certainly won’t be achieving the best results, and if you care about your business in and beyond 2010 then you should aim for the best! Ideal Sites for example has been working with the internet for over 10 years and we can tell you now that understanding the many aspects to a successful website and mastering the skills required, simply cannot be learned in a short time period and no off the shelf package will stand out without further specialist enhancement.

Not only will you be at a disadvantage to the competition (costing you more in the long run) but the time spent in having a go yourself would be much better spent elsewhere doing what you do best!

With so many websites these days competing for search engine positions, having a site that simply lists a wide range of unrelated products and/or generic content from a manufacturer’s catalogue won’t cut it.

First of all you have to focus the site on a particular product type/subject, which will be more appealing to both the search engines as well as possible customers searching for what you might have to offer.

Finally to add any value to the web and really generate interest, you have to bring along something different to the party in the way of content. Whether it be product reviews, project guides or something humorous, good content will attract inbound links, people talking about the site in social networks and in turn improved search rankings and even more visitors!

Obviously it is essential to have a well made website in place and like most things, you will have to work at it. But if you plant a good seed and keep watering it, one day it will flourish!

1) Separate Gateway & Merchant Bank Account

The payment gateway can be seen as the virtual card machine, which bolts on to the site and securely transmits and verifies card details. A leading example is SagePay, who are our recommended choice.

To use a provider such as SagePay you also require a merchant bank account, which uses the encrypted data provided by the payment gateway to accept or decline a transaction. This then issues a response back to the payment gateway and collects/reserves the funds if successful.

Your existing business bank or card services provider can provide you with a merchant account but shop around for the best rates. (Streamline card services also offer a merchant account with no setup fees for FSB members, yet this may not be the cheapest per transaction)

2) Or – All in One Solutions

A quicker and simpler way to get setup accepting payments online is to use an all in one service such as PayPal or Nochex who handle both parts of the transaction. There are usually fewer hoops to jump through to get set up but for larger volumes this is not going to be the cheapest option. With PayPal being so widely used and enabling customers to pay for goods using their PayPal balance it can be wise to offer this option alongside a dedicated payment gateway for PayPal account holders.

So which is best?

If you are serious about selling online then setting up a separate gateway and merchant account is the way to go as not only should it be cheaper in the long run but also a more professional approach. However there is usually a minimum contract term, setup fees as well as credit checks involved to acquire a merchant account.

If you are lucky enough to buy a domain which as well as being appropriate to the overall content is exactly the search term you want to rank well for (e.g. for the term ‘blue widgets’ you bought bluewidgets.co.uk) you would find this is extremely beneficial for attaining higher search rankings.

However don’t go out buying 10’s of domain names made up of different combinations of a number of your favoured search terms if you have the intention of pointing them all to one site. Doing this won’t help with search rankings at all as search engines will only look at the destination site. The only way these domains may provide some value is if people are typing them directly in to the address bar expecting a site or if you want to stop a competitor from using them.

The bottom line is that you need to be where your target audiences eyeballs go and nowadays people are spending more time online and perhaps less in front of the TV. The reason for this is interaction, we can all talk to one another and share information like never before and we can’t get enough of it! Compare The Market had the crazy idea of creating and advertising Compare The Meerkat with new TV ads and a new website. They then took Alekandr the lovable main character featuring in the Ads and set him up with an amusing fan page on Facebook. At the time of writing this he has 317,262 fans and counting. I wonder which comparison site these fans will first think of using when shopping for car insurance?

All of the link value pointing to Compare The Meerkat will be passed on to Compare The Market, which may well help them to stand out from their competitors!

The best thing about this is that it’s completely free and you can use your Google login to enter product details manually or alternatively upload a spreadsheet quickly and easily, which is the obvious solution for more than just a few products, especially as listings need to be renewed after 1 month. To summarise a highly recommended strategy to further increase exposure on the major search engine!

Version 7 finally saw the introduction of the incredibly useful tabbed browsing, a feature that the competition introduced a long time before. But this is not the problem, All of the other browsers already support the latest web standards to present content in the most efficient way, however Microsoft are only just getting up to date with version 8! Why? Because when Microsoft captured most of the browser market some years ago they focused their attention on to other areas to dominate.

In the future once everyone has at least updated to this new version (or use the recommended FREE Mozilla Firefox) it will mean that web sites can be developed in a more efficient way providing a better web experience for everyone!

This blog is not only going to tell you what’s new with Idealsites but provide key information about online marketing in as simple a way as possible! We’ll also be posting valuable tips for the everyday web user, you!