| LED Digest 1525: Site Revamps & Search Engines |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. February 25, 2003 Issue #1525 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Site Revamps and Search Engine Position ==-- ~ Dirk Vanderwerff "...will my ratings in the search engines suddenly drop...?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== International Fraud Protection ==-- ~ Ron Coble "...most merchants on the Internet are small and simply cannot afford to not 'cover their butts'..." ~ Bruno Rodrigues "Portugal already uses this system called MBnet...with PIN verification." ===== GEEK TIPS ================== --== Sub-domains ==-- ~ Toon Eppink ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Web Statistics Software ==-- ~ Barry Morgan ~ Laura Teeple --== Godaddy Gone? ==-- ~ G. Nathan ====== NEW ======================================= From: Dirk Vanderwerff Subject: Website Revamp and Search Engine Position Hello - I was recently asked for over US$17,000 to change the design and revamp my long established website. I have been established as a one person part-time business for almost 6 years on the internet and I have over 400 pages currently online (URL below), but for a part-time job I make decent money from the specialist magazine I produce four times a year. I have decided to redesign and update the website myself (!) because of the costs involved and I'm about halfway there with a launch date in May 2003. My question is this. I have set up the page structure differently for reasons of navigation, though the majority of the pages on relaunch are pretty much the same content as the current ones, many more pages will be added before the end of the year. However, will my ratings in the search engines suddenly drop because some pages return a 'sorry no longer available' sign, or that the link structure is different? I have over 900 page links with other sites and return a top ten search with Google for 'plants' and I'm now concerned that the high profile I now have may dip considerably (at least for a while) on relaunch. Any advice or information would be valuable Dirk van der Werff, Editor / Publisher http://www.plants-magazine.com/ ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Ronald L Coble Subject: Fraud protection Hello Again, I read the latest edition of LED Digest with great interest to see the kind of feedback my post would generate. I read the responses from David Neese and Marty R. Milette and felt compelled to respond to both. In regards to David's response, we do not rule out doing business with a potential customer in any country. We were very apprehensive about a couple of orders from Indonesia which is by definintion of the credit card companies near the Top of the heap when it comes to fraudulent credit card orders. However, the customers provided all the verification information we requested and we have not had a problem since the order was placed about 6 months ago. My hope is this does not come back to bite us in the butt since time does not seem to matter when it comes to chargebacks. Our main publisher just had a chargeback from an order made ONE year ago. We had a chargeback last year that was 5 months after the order had been placed. I would like to hear further from David about how he obtains address verification for the countries he mentioned. We've been in this business for 15 years now and the verification process has only become more difficult. I agree the language barrier is often the cause but quite frankly the card issuing banks in Australia and the UK have become virtually worthless to call. Yes they speak good English, but NO they won't provide an address verification???? In regards to Address Verification, American Express wins with us, hands down! We have been able to verify addresses in Bangladesh, India and in "every" country we have ever called them about. Therein lies my comment of the "uncaring" attitude that Visa and MasterCard takes. I am sure Visa/MC are much larger, financially, than Amex is, so why can't Visa/MC provide such an "easy" and streamlined service to their merchants as Amex provides us? It would ultimately benefit them by the extra sales that would be made through their services? Now in regards to Marty's post, I hope my response is not taken personal but the remark "most merchants are so busy covering their own butts" I took personally. My reply to that remark is simply to say "damn straight". If I do not "cover my butt", i.e., translation "protect our business from fraud" no one else is going to cover the US$41,000 in losses we would have incurred along with the tremendous amount of chargeback fees on top of it. One other note about the $41,000 - approximately 95% of that amount was from orders placed with us from outside the USA and Canada. I agree that the operators of PayPal, Visa/MC and the other "biggies" on the Internet should do more, both to assist their customers and the merchants that supply their life blood. However, I also believe that most merchants on the Internet are small in size and simply cannot afford to not "cover their butts" with every possible precaution possible. The word discriminate was used in Marty's post so I went to Webster.com and looked up the word. It referred me to a definition that has a very appropriate application to to this debate: 1 a : to make a distinction b : to use good judgment. The 'damn foreigners' comment was another one that got to me. That comment sure does not apply to our business, nor do I feel it applies to most businesses. We welcome customers from outside the USA. In fact, they account for nearly 70-75% of our business and we've shipped our products into 51 different countries. I understand the problems of not being able to get wire transfers and the incredible fees that banks place on them from both the issuing banks and your receiving bank. I wish there was a solution to all the hassle that both the customer and the merchant must go through. I think my feelings as a business owner, mirror that of most business owners, we "do not" want to lose any sales but we also "do not" want to bankrupt our business with chargeback fees and fines from the major card issuers if our chargeback rate exceeds a certain percentage of our sales. If someone ever comes up with a solution, his wealth could be multiplied past that of Bill Gates. There is a headline at Yahoo News! this morning titled: "FBI Probing Theft of 8 Million Credit Card Numbers". Should we as merchants ignore this type of massive potential for theft from "us"? I would like to close by offering a suggestion to Marty regarding the issue of having merchandise shipped to an address other than the billing address. We advise our customers to contact their card issuing bank and place the "alternate ship to" address on their account file. Because only the valid card owner would have the security information to do this, the merchant can then verify the "alternate ship to" address with the bank and process the order. Thank you for allowing me to rant, once again, but I hope my comments are more constructive than critical on a subject that has become a large part of our daily business regimen. Ron Coble Coble International http://www.importexporthelp.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Bruno Rodrigues Subject: Fraud protection Just a small note to Martyn Gay's comment: The systems he refers that Credit Card companies will introduce, combining credit card number with a secret PIN already exists in some countries. Portugal already uses this system called MBnet that allows a consumer to setup an ID to his / her credit card with PIN verification. You can also limit the amount you allow to be charged to your credit card per month. You can always change it thru your internet account. If you want to use the MBnet system to pay at a site that doesn t accept it you will get a virtual Visa number that connects to your credit card with the limitations imposed by you. This way we have been able to reduce credit card to fraud to virtually 2 or 3%. At this moment, the system didn't reach its peak because of the cost per transaction (and we can't do anything about since they are the only local company allowed to process major credit cards): 4,5% per transaction. You can check it out at: https://www.mbnet.pt/ Since this is a country initiative you need to know Portuguese to see it (they don't have an English version of the site). Probably if you use the translation service of Altavista [ http://world.altavista.com/ ] you can get a clue of what I'm talking about (although the translation will be very bad). I hope this helped in any way Bruno Rodrigues www.worldsites.net ===== GEEK TIPS =================================== From: Toon Eppink Subject: sub domains Hello everyone, First of all let me thank you for the great help you've been in the past. Once again I have a question. I notice some sites have sub domains, for instance http://www.shop.com has the sub domains http://product1.shop.com and http://product2.shop.com. How is this accomplished? Do you need to register those sub domains or is there some kind of server adjustment that can do it? Or something else? Any tips are greatly appreciated. Toon Eppink www.hanktheknife.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Barry Morgan Subject: Web stats > I was hoping if someone could please give me > some advice as to a good web statistics software. - D. Diehl, LED 1523 Currently I use http://www.indextools.com ecommerce edition. I have found that it is inexpensive ($49 US per month), easy to use, reliable and has truly assisted my efforts to prove our case when dealing with inexperienced clientele. It even allows me to take an IP address used in a sale and find out how they found my site, answers if they are a returning visitor and what path they went through my site - which is very valuable "intel" as our sales start at $5000 US. They also take my suggestions seriously when given. My only complaint that hasn't been resolved goes to my HTML purist mentality as their tracking java script, which works great, has a "&" in the code, which is not seen as correct when you run an HTML code verification on your website. I have not seen any negative results from this but it bothers me any way. And alternatively, having been part of very well known web hosting company development team. I have had significant experience using free software packages such as analog, webalizer and the AXS Visitor Tracking System. I would use a combination of all three if I had a zero dollar budget and plenty of time to learn some basic scripting, implement and maintain. The system isn't pretty but I can get very similiar results from those completely free packages as well. Links to analog, webalizer and AXS: http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/ http://www.analog.cx/ http://www.xav.com/ Good luck! Regards, Barry Morgan, Online Business Development Printa Systems, Incorporated http://www.printa.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Laura Teeple Subject: Web stats I find WebTrends by NetIQ to be a fabulous statistics package. WebTrends provides information about the end user such as: Entry/Exit pages, Referrers, OS, Browsers, Geographical locations, Paths, and much more! The information is rendered quite nicely into charts, making it easy to analyze. To see what they have to offer, go to http://www.netiq.com/solutions/analytics/default.asp . I hope this helps! Best Regards, Laura C. Teeple, Web Developer Queen's School of Business ------- new post - new topic ------- From: G. Nathan Subject: Godaddy Hi Everyone, I would just like to point out that Godaddy no longer seems to be operating. I had a domain name with them and it has suddenly been transferred to Tucows from what I can gather. Warmest Regards, G. Nathan, Managing Editor Feng Shui Times www.fengshuitimes.com ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The road to a friend's house is never long." - Danish proverb |
