We Love The Web - Blogorhea

If you want your customers to be able to buy stuff from you and pay online, then you'll need to make credit card transaction one way or another*. There are about four ways that you can do this, each with their pros and cons.

Whichever way you choose, it's almost always the part of setting up an eCommerce outfit that takes the longest. It just always does. You either have to prove who you are to Paypal or Google Checkout, or get a merchant facility with online 'customer not present' payments from your bank. Either route takes time - allow up to a month. I know. A month. It often takes less time to build the store than get the payment stuff in place.

* I am ignoring bitcoin and other alternative eCurrencies until they become a bit more mainstream. 

What are my options?
Broadly speaking: PayPal, Google Checkout, SagePay and WorldPay.
There are a host of minor providers, but these are the big ones.

PayPal
Easy to set up, people are familiar with it, but comes with issues around customer service. Because it's a mass market service, they have real problems with preventing fraud, so will tend to shut down accounts that exhibit unusual behaviour. So, if you get a big sales spike because your latest product video went viral then PayPal may shut down your account if you get a lot of business. And then you are left to deal with PayPal customer support, which appears to be one little old lady in a broom cupboard with a bakelite telephone in the Arctic circle. OK, the risk is small, but the impact is huge. This has happened to people we know.

In it's favour, it doesn't require you to get any special facilities from your bank. The downside to this is that they charge higher commission as a result. Watch out for its fee structure though.

Both SagePay and WorldPay also offer a 'pay by PayPal' option on top of their own payment gateway, so you don't have to choose 'either/or'

Google Checkout
Easy to set up, but takes quite a big lump out of your payments in commission. The same problem that you have with paypal freezing accounts is also true, but given the higher level of proof required to get the account, we haven't heard of as many problems. Unfortunately, Google customer support is, we think, outsourced to the same old lady in the Arctic circle as PayPal use. Getting redress for grievances can be difficult.

A significant difference between PayPal and Google Checkout, to my understanding is that Google automatically pays money into your bank account after about 48 hours, whereas PayPal just hangs onto it until you log in and initiate a transfer, but I may be wrong.

As with PayPal, this doesn't have to be the only payment option on your site. Adding new payment options often increases the number of completed orders.

SagePay, WorldPay and a host of smaller providers
These guys usually charge a monthly fee + small transaction fee to validate that the person's credit card is valid and has fund, then it either takes the money immediately, or reserves it (pending despatch of the item and 'release of payment' when you actually want to take the money).SagePay, for example, charge £20 a month, which covers the first 100 transactions and thereafter in £20 blocks for each 100 payments. 

To work, they need to be linked to a business bank account with the ability to take credit card payments (called a merchant account). The banks will charge you

A key advantage to these payment providers is that they are unlikely to freeze your accounts lightly and, because you are their customer paying real money, you can actually phone them up and try to sort things out with an actual live human being! Costwise, they are about the same because your bank will charge you commission on the incoming payments of 1-2% or about 60p for debit cards.

Broadly speaking, WorldPay allows you to apply your styling more seamlessly to the payment process, but SagePay is more flexible to work with and better with foreigners (see below). We prefer SagePay.

Do I have to take Credit Cards? Is there no other way?

There are some really interesting developments on the horizon such as dwolla that circumvent the need for a Visa card entirely. This is a good thing and long overdue because Visa and Mastercard take far too large a chunk of your payment and can get away with it because there's no meaningful competition. Sadly, they only work in the US at the moment. We'll update this post when they come over here!

Why does it take so long to get set up?

Paypal
PayPal is the quickest route, but comes with other issues (see below). Paypal need to validate your credit card and address by making a small charge against a credit card validated to your given address. When you receive your statement then you type in the special code given. You'll need to do the same thing for a nominated bank account too as soon as you reach a sending limit for money.

Google Checkout
Setting this up entails sending off audited accounts to Google, along with copies of your certificate of incorporation (for Ltd. companies) and various other bits. Google then lets you know a few weeks later when it's approved.

SagePay, WorldPay and other processors that need a bank account with a merchant facility.
The big problem here is the banks. You'll be amazed to learn this, obviously. Honestly, it's like they are stuck in the 18th century. We've yet to see a bank completing the necessary paperwork in less than a month. No reason, just stupidity and bureaucracy.

Taking and storing credit card numbers yourself like wot Amazon do.
This is a complete non-starter unless you have about £15k to spend just on taking payments. We have to have all sorts of heinous security stuff in place and it's not just about software on the server, it's about making the organisation PCI-DSS compliant. Sorry, acronyms. PCI-DSS is the set of rules that the banks have put in place to make sure your organisation can securely process credit card payments. There are a lot of rules and complying with them all is expensive.

Foreigners with their funny money.
Just when you thought you'd solved all the problems with taking money, some damn foreign Johnny will want to give you some money. And this introduces a new set of minor complications.

Assuming your shop supports multiple currency pricing for a moment (and ours do, obviously), then you need to make sure your payment provider does too. For Paypal, this shouldn't be a problem, at least for the obvious currencies (Yen, US$, Euro, GBP Sterling) - you may have a problem with the Azerbaijani Manat through. It will handle the hard work.

Google checkout only works with a handful of currencies, currently Yen, US$ and GBP, but will only accept payments in your native currency (so GBP for UK accounts). It will not take payments in Euros.

For sagepay, providing your bank account with the merchant facility is set up to accept payments in other currencies, then you just let them know and it will pass on the payments in the original currency.

World Pay always used to be owned by RBS, those fine upstanding titans of fiscal rectitude. They used to make you have an RBS account for payments in all currencies except Sterling, but not sure if they still do now that they are no longer owned by RBS.

Watch out for cross-border payment fees too. Yes, even if they are paying in pounds at a retail exhange rate that the payment processing people mark-up heinously, some processors (I'm looking at YOU PayPal) also charge you for moving the money across borders. No, there's no real excuse for it, it's just another source of profit.

What other gotcha's are there?
Well, you also have to watch for chargebacks. Basically, if a customer is unhappy and can't get resolution from you, they can initiate a 'chargeback', which involves telling their bank that this was a fraudulent transaction. The bank assumes the customer is correct and takes the money back. The onus is on you to prove yourself innocent of the charge. Too many of these a month (more than a couple) and you could be looking at fines or suspension of your account. These do sound scary, but in truth, they rarely happen unless you come under concerted attack.

Oh, and finally: one real eyebrow raiser is that refunds are counted as another transaction and therefore attract another round of commissions! That makes you cross the first time it happens, but it is survivable as most people don't issue many refunds.

So, hope I haven't scared you off taking money online. It really does work out well for most people - none of our customers have had real problems around this part of the process, but since the banks are involved you can expect to experience a stinging pain in the wallet. Strip aside all the comic 'chip on the shoulder' stuff about the banks and it boils down to this: you have to plan the turnaround times and transaction fees into your business model.

To find out more about how eCommerce. could help you, call Frank or Jules on 01422 847 958 or email us: make.it.work@welovetheweb.com

If you have a friend or colleague who you think might like to receive these as emails, get them to sign-up here: Sign up for the We love the web newsletter.
We won't share their email addresses with anyone else and we won't send through huge numbers of mails, just these how-tos, well, and the very occasional sales pitch, but we promise not to be 'in your face' about it.

And you can unsubscribe at any time.

I was reading an article about the companies that spent the most on advertising and noticed something odd. Not one of them spent more than 10% of their budget online. They loved TV though. You could buy the whole damn Internet for the sort of money they spend on TV campaigns.

This is a bit mental when people spend as much time online as they do watching TV. It's even more mental when you consider that online marketing can be so much more effective than TV: you can get five times as much for your money. More was spent on billboards than online. So: if you want to get the most for your money then 'As seen online' is more effective than 'As seen on TV'.

Still, most of us don't deal in TV-sized budgets. How does digital spend compare with direct mail, press, outdoor and other channels for Return On Investment (ROI)? In the B2B environment, it's websites.

"Methods generating the highest B2B ROI are topped by advertisers’ own websites, followed by conferences, exhibitions and trade shows; direct mail; search engine keywords; and e-marketing/e-newsletters." Source: Outsell.

So, if you have a choice of spending a few thousand on a print ad. or improving your website, it's a no-brainer. Some of our customers wouldn't dream of spending thousands on SEO or a campaign microsite and this does seem daft.

Thing is: you can measure the effectiveness of the campaigns quickly and easily (that's code for 'fairly cheaply'), so you can and should test and compare the cost per sale across media.

Of course the highest payback of all came from cross-media campaigns. Even though my livelihood depends on selling you digital stuff, I'm not suggesting you should only spend money on digital, just that you may profit from doing some testing and experimentation of your own. We can help you with that, so give us a call to find out how. 

Apps are shiny.
Apps are there on your iThing even without an internet connection.
Apps run in full screen with no browser bars.
Apps make great bling to show your clients/boss.

What’s not to like?

First things first: the mobile web is (normally) more important.
If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, then consider that first. You can find more information here - How-to: stop punishing iPhone owners.

Done? Great: let’s talk about apps.
Sucessful apps.increase customer loyalty by being useful, amusing or informative and keep your brand right there on a customer’s home screen (I’m talking about marketing apps in this how-to, not paid-for ones).

It’s also true that most apps are only used a couple of times. There are a lot of apps. out there.

So: why would anyone want yours?
If you can’t answer that question, you will waste your money.

5 good reasons to build an app.

• You have a complicated product that people need to configure, update or access on–the-move
• Your app. provides an information service (AA directions, Train times, Yell etc.)
• You have great content that changes regularly and people want to access it on-the-move (e.g. the Economist or Guardian etc.)
• There’s a repeating or ‘hobby’ element to your offering (such Nike GPS+ that records jogging mileage using a smartphone GPS tracker or a dieting product with weekly weigh-ins).
• You have a great idea that’s going to ‘go viral’ which will amuse and amaze everyone. 

3 reasons not to

• Because we can
• Because our marketing director has an iThing
• Because you want to see if you can get Comic Sans past the Apple app. reviewers.*

*You can’t. Comic Sans has been banned from the app. store and using it is in violation of your license agreement with Apple. Loading an app. containing this font causes the immediate and irreversible shut-down of your iOS device. This paragraph is 100% true in every way. Oh yes. 

What’s does that leave?

• You have an in-house brochure or sales tool that would look great on a shiny.

Something you have to know about the iThing

The only way to get iPhone/iPad apps in the hands of the public is through the Apple app. store. That means we have to get it past the app. store review process (PDF doc).

Break the rules and the app. gets kicked back at you.

This isn’t true of Android. Publishing to Android marketplace costs about £50 in fees and there’s no review process. Debate rages as to whose approach is better.

So, is there no other way of distributing an app.?

Many of the enquiries we get are for sales collateral: shiny screens to be used at trade shows etc. So: for limited distribution, you need a different answer: in-house apps.

To do this, the iShiny device has to be known to your IT people and has to be tweaked to allow installs of ‘in-house’ apps on it. The IT people need to be registered developers too. The configuration change isn't a huge deal, but it's not exactly the 'download and install' that you are used to.

You could always put a full-screen PDF or slideshow on the iPad if you just need to get your brochure on it. Or buy an Android instead.

What else do I need to know?

Consider which platforms you need the app. to work on:
Right now, it’s normally iPhone and Android. Here’s a link to current smartphone market share.

But, take the lead from what devices people use to access your website. For you, iOS may outstrip Android because of your audience.

If you need to develop more than one, then you need to read this bit. These devices understand different languages. It’s possible, but harder, to develop an app. to target both at the same time. Considering you have to get the Apple version through the review process for *each and every* update, it can be cheaper to maintain two separate programs. You can learn and iterate on the Android, then push the successful changes through to the iPhone version.

To find out more about how a mobile app. could help you, call Frank or Jules on 01422 847 958 or email us: make.it.work@welovetheweb.com

If you have a friend or colleague who you think might like to receive these as emails, get them to sign-up here: Sign up for the We love the web newsletter.
We won't share their email addresses with anyone else and we won't send through huge numbers of mails, just these how-tos, well, and the very occasional sales pitch, but we promise not to be 'in your face' about it.

And you can unsubscribe at any time.

Yeah, I'm bored of the web and decided to write about music instead. So, the big news this week is that Take That's official fansite uses our favourite CMS (Umbraco) and serves 6 million pages every 30th of a second or something.

Maybe not. It's actually about the very basics of Search Engine Optmisation(SEO). Getting your site in the top 10: that vital first page of search results in Google.

Dull, dull, dull, Why do you care?
Because it can double the number of people who find your site, see what you offer and decide to buy your stuff. When we rebuilt www.celebrityslim.co.uk and did SEO work, traffic nearly doubled, to 180% of previous levels (I've no hard sales data, sorry. Suffice to say our client was happy!)

Odd then, that it's the budget line-item that people most often cut from the build to 'save money'. To reprise an earlier theme: that's like spending £10k on a brochure and then hiding it in the cupboard. Nuts.

I understand though. It can be hard to make your client see the value.

So, Search engines: they're clever things right?
No. They are dumb machines, set up in complicated ways. They decide which sites are important using a complex set of rules designed to cover up the problem that they don't really 'understand' us humans (this is partly because most people don't understand us humans very well). Anyway, we work with those rules to promote your site.

Search engines do their best to work out where your site fits into life's rich tapestry by crawling through what they can see: text and links.

Important sites look like this:

• Well-made
  Good code tells search engines which bits of the page are important. Well structured content flags what that page is about to search engines in ways they find easy to understand.
• Lots of links
  People link to sites and articles they find useful or good. Search engines count how many sites link to yours to gauge your popularity and authority.
• Lots of content
  Plenty of original text and links to chew through, index and correllate. Search engines use that content to build up a picture of what you are about. Also, the more text and links there are, the bigger the site. Size is a proxy for importance.
• Lots of activity
  Things change regularly. Search engines use this to gauge how likely it is someone will visit the site often.
• Staying power
  Spammy sites come and go. Authoritative sites like, the BBC tend to stick around. Search engines like sites that stick around. Just being there for the last ten years can give you a better rank!
• No comic sans
  Sites using comic sans are downgraded by search engines for being amateurish.*

If your site looks important to Google, it shows up in searches for your products and services. And visibility + good product = sales.

* This is not true. It should be though. 

Boring note: lots of other things affect your ranking. These are just the main ones

How do I make my site look more important?
The usual way: rent a Bentley, don an expensive suit, go round to Google HQ and demand your due! Alternatively, follow our Five Step Plan.

• Step 1: who am I trying to impress?
  The most important question. What are your customers searching for, both metaphorically and on Google? We work with you to build a plan of what you want to be found for. We back it with real search data and measure the effect after doing the work, so you can see the benefit.
• Step 2: make the code help you
  We can restructure existing website code if you already have a site, or we can build fresh. The point of this is to structure the pages so that search engines can see what's important and what's not.
• Step 3: optimise the content
  This is a copy editing and writing job, but it's NOT a job for a generic copywriter. Too many website home pages are accidentally optimised for the word 'Welcome'. Get an SEO specialist copywriter to do this or you are wasting your money. You'll be amazed to learn that we can supply such a person.
• Step 4: get links
  You could do this yourself, but the truth is that you probably won't. Not only is it dull, slow work, you also need to know which sites are worth getting links from. Does your Yell listing link to your site and hit your keywords? Is your Google places record up to date? Are you listed in DMOZ? If you can't answer these questions, you'll benefit from our help.
• Step 5: implement your content plan
  You do have one, right? It's almost as important as the build.
  Too many people think: yeah: we'll have a blog and a twitter feed and news and ... and ... and ... STUFF! Since they haven't set any time or resource aside for it, no content ever happens.
  Having a community of users generating content is also a great way of improving search engine rankings and has many other sales benefits, but unless you have a Mrs. Miggins who organises and looks after that community, you may find it a non-starter.
  We can help you with that content plan.

And finally: as with all your marketing efforts, if you aren't testing, measuring the return and optimising then you have no idea what's bringing you sales. Surviving the afterlive is something we'll cover in another post.

Summary 

I (the person trying to sell you SEO along with your build) says that cutting SEO or trying to do it yourself is a false economy. Well, I would, wouldn't I? But the payoff is so unambiguous that it should be a no-brainer.

To find out how SEO could help you, give Frank and Jules a shout on
01422 847958, or email make.it.work@welovetheweb.com

Boot note: You may notice that I haven't used the word 'Metatags' once. That's because they are only peripherally useful: less than 5% of the job. So if you have an idea in your head that SEO is to do with metatags, then you may not fully understand the process.

Disclaimer: your mileage may vary for which of your search terms make it into the top ten. That's why we optimise for a whole spread of words and phrases.

If you have a friend or colleague who you think might like to receive these emails, get them to sign up for the We love the web newsletter. We won't share their email addresses with anyone else and we won't send through huge numbers of mails, just these how-tos, well, and the very occasional sales pitch, but we promise not to be 'in your face' about it.

HTML5 is a good general upgrade to HTML4, the basic language of web pages. It adds a couple of new features that allow you to play video and sound without using a plug-in such as Flash. It has some data handling tools too. That's it.

Sorry, I didn't promise that every how-to would be exciting. This one is aiming more for ‘informative’. If you read to the end, I’ll throw in some jokes. Fair?

I’ve vaguely heard of HTML5. If it’s so dull, why the hype?

Many of the HTML5 demos you’ll see are full-on multimedia eye candy. Where’s all this bling come from?

What’s happened is that other things have become confused and associated with HTML5.

1. A fistful of handy design and typography features used to make designs richer in the styling system called CSS.
2. Lots of work on making animations work without Flash by people who don’t like Flash.**
3. Lots of work by people who want to update bits of a page on the fly without the whole page refreshing.

Most of the cool new animation and interactivity stuff is done with that scripting language called JavaScript. And most JavaScript works on pages written using boring old HTML4 too. It may take a bit longer, but it can be done. The typography stuff can be done with existing browsers too: it’s a bit of a faff, but it’s do-able. This is good news, as half the browsers people use don't understand HTML5*.

Cool HTML5 demo’s that only work in some browsers:

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/48-excellent-html5-demos/
The demo’s only work in recent versions of Safari, Firefox and Chrome and IE9

Why do you care about HTML5?

Together, these things allow us to deliver websites that are a real pleasure to use: where everything feels slick. It’s the little things, like revealing and hiding text with a pleasing slide, so much nicer than the clunky ‘wait and re-arrange’ of a full page-load. Or the searches that suggest things to you before you’ve finished typing. Or forms that turn green the second you’ve filled them in correctly.

HTML5 makes it easier to tie all that stuff together, but it’s not mandatory.

Where’s the sell?

The reality is: we know it's not mass-market yet. Not until browsers that understand HTML5 outnumber those that don't by about 20:1. That’s about 2 years away.

It doesn’t matter: all that niceness is here, now. Yes. Your sites can be effortlessly cool even without alienating the technologically challenged! So, to find out about a whole heap of cool grooviness, give Frank and Jules a shout on 01422 847958, or email make.it.work@welovetheweb.com

* Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8 don't understand HTML5 properly. These browsers make up about 40% of the browser market. Internet Explorer 9 does get it.

** The iPhone and iPad don't do Flash because Steve Jobs banned it from iThingies. I think he got grumpy that Adobe (who make Flash) never made a Mac version of Flash as good as the Windows version. Flash runs fine on Android phone, so it's just industry politics keeping Flash off your Apple fondleslab. Dear sweet Lord, the politics of IT are dull. Quite apart from that, a lot of programmers don’t like Flash because Adobe own it,make lots of money from it and are a bit of a pain. And a lot of programmers also hate flash adverts. 

If you have a friend or colleague who you think might like to receive these emails, get them to sign up for the We love the web newsletter.
We won't share their email addresses with anyone else and we won't send through huge numbers of mails, just these how-tos, well, and the very occasional sales pitch, but we promise not to be 'in your face' about it.

Oh yes, jokes.

OK, top three jokes from this year's Edinburgh festival:

1. Nick Helm – “I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”
2. Tim Vine – “Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.”
3. Hannibal Buress – “People say ‘I'm taking it one day at a time.’ You know what? So is everybody. That's how time works.”

As you were.

Carry on.

Here's a quick test.

Take out your iPhone (your friend's Android, Blackberry or other smartphone will do just as well).

Go outside, beyond the reach of Wifi and onto your 3G connection.

Now: browse to your company's website.

And wait.

... wait some more...

... tum-tee-tum-tee-tum ...

... not long now ...

... are we nearly there yet?

... I wonder what's on the telly tonight...

... maybe I'll just take a quick snooze while this web page loads.

OK, so why should you care? 

That's what one in five of your customers experiences.
Just before they leave in disgust.

Now, try this site m.guardian.co.uk

I hope you agree that this is far less annoying.

One in five users are now mobile.
This screenshot below is from the analytics for one of the consumer sites we look after. Popular site too, it has 50,000 members. Quick Caveat: different sites attract different browsers. We look at this on a case-by-case basis with you.

20% of web browsing is now done from mobiles!

You'll know this if you ever travel by train. Sometimes it seems as though half the carriage is busily jabbing away at touchscreen devices. Not having a mobile version of your site means you are annoying one in five of your customers. I think that's a bad thing.

Good news: it's usually straightforward to make a mobile version of your site.

Basically, we do some cleverness so that mobiles just skip much of the styling and images that make a desktop site pretty, but slow to load. There's no rebuilding: it just runs off your existing desktop site content. These stylesheets are simple and lightweight by design, so they aren't even expensive to produce.

We'll also set things up so that people on smartphones are automatically redirected to the mobile site. And even put in a link to the full site so they can get to that if they want it.

To find out more about how a mobile site could help you, call Frank or Jules on 01422 847 958 or email us: make.it.work@welovetheweb.com

If you have a friend or colleague who you think might like to receive these emails, get them to sign-up here: Sign up for the We love the web newsletter.
We won't share their email addresses with anyone else and we won't send through huge numbers of mails, just these how-tos, well, and the very occasional sales pitch, but we promise not to be 'in your face' about it.

And you can unsubscribe at any time.

* you stop punishing Android and Blackberry owners too at the same time. You may see that as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you feel about the shiny.

Very simply: almost anything except the things you'd expect to be easy.

Your Facebook fanpage is made out of frame that facebook supply and a page on your own server that gets pulled into that frame whenever someone looks at the fanpage.So, realistically, it can contain almost anything.

This bit comes from Facebook.

This bit comes from a page on your website.

We make magic spells and the two are combined.

So, your fanpage is mostly a normal web page that Facebook pulls in remotely using magic spells that we cast to make it all work. What most of our customers want is to get access to all those lovely people who 'like' you and interact with you. And that's down to making your facebook page relevant and valuable to your customers. I'll start to scratch at the surface of that in another post. For now, this is the 'mechanical' how-to.

There are a couple of rules about accessing people's details that will probably surprise and annoy you though: they are the opposite of what you'd expect.

You can:

• Do almost everything you can with a normal web page, albeit one limited to 740x588 in size.
• Make a different set of stuff display once someone 'Likes' you
• Collect information using normal web-based forms. So, you can ask for people's email address, inside leg measurements and get them to enter a competition, but you can't automatically 'harvest' information from their profiles.
• If you want to gain access to people's profiles then you build an application such as this one:
  http://apps.facebook.com/hovis-stop-snacking/?ref=appd_my_recent&fa=1.
• People have to give permission for you to access their profiles. The deal is this: you give people something they want and they, in return, hand over their name, permission to message them, post on their wall, access to their list of friends, messages they've posted, profile, phone numbers and private innermost thoughts. Seems like a good deal.

You can't:

• Get access to someone's facebook profile name, addresses or profile details directly from a fan page.
• This is the annoying one, because it's the one that everyone asks for. Gathering this info has to be done through a facebook app. and these don't live on the fan page.
  • Facebook apps. are a slightly different beast and they can't be on your Facebook homepage. They have to be on a separate tab or linked from the fanpage.

One more thing to note:
Facebook change things. A lot. Like, all the time. They've probably changed everything at least twice since you started reading this. When I'm doing research on anything facebook related, I tell Google to ignore any page older than 6 months old.

And Facebook Connect? Oh, I think I've written enough for this mini how-to. I'll cover that soon too.

Bootnote:
D'you know what? It's getting harder and harder to shoehorn in an insult to comic sans, the world's ugliest typeface. Hmm... your suggestions welcome for how to do this more effectively.

'Should we promote our site using Google AdWords, or invest in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?' Which is better? I get asked this a lot.

SEO is a basic 'Thing you should do'. If you don't, you are throwing money away.

Not doing SEO on your site is like spending £10,000 on a brochure but keeping it in a box at the back of a cupboard. Silly, right? SEO improves the chances of your customers finding you. The basics are not even technical, but they do take time (this will be the subject of a 'how-to' very soon).

If you haven't done the SEO basics then you shouldn't even be considering AdWords.

Let's assume you've done the basics. Should you invest more in SEO, or spend money on AdWords?

That depends.

AdWords are good when:

• You've done all the basic SEO stuff
• You have a specific product, service or event to promote
• You need to get the word out 'Right Now!'
• You are prepared to spend time testing and measuring what leads to sales and what doesn't. If you don't, then you'll get a lot of click-throughs, but no sales.

Bad things about AdWords:

• As soon as you stop spending, the traffic stops.

SEO is good when:

• You have a reasonably stable target audience or range of products.
• You don't have a huge budget.
• You want to do some work now and reap the benefits for the next year or more.

Bad things about SEO:

• It's hard to test and measure results quickly.

We have used AdWords in the past with good results to refine keyword choices for optimisation. We use AdWords to work out what SEO we should do!

So: we have a very low budget Adwords campaign on a number of different keywords. At the end of the month, we look at which Adwords generated the most sign-ups/sales/enquiries. We then know how to optimise the site. This is a good way to make sure your SEO budget is used effectively.

Whatever you do, make sure you measure the outcomes to see what you get back from the money you spend.

In the beginning it was easy.

The only fonts you were allowed to use on a web page were the ones everyone had installed, so:

Times, Arial, Courier, Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet, Tahoma, Lucida

And that's yer lot. Everything else had to be created as an image.

Then came a little widget called Sifr, another called Cufon and finally the widespread use @font-face in stylesheets.Yeah, I know that sentence is gibberish, but in plain English: you can now use any font online. And 'lo the designers were greatly pleased.

It's not quite a free-for all though.

• Every non-system font we use adds about 20k to the page load. So add more than a couple and it will start to affect website load time (especially on mobiles).
• Fonts aren't free and need to be licensed. Sorry, we can't just include it on the quiet. This is public, easily searchable stuff and you will get caught. It's a cost we can't predict until we see the artwork, so be prepared for us to come back and ask you to license the fonts. 
• We still can't do kerning and leading in the way you are used to in print work. Sorry. Give it five years.
• Email is stuck in the past. You can still only use the standard system fonts. Everything else has to be done in images.

Do

• Use fonts creatively, but sparingly

Don't

• Use comic sans. Ever. No really, why would you? It's deliberately choosing something ugly when there are so many beautiful options available.

Was having a conversation at a party last week about this (yeahman, you just know the kind of happenings I go to) and someone asked me this, citing that dreary Microsoft advert where some insanely dull person says 'let's take it to the cloud'. Whizzy stuff then happens and you are left no wiser.

Very simply put: cloud services are things you only ever have online and the 'cloud' is just a confusing way of referring to stuff 'out there' on the Internet. They aren't dependent on your particular computer, they can be accessed from anywhere.

Paypal is a cloud service: you don't have a Paypal installed on your computer. Hotmail is a cloud service. Google documents is a very useful cloud service: like a word document or spreadsheet that lots of people can work on at once (and see each other's changes as they make them).

Those are all cloud services and you probably use them every day.