Ecommerce software - analytical review of different options

If you are an artist and want to market and sell your art online then one of the things you'll end up doing sooner or later is investigate ecommerce software. The aim will be to try and evaluate whether any of them do what you want and which one might work best for you.

For those who have never had to deal with anything more threatening than a new version of Microsoft Office, this can be a major challenge!

The first thing you learn is that, with few exceptions, most of the software is generic and not targeted at artists.

I've just come across a website called G2Crowd which provides a way-in to:

• understanding what the options exist relating to ecommerce software
• typically in-depth customer reviews for different products
• an evaluation and rating of different business software according to market presence and customer satisfaction

Home Page - GCrowd website

The idea behind the site is that there is too much spin out there in relation to products available for sale in the marketplace - and not enough well informed reviews.  

• The idea is to eliminate "vendor spin and outdated analyst reports".  
• Products ranks are aggregated from peer reviews and social data. 
• The reviews are intended to be real, unbiased feedback or ....advice from people who had actually implemented and used the software and related services

This, for example, is its page relating to ecommerce software and below is the widget it uses for demonstrating how one site relates to another.

• The y axis is documenting presence in the marketplace with those in the top half being the bigger players
• the x axis looks at the satisfaction scoring attributed to different sites - with the more established sites tending to have more and higher scoring ratings.

These are the policies for grid rating objectives and grid rating methodology. 

Compare Best E-Commerce Software

This is how GCrowd describes the four quadrants of the four cell table

The best E-Commerce Software products are determined by customer satisfaction (based on user reviews) and scale (based on market share, vendor size, and social impact) and placed into four categories on the Grid:

• Leaders offer E-Commerce products that are rated highly by G2 Crowd users and have substantial scale, market share, and global support and service resources. Leaders include:Amazon Webstore, Paypal, PayPal Payments

• High Performers provide products that are highly rated by their users, but have not yet achieved the market share and scale of the vendors in the Leader category. High Performers include: Miva Merchant, ChargeBee, Shopify, Demandware, cleverbridge, BigCommerce

• Contenders have significant scale and resources, but their products have received below average user satisfaction ratings or have not yet received a sufficient number of reviews to validate their products. Contenders include: Magento, IBM WebSphere Commerce, Yahoo Merchant Solutions

• Niche vendors do not have the scale and market share of the Leaders. They may have been rated positively on customer satisfaction, but have not yet received enough reviews to validate their success. Niche include: Zuora, CloudCraze

It's worth taking a look and checking out what you currently use (I've just had some validation of my choice to use PayPal for payments by clients!) and investigating how well it stacks up relative to competitors.

To the extent that dedicated software for artists actually exists, you can assess whether (1) it's recognised and (2)  its performance in the market in general for that type of product.

The ecommerce categories for software are

• E-Commerce Platform
• Digital E-Commerce
• Shopping Cart
• Live Chat
• Order & Fulfillment Management
• Payment Gateway
• Product Reviews
• Subscription Management

Click any of these links above and you can find the software which comes into this category.

Use the column on the left to define attributes and further sub-categories which you want to focus on. You'll end up with a list of options for your particular needs eg for Digital E-Commerce Software

You can also use the platform to assess other business and marketing software - for example, find out which product is rated as the best email marketing tool

Ning's abysmal communication on billing

I use Ning to provide a framework for online discussion groups about art. The framework they offer and the service they provide is great.

However I have one MAJOR complaint about Ning. I complained about it last year - to Ning.  The situation is no better this year so I'm going to complain about it again - and this time I'm doing it in public.

Ning's communication with respect to annual subscription billing is absolutely APPALLING!

ABYSMAL is another word I would quite happily use.

Communication is limited to a pop-up message on entry to the network.

• There are no emails to the network owner prior to payment becoming due
• There are no invoices delivered via email to the owner's inbox - PRIOR to payment.
• Continued subscription is assumed and revisions to existing arrangements are made difficult for network owners due to the lack of information on the network dashboard
• Payment can be made BEFORE an owner has had a chance to review the payment.

Now as it happens I don't want to revise my current arrangements.  However if I did Ning doesn't give me much of a chance to do something about it.

 However as somebody who is very familiar with the proper statutory requirements and other good practice standards applied to systems for billing accounts I know that Ning's arrangements fall far short of what's required.

 I conclude that Ning's communication on invoices is very poor and below all reasonable expectations of standards for online payments.

 It made me think last year that there's a need for some sort of online financial systems ombudsman. I'm thinking the same thing again this year.

This is the online billing enquiry they're receiving from me today.

Please answer the following questions:

1. Why does a responsible company not have a setting for account details and payments of invoices linked to an individual's personal account and/or the network account.
 
2. Why do you not communicate with the site owner via email in advance of the billing date with respect to annual billings.  I do not in any way regard a flash-up message when logging in as any sort of adequate substitute for proper communication.  For one thing there is no online record which is accessible to me that it has occurred.
 
3. Are your billing arrangements fully transparent and completely compliant with all statutory legislation and prevailing good accounting practice relating to the payment of bills for online services?

I'd be very interested to hear about other people's experiences of Ning's Billing arrangements.


UPDATE:  Here's the automated response which completely fails to address any of the questions asked. Like I said - their communication is abysmal!

Hi there,

Thanks for contacting us. You can view all of your account information, including your complete billing and invoice history, by signing in directly to Ning.com using the email address you used to create your network. You can also access your Ning.com account from the dashboard of your network by clicking "My Account." For any questions, please refer to our Help Center article located here: http://www.ning.com/help/?p=5859
We hope this helps.

Thanks,
The Ning Team

Zeen - YouTube messes with copyright again?

A new magazine site called Zeen is being developed by the YouTube Founders.  It may prove to be as much of a nuisance and copyright challenge for artists and photographers as Pinterest has been.

In essence, YouTube is building some sort of magazine site.  The interesting question is where is all the content going to come from which allows people to build their own magazines - and how much of the information in the magazines is going to be shared ie published.

Adding Content to the Service. If you choose to add content to the Service, including without limitation links, images, videos, text, sound, comments, notes or tags (any and all of the foregoing “Member Content”), such content will be publicly viewable via the Service. Your username will also be publicly associated with any Member Content you add.
Sharing Member Content With Others. In certain instances you may be able to elect to share Member Content with others. In such instances, the person with whom you choose to share Member Content will receive an email notification that you wish to share Member Content with them and that email will originate from the email address associated with your account and therefore that email address will be viewable by the recipient and associated with your username.
Zeen Privacy Policy

These two articles tell all that can be found on the net about this application to date

• Fusible - YouTube co-founders are working on a magazine publishing service called Zeen
• PC Magazine - YouTube Founders Building Mysterious Magazine Publishing App

This is the text of the email I received this morning.  The first sentence tells me that this person has not looked at my blog at all and this is a complete load of guff!

Hi Katherine,

First off, I wanted to say how much I’ve genuinely enjoyed browsing through “Making a Mark.” I’ve been researching art and your work is some of the best I’ve seen out there. That's why, after getting lost in your site, I wanted to reach out to you.

I’m working on Zeen, the new project from YouTube co-founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. We’re looking for a select group of content creators with unique expertise in art and would like to invite you to join our beta creator program. As a beta creator you’ll be the first to get your eyes on the still private platform, offer feedback and establish your footprint in a brand new webspace before anyone else. Sound interesting? Here’s how to get started:

1) Reserve your username at http://www.zeen.com and be sure to validate your email
2) Register for the Zeen Beta Creator Program here (http://bit.ly/I7FtOa)
3) When the beta site is ready for you, we’ll let you know and enable exclusive access to your account

Even though we’re still in stealth mode, and we have yet to do any press outreach, we’ve already received a lot of great coverage speculating about what we’re up to. It would be great to have you onboard as one of our beta creators so you could see what’s going on before anyone else.
Hope to see you on Zeen!
Thanks,
Olivia

Their "great press coverage" links to the PC Magazine article. If you read it, it's the typical PC magazine review of an upcoming development about which they know very little.  Lots of speculation and head scratching.  It finishes thus.....

And here's hoping the general Internet population doesn't launch 6,000 different cat magazines once Zeen goes live.

The thing is - the PC Magazine articles either isn't being read by people (unlikely?) or it doesn't appear to be taking any comments.  At least there's no credible comments on the article and mine wouldn't publish this morning.  Which is odd.  How credible is that?  So is the article actually a bit of PR fluff?

My concern is the potential copyright infringement of the content which might be included on the net via this new development

So here is my comment that I tried to leave at PC Magazine again - reproduced below.

I got my beta invite this morning - with all the normal gushing up front about what a remarkable blog I have. I can't think of anything more guaranteed to make me decline to participate.

So is this going to be yet another site - like Pinterest - which says one thing in its terms of service about "all the content you upload must be your own" and, in practice allows anybody to allow copyrighted material from around the net? Photographers and artists are getting very fed up with having their work stolen.

Are they paying attention to the way that Pinterest is being clobbered with DMCA notices all the time and has had to revise its TOS?

Are YouTube paying attention to the results of the recent Court action re YouTube in Germany - which YouTube lost (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17785613 ) - where the Judge ruled that they can be held responsible for copyright infringement if they don't take effective action to stop it? YouTube now faces "a huge bill for royalties"

I predict that if these are such wonderful income generating applications that it won't be long before the invoices for fees for unauthorised publication will accompany the DMCA notices from those whose copyright has been infringed.

Maybe the rollout of this application will be a little longer than originally anticipated?

For those who are wondering about what artists and photographers - and various commentators - had to say about Pinterest and its "allowed lifting" of copyrighted content see my site - Pinterest and Copyright - for Visual Artists & Photographers.

Pinterest has got very good at removing copyrighted content - but the primary issue remains that it should not be there in the first place.  Hence there continue to be a variety of concerns about Pinterest which don't look like they're going to go away anytime soon - unless artists and photographers start serving Pinterest with invoices for the licensing fees required for publication of their content.

I wonder if I'll need to start a new site for Copyright issues re. Zeen?

One thing is for sure - there is no way that the majority of authors of copyrighted content are going to allow major  moneymaking machines like YouTube to profit off their endeavours with no "pay for view" involved.  I think it's about time for us all to get business-like about copyright theft.

Review: Art Guide - iPad/iPhone app by Art Fund

The new free Art Guide app (for iPhone/iPod/IPad) developed by the Art Fund and available from iTunes is an excellent app for those aiming to get out and about to see exhibitions in the main art galleries and museums around the UK

Initial impression, sat at my desk, are very favourable.  It looks like it's a very useful app for all those visiting exhibitions on a regular basis.  It provides listings of current major exhibitions and even has a  "popular" tab providing a top ten list of all current exhibitions.

The Art Guide App from iTunes
photographed on my iPad
copyright - all rights reserved

Pros:

• "nearby" function has the capacity to identify where you are
• identifies the most popular exhibitions
• very easy to develop a "wish list" of things you want to see and visit
• "trip planner" enables you to identify what's on in an area you are planning to visit.  You can identify location by post code and then identify exhibitions / galleries and museums within a defined area (you choose the mileage).  It also prompts for different mileages.
• provides detailed information about individual venues including how to contact them, when they are open and what the charges are - plus directions using Google Maps
• enables anybody with a National Art Pass to check the benefits and discounts wherever you are
• provides a prompt about an exhibition coming to an end (if you set up a wishlist)

Cons:

• much more suitable for iPhone and iPod than the iPad where it lacks the scope to make use of all the screen and the functionality of the iPad

Here's a YouTube video which explains what it does and shows you what you can see and how it works

Purpose of app

This is the description about the Art Guide on the iTunes website

Passionate about art? This free app is the ultimate guide to seeing and experiencing art across the UK. The Art Guide brought to you by the Art Fund helps you discover world-class exhibitions, museums and stunning country homes near you.

This is the official listing of what it does

• Search for the most interesting and inspirational exhibitions across the UK

• Discover over 600 museums and galleries

• Check for National Art Pass benefits and discounts wherever you are

• Create a wishlist of your favourite exhibitions and places you'd like to visit

• Set up alerts in your wishlist telling you when an exhibition is coming to an end

• Browse high-res image galleries of venues, exhibition highlights and work the Art Fund has helped buy

What type of app? 

According to iTunes, it's:

• Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, 
• iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and 
• iPad.Requires iOS 4.2 or late

According to the Art Fund the android version is in the works and coming soon.  I shall certainly be downloading it to my Samsung Galaxy.

The app is looking a bit small and lonely on my iPad as it's obviously configured primarily for the iPhone and iPod.

I do wish both developers and iTunes would be more explicit about those apps which are "available" for the iPad and which ones are "designed for" the iPad!

Primarily this is an iPhone app which has been made available on the iPad.  It lacks iPad functionality (eg there's only one way you can look at it and it doesn't turn as you change the angle of the iPad.) I'd like to see an upgrade happening very fast to get this app fully sized for the iPad.

North Light Shop - Digital Download Deficiencies

Going round in circles - trying to download to no avail

This is all about how the North Light Shop makes it difficult for international customers trying to download a digital copy of The Pastel Journal

I've become a big fan of digital downloads of books and magazines - but while iTunes and Amazon work fine for me (and sync between my Mac and iPad beautifully)  it is possible to encounter difficulties when trying to buy/download from suppliers who are less well attuned to digital downloads.

Art Magazines from North Light Shop

I used to subscribe to various American Art Magazines but gradually got fed up by the time they took to arrive and the cost relative to the content - given the amount of content available for free online which was of comparable quality.

The other major problem was the massive postage cost for international customers which made a journal which is available for a reasonable cost in the USA a very expensive proposition when buying as an overseas customer.

It's a challenge that a lot of publishers of journals and magazines face.  It's also a challenge which must be losing them custom and customers.

One of the delights of the Internet is that it is now possible to order individual copies of magazines as digital downloads.   That means I can get a copy as soon as the magazine is published.  It's all very fast - see/buy/download/receive.  The admin process is extremely speedy on other sites.  The only time I have to wait is the time to receive the download.

This is why some of the publishers of art magazines now make digital downloads available from their website stores.

Which is fine - so long as they work!

This is the story of trying to buy the April 2011 copy of the Pastel Journal which has the Pastel 100 winners in it.

It was always a copy I looked forward to getting and I'm very happy to try and download a digital copy for $7.99 (although I would expect the publishers to realise at some point that they will achieve a lot more sales when they start relating the digital file to cost ie there are no paper or printing costs involved with a digital file)

This is the process I followed - which ended up in this blog post.

• Read Pastel Journal Blog - see article about the Pastel Journal 100 edition and click the link to the 12th annual Pastel 100 competition
• Arrive at North Light Store 
• Bonus:  I note the following This item does not have shipping or handling fees, but does count toward your order total to receive free shipping on other products.
• Realise I need to set up an account and do so.  Get rather irritated by an antiquated American ecommerce system which assumes all international addresses work in exactly the same way as American ones.  It's something I've seen a lot of in the past but much less so nowadays hence the irritation at having to make "England" a province.  It's a country!
• Click through the North Light website menu to get to the Pastel Journal and choose the digital download option for the Pastel Journal 100 issue (April 2011)
• Next I click the link and.......

• Billing information has been automatically inserted
• Just the payment information to complete (what a pity they don't offer Paypal which is used by soooooooo many people these days for international payments)
• see the shipping information but do not complete this as they don't need it, the digital download is coming to my computer.  It's not a CD coming to my B&M address
• HOWEVER I do note that there is no option for "digital download" in the shipping information!  Which seems very odd to say the least
• Odd that is until I press "continue"
• The next thing I get is a screen demanding that I complete a shipping address.  This states the following

Invalid First Name For Shipping Address
Invalid Last Name For Shipping Address
Invalid Shipping Address 1
Invalid City For Shipping Address
Invalid Postal Code for Shipping Address
Invalid Ship Country

• So now I wonder what to do - which is never a situation I like to be in when in the middle of a transaction on a secure website
• I try choosing default and that loads my home address and announces that it's going to send me my digital download as "international printed matter"
• I try the same process twice more with identical result.  Nope I didn't do anything wrong.  The system running on the North Light Store does not appear to be one which can cope with digital downloads of files!  Either that or somebody forgot to ask the webmaster to include instructions specifically for digital download customers.
• This is the point at which I begin to "lose it" and......
• Start this blog post instead.  I give up!

So - a question for you

Has anybody SUCCESSFULLY downloaded a digital file to an international address from the North Light Store?

• If so, what did you do?  Did it arrive as a digital download?
• If not, why not?  Plus what did you next?

POLL: Which "Print on Demand" site do you like the best? (Update #1)

Last summer I started a poll on Print on Demand - Resources for Artists to identify what people's preferences were in relation to different Print on Demands websites.

The popularity of the various 'print on demand' sites waxes and wanes. We know something about the traffic they get ( see the traffic charts below) but what do people think of them after they've used them and/or bought items from them? This poll set out to find out.

This is the situation some six months on.  44 people have responded to date.

Print on Demand Poll as at 12th February 2011

Print on demand - art prints/posters and other printed items

Clearly Zazzle is way out in front.

However looking at the preferences in the context of traffic enables us to get a better picture

Zazzle's premier position is echoed by the growth in traffic to their website.  Zazzle and Cafe Press are far and away the largest competitors with traffic peaking at nearly 7 millon a month in December.  However, since last summer, Zazzle has consistently attracted more traffic than Cafe Press.

Zazzle's traffic (blue) overtook that of CafePress (green) last summer
(January 2010 - January 2011)

Red Bubble is the newest website in this competitive marketplace.  It picked up second place in the order of preferences.

Again this is born out by the compete.com chart when comparing the traffic of Imagekind and Red Bubble - where it can be seen that Red Bubble has been beating Imagekine for all of the last 12 months.

Imagekind (blue) has been consistently losing out to Red Bubble (green) in the last 12 months
(January 2010 - January 2011)

Interestingly 20% of those voting preferred another site - but rather frustratingly didn't say which!

See Print on Demand - Art for more information, advice and tips about the different websites

Print of demand publications

In the print of demand publications stakes, Lulu is preferred to Blurb.  Again this reflects the relative position on traffic.

Lulu's traffic approximately three times that of Blurb (January 2010 - January 2011)

See Print on Demand - Publications for more information

Conclusions / your views

Overall, traffic is a pretty good indicator of preference - with the exception of CafePress.  This site has extremely high traffic but is not the site of choice for most people.  One can only assume this say something about people's experiences with the site or their reputation.

• What's your preferred print on demand website - and why?   
• Have you voted on the poll? - please update the poll if you have not yet voted
  

Email List Building for Bloggers

This isn't so much a review as a recommendation to read the series of blog posts about List Building for Bloggers (#LBB)  written by Phil Hollows, the Founder and CEO of FeedBlitz .  This is an alternative to Feedburner for pushing out RSS feeds to subscribers which I use.

This series of posts are designed to:

• help you get the most benefit from your blogging 
• harness the power and capabilities of email and social media communications network - together with your blog - to build a list of followers.

These are the posts to date on the Feedblitz blog:

Get the basics in place first

1. Why aren't Email Lists Dead in the Age of Social Media?
2. Lists, Email Marketing and Your Blog
3. Five Key Steps to Grow Your Blog's Mailing List
4. Growing Your List: Accelerating Subscriber Growth
5. Growing Your List: Improving Engagement
6. Avoiding the Spam Trap 

Optimisation of your Mailing List

1. Mailing List Underperforming? Optimize it with these Tips!

I've been reading them as they've been published and, while I wouldn't necessarily follow all the advice, there's lots and lots of good content and reminders of things you know but forgotten.

Techie: Bloglines to close down 1st October

My first ever feedreader was Bloglines - and I loved it.  However over time I gradually switched my feeds to Google Reader - and then found that I also picked up on people's blog posts increasingly via Blogger Dashboard, Facebook and Twitter.

I guess a few other people must have been doing likewise as it's been announced that Bloglines is to close on 1st October.  Bloglines is owned by Ask.com and you can find their explanation for their decision here - Bloglines Update

A little perspective: when we originally acquired Bloglines in 2005, RSS was in its infancy. The concept of “push” versus “search” around information consumption had become very real, and we were bullish about the opportunity Bloglines presented for our users. 
 
Flash forward to 2010. The Internet has undergone a major evolution. The real-time information RSS was so astute at delivering (primarily, blog feeds) is now gained through conversations, and consuming this information has become a social experience. As Steve Gillmor pointed out in TechCrunch last year , being locked in an RSS reader makes less and less sense to people as Twitter and Facebook dominate real-time information flow. Today RSS is the enabling technology – the infrastructure, the delivery system. RSS is a means to an end, not a consumer experience in and of itself. As a result, RSS aggregator usage has slowed significantly, and Bloglines isn’t the only service to feel the impact. The writing is on the wall.
 


There is a a three-week period to export feeds to another service – more detail and instructions can be found on the Bloglines website.

I've just moved all my subscriptions from Bloglines to a Google Reader and it took about two minutes - easypeasy! :)

It's worth noting that the import/export tab for Google Reader is a tab within the Google Reader Settings tab rather than a line in the menu as it is with Bloglines. 

Webware review: Blogger Stats

Did you know that you can now get statistics in Blogger?  If you view your blog in Blogger in draft (http://draft.blogger.com) then you can now see a new stats tab to the right of the design and monetise tabs.

This post on the Blogger in Draft blog explains what's available - see Introducing Blogger Stats

I've been looking at my Blogger stats for my different blogs and I'm favourably impressed.  It reminds me of a cut down tidied up version of Google Analytics without any of the fuss associated with setting up a Google Analytics account for your blog and inserting the html code in the template

Geographical spread of visitors to this blog

 The scope is as follows:

1. Flexible perspectives:  Any of the different tabs can be viewed  for different timeframes - now, day, week, month and all time.  The latter is distorted due to the start date for the stats widget.
2. Overview tab - provides a neat and simple summary of traffic, popular posts, sources of traffic and where in the world it's coming from
3. Posts / Pages tab:  lists the 10 most popular posts and tells you how many pageviews they have each received.  Also indicates page views for individual static page.  I particularly like the pageviews for top posts as this gives a different perspective from one which is focused around visitors and the profile is somewhat different.
4. Traffic sources tab: This provides the top referring URLs, referring sites and the most popular keywords
5. Audience tab:  This provides a map of where visitors come from plus analyses pageviews by country, browser and operating system

This is a quick overview:

Pros

• no set-up requirements beyond switching to viewing your blog in Blogger in Draft
• nice clean well organised design
• tab access to different perspectives
• very accessible
• identifies the most popular posts by pageviews (across different timeframes)
• provides the right level of information for most people
• no need to leave your blog in order to view the stats.

Cons

• not as comprehensive as Google Analytics (but absolutely fine for most people)
• no details for individual visitors (such as you get with Statcounter)
• focuses on pageviews rather than unique visitors hence multiple visits from or page refresh by one person can inflate numbers.  Most people measure the popularity of a site by unique visitors as this is more reliable and less susceptible to distortion
• total numbers for the "all time" dimension appears to be affected by when this webware started to be used

Overall

This is a very useful addition to Blogger.  So much so that I've now made Blogger in draft my defaul view so I can keep an eye on my stats.

What brands do you favour for backup?

In How do you archive your images? (MAM Poll Results) over on Making A Mark, I highlighted the different ways in which people archive their image files of reference photos and artwork (in progress; available, exhibited and sold).

How do you archive your images?
copyright Katherine Tyrrell / Making A Mark

Maybe you won't be surprised to know that 14% of the artists who responded had no back up organised at all! If their computer died - so did all their images on that hard drive.

I'm now moving on to the next stage and trying to demystify what's involved inbacking up images and I'm trying to put an information site together.

I'm now looking for help in terms of recommendations and warnings!

What I'd like to know is:

• which brands (eg of external hard disc drives) are you happy with?
• Have you found any branded backup device or software problematical?
  
• Is there any particular hardware or software or digital vault website which you'd like to recommend

For the record I use:

• Western Digital MyBook - for backup onto external hard disc drives which were 'best in class' when I got them = although it now looks like other brands are better
  
• Flickr Pro account for online digital archivng (unlimited storage and no limits on uploads)
  
• a variety of brands for archiving onto non-rewritable CDs
• ScanDisc Ultra and Jessops for my secure digital/SDHC cards
  

Widget reviews - Google Search on Blogger

Widget: "Google Search" widget on Blogger

Summary: Highly recommended for all those who use a search function often - like me. Essential for those who reference posts from their own blog and/or use their own blog to file details about a book or product for when they need it for future reference - like me! I'm finding I'm using it all the time.

Technical Details: Google Search Widget available from standard menu

Synopsis: Performs a Google search with several options for my blog and the wider world

Highlights: very fast - much faster and more accurate than the normal Blogger search function huge flexibility as to how I seach standard options are to search my blog, the pages I link to or the web additional options to search specific categories of links in my blogroll (see below to see an example of the search opportunities for this blog)

Think Again? Unnecessary if you never ever search your own blog or those of other people. You might as well use your normal search engine for the rest.

Owner/Distributor: Google/Blogger - it's the second item in the list of 'basics' widgets

Suitable for: Anybody who has been blogging for a long time, has a substantial archive and likes to refer back to past posts - like me! Where you'll put it in your side column will depend on how often you want to search your own blog. It's a simple widget and it's now at the top of all three of my blogs

These are the options it provides for this blog. I've used some but not all but can change my options at any time. At present I've focused it mainly on my own archives and posts but I'm still experimenting with which seem the best options. I recommend you do the same as the best option will be very personnel and vary from person to person.

Call for reviews - NetworkedBlogs on Facebook

I've just put my main blog and this blog on NetworkedBlogs on Facebook.

I'm thinking of doing a review of this application at some future stage - from the perspective of artist bloggers on Facebook - and wondered if anybody would like to help out by offering your views (see questions below).

NetworkedBlogs is a facebook application. Think of it as a social network for bloggers inside facebook. Add a visual blogroll on your profile, and show of your blogs and blogs you like. NetworkedBlogs also aggregates the RSS/ATOM feeds from thousands of blogs and allows you to read the latest news selected by users like you.

Please only comment if you are an artist blogger on Facebook.
Any spam will not be published.

What I'd like to know

I'd like to hear about your reviews of this facebook application. You can use my basic queries listed below if that helps you. Please respond to as many or as few as you want to.

Accessibility and ease of use on installation

• How long did it take you before you discovered this application
  
• How did you find the installation of networked blogs?
• What did you think of the verification process?
  

Practical impact

• Has networked.blogs helped you to build a profile on Face book? (Do you have any numbers?)
  
• If yes, what if any benefits has that brought you? (If none, please say so)
• Specifically, can you tell whether it has helped with the marketing of your art? (Please say how)
  
• If it has brought you no benefits do you know why that might be?

The Directory

• What do you think of the blog directory generally?
• Have you looked at and/or started to follow any of the top 50 blogs listed under any of the art terms eg art; design; illustration
• What do you think about the Directory listing being limited to 50?
  

Do you like networked blogs?

• What's your overall impression of NetworkedBlogs after using it?
  
• Would you recommend it to other Facebook users?
• Would you recommend it to other artists on Facebook?

Anything else? Do also feel free to comment on any other aspect not covered above.

New Federal rules for product reviews/endorsements by bloggers

Beginning Dec. 1, bloggers, Twitterers and many others who write online product reviews must disclose the receipt of free merchandise or payment for the items they write about.
New York Times - New F.T.C. Rules Have Bloggers and Twitterers Mulling

Not a problem for me. I've already got a disclaimer at the bottom of this blog which clearly states................

Disclaimer

The basic principle which underpins this blog is that all all the reviews which appear here should be independent.

What does this mean?

• I am sent review copies of books by publishers or authors and samples of art materials by suppliers of art materials but I have no financial relationship with those suppliers or any art shop or art bookshop.
• I am an Amazon affiliate (which helps me to finance the purchase of any new books); however I have no formal affiliation with any other manufacturer or publisher and I buy lots of art books in various art shops)
  
• I will always declare if I have any sort of affiliate interest in relation to a product or service under review and I'll also declare whether I was sent a product as a sample.
• I expect all reviews by other artists which appear on this blog to adhere to the basic premise that any and all affiliations are declared.

I don't think I need to take any action.

How about you?

There are clear issues about how to distinguish between ordinary people who write about products they use in an 'everyday' way and those who provide endorsements with a view to earning money from their blogs.

It's been an issue that has always seemed to me to be one which is best addressed by ALWAYS being open and upfront about any products/books/items I'm sent to review. I don't give positive reviews simply because I'm sent something but I really wouldn't want people to think that a positive review is the result of getting a freebie!!!

Overall, I say what I think - but try to be fair. In relation to negative experiences I notify a manufacturers if a sample product has failed to perform - as I've done just recently. I then seek a replacement to ensure that my review is not distorted by what might be a 'one-off' malfunction. It happens.

Further Information

The Guide was last updated in 1980 so this is a major and important change. It's specifically aimed at ensuring transparency in dealings as much advertising now moves away from traditional channels and towards social networking sites.

Here are some links providing more information.

• Federal Trade Commission - News: FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.
Federal Trade Commission - News: FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

• Text of the Federal Register Notice Note in particular the definitions below and example 8 in this Notice - which is particularly relevant to bloggers
• Definition of endorsement, product and experts

For purposes of this part, an endorsement means any advertising message including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of the name, signature, likeness or other identifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the
sponsoring advertiser. The party whose opinions, beliefs, findings, or experience the message appears to reflect will be called the endorser and may be an individual, group, or institution.
(c) The Commission intends to treat endorsements and testimonials identically in the context of its enforcement of the Federal Trade Commission Act and for purposes of this part. The term endorsements is therefore generally used hereinafter to cover both terms and situations.
(d) For purposes of this part, the term product includes any product, service, company or industry.
(e) For purposes of this part, an expert is an individual, group, or institution possessing, as a result of experience, study, or training, knowledge of a particular subject, which knowledge is superior to what ordinary individuals generally acquire.

• Text of the Revised Endorsement and Testimonial Guides: FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 16 CFR Part 255 - Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising

Webware review: SEO Analysis Tool

Webware: SEO Analysis tool

Owner/Distributor: SEO Workers Consultants.

Technical Details: The tool is webware and can be used without downloading anything from the internet. There's an option to download Firefox browser extension (not tested). This is what it claims to do. Analyze most common meta tags; Analyze keyword density from the page content; Analyze page load time from the page; Analyze size from the page; Analyze title meta tag relevancy to page content; Analyze description meta tag relevancy to page content; Analyze keywords meta tag relevancy to page content; Check robots.txt file if user agent is allowed to spider the page; Display meta tags returned from the web server; Display headers returned from the web server; Search for keywords on the page; Search for keywords in the anchor (URL) tags; Search for keywords in the images alt tag.

Summary: A useful tool for reviewing the titles, text and meta tags used for individual website pages. Identifies quickly and easily issues which might cause a site to fail to rank well in SEO terms.

Suitable for: people wanting to assess whether their website is search engine friendly

Highlights: webware - can be used without installing anything on your computer helps siteowners to improve the page ranking of individual pages of their website by removing aspects unfriendly to Googlebot and other spiderbots tests for a good match between title tags and page descriptions (in text) helps focus attention on how a website page is described - and whether that will be scanned by spiders checks that meta tags are a good match with text produces results very quickly and very simply uses a traffic light system of colours plus text to highlight issues which need to be addressed you can test and retest easily - identify what makes a difference by being able to tweak, republish and check again very quickly

Think Again? debateable how important meta tags are these days (however titles and text and congruence between the two remains very important) it's a bit too addictive - ration your time! inability to understand the coding of blogspot blogs

Suppliers: Available from http://www.seoworkers.com

Before I comment further on the tool it's important to provide some context so here's......

A preamble about SEO and Page Rank

Google crawls webpages to look for changes roughly in order of the page rank of each page. This is how Google rates and ranks web pages for search purposes

PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

Google - Technology Overview

This is a summary of Google SEO Ranking Factors with comments based on the SEOmoz survey of Search Engine Ranking factors v2.

Earlier this year I reviewed which factors were relevant - or otherwise for artists in

• 5 positive ways to help your art website rank well in Google - the top five factors for helping your website or blog do well in search engine enquiries
  
• 5 more ways of helping your art website to rank well in Google the next five top factors
  
• 5 approaches to avoid on your art website or art blog - what you want to make sure you avoid. Note some of these are highlighted in the next post as being controversial
  
• SEO for Artists - which factors help or hinder? - which identifies those factors where experts agreed or disagreed the most as to their importance

What this SEO Analysis Tool will NOT do

This tool is:

• NOT going toimprove a site's page rank in terms of how many links you get (as described above)
• NOT going to tell you what your page rank is - but it will show you how you're messing up your chances of getting a good page rank.
• NOT going to tell you all the things you need to do - but will highlight some important things to address.
  

How this SEO Analysis Tool can help

This SEO Analysis Tool is to help you analyze and measure the ranking potential of your web pages.

It doesn't only analyze the Meta Tags of your pages, rather it tries to use the same spider technology as the search engines spiders them self.

Before you can get a link you first have to be found! This tool might improve the chances of a page being found as a result of a search due to the page being accurately described in a way which the Google bot and other spider bots like.

All you have to do to use this tool is insert a URL for a website (for the home page) or any URL of any website page and that page will be analysed as to its SEO effectiveness. Then complete a quick spam check.

An example of a report produced
(for my portfolio website http://www.pastelsandpencils.com)

On the right I've provided an example of a page. i'd like to just emphasise that this was after paying attention to the warning messages and tidying up my site description and meta tags.

In general, I found it very helpful to focus in particular on the title tags and the description as that is where Google starts in its hypertext analysis.

I've personally found it very helpful for reviewing the set-up of my information pages on Squidoo and the individual pages of my two main websites. The thing I liked best is that you could tweak a site, republish and then check to see what difference a change made - for better or worse.

The one problem I identified while trying it out is that it is not at all helpful in analysing blogspot blogs.

The website also provides some useful SEO tutorials in layman's language and general terms.

Incidentally, one of the things I liked about SEO Workers was that they identified who they are - see About Us which lists names and provides pics, addresses, and contact details.

Pay attention to Matt Cutts too!

It also pays to review what Matt Cutts, the SEO GoogleMeister, has to say from time to time. he's got the most up to date perspective on what counts and what matters.

Think about the keywords that users will type. Include them naturally in your posts

• "usb drive""thumb drive""flash drive""pen drive"
• ALT attribute are handy (3-4 relevant words)
• Don't forget image search, videos, etc.

Matt Cutts - Straight from Google: What You Need to Know

Plus this is a YouTube Video by Google about Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Crawling and Indexing

Links:

• Wikipedia - Search engine optimisation
  
• Wikipedia - Page Rank
• Google: Corporate Information - Technology overview
  

At last - statistics that make sense!

First of all, I'd like to say a HUGE thank you to all those people who have subscribed to Making a Mark reviews...... since it started in April this year.

For some reason Feedburner has been ignoring virtually all the people who have subscribed to this blog - including ALL the subscriptions in Google Reader!

I was feeling very perplexed about why only 7 people wanted to subscribe. However I got a big shock this morning when I saw that actually 82 people have subscribed in one way or another! That's quite some incentive to create reviews!

I still seem to be having a problem with Feedblitz which seems to want to update about every four hours and say precisely nothing but I'm hoping to get to the bottom of that one.

In the meantime thank you for bearing with me and I'll be back to normal very soon I hope.

I've got problems validating this blog's feed

The statistics for this blog have been very odd and I've discovered that I've got problems with the feed for this blog which in turn was:

• producing some very odd results on the Feedburner validation page.
• causing the subscription link to loop and not arrive at a subscription page
  

PLEASE let me know if it's causing a problem for you too.

In the meantime if anybody knows what the following is all about I'd love to hear from you!.

Use of unknown namespace: http://schemas.google.com/g/2005

I'd naievely assumed that Google wouldn't be using templates or code that was incompatible between its products - namely Blogger and Feedburner

By the way - did you know that Google doesn't use feedburner for the feeds for its own Google Blogs? I wonder why?

Widget Review: LinkWithin

Widget: LinkWithin

Owner/Distributor: Who knows? There are no details available on the website!

Technical Details: Widget produces three relevant/related posts from your blog with a photo thumbnail and full post title for each at the end of every blog post. The plugin is available for Wordpress, Typepad, and Blogger

Summary: Widget looks good and works reasonably well in terms of identifying internal links to relevant posts. Simple and quick installation of code on Blogger. Website provides a link to FAQs but this didn't answer any of my questions (see "Think Again" below). The major failing is that the website lacks basic details (ie postal address and policies covering data security and privacy) which should be essential and available on any any website which asks you for your email address.

Suitable for: Bloggers who want to try and increase the number of relevant internal links available to readers - but only if they use an email address which they can dump if need be!

Highlights: free to install / no plans for an advertising model as yet installation is easy(on Blogger) possible to review installation code nice clean design - will integrate well with a variety of blogs no requirement to provide any personal and identifiable information (but you do need to provide an email address - see below)

Think Again? you need to know what you're doing if you want to try customising the code no instructions provided if you want to change the position of the widget you give away your email address before you see how the widget works on your blog - Bad! no privacy policy relating to your email address and its connection to the blog URL - Bad! no security policy (as above) - Bad! no details about who produced this and how they can be contacted other than an email address - Bad!

I've been seeing LinkWithin on a number of blogger's websites recently. Following my post on Making A Mark on Monday about 5 positive ways to help your art website rank well in Google, I decided to try this new widget plugin out on this blog and write a review about it.

Why? Well this widget addresses one of the factors highlighted on Monday's post Link Popularity within the Site's Internal link Structure on Making A Mark.

• First - Google likes to see you making navigation to related content easy for your visitors.
  
• Second - this is an excellent way of increasing page views on your blog. Seeing options around more content may persuade casual visitors to return again and read/see some more.

LinkWithin is a widget that links to related stories from your archive under each story on your blog.

Don't Let Your Past Stories Go to Waste! We retrieve and index all stories from your blog archive, not just recent stories, making them accessible to new or casual readers of your blog who would not otherwise encounter them.

Increase Pageviews, Keep Readers Engaged - The widget links to stories that are relevant and interesting to readers of a particular story, keeping them engaged

LinkWithin produces a related posts with a photo thumbnail at the end of each blog post - just look at the end of this post to see what I mean.

It's not clear how the widget produces the links. I think it's doing more than just looking at the tags/labels given to each post. It may well be scanning text as well.

It was particularly interesting to test it on this blog given that it's very new and there are not that too many blog posts as yet. In theory, that should make it easier to get a good match. It also means I can tell how good the widget is at doing it's job. At the moment, I've noticed that the three posts highlighted change every time the page is refreshed. Overall I think my initial conclusion - after reviewing what it produced for a number of posts - is that it's not bad but it could be better.

The plugin is available for Wordpress, Typepad, and Blogger. The instructions for installing the widget on Blogger were nice and clear. There are also instructions which tailor it to different types of webware. HOWEVER you can't see the instructions until you've included and supplied your email email address.

The html for the page then includes both your blog and address and your email - which is why you don't see the page linked to here!

This is what it looks like though - see image on right

I thought the actual widget itself looked very good - it has a nice clean design which fits well with a lot of different websites and is one of the better aspects of this widget.

The bad news: My major reservations relate to

• a complete lack of data about the company which owns/markets this widget and the postal address where they can be contacted (something they'll have to remedy before they take any money off anybody - including advertisers). Providing an email addresses is simply not good enough! They are either very naieve or negligent or they don't care about your data because, despite the fact they ask for your email address, the website also has............
  
• NO DATA SECURITY POLICY
• NO PRIVACY POLICY

I'm going to keep an eye on this widget and how it gets on as the posts on this blog multiply and will report back in due course.

However I am NOT installing this widget on any of my other blogs unless and until the website omissions relating to widget owner details, data security and privacy are remedied.

I've written to the email addresses supplied on the website and I'll update this post with a note about what sort of response I get. None of the issues I've raised are difficult to deal with - but in my view they should have been dealt with before this site went live.

I'd also caution people installing this widget to be very careful about which email address they supply.

BTW - there are a fair few reviews out there about this widget and not one of the ones I read identified the issue about the lack of an address or policy relating to data protection. They may think the practices used by this website are OK - but I don't they are and I think you should be aware of what they are.