Originally published here: http://blog.postcodeanywhere.co.uk/index.php/common-ecommerce-mistakes-1-get-niche-or-get-out/ One of the most common mistakes new online businesses make is trying to sell too many different kinds of things. Last year I sat down with a lovely chap in his fifties who had an idea for an online business that he was really excited about, and he wanted me to [...]

In last month’s blog post I talked about how you can influence how relevant search engines think you are by tweaking the content of your site pages. I gave you some simple things to look at that were well within your control and will have a real positive effect. This month, however, is where search [...]

Originally Published Here Search Engine Optimisation is such a massive turn-off for most businesses. What I hear all the time from my clients is that it’s confusing, it’s highly technical, it takes a huge amount of effort, there’s conflicting information out there about how to do it and no matter how hard you work at [...]

If you’ve been following the story so far (here and here) you’ll see that so far in Actinic Online I’ve come up with a straightforward but attractive design I think is achievable, and also worked out how to get at the CSS of the site to start implementing some custom fonts, colours, graphics and backgrounds. [...]

Having come up with a design I think would work in Actinic Online (original article is here if you haven’t seen it) the next job was to get access to the design options in Actinic Online and start playing. If you are doing a custom design, you can start in one of two places. Either [...]

Where To Begin? There is nothing like having a real customer to help focus the mind on learning a new bit of software. No, let me rephrase that. There’s nothing like there being money involved to help focus the mind on learning a new bit of software. When a customer approached me wanting to use [...]

Originally posted here – http://blog.postcodeanywhere.co.uk/index.php/using-twitter-for-business/ Twitter can be an incredibly powerful business tool. You can use it to encourage loyalty with your current customers, and also connect to brand new people who you would never have reached before Twitter. Which sounds marvellous in theory, but there’s no denying that it’s also a tricky medium to [...]

Originally Published on the Postcode Anywhere Blog When I talk with my clients about using Twitter, half of them tell me they don’t understand it, and the other half don’t see why they should bother with it. To be honest, I can see what they mean – it’s not like the average small business owner [...]

A few of my customers (e.g. www.page45.com) have recently added a forum to their site. Although forums provide a massive opportunity for businesses to develop and nurture a fanatically loyal band of enthusiasts, they can also lead to hours spent dealing with administrative and moderation issues. My experience moderating the Actinic Community for four years [...]

Random River has just finished putting the finishing touches to http://www.fruit-bowl.com/ and http://www.casabellavista.co.uk/ – two sites built using the WordPress content management system. Both allow the clients to update all the content and images in the site themselves using a browser, rather than having to pick up the phone to us (as much as we [...]