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Last week I posted the first half of our 2008 review, pointing out some of the best posts and stories we had on the blog in the first six months of this year. And now, here’s what happened in the second half of 2008.

July

Angelina Jolie gave birth to twins and registered domains containing their names and in non-celebrity news, we looked at how easy it is to trade internationally online and wrote a guide to help you make it happen.

Then one of the year’s biggest stories broke, with news that hundreds of new domain extensions could be created. You seemed to be really interested in the story, and left lots of comments. We also asked a PayPal Director how to build a winning online shop, and covered another development in the narnia.mobi domain dispute.

August

Right at the start of the month I invited ridicule again by getting in front of the camera and recording a quick video about producing great sales copy. And the campaign to get a domain extension for Wales got a boost when it received £20,000 of funding from the Welsh assembly. Read the rest of this entry »

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Our recent piece about domaining attracted quite a bit of interest, so we thought we’d try to demystify a couple of related areas too.

We’ve decided to start with domain parking. This is, basically, a way to make money from domain names.

If you’ve spent much time registering domains, or reading about the industries that have sprung up around them, you’ve probably come across the concept at some point.

So how does it work?

A parked domain is one which has been bought and then used to display a single page. At its simplest, a parked domain could point to an ‘under construction’ page. You could even fit it out with an early-90s throwback roadworks sign for that retro feel.

A domain is usually parked in this way when the owner is planning to use it for something, but just hasn’t got round to it yet. Domain parking is also sometimes used to protect a brand name – usually the owner of the brand will redirect the parked domain to their main website (so yourbrand.co.uk might redirect to yourbrand.com). Read the rest of this entry »

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The end of 2008 is coming up fast. So in common with virtually every other newspaper, magazine, website and blog out there, here’s our own take on the year. We’ve included some of the biggest stories and best posts we’ve produced over the last 12 months.

The Long Tail and an expensive domain

In January, we learnt more about the history of domain names (it’s more interesting than it sounds) and interviewed a chap from Microsoft about the end of the keyboard and robotic vacuum cleaners.

We also spoke to Chris Anderson, whose Long Tail theory has recently been challenged, and really stuck our necks out with the prediction that social networks like Facebook would get bigger in 2008.

February saw us nail another good interview, this time with Richard Moross, founder of Moo.com. They’ve been one of Britain’s biggest dotcom success stories, and it was good to hear how they’ve done it.

This was also the month when cruises.co.uk sold for £560,000 – that’s the most money ever paid for a .uk domain name. We considered spending a slightly more affordable $30 on a cool poster instead. Read the rest of this entry »

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We’ve just entered the busiest time of the year for online retailers.

According to various sources, the 3rd, 10th and 26th December were particularly busy days last year, and this year we’ve already smashed the record for busiest internet shopping day ever, clocking up 4.6 million online transactions on Monday.

Recession resistant

Ecommerce has been growing well for years now, and despite the onrushing recession, it’s likely online shops will buck the general downturn to an extent.

That means that while Marks and Spencer is repeating its one-day special sale to lure in business and Alistair Darling is changing VAT for the first time in 17 years, ecommerce sales are actually still on the up.

Sure, the downturn means the rapid rate of growth of ecommerce will slow, but while sales are actually contracting on the High Street, the fact that online business is growing at all marks it out as one of the more recession-resistant areas of the economy.

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Following on from a previous post Questions to ask a web designer before you use them, I thought I would expand the idea to another area a lot of website owners consider outsourcing, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation ). This list is by no means exhaustive but it should hopefully point you in the right direction if you are thinking about taking the leap…

1. Can you provide examples of sites you have worked on before and any performance stats?
When it comes to SEO, every man and his dog claims to be an expert. To avoid taking on someone who talks a good game but has never used their ‘skills’ in anger, ask for specific examples of sites they have worked on and how they increased those site’s rankings.

2. How do you monitor performance?
Just checking Google every so often isn’t good enough. There are dozen’s of good quality tracking software solutions out there which will tell you exactly where you are ranked for each keyword you are targeting. Also, ask for access to that data so you have complete visibility, be it through regular reports or direct access to the control panel to check your self.

3. What areas of off-site and on-site optimisation will you be looking at?
For on-site I would expect to see some of the following highlighted (in no order):
- Page titles
- H1, H2 etc tags
- Keywords in opening paragraph
- Link structure of the site
- Keywords used in the anchor text
- Your sites URL’s
- Meta description tags

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