As expected Mozilla have released Firefox 3 and made it available for download. You can download the latest browser by going to the Mozilla Website.

First tests have proved positive as EROL 5 works as expected with this browser.

This guide can be used for sites that are not built using EROL 5, but in this case I am using the new EROL 5 business edition for this article.

The following tweaks can only done on a Linux/Apache platform. If you are currently hosting your site using EROL hosting then this these tips will work without too much amendments.

I put together these tips after installing the Yslow! plugin from Yahoo which works within the firebug plugin for firefox. The Yslow! plugin will rate your site/page and provide you with a grade. ‘A’ being the best. It will also tell you were you can improve the page loading speed.

Compress files sent from the web server using Gzip
In most cases the webserver will send your .html, .css and .js files as uncompressed files to the browser. Using Gzip the webserver will compress the files, making them smaller and then send the files at almost a 10th of the original size. There is a downside to this, and this is the time taken for the server to compress the files before sending and the processing time for the browser to uncompress these files when they are received.

It is not recommended to use Gzip on image files such as .jpg, .gif and .png as these are already in compressed format and will not reduce to any smaller size.

To enable this feature in EROL hosting you will need to create a .htaccess file and upload this to the root of your server. You can do this by creating a file in Notepad (I recommend Notepad++) and adding the following lines.


# compress content with type html, text, and css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css text/javascript application/x-javascript
# properly handle requests coming from behind proxies
Header append Vary User-Agent


This will only apply gzip compression to css and javascript.
To activate gzip for the html files you will need to add the following line.


AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html
php_value auto_prepend_file /var/www/vhosts/erolhosting.co.uk/httpdocs/begin_gzip.php
php_value auto_append_file /var/www/vhosts/erolhosting.co.uk/httpdocs/end_gzip.php


You will need to replace erolhosting.co.uk with your own domain name. For those not on EROL hosting you will need to contact your hosting provider to find out what your complete path is.

The first line will tell Apache to interpret all html files as php. This means that all EROL files will be parsed by the PHP compiler. This will allow you to embed php code in your EROL 5 store.

Secondly the next two line will stitch two php files to the top and bottom of all html files.

You will need to create these files and upload them to the server.

begin_gzip.php

< ?php
ob_start("ob_gzhandler");
?>


end_gzip.php

< ?php
ob_flush();
?>


Add an expire header for image, javascript and shockwave files

ExpiresActive on
ExpiresByType image/gif A2592000
ExpiresByType image/png A2592000
ExpiresByType image/jpeg A2592000
ExpiresByType text/css A2592000
ExpiresByType text/javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType text/js A2592000
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A2592000
ExpiresByType application/x-Shockwave-Flash A2592000


This will set the expires header for the file types above to 1 month from today. This will reduce the number of subsequent http requests after the first visit of a customer. If they return to your site within a month the browser will not request the images files from the server and this will reduce bandwidth and load times.

Summary
I recommend you install Firefox, Firebug and YSlow and check your page load times.
The components sections shows the Total Size and number of http requests when the browser has an empty cache and after the cache has been loaded. In my tests I managed to significantly reduce the file sizes using gzip and also reduce the http requests using the expires header settings.

1) EROL Store Directory – add your store and this will assist in increasing your Google Page rank – this is how Google see’s the importance of pages on the web. The EROL website enjoys a page-ranking of 6/7 – Microsoft have 8. A new site on the web has 0. This is one of the many factors affecting how sites rank in Search Engines.

This also qualifies you to enter our Store of the Month competition, which gets you homepage Coverage on our site, with a graphic and link to your site on our Examples Homepage too. This will generate traffic to your site as we get 10’s Thousands clicks per month.
2) Get Quality Inbound Links – adding your store to the EROL Store Directory gets you on the way with this. Search Engines like to see relevant links from other sites – preferably that are ranked well /seen as important, informative and useful to your customers /users.

3) EROL Optimisation Guide – please work through this and implement any changes as advised (if you didnt refer to this when building your site). It may well be that all is well and there is little to do, but if implemented this will assist the Search Engines in finding your site, listing your products and also getting traffic to your site.
This is a fundamental part of starting any SEO campaign with your store (its the bricks that all else is built on as it were).

4) EROL Shopping – we have added your site on to EROL Shopping. This will show from tomorrow in the ‘Home and Garden’ section, listing all of your products. Please check this tomorrow and let me know if you have any queries. Any changes are made at your end, and are automatically displayed on EROL Shopping the day after.

This service, as part of your EROL Cover Plan, will generate traffic (qualified) to your site, as well as orders. This is all without charge. On average in the last 6 months we have directed 33,200 clicks to each store listed on EROL Shopping.

5) EROL Shopping Optimisation Guide – by implementing the changes in this document it will help us via the EROL Shopping site to maximise the effectiveness of this service, and has a direct result on the amount of traffic and orders we can get to your site over the next 12 months.

6) EROL SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Services

- EROL Free SEO Report – a high-level report that simply confirms whether there is a value to you actioning SEO on your site, and the key areas to focus on. Available on request from EROL Sales on 0845 072 6060.

- EROL Audit SEO Report – get our SEO experts to action an ‘SEO MOT’ on your site. A 20-page document that goes through your site in depth, detailing where changes / amends should be made in order to increase your pages appeal to the Search Engines and to get more traffic via natural rankings to your site. All suggested changes / improvements are detailed in ‘non-technical’ , with examples from your site to make implementation easier. One-off cost of £249+vat.

Without exception, any of our clients that have had one of these reports have had the £249+vat back in 6-8 weeks of actioning the suggested changes. Customer comments and feedback.

- EROL Managed SEO Offerings – get our expert team to action and implement your Audit SEO Report, and then run a focused campaign on targeted Keywords that you want your site to be found for in Searches via Google, Yahoo,MSN, Ask, etc.
Let the team that make the software and are professional Search Experts drive the traffic while you focus on what you’re best at – running your business.
There is an SEO Offer in the Jan Newsletter sent to you today, which I would be happy to offer you if you are interested in this and can order this week.

Please see the attached PDF’s for a full overview of our SEO Offerings.

7) EROL Customer Manager – Customer Login Feature
Why not set up a ‘Voucher’ login (single code), print this on to leaflets, and distribute them at Trade Shows, your local Train Station – or anywhere else there is a ‘target-market’ for your customers.
For example you can give 10,000 people a voucher wiith your site address /details on, stating ‘Get a 20% Discount Today Only’ by using the code ‘ROSE1′.

This has from feedback been a very successful tool for many clients. Can also be used in Magazine Ad’s / newspaper Ad’s etc.

I hope that this offers some ideas as to your various options for growing your business online, and also details the numerous ways that EROL Services can assist.

The OFT (Office of Fair Trading) has been conducting wide-spread checks on online stores over the run-up to Christmas, looking for sites that contravene the DSR’s (Distance Selling Regulations).

Although the exercise initially focused on the top 600 online stores, this is sure to continue through 2008, with the OFT starting to focus more and more on the Online retail sector.

The government has published guidelines for e-Tailers to assist in becoming compliant. It is certainly in the interests of e-Tailer’s to meet the regulations, as non-compliance can mean that your customers can take advantage of your T’s and C’s – as well as the potential to be taken offline by the DTI.

The OFT Guidelines can be seen here:

www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/small_businesses/distance-selling/

Any queries on this dont hesitate to give us a call on 0845 072 6060.

It looks like another booming good Christmas for EROL customers in 2007.

Feedback from out customers show that there has been a significant increase in the amount of online spending for the December period, with an overall increase of around 15%*.

Reasons for this increase have been attributed to queues on busy high street shops and the savings that can be made when buying online – with products being on average 13 per cent cheaper online.

*Based on orders placed on EROL stores during December 2006 and December 2007.