Silkmoth today have launched a Royalty Free photographs site: PhotosWithoutRoyalties. I'm not really anti-monarchy. By and large I think the royal family is fairly harmless. In fact this post has nothing to do with them at all. It's about a site we've built that has the express intention of getting its images indexed by Google images. I'll report back occasionally on how well it's working

Well, actually, 0 - 10% in 35 days.

A site that has been live for just over a month is already delivering 10% of the clients orders.

We launched a site at the beginning of November for a client, Beaumanor Engineering. Beaumanor sell fluid fittings, see the portfolio entry here. Fewer than 5% of their customers have so far been given accounts to place orders on the website but yesterday 10% of their order volume was placed through the website.

This is an excellent example of the power of the web to enhance existing routes to market. Beaumanor is already a very successful operation. However, using the web intelligently to allow customers to place orders online (and then place top-up orders later in the day) spreads the order load across the day, improving staff efficiency and potentially lowering shift costs.

By now everybody will have come across 3D-Secure, or to give it its trade names; "Verified by Visa" or "MasterCard SecureCode".

This is the system where as you click the Buy button on a website, you are magically transferred to your bank or card issuer.  There you have to enter another password, your mother's maiden name or your shoe size.  In theory it all seems straightforward enough but...

1. Each card issuer/bank has their own strength of password rules which means you end up creating a new, unique password that is instantly forgettable. Let's face it we all like to use the same password wherever we go. This way we end up writing it on a yellow sticky stuck to the side of our computers. Which is more secure?
2. When you jump to your bank you're not actually jumping to your bank. You're jumping to a third party service, like SecureSuite, where you enter your account and pin/password. I'm sure you'll all remember that our banks tell us frequently not to enter these details on any website other than theirs.
3. Sometimes the 3D-Secure service is embedded within a frame on the retailer's website. This prevents you from checking out their secure certificate (click the padlock) and ensuring they are who they say they are.

So, we're asked to give up our pins and passwords to a third party service we can't check out. Sounds more like a phishing scam than enhanced security!

You might be asking why this has happened? Well, when a card is used fraudulently it's the retailer who loses out. If a crook buys a new flat screen TV using your card, they get the TV and you get your money back. The retailer is a TV short with nothing to show for it.

If the payment went through 3D-Secure then the liability is shifted to the card issuer/your bank. This is why retailers, apparently, are in favour. However, we know from experience with Silkmoth's web retailers, there's anything from a 9% to 21% reduction in 3D-Secure sales because customers don't complete their sales. It's just too complicated/scary for them!

So the retailers still lose out and that's why I hate 3D-Secure.  It's bad for everyone.

We're gathering quite a number of solicitors practices as clients. The latest is a two fee-earner practice in Bramhall led by Brian Drewitt.

I've know Brian through my various networking activities for a while and he is a great bloke with a fine turn of phrase and I would not like to come up against him in a court of law - his intelligence is as sharp as his wit.

Brian is a commercial solicitor in Bramhall. He also handles property work through his associate, David Chapman. When we talked to Brian about the plans for his new site I said that the practice was mainly Brian and the thing that made his clients happy with the results was down to his knowledge and experience. So, I said, present the personality of the site based on the personality of Brian Drewitt: experienced, intelligent and not afraid to have a laugh. Gareth Lowe took some excellent photographs and les Renshaw wrote the words. Gareth and les are networking regulars at BNI Wilmslow.