Clarihon blog

• Welcome to Clarihon Web Service’s blog

Our latest web site has just gone live.

MIH Centre are leading innovation consultants to major businesses that need to develop new products or services.

The company was started by Tim Nicol, an ex-senior manager in marketing at Mars/Masterfoods. He saw first-hand the difficulties many large companies have with the creation and further development of products and services. They have now helped businesses around the world including BP, Diageo, Nestle, Sony and many other household names.

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Our Internet viewing habits are of great interest to retailers and other groups so there’s been an increase in the use of tracking tools by web sites. This is usually via ‘cookies’ and the EU are now attempting to regulate how they are used through legislation.

Cookies are text files that are stored on a computer and can be used to authenticate a person, store their preferences or much more.

They also drive the biggest industry on the web – advertising.  These cookies enable advertisers to track websites visited and then present that person with tailored content and adverts – known as ‘behavioural advertising’.  It is this aspect that has caused the privacy concerns about cookies.

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Our November 2009 newsletter looked at various copyright issues relating to websites mainly looking at how copyright protects your website from others.  In this newsletter we’re focusing on aspects that relate to the legality of your website.

It is essential that any text and images you use are either your own creation or that you have permission to use someone else’s words or pictures and if you do, that the source is acknowledged.  You might think that including a logo link to YouTube or Flickr would be straight forward, but unlike Facebook or Twitter which have logo files for you to use on your website, both YouTube and Flickr require you to seek permission first before you use them.  There’s no problem just providing a link to the sites, but once you try and make use of a company’s branding then you can run into problems. Infringing copyright is known as piracy and dates from 1603.

Whilst not affecting the legality of websites, accessibility is an important aspect to consider.  Accessibility relates to making a website usable by readers of all abilitites and inabilities.  There are several assistive technologies for web browsers to help people with disabilities which include alternative screen reader software, braille terminals, screen magnification, voice recognition, alternative keyboard devices and others.  The government has an eAccessibility action plan for ensuring that public websites conform to certain standards and there is a British Standard (BS 8878 Web accessibility. Code of Practice) specifically for digital inclusion.

It is worth mentioning that the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) was broadened earlier this year to include online marketing communications – there was a widespread media campaign at the time to alert people to the changes.  Any paid-for listings and pop-up adverts were already covered, but the ASA code has now been extended to marketing communications on websites and other non-paid for online space.  So basically if you have something to sell – either a product or service – and you have a website to showcase it, then making any false claims runs the risk of falling foul of the authorities.

This change then affects how some people have done organic (not paid-for) search engine optimisation (SEO) in the past.  There has always been ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ SEO but not only will Google penalise ‘black hat’ methods, this revised ASA code may mean that some of these practices are now illegal. The CAP code opening paragraph states that “the central principle for all marketing communications is that they should be legal,
decent, honest and truthful.  So websites really do need to do ‘what they say on the tin’.

More detailed information is available on the Committee of Advertising Practice website.

We’ve just launched 2 new web sites for clients

The first was last week for Pikkup, a client who sells accessories for, not surprisingly, pick-up trucks – like Toyota Hilux and Nissan Navara. He wanted a simple e-commerce site to effectively replace his e-Bay site. The site went live on Wed 27th July. www.pikkup.co.uk

The second was for a professional media trainer, business speaker and business columnist based in London. Robert Taylor trains people to handle themselves well in front of the media – TV, radio, journalists and so on. He has trained over 1000 members of the Foreign Office and plenty of senior execs of major companies inside and outside the UK. The site went live on Monday 1st August. www.RobertTaylorInternational.com