Graham Charlton

Graham Charlton is Editor of the Econsultancy blog, covering e-commerce, SEO, and more. He also contributes to our Best Practice Guides and other reports. You can contact him at graham.charlton@econsultancy.com.

Yahoo launches new food site

Yahoo has today launched a new US website devoted to food, in an effort to offer more unique content and boost its advertising sales.

Yahoo’s food site will feature a searchable recipe section, as well as videos and blogs from a range of celebrity chefs. It will launch in the US initially.

by Graham Charlton 02 November 2006 16:35pm 0 comments

Google to surpass Channel 4 in UK ad revenue

Channel 4 has issued a warning that Google is set to overtake them in terms of advertising revenue this year.

The search engine is set to earn £900 million in advertising revenues for the UK market, which will top the predicted Channel 4 figure of around £800 million.

by Graham Charlton 02 November 2006 10:03am 0 comments

Pay-as-you-go VISA voucher to lure wary shoppers online

A new pay-as-you-go Visa voucher for online shopping has been released today, in an attempt to get more people shopping online.

Figures from the 3V Transaction Services ‘online shopper’ study reveal that around a fifth of people want to shop online but are reluctant to do so, and that over 9 million people in the UK are left behind by the online shopping boom.

by Graham Charlton 01 November 2006 13:46pm 3 comments

Google buys wiki tool developer Jotspot

Google has today acquired Jotspot, a three year old California-based company which develops platforms for building wiki-based applications.

Wikis, popularised by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, are platforms for user-generated content. Users can create, modify and even delete information, to build up pages, in a structured format.

by Graham Charlton 31 October 2006 16:16pm 0 comments

BBC could make millions from online ads

The BBC could make up to £105 million from online advertising on its BBC Worldwide web services, according to a strategy report from Accenture.

The Guardian reports that the BBC is considering bringing in ad revenue from overseas viewers of its website, though BBC staff have previously voiced their opposition to online advertising.

by Graham Charlton 31 October 2006 16:21pm 0 comments

Pluck to close its RSS reader

Pluck, the two year old Texas-based social media company, has announced that it’s planning to shut off its RSS reader product line to focus into other business areas.

A notice on Pluck’s website advises that its RSS readers for Internet Explorer, FireFox and Pluck's web edition will be discontinued from January 7th, 2007. Subscribers will have two months to export their subscriptions to other readers.

by Graham Charlton 31 October 2006 11:45am 0 comments

Blogging tips from John Battelle of Federated Media

Michael Zhang at Folksonomy has a great interview with John Battelle of Federated Media, in which he shares his tips for bloggers.

by Graham Charlton 31 October 2006 10:43am 0 comments

Christmas shoppers WON'T cost UK businesses £7 billion

Employment experts suggest that the cost to business of employees surfing the net for their Christmas shopping on company time could be £7 billion this year, although frankly this research is somewhat misleading.

The prediction comes from the Employment Law Advisory Service (ELAS), which advises employers to lay down rules for staff to minimise the risk of losing hours to internet shopping.

All things considered, this sounds a bit Orwellian for our liking. But first, let's look more at this ELAS research...

by Graham Charlton 30 October 2006 19:23pm 0 comments

Bumper Christmas expected for online customer service

Online customer service departments may be dealing with up to five times more emails in the pre-Christmas run up than at any other time of the year.

The two weeks before Christmas will be a busy one as anxious customers contact retailer’s customer service departments to see whether their purchases are going to turn up in time for the big day.

by Graham Charlton 30 October 2006 14:38pm 0 comments

Reasons to avoid Flash on your website

Web developers and businesses continue to develop Flash based websites, despite the well-documented drawbacks in terms of SEO and usability.

When used well, Flash can be a great tool for the presentation of rich content, but pure flash websites, though they may look good, can annoy the hell out of visitors.

After the jump, some reasons why...

by Graham Charlton 30 October 2006 10:47am 12 comments