A small ecommerce website for Westco but ecommerce non-the-less; this website was developed very quickly (within 2 weeks) and although primarily it is a brochure website for the flooring giant, it does allow online sales of particular special offers from the homepage. The original requirement was to design and develop, very quickly, an attractive brochure-type website to better represent the wholesale flooring company online. The longer term project is ongoing and thankfully we have more time to develop it; it's an ecommerce enabled wholesale system which will allow their wholesale clients to login and purchase their flooring products via an online ecommerce website. The new much larger system will have integrated wholesale accounts, linked directly to their Sage system, the website will be fully integrated with Sage to enable realtime integration with their sales ledger, stock levels and customer records, including customer specific discounts, customer reviews, credit limits etc.

The Westco website was designed, developed and published within a 2 week period and looks pretty good we think, take a look at the flooring website and see what you think.

Google once again shocked the internet world by releasing its +1 button which features as a part of its paid and organic search results. Following in the footsteps of the Facebook Like button, Google’s +1 button is incorporates user sentiment into the search results, but many question the thinking and intent behind this addition to the search results.

How does the Google +1 Button Work?
The thinking is that people respect the opinion of friends and colleagues over and above strangers or marketers – hence word of mouth has worked well for decades. Now Google want to cash in on this trend by allowing your friends and contacts to recommend websites and content in the search results by adding a +1 to that site.  So, if you are signed into a Google account you will be able to see all the sites your contacts have +1’d and likewise they will be able to see those sites you +1.

Where does the button feature?
The Google +1 button features on both organic and paid search results. Google have also produced a +1 button that can be placed within your website’s pages which allows visitors to recommend your site without having to leave it. At Designer Websites we have already begun implementing this button into a number of website designs making it much easier for our client’s customers to share products, news and special offers.

How will this effect SEO?
The best indication we have so far as to how this new button effects search results comes from the following statement from Google, “We’ll also start to look at +1’s as one of the many signals we use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, including social signals from other services. For +1's, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality over time.” Those sceptical about this new development cite the opportunity for the button to be manipulated through false Google accounts to distort rankings. No doubt Google have thought hard on this and will be monitoring such behaviour closely.

For additional information and details on Google’s +1 button visit Google’s Webmaster Blog.