Ultimately it’s best to go with the dash as it acts as a seperator where underline joins the terms together, but I thought I would let Matt Cutts from Google (yes an actual Google person) explain the difference in the video below if you’re interested in knowing why.

Google is in the process of launching their new attempt at challenging Facebook, let’s hope that they have learned from their first two attempts, Wave and Buzz, which were both terrible launches and complete disasters for users.

So a client asked me what makes this one different from the rest of Google’s social media attempts? Well they are allowing you to essentially divide up your social groups, which could either be really good or a terrible idea, time will tell.

So what do I mean by divide up the social group? Google calls this “Circles”.

Just think of all the times you’ve heard people say “my mums just joined facebook and wants to be added to my friends list” who knows what stuff you don’t want your mum to see or comments from other friends she’s never meant that show the wrong side of you. Sometimes there needs to be boundaries and this is essentially what Google thinks will make them different from the rest.

In theory this is a good idea for cases like that, but will it work in the real world? Only by getting enough people on the system and actually using it will we know if it’s a hit or not.

They bring a few other things to the table that are of interest like “Hangouts”.

So a few of you are online at the same time, wouldn’t it just be easier to set up video chat with everyone, but that’s usually a one to one affair, not with Google Huddle apparently you can do more than 2, how many more? well apparently up to ten, which is quite impressive, but will it work or kill broadband connections all over the place, guess we’ll find out soon.

So what else do they bring to the table well something called “Huddle”.

Have you ever been trying to arrange a night out with 4 or more people and had trouble with everyone knowing what’s going on then plans change and you have to do the round robin nightmare again to make sure everyone knows what’s happening. Well Huddle is apparently the saviour by letting you group everyone together in one big chat room. Problem solved, everyone now gets the same information as everyone else and can contribute to the chat without messing up your profile with useless chatter. This could be very useful to many people.

Maybe not as social right away “Sparks” is the next thing on the list.

This is basically a way for Google+ to suggest things you might be interested in from your searches. either it will work really well and you’ll discover lots of great new things or it will very quickly become spam and peeve you off.

They actually have a whole load of other things like privacy settings that are both easy to set and in your control, the ability to download all your photos and Google+ profile data so that if the service ever got canned you would have all your information – this is a nice touch, but something Facebook will probably be able to add easily enough.

Google+ will also be on pretty much every smart phone out there so it won’t matter if you have Android, iOS, Win 7 Mobile, Blackberry or Nokia Symbian.

So lot’s to take in and consider there for Google+, but do we need another social network?

I think it can’t do any harm to make Facebook take notice that maybe their position isn’t fixed at number 1. They will ultimately improve themselves as a result and maybe even simplify things like their privacy policy when they see how others approach it.

The consumers always lose out when there is only one of any service, so I would say try out Google+ and see if it is a worthy alternative for your life and business, if not, Facebook aren’t exactly going to kick you out!

A. There are a number of areas that really help an e-commerce site.

The main one you should focus on is really concentrate on the shopping basket experience as this is where you can lose most of your customers. Don’t make it too complicated or have too many steps, make it simple and easy to create an account, so minimum information and let them fill out the rest later.

If you look at one of the most successful e-commerce sites (Amazon) they have got it down to a fine art. 1 click purchasing, people who bought this also bought these items, customer feedback with ratings.

Sometimes they could do with simplifying a page mainly because if you’re not used to the layout there is a lot that hits you all at once, but they make a lot of money as they have really perfected the art of reducing shopping cart abandonment.

Other 10 key areas are:

1. Really understand who your customers are and what details they want to see in the descriptions.
2. Have large and many images of items being sold, customers like to be able to see the detail of the thing they are buying. This helps convince them that the quality or value is as advertised
3. Have a most popular list of items you sell and do regular special offers to people who sign up to your newsletter.
4. Have an FAQ and update it as much as possible, if you get a complaint or a question put it up there, show your customers that you are trustworthy and fair to deal with.
5. Make sure that the site is secure with SSL (the little padlock you see on secure sites) and has logos or information easily accessible proving this.
6. Have a good support system to deal with customers quickly, this will help your reputation and make sure you have multiple ways for them to get in touch.
7. Do a lot of PR to help build the trust in your brand, why should people shop with you even if you are a little bit more expensive.
8. Run loyalty schemes for your top buyers to keep them not only coming back, but recommend you to others.
9. If you have the right products you can create an affiliate program so get others to do the selling and effectively pay them a percentage of sale.
10. Measure and test often, try different headlines, look at your stats, keep trying to make your site better and easier to use for your customers.

There are many more factors, too many to mention here, but the list above are some of the main ones to consider.

I hope you find it useful.

You can comment or get in touch here and leave us your question(s), we will do our best to answer all of them, but there are only so many hours in the day.

I look forward to reading what is most bothering or baffling you and solving that little itch!

Alan