There's so much confusion around the laws and regulations surrounding ecommerce and distance selling in particular.

The Distance Selling Regulations (DSR) are one of the most important pieces of legislation to be aware of - to ensure you're passing on the correct information, you know your customers legal entitlement and trade within the law.

As part of the blog series on legal issues affecting your website, I've produced a quick reference guide/wall chart outlining your legal responsibilities and your customers rights at every stage of the order process.

Refer to this to ensure you're operating within the law and that your Ts&Cs cover everything you need them to.

Any queries or suggestions for improvement I'd love to hear - and I'll publish a new information if I'm able to get courier statistics on refused deliveries and other useful info.

Note that this does not constitute legal advice and the full DSR document from the OFT should be consulted or you can contact your local Trading Standards office.

Online trading is a great way to drive your business forward. Ecommerce stores are becoming easier and easier to set up and it can be very tempting to just jump in. However customers have numerous legal rights when buying online that they don't have when buying on the high street. Also, as your presence is virtual, it's important that customers know who they're dealing with and what recourse they can take should problems occur.

Online traders must comply with 6 main laws:

• Distance Selling Regulations
  
• Electronic Commerce Regulations
• Sales of Goods Act
• Data Protection Act
• Companies Act
• Business Names Act

I'll be covering what you need to do to comply with these any any other applicable regulations over the coming weeks.

To start of with the basics, the following must be on any trading website in the UK...

If you're registered at Companies House (under the Companies Act of 2006 and 1995 Business Names Act) you must display the following on your website:

• Company Name
• Company Registration Number
• Place of Registration
• Registered Office Address

If you're a sole trader or partnership working under a business name:

• Name of sole trader or each member of partnership
• An address for each person named where documents and notices can be served

The 2002 UK eCommerce Regulations insist on

• Business Name and details if the business is 'trading as'
  
• Business address (which must be geographic rather than a PO box)
• Other contact details (email and phone number - a contact form is not sufficient unless accompanied by an email address)
• VAT Number if business is VAT registered
• Details of any trade/professional bodies the business is registered with and registration numbers

All this information must be on a permanent and accessible location within your website, but not necessarily on every page.

Please note, this post does not constitute legal advice and I recommend all wording on your website is clarified by a trained legal advisor.

Well it's approaching a year since I left Boudiche and went off on my own - and while the company no longer exists as I knew it, in the 18 months or so I was there I like to think that I produced some great work and helped make a difference to what they were doing.

Working as part of the web team and closely with marketing I started working on the website during November 2008, leaving at the end of January 2010. The following figures compare the 08/09 and 09/10 financial years (which ran from 1st Feb to 31st Jan).

• Conversion Rate: +17.4%
• Transactions: +48%
• Average Order Value: -2.2%
• Revenue: +44.6%
• Visits: +26.0%
• Absolute Unique Visitors: +25.2%

These overall figures show great improvements, however much of this happened internationally too - Boudiche.com shipped orders to over 70 countries.

	Visitors	Revenue	Transactions	Conversion Rate
Europe	+21.6%	+44.7%	+46.3%	+20.3%
America	+40.3%	+46.0%	+66.7%	+18.8%
Rest of World	+44.7%	+38.3%	+71.6%	+18.7%

Overall, with little external investment and despite the credit crunch affecting the average order value, overall revenue from the website increased nearly 45% year on year. This was on top of quick win increases in the last quarter of 08/09 for the busy festive period.

The change was brought about through effective search marketing, offering the best product information, service offering and ensuring customers received excellent customer service and re-marketing.

As well as work on the website, I provided graphic design support to the marketing team to deliver their campaigns on time, on brand and to the right audience - a selection of which can be seen below.

With any large scale event attracting media attention, ensuring the the right images hit journalists desks quickly and efficiently is of the utmost importance.

With Genuine providing PR and media support services for the Scotland with Style Scottish Music Awards - The Tartan Clefs again this year it was decided that emailing out images wasn't going to be efficient.

Working backstage meant limited internet connectivity via mobile broadband dongles and sending multiple large images to all the journalists and news desks wasn't feasible.

Therefore a dedicate file upload area was created on private web space and branded for Genuine PR. This allowed journalists to log in with a password emailed to them in advance and browse through the image galleries. Images were added live as they were shot by the photographers, each only having to be uploaded once. As soon as they were online, images could be quickly downloaded by journalists with the password.

This system saved time during the event having one easy place to upload images to, as well for any news desk receiving images - they could download the shots they needed through a simple web-based interface which provided thumbnails for easy browsing and their inboxes weren't clogged up with large emails.

As part of my ongoing work with Genuine PR I was recently tasked with refreshing their corporate identity.

Initially this would comprise of new business cards for the Director, Chris Hunt, and later be rolled out to other promotional materials and their website.

The current simple one-sided cards fulfilled their basic purpose but didn't actively help promote Genuine or their services - in fact the only mention of PR was in their web address!

Working with these as a base, initial ideas were drafted and a refined selection sent to the client. From there the design was tweaked until we were all happy with the end result.

The final cards kept the familiar quirky tea cup logo, but updated the brand typeface to a more unique style. I also utilised the reverse of the card to include 'Genuine's Story' which gives a real piece of insight into who Genuine are and how they can help.

Finally, to ensure the physical cards were interesting, the new cards were printed on Conqueror Laid stock - giving them a great tactile texture and really helping them stand out.

After initially approaching bebaroque regarding some optimisation of their existing website, the founders decided on a complete redesign to realise the true potential of trading online.

Working with Glasgow based graphic designers Make Studio I was responsible for implementation of their design in as well as ensuring the website performed to meet business objectives.

The site is based on the Jshop ecommerce platform which offers great flexibility and easy management by clients. This project entailed customisation of the platform with new HTML/CSS templates, PHP coding to extend functionality and jQuery elements on the front end to increase user experience.

The major pages of the site were redesigned by Make to give greater visual appeal and ease of use to the site. Together we ensured adherence to best practice and considered usability at all stages.

From entrance to completing the checkout process, the site is designed to present bebaroque’s customers with as much relevant information as possible so they can shop confidently – from multiple images and accurate descriptions on product pages, clearly showing delivery charges in the basket, and offering an enclosed checkout to prevent customers becoming distracted while ordering their items.

As part of the work we also implemented social sharing of products and a Google products feed to ensure bebaroque’s ranges can be easily found and shared.

From the site going live, we’ve already seen increases in visitor numbers and conversion rates with these looking set to continue.

Chloe and I are really happy with the new website! It looks great and the feedback from our customers and friends has been very positive. Thank you very much for all your hard work!

Thank you all very much for helping us to achieve the brand image bebaroque deserves. The site really reflects the image bebaroque is trying to portray.

71% men, 15% women and 14% perverts... one of the more novel ways I've been introduced it must be said, done only as The Drum could! I provided opinion on the internet phenomenon of Chatroulette and if the corporate model could apply to the service which sits on the fringe of 'internet normality'.

Originally published on 14th May 2010.

It was great to be asked by Boudiche to be involved in their 'Smalls for All' event - helping collect bras and knickers to donate to women in Africa.

The 'Smalls for All' is a fundraiser started by Maria MacNamara from Edinburgh after she volunteered in an orphanage and realised first hand that many African women and children do not have access to underwear which we take for granted. Boudiche wanted to help by donating 5 pairs of knickers for every bra fitting they carried out, hoping to donate 1000 in total!

Working with the in house marketing team, I created a simple landing page (http://www.boudiche.com/africa) and branding for the campaign.

This was key to presenting the facts about the fundraiser and a custom built CSS-based bar graph allowed a live track of knicker donations working towards their target. This updated live from a php backend which the boutiques had access to, enabling contributing customers to see their effect immediately. This also gave us the ability to update the count live to social networks Facebook and Twitter to encourage wider interaction.

Customised prize reclaim system designed and built for Bodyform as part of the launch of their new 'Natural' range.

Clean page layout based on the brand guidelines which was used on a custom php backend which allowed management of voucher codes and customers to reclaim their prizes.

Sadly, this project never went live.

Recently I was asked by Edinburgh-based Social Penguin Blog to answer a couple of short questions on Social Media.

Quite a daunting challenge being published along with much bigger names in local Social Media, especially being the new boy of the pack! Head to the penguin enclosure to read the full article...

Penguins – Can you please describe what you do in 140 characters?

Jamie – I wish I knew some days! Look after online channels/technical stuff/design for Boudiche working with a great in-house team.

Penguins – What was your favourite Social Media story/moment of 2009?

Jamie – Reckon it would be Michael Jackson’s death – the speed at which this broke and spread I feel was a big turning point for many people with social media, realising it as a quick, accessible and useful channel. From here the massive #iranelection campaign, Rage Against the Machine for number 1 and viral flashmobs/croud sourcing have all shaped our feelings and brand desires as part of being a more engaged population.

Penguins – What digital marketing resource helped you the most in 2009?

Jamie - Twitter – there was nothing better for getting up to the minute news and idea/success sharing from different industries and methods of thinking.

Penguins – What innovation would you like to see in 2010?

Jamie – More brands using social media properly to interact with their customers – I can tend to rant a bit but very few companies pick up on it, or might and choose to ignore it. The personal touch really matters. And for a gadget innovation, I’d quite fancy an eBook reader which would play nicely with Google Reader/RSS feeds.

Penguins – What smartphone app would you fail to survive without? (This can be from personal life or business!)

Jamie – Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger, UberTwitter and Spotify all get regular use for keeping in touch and staying up to date.

Penguins – What brands would you class as ‘one to watch’ in terms of social media strategy in 2010?

Jamie – I can’t wait to see how the big brands such as Zappos who already using it well really push boundaries; plus seeing what Pepsi etc who are now using it as their main advertising strategy do. However, I’m much more interested in smaller companies really making the most of the opportunity and using it to create real interest about themselves and their products – but I’m yet to see one that’s really impressed me, so here’s hoping 2010 offers up plenty.

Great insight there Jamie thanks very much! Very interesting to hear from a SM user within a small and fairly niche local business. Penelope Penguin is after some fancy knickers, I will send her your way!

Thanks to Mike and the Penguins for asking me to contribute