Feb 15, 2013

Magento 1.7.0.2: How to Select Both PayPal Express Checkout and PayPal Standard

In Magento Community version 1.7.0.2, many of our clients have complained that they have not been able to select more than one PayPal method at the same time.

For example, if you are running Magento Community 1.7.0.2, and want to enable both PayPal Express Checkout, as well as PayPal Website Payments Standard, the system throws an error like this:

Magento Community 1.7.0.2 Admin Error Message: There is already another PayPal solution enabled. Enable this solution instead?

Magento Community 1.7.0.2 Admin Error Message:
There is already another PayPal solution enabled. Enable this solution instead?



This happens when you are in the Magento admin area of the site, under the PayPal Payment Solutions:

Magento Admin Community 1.7.0.2 Screenshot - PayPal Payment Solutions Options

Magento Admin Community 1.7.0.2 Screenshot – PayPal Payment Solutions Options



If you attempt to add both the first option (PayPal Website Payments Standard) and the fourth option (PayPal Express Checkout) at the same time, you’re not able to add both at the same time.

A big reason to add both is that a customer will often choose the PayPal Express Checkout option on the shopping cart page (and thereby bypass the checkout page). Mobile users are a huge reason why a website should enable PayPal Express Checkout. Instead of having to find and then type your credit card information into a form on an iPhone, iPad or other mobile device or tablet, you merely have to enter in an email address and a password, and you can check out. Without having to create a new profile on the site, etc.

It’s important to have PayPal as a payment option on the checkout page, so if someone wants to pay via PayPal instead of a credit card, they can do this easily. I do this all the time when I’m trying to place an order, and don’t have my credit card handy.

PayPal Express Checkout is an altogether different customer experience than PayPal Standard, and that’s why so many Magento Community version 1.7.0.2 users have been frustrated.

Our Magento Certified Developers at Customer Paradigm have developed a quick fix to allow you to enable both PayPal Standard and PayPal Express Checkout, and can usually apply this patch to your site in about an hour. Want more information? Call 303.473.4400 or visit here to have a real person contact you now.

Jan 25, 2013

Magento Tutorial: Building Products in Magento With Multiple Options

In Magento Commerce, the question of how do you best build products with multiple options isn’t straightforward.

Lonny Burgos - Developer, Customer Paradigm  Magento Certified DeveloperIn this tutorial, Lonny Burgos, a Magento Certified Developer, guides you through the process.

 

Questions? Need help with your Magento site? Call us – 303.473.4400 or visit here to have a real person contact you now >>

Four Main Steps to Building Configurable Products with Multiple Options

  1. Build the Attributes – these are the options that will show up as dropdowns on the product page.
  2. Add the Attributes to an Attribute Set – the attribute set will provide an easy way to reuse the attributes for other products.
  3. Create Simple Products – these are the individual products for each option.
  4. Create Main Configurable Product – this main product will house all the simple products.

To better understand the relationship between the Main Configurable Product and the simple products, I will outline a simple scenario:

I have a product called Crispy Tee:

  • This product is manufactured in 2 sizes (small and medium), and 2 colors, red and white.
  • I will have to build out a total of 5 products:
    • 1 Main Configurable Product
    • 1 Simple Product – small/white
    • 1 Simple Product – small/red
    • 1 Simple Product – medium/white
    • 1 Simple Product – medium/red
  • I intend for the customer to pick out the size and color of my Crispy Tee product before they add it to the cart.

Step 1 – Build the Attributes (aka the options size and color)

Lets begin by building out the new attributes for our Crispy Tee. I am going to use the following attributes names:

  1. crispyshirtsize
  2. crispyshirtcolor

In the admin, navigate to Catalog->Attributes->Manage Attributes. Notice the Add New Attribute button to the right and click on it. (Right Side of screen)

Magento - New product attribute for attribute code, scope, catalog input type for store, values required.
Be sure to set the following for each attribute:

  • Attribute Code – the internal name of the attribute must be lowercase.
  • Scope - set to Global otherwise the attribute will not be visible throughout the site
  • Catalog Input Type Store – set to Dropdown, this setting will come into play later when we are setting up the Main Configurable Product.
  • Values Required – set to Yes so that the customer will be forced to pick both a size and color for the shirt.
  • Use to Create Configurable Product - set to Yes so that this attribute will be included in the list of options for the Main Configurable Product.

After these options are set. Click on Manage Labels on the right-hand side.


Magento - Edit Product Attribute - Default Size - Manage Options

Set the titles:

  • Admin  - Uppercase name that will show in the Manage Admin screen under Attribute Label
  • Default Store View – Lowercase label that will show on the frontend product page.

Manage Options:
Since we selected this option as a dropdown, the options need to be defined by clicking on the Add Option button. The options cannot be empty

  • Admin  - Uppercase name that will show in the backend.
  • Default Store View – Lowercase dropdown option that will show on the frontend product page.
  • Position - Sort the dropdown. In this case small will show up before medium in the dropdown.
  • Is Default – Select the dropdown option that dropdown will automatically default to the selected option.

Now Click on the Save the Attribute button.

Repeat Step One for each attribute. In this case, I will repeat for the crispyshirtcolor attribute.

The new attributes should now be visible in the Manage Attribute screen. Now it is time to move onto Step 2 – Add the Attributes to an Attribute Set.
Magento - Manage Attributes for color, size, attribute code and label

 

Step 2 – Add the Attributes to an Attribute Set


Navigate to Catalog->Attributes->Manage Attribute Sets and click on the Add New Set Button in the top right corner.

In the next screen, add a new name and base this attribute off of Default.

Magento - Add the attributes to an attribute set in Magento for editing set name

Now Click on the Save the Attribute Set button.

At this point, the newly created attributes need to be added to the attribute set. The new attributes are located under Unassigned Attributes.

Click and drag the newly created attributes from Unassigned Attributes and place into Groups. See screenshot below.

Click and drag attributes from unassigned attributes to groups

Now Click on the Save the Attribute Set button.

At this point, the new Attribute Set should appear in the Manage Attribute Sets screen. The next steps are to add the products and attach the attributes along with attribute sets.

Step – 3 Create Simple Products

Navigate to Catalog->Manage Products and locate the Add Product button.

Magento - Create new simple products by navigating to catalog and create product settings for attribute set and product type
Create Product Settings:

  • Attribute Set – Set this option to the new attribute set that we created in Step 2, Crispy Tee Shirts.
  • Product Type – Set this option  to Simple Product.

Click on the Continue button.

Now, the product’s configuration will be need to be setup in the General, Prices, Inventory, Categories sections in the left sidebar menu.

 

General Product Configuration Screenshot for Magento

 

Set the General Settings:

  • Name - the product name that will be used for all the Simple Products and the Main Configuration Product
  • Crispy Shirt Color and Crispy Size – each simple product will have a different option enabled. For the first simple product we will use the default dropdown options: white and medium.
  • Description – Enter a description of the product.
  • Short Description –  Enter a short description of the product.
  • SKU –  Enter a unique value for the SKU.
  • Weight – Enter a weight value
  • Status – Set this option to Enabled.
  • Visibility – Set to Not Visible Individually. This option is important so that the simple product does not show on the frontend. The product will hide inside the Main Configuration Product.

Next move onto the Prices section.
Prices section screenshot for Magento admin to add new product with prices

Set the Prices Settings:

  • Price – Set a price for the simple product.
  • Tax Class –  Set this value to the desired Tax Class, cannot leave blank in order to save the product.

Manage Inventory Screenshot for Magento commerce - quantity and stock availability

Setup Inventory Settings:

  • Qty –  Set a number of available products in stock.
  • Stock Availability – Set to In Stock so that the product is available.

Click on the Save button to save the product.
The product should now be added to the Manage Product screen.

So now, the other simple products need to be setup with the alternate options:

  • 1 Simple Product – small/white
  • 1 Simple Product – small/red
  • 1 Simple Product – medium/white – Created
  • 1 Simple Product – medium/red

In order to easily setup the alternate simple products. Click on the first simple product and in the Product Information screen, locate the Duplicate button.

A duplicate of the medium/white option will be created. Change the attribute options to medium/red and change the Status to Enabled. Keep everything the same, except for Description, Short Description, and SKU in the General Settings. Go through the Prices, Inventory, and Categories Setting to configure the product correctly.

Price Settings:
Be sure that a price and tax class are entered.

Inventory:
Be sure that a value is assigned to Qty and set the Stock Availability to In Stock.

Categories:
Add the product to the correct categories.

At this point, if everything is setup. Click on the Save button.
Repeat the duplication process for each attribute option.

All the following Simple Products should be created:

  • 1 Simple Product – small/white – Created
  • 1 Simple Product – small/red – Created
  • 1 Simple Product – medium/white – Created
  • 1 Simple Product – medium/red – Created

The last step is to create the Main Configurable Product. This product will be visible on the frontend and will contain all of the simple products.

Step 4 – Create Main Configurable Product

First, copy the name of the product from the simple products that we created. In this scenario all 5 products will have the name Nash Shirt.

Add a new product from the Manage Product screen.

Magento Screenshot - Create Main Configurable Product - attribute set and product type
Configure the Create Product Settings:

  • Attribute Set – Set to the same attribute set as the simple products, in this case, Crispy Tee Shirts.
  • Product Type – Set to Configurable Product. This option is setting up the Main Configurable Product.

Click Continue.

New Product Settings in Magento - Attribute Set and Product Type


Since we setup our attributes to Global, Dropdown, and to use with the Main Configurable Product, the options/attributes will be available. Enable both attributes.

Magento Screenshot - set new product general infomation, including name, description SKU and status

Set the General Settings:

  • Name - the product name that will be used for Main Configuration Product.
  • Description – Enter a description of the product.
  • Short Description –  Enter a short description of the product.
  • SKU –  Enter a unique value for the SKU.
  • Weight – Enter a weight value.
  • Status – Set this to Enabled.
  • Visibility- Set this to Catalog, Search so that it is visible in the frontend and included in the search.

Next move onto the Prices section.
Magento Screenshot - Set Price in New Product Screen

Set the Prices Settings:

  • Price – Set a price for the simple product.
  • Tax Class –  Set this value to the desired Tax Class, cannot leave blank in order to save the product.

Next Add the images for the main configurable product

Price and Tax Class - Thumbnails for Magento Product - Magento Screenshot

Use the Browse Files and Upload Files buttons to add the image.
Set an image Base Image, Small Image, and Thumbnail.
In this case, I only added one image, however multiple images can be added.

Next set the Inventory Settings:
New Product - Set Inventory Settings
Stock Availability - Set the Main Configurable Product to In Stock.

Next set the Categories for the Main Configurable Product.
Magento - New Product Category

Now the Simple Products need to be added to the Main Configurable Product.  To assign the Simple Products, navigate to the Associated Products in the left sidebar Product Information menu.

Magento Configurable Product - Simple Product with Associated Product Information Screenshot

Use the top portion to add a different price for specific options.
Add all of the Simple Products.
Click Save.

Navigate to the Main Configurable Product in a web browser.

See the Main Configurable Product in the Web Browser - Screenshot of Magento Storefront

The attributes/options will now be required before the customer adds the product to the cart.

Conclusion – Magento Configurable Products:

Once the entire is process has been completed. Magento makes it very easy for you to reuse attribute sets. In the scenario above, assume that the Crispy Tee now comes in blue and xsmall.

To accommodate for this change, the blue and xsmall features would be added to the dropdown for each existing attribute as follows: (Step 1)
1. crispyshirtsize – xsmall
2. crispyshirtcolor – blue

Next a simple product would need to be added similar to Step 3. Finally, the simple product would need to be included in the Associated Products in the Main Configurable Product.

Alternately, if you did not want to offer a small/white any longer. Then you would disassociate that simple product from the Associated Products in the Main Configurable Product.

Questions? Need help with your Magento site? Call us – 303.473.4400 or visit here to have a real person contact you now >>

Jan 17, 2013

Understanding the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

Free PDF Summary

Does your email comply with the new CAN-SPAM Act?

Can Spam Act Summary - DownloadDownload our free PDF summary, “Understanding the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.” Included are best-practice recommendations, as well as a detailed Deployment Checklist to use prior to each email campaign. Featured as the top summary in Entreprenuer Magazine.

Are your messages transactional / relationship messages or do they qualify as commerical electronic messages under the new anti-spam law? Did you know that failing to place postal address in your messages could result in up to three years in jail and fines of up to $250 per message? Avoid mistakes – download the summary today:

Get your FREE copy today:
“Understanding the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003″

Please enter your email address to receive a
link by email to the free PDF summary:

Why do we ask for your email address?
If there are important updates, errors or ommissions in the report, we want to inform you by email. Your email address will not be sold, given away or transfered to another party. You may unsubscribe from updates / notifications at any time. Full Privacy Policy

Summary Includes:

  • Background on CAN-SPAM Act
  • Relationship / Transactional Messages
  • Commercial Electronic Messages
  • Do Not Email Registry Information
  • Fraudulent Headers (including FROM, Subject line)
  • Functioning Return Email Address
  • Opt-out / Unsubscribe Recommendations
  • When you need to include a valid physical postal address in your email messages
  • When the ADV warning label in subject line is needed
  • Open Mail Relay / Blacklisting
  • List gathering / management / privacy issues
  • What to do if your emails contain sexual content
  • How CAN-SPAM will be enforced by the FTC, State Attorneys General, ISPs (including fines and jail time)
  • Reward system for people who turn in spammers
  • Wireless Commercial Message Rules
  • PLUS: Free Email Deployment Checklist to use prior to each campagin (make sure your team avoids mistakes with their email marketing).
    Click here >>

Q: We don?t send unsolicited email.
Why do I need to read this?

A: Even if your company or organization only sends permission-based email, the CAN-SPAM Act may require you to change how you send your permission-based email in order to comply with the new legislation. For example, you may be required to include your postal address in all outbound email messages (see free report for more details).

Anti-Spam Statement:

Customer Paradigm recommends opt-in, permission-based email marketing and messaging. Sending unsolicited commercial email (UCE) will likely result in consumer backlash, damage to your reputation, brand, and blacklisting by anti-spam organizations of your domain (which will prevent you and anyone else on your domain from sending email to much of the Internet).

Bottom line: Don?t send unsolicited email. This free summary is meant to help legitimate businesses and organizations understand the federal ?Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003? (also known as the CAN-SPAM Act, which takes effect January 1, 2004).

Questions? Need More Information?
Call: 303.499.9318

 

Nov 1, 2012

5 Must Know eBusiness Stats for 2012

Being involved in internet marketing, you are well aware that inbound marketing is just as essential as opening the front door of your business. It’s the first step that allows leads to get to your business. But, unfortunately accomplishing/magento-development/internet-marketing/social-media/ this is not as easy as a physical location with people walking by. No, with a  website you not only have to open your door (index your site) you have to open doors where the traffic is.

This is where inbound marketing techniques associated with social media come to play!

Don’t be mistaken social media isn’t solely an avenue for you to post all your products and shout about how great you are. Instead it is becoming increasingly influential in consumption behaviors. It’s becoming a new avenue for customer service. People are tweeting for customer help, and responses have been speedy and saved business relationships.

With the growth of social media, the skeptics were hesitant to get on board and dedicate time to managing their social media avenues. It has undoubtedly become an influential factor in business. Now arise the big questions, how can we leverage this factor for greater business? 

 

5 Tempting eBusiness Statistics of 2012 & What to do!

1. LinkedIn for B2B Leads

LinkedIn eBusiness Statistic 2012

 

According to Social Media B2B, LinkedIn generated the most B2B leads for any company. When businesses were asked if they were actively using LinkedIn as a social media medium only 45% of businesses said they actively used LinkedIn.

If you are a B2B company, and not actively using LinkedIn you could be missing out on business opportunities. The first step is to create a business page on LinkedIn. Let your existing employees know you have created a business LinkedIn profile, so that they can connect and more users can find you.

Follow Customer Paradigm on LinkedIn >> Follow Here 

 

 

2. CEO’s Get Involved!

Social Media Development Boulder Statistics

According to an article by eMarketer it is important to consumers that CEO’s are involved in their social media communication. Seventy-seven percent of consumers say they will be more likely to buy from a company if the CEO or upper level management is involved in their social media communication. Almost 95% of people said that they view the brand as more trustworthy and overall increase brand image when management is involved in social media.

We know that CEO’s are busy and their list of to-do’s seems like an endless pad of paper. If the head management is unable to directly facilitate social media channels, then always post on their behalf.

 

 

3. Lower Barriers of Involvement

Account Login Requirement statisticsWe know you are trying to collect information to keep involved with your customer base or viewers, but beware that collecting information as a requirement can be a huge barrier to entry and decrease your user involvement. According to Marketing Sherpa 86% of people say they are irritated when the website requires them to make a new account.

As a business you have two options, understanding that asking a user to sign up for your site to view it is asking a bit much. Why don’t you just marry me now and then I will talk to you later? This makes no sense.

Option 1: Take your barrier to entry out and write engaging content that brings users back because of genuine interest. Eventually they will give their information and sign up for your newsletter.

Option 2: Provide options for the user. Don’t give them one option, for example don’t make them sign in only through your services. Provide them with Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and other third party sign-in options.

 

4. Write Blogs & Share

Blog Development BoulderIt is argued that blogs are the single most important inbound marketing tool. Why? Because (according to Mindjumpers) blogs and social media reach about eighty percent of all internet users in the United States. There is a high correlation between blogging frequency and the number of customers acquired. According to Hubspot 92% of blogs that posted multiple times a day acquired more customers.

Blogging is an important tool for your inbound marketing strategy. Don’t doubt the power of a good blog with useful information. A statistic which should get the ball rolling on your blogging is that B2B companies with blogs generate close to 70% more leads than companies with no blog.

If your website needs to integrate a blog, call Customer Paradigm at 303.473.4400 to speak with a real person about how we can create a blog and generate more inbound leads. Remember, develop strong, useful topics, write clearly and spread the news.

 


5. Accessible on a Mobile Platform

Mobile Website Design BoulderE-mails and websites are increasing in viewership through a mobile device. 4.8 billion people own phones, and on average 50% of B2B sites are being viewed through a mobile device. The strange statistic is that 75% of all marketers are aware of the increase in viewership through a mobile device but only about 20% of marketers find it a critical move to develop a mobile platform.

I like to be ahead of the curve, not reacting to the change because it becomes a critical function for business to continue to survive. If your B2B company sees a trend for an increase in mobile device visits bring up a mobile website as a critical issue. Trust me, your business will be thanking you for pressing the development.

If your business is in need of a mobile platform development, call Customer Paradigm now at 303.473.4400 to talk to a real person. We listen to your business goals and help you market yourself to accomplish your business goals while meeting the consumers needs.

 

I hope you found these 5 statistics of 2012 interesting, and provided you with some great ideas to branch your business out and grow with the changes of technology and consumer behavior trends. Please follow us on Twitter @custparadigm to keep up with more trends ad updates.

Oct 30, 2012

Impact of Holiday eCommerce Shopping – MAGENTO

Is Your Website Ready For Sales?

Magento eCommerce Website SalesI’m not talking about any sales, I’m talking about holiday sales. Shoppers that are price-sensitive, impatient and quick to click to your nearest competition to get their holiday shopping done.

The holiday season is upon us and committing to the final changes to your website now can make all the difference for your sales and conversion rates.

Having the right Magento Developers can determine the success or failure of your site.

At Customer Paradigm we are Magento Certified Developers. We work hard to meet your eCommerce goals, communicate clearly with prompt project management and deliver to exceed your expectations.

 

Importance of Holiday Sales

Sometimes, words just don’t do the job. Here are some great info-graphics and statistics on holiday eCommerce consumption behaviors.

 

Magento eCommerce Development for Holidays

Revenue in the Holiday Season

  • The Holiday Season accounts for 41% of total annual revenue
  • The average conversion rate increases by 108% in December
  • It is projected that US Retail web sales will increase by about 17% this year in comparison to last years online shopping trends

 

How to Make Them Purchase

Are you asking the right questions?

  • How can I change my website to increase my conversion rate?
  • What can we offer that will make shoppers purchase with me over Amazon where they already have an account?
  • What matters to the consumer?

If you can understand what drives consumer sales, you will have a more profitable holiday season and overall profitable year. Adapting these strategies can make all the difference, start updating your Magento website today to convert for sales tomorrow!

 

Is Your Website Accessible?

With the variety of tablets, smart phones, computers with different browsers, is your site accessible and functional?

eCommerce SalesAccording to Invesp.com:

  • Shoppers via Tablets have an average sale of $110
  • Shoppers via Computers have an average sale of $95
  • Shoppers via Smartphones have an average sale of $70

What are Shoppers Doing Online?

If your store is getting a lot of visitors but the conversion rate is low, my first thought as a marketer is to understand the consumer. Get in their mindset. What are they doing online? What are they looking for? What matters to THEM?

 

Consumer Magento Online Shopping HabitsAttributes of Online Shoppers:

  • Price Sensitive – 79% of users are viewing your website to compare prices
  • Deals – 73% are looking for what you offer in deals and promotions
  • Information – 67% are reading reviews about the product
  • Substitutes – 60% are comparing specs of one model to a close substitute
  • Customer Service – 37% are trying to get in contact with you

Know & Act

The first step is understanding your consumer and what they are doing on your website, the next step is acting to satisfy their concerns while keeping them on your site.

 

 Know: Price Sensitive >> Provide Perks that Diminish Price-Sensitivity

  • Free Shipping - Influences holiday purchases by 55%
  • Payment Plans – Having multiple methods of payment plans affects purchase intent by 8%. A potential customer will be hesitant to purchase from you if they have to create a new account or your check-out process is comprised of too many steps.

Know: Deals >> Give Them Discounts, Coupons, and Incentives!

  • Daily Deals – Having daily deals increases the urgency of the purchase, making users feel if they pass up the opportunity today the price may never come back. 1 in every 4 holiday consumers purchases a daily deal.
  • Coupons – Coupons offer discounts or rewards which are an incentive to the consumer to purchase with you over not receiving any discount. Many shoppers will associate a discount as more value even if the end price is higher than a competitor.

Know: Information >> Tell Them What The Product Is

  • Descriptions – Write captivating descriptions which describe the product fulfilling every specification they will need to know. This is very important for electronic devices, the more information you provide the less a shopper will research on other sites.
  • Reviews – Get in a habit of sending automatic e-mails a few months after the purchase of an item to accrue reviews on your website. Reviews are one of the most influential factors for the final decision on whether or not to purchase.

Know: Substitutes >> Internalize the Process

  • Compare Products – Add a compare products option to your eCommerce site. If a user is debating between two camera models, allow them to perform a side by side comparison on your site rather than getting distracted and looking for alternatives on competitors eCommerce sites.

Know: Customer Service >> Be Prompt, Be Thorough

  • Above and Beyond – Remember it is much easier to retain a customer than to attain one. With this in mind, be prompt to answer requests, be thorough so it is not addressed again, and go above and beyond to ensure that they are satisfied with your services.

 

You Know, You Understand, How Will You Act?

After understanding what the consumer is going through, what they are looking for, is your website ready for Holiday eCommerce Shopping? Are you set-up to provide what consumers are looking for and keep them on your site, engaged, and purchasing?

If you are in need of Magento eCommerce development contact Customer Paradigm now at 303.473.4400 to talk to a real person about your business strategy. If your website is in need of internet marketing to create incentives and deals for your shoppers, talk to our SEO team and see how we can work to increase your conversion rates.

Oct 30, 2012

Impact of Holiday eCommerce Shopping – MAGENTO

Is Your Website Ready For Sales?

Magento eCommerce Website SalesI’m not talking about any sales, I’m talking about holiday sales. Shoppers that are price-sensitive, impatient and quick to click to your nearest competition to get their holiday shopping done.

The holiday season is upon us and committing to the final changes to your website now can make all the difference for your sales and conversion rates.

Having the right Magento Developers can determine the success or failure of your site.

At Customer Paradigm we are Magento Certified Developers. We work hard to meet your eCommerce goals, communicate clearly with prompt project management and deliver to exceed your expectations.

 

Importance of Holiday Sales

Sometimes, words just don’t do the job. Here are some great info-graphics and statistics on holiday eCommerce consumption behaviors.

 

Magento eCommerce Development for Holidays

Revenue in the Holiday Season

  • The Holiday Season accounts for 41% of total annual revenue
  • The average conversion rate increases by 108% in December
  • It is projected that US Retail web sales will increase by about 17% this year in comparison to last years online shopping trends

 

How to Make Them Purchase

Are you asking the right questions?

  • How can I change my website to increase my conversion rate?
  • What can we offer that will make shoppers purchase with me over Amazon where they already have an account?
  • What matters to the consumer?

If you can understand what drives consumer sales, you will have a more profitable holiday season and overall profitable year. Adapting these strategies can make all the difference, start updating your Magento website today to convert for sales tomorrow!

 

Is Your Website Accessible?

With the variety of tablets, smart phones, computers with different browsers, is your site accessible and functional?

eCommerce SalesAccording to Invesp.com:

  • Shoppers via Tablets have an average sale of $110
  • Shoppers via Computers have an average sale of $95
  • Shoppers via Smartphones have an average sale of $70

What are Shoppers Doing Online?

If your store is getting a lot of visitors but the conversion rate is low, my first thought as a marketer is to understand the consumer. Get in their mindset. What are they doing online? What are they looking for? What matters to THEM?

 

Consumer Magento Online Shopping HabitsAttributes of Online Shoppers:

  • Price Sensitive – 79% of users are viewing your website to compare prices
  • Deals – 73% are looking for what you offer in deals and promotions
  • Information – 67% are reading reviews about the product
  • Substitutes – 60% are comparing specs of one model to a close substitute
  • Customer Service – 37% are trying to get in contact with you

Know & Act

The first step is understanding your consumer and what they are doing on your website, the next step is acting to satisfy their concerns while keeping them on your site.

 

 Know: Price Sensitive >> Provide Perks that Diminish Price-Sensitivity

  • Free Shipping - Influences holiday purchases by 55%
  • Payment Plans – Having multiple methods of payment plans affects purchase intent by 8%. A potential customer will be hesitant to purchase from you if they have to create a new account or your check-out process is comprised of too many steps.

Know: Deals >> Give Them Discounts, Coupons, and Incentives!

  • Daily Deals – Having daily deals increases the urgency of the purchase, making users feel if they pass up the opportunity today the price may never come back. 1 in every 4 holiday consumers purchases a daily deal.
  • Coupons – Coupons offer discounts or rewards which are an incentive to the consumer to purchase with you over not receiving any discount. Many shoppers will associate a discount as more value even if the end price is higher than a competitor.

Know: Information >> Tell Them What The Product Is

  • Descriptions – Write captivating descriptions which describe the product fulfilling every specification they will need to know. This is very important for electronic devices, the more information you provide the less a shopper will research on other sites.
  • Reviews – Get in a habit of sending automatic e-mails a few months after the purchase of an item to accrue reviews on your website. Reviews are one of the most influential factors for the final decision on whether or not to purchase.

Know: Substitutes >> Internalize the Process

  • Compare Products – Add a compare products option to your eCommerce site. If a user is debating between two camera models, allow them to perform a side by side comparison on your site rather than getting distracted and looking for alternatives on competitors eCommerce sites.

Know: Customer Service >> Be Prompt, Be Thorough

  • Above and Beyond – Remember it is much easier to retain a customer than to attain one. With this in mind, be prompt to answer requests, be thorough so it is not addressed again, and go above and beyond to ensure that they are satisfied with your services.

 

You Know, You Understand, How Will You Act?

After understanding what the consumer is going through, what they are looking for, is your website ready for Holiday eCommerce Shopping? Are you set-up to provide what consumers are looking for and keep them on your site, engaged, and purchasing?

If you are in need of Magento eCommerce development contact Customer Paradigm now at 303.473.4400 to talk to a real person about your business strategy. If your website is in need of internet marketing to create incentives and deals for your shoppers, talk to our SEO team and see how we can work to increase your conversion rates.

Oct 25, 2012

The Power of eCommerce Website Sales [Infographic]

Magento Ecommerce Results 2012

Provided by flippa.com

Growth of eCommerce

Flippa.com has provided an awesome info-graphic displaying the factors which have affected our eCommerce worlds. With the power of the internet, businesses have shifted from the large factories of work, to the ability to sit at home and be the owner of your own business online. That’s incredible!

The info-graphic to the left has been a random sampling of $26 million dollars worth of transactions over the last eighteen months. If you are an eCommerce start up you should pay attention to these trends and invest in the right direction.

2012 eCommerce Platform Demand & Supply

In 2012 the highest demanded platform is Shopify with 39.8%, with Magento coming in second with a demand of 18.3%, and finally Open Cart with a demand of 13.4%. In 2012, the supply was met by Magento platforms taking over 30.3% of supply, with Open Cart following at 11.8% of supply and finally Shopify at 5.3%.

Why would Magento be the majority of supply over Shopify? 

It’s really simple when you break it down why the demand doesn’t correlate directly with the supply. The first factor is brand awareness, new eCommerce buyers recognize Shopify whereas they are less knowledgeable about the other eCommerce platforms. The obvious reason that Magento provides the majority of supply is the ability for unlimited customization on this platform. Magento is a PHP / MySQL based framework, where Shopify is a SAAS solution. SAAS solution basically means that the core functionality of your website can not be modified.

It is clear that Magento is for the advanced eCommerce needs, if you wanted to add coupon codes to your products then Magento would be the platform for you. If you were selling extra characters for Angry Birds, then Shopify would be great for you. It is very important to match the eCommerce needs with the right platform.

 

2012 Content Management System Demand & Supply

A content management system (CMS) runs with your eCommerce platform to provide a blog for your website. This may not seem relevant to you as an eCommerce owner, but it is extremely relevant to the success of your website. Some eCommerce sites are run completed on a CMS using plug-ins or modules that are added for an online store capability.

Due to the Google Penguin update, which is an algorithm change that dictates your Search Engine Ranking Positioning (SERP). This directly affects the traffic to your website, so changes to the Google Algorithm are constantly on our SEO radar. Long story short, CMS and eCommerce websites go hand in hand.

In 2012 WordPress stole the majority demand at 82.9% and won the supply at an astounding 88.5%. The second most demanded CMS is Joomla at 4.6% and providing a supply of 3.1%.

Why is WordPress the Clear Winner?

WordPress is the clear winner because it brings simplicity, functionality, and flexibility for your website. And it’s FREE!

If you have any questions, or are interested in a WordPress website, call us at Customer Paradigm Now at 303.473.4400 to find out more information about how we can make your website a reality.

 

Custom Built Languages Demand & Supply

Very rarely do you get a website and it works exactly how you need it to function. This is where custom languages come into play in modifying your website. Some languages are: PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby. In 2012 the highest demanded custom language is PHP at 46%, followed my HTML with a demand of 24%. In 2012 the supply was met by 61% PHP and following behind 21% HTML.

Customizing your website to work with functioning that you need in order to succeed can be the difference in your conversion percentage. For example, if you need to format your pages so that users are able to view products faster, that’s where PHP customization would come in handy. At Customer Paradigm it is all about the efficiency of your website to be found for the right searches, direct the customers to the right products, and check out with ease.

 

If you are needing help on your eCommerce website, Customer Paradigm is a Magento certified business. We work to develop clean, efficient and profitable websites for your business. If you would like more information on how we can make your business goals happen call us at 303.473.4400 and we would love to hear the vision you have for your business and how we can work together to make it happen.

 

Oct 22, 2012

Unnatural Link Profiles – Causes, Actions and Solutions – Disavow Tool

Spammy Links, Give Me Back My Traffic! Please?

Fixing Spammy Link Profile

On October 16, 2012 Google has responded to the cries from websites who have lost their search engine ranking positioning due to an unnatural or spammy link profiles. A spammy link profile can be created without you lifting a finger or engaging in any black hat SEO tactics, or link-building scams. It can simply be born from “unnatural links” that direct back to your website.

For example, you are the owner of a flower  business which sell bouquets of deliverable flowers and suddenly as a result of your poor link profile, your natural traffic is gone. You begin to panic, that’s thousands of dollars in revenue you’re losing every day. You begin to do your research and find that many websites not in your industry or related to you are linking back to you. This is frequently an issue when companies engage in black hat SEO tactics that gain links through spammy comments from anywhere they can. Being as smart as you are, you ask the important questions, “How did these poorly related links start?” “What do I do now?”

As they look through their link profile they begin to identify thousands of inbound links from unrelated sites such as house building, mechanical, adult content and more. It’s coming up on Valentine’s day, the day of their biggest sales and showing up on rankings is important. What do they do?

 

The First Steps Are Always The Hardest

 

Identify the Source of the IssueUnnatural Link Profile Help

With any issue it is important to look at the symptoms, identify the issue, and then take action. In this case, your symptom is that you have lost all search engine traffic to your website. The issue comes down to one of two: you are engaging in SEO practices that are building you spammy link profiles, or, you are not engaging in SEO practices and the poor links are being created naturally.

If you are paying for an SEO service, call them now and let them know you have received a notification that your website has received an unnatural link profile notification and your search traffic has dropped dramatically. Request a link profile analysis and instruct them to stop all link-building for your site. After you have received your link profile and have gone through it to mark all inbound links which you believe are hurting your profile, send it back to your service and request to have them fix the situation. (Note: This is a very long process. It is easy to have your links go up on a site that is poorly managed, but having the moderators search through the site for you is a very difficult task that rarely gets done.)

If you are not paying for any SEO service, and poor links have been born naturally contact us today or call us at 303.473.4400 to talk to a real person about your unnatural link notification. We will analyze your website and your link profile, and help you work to bring your site back to full traffic.

To help the process be easier as you go, create a .txt file with all the links you are working on and their status. The best format is to have a commented out section stating the progress of that link. For example:

#contacted admin 5 times, last contact October 22, 2012

http://www.annoyingdomain.com

 

Cleaning the Grime of Bad Links With Persistence and Patience

As noted above, if you begin to clean your link profile it will be a long process and if it isn’t tell me how you did it. First, you must contact the moderators or site admins of each root link and the more work you can do to get rid of the link the better. For example, anticipate that the moderators are not going to be very happy that you are saying their site linking to your attributing to your poor traffic. That’s not exactly a compliment to them. The best strategy I have come across is being as courteous and helpful as possible.

Explain that you are trying to tailor your link profile to domains relative to yours. Find the exact page on their site and let them know the anchor text which is linking to your website and request to have it removed. If the moderator or site admin is polite enough they will e-mail you and let you know it has been done. If not, continue to check in on the link periodically.

Remember >> Persistence and Patience

 

If All Else Fails: Google Disavow Link

Google doesn’t want your website to fail, if you have been hit with a poor link profile. Sometimes it just comes down to the mistake of signing up for an all inclusive SEO package with too many confusing points to begin with. You hoped with all their beautiful testimonials circulating throughout their site that there was some truth to it. Who can blame you? Unfortunately, there are plenty of SEO companies who do not keep up on the new algorithm changes and still engage in old tactics that now cause harm to your business and more specifically website traffic.

 

You’ve Done It All, Still No Results… What Now?

Only after you have contacted all the administrators to have your links removed and have been persistent and patient, should you turn to the Google disavow tool. It is important that you understand this should be your last resort. Google has made it very clear that this should not be used loosely to heal your link profile.

Now that we are on the same page, here’s what you need to know about the Google disavow link tool.

 

What You Need: Google Webmaster Tools Profile

Make sure you have your website set up on Google webmasters >> Google.com/webmasters/

If you already have that set up then you can visit the Google Disavow Link Page >> Here

Select the website from the menu in your Google webmasters tools which you would like to clean up the link profile for.

finding the google disavow link tool

You will then be prompted to upload a file which contains all the links you wish to disavow.

Creating a Valid Disavow File – BE CAREFUL

The Google disavow file is a very simple .txt file

My first warning, I say be careful for a reason. Matt Cutts from Google has said once a link has been disavowed, re-avowing a link will take a lot longer. So make sure that the links you wish to disavow have been properly identified as a spammy link.

It has been recommended to create this file while working on cleaning up your link profile (as mentioned above). It is important to add comments and work on the status of your requested disavow links, this one, keeps you organized, secondly, lets Google know you have been working on it.

Here is the format:

# Note about your Progress such as: Contacted siteadmin of badlink.com on 10/22 and have had no response

http://www.badlink.com/content4.html

http://www.badlink.com/content21.html

# Comment about next bad link

http://www.badlink2.com/right-now-help/

http://www.badlink2.com/mechanics-need-help-too/

 

The disavow links can be used on two levels. You can disavow links on a site wide level in this case you would put the root domain on its own line in the example file shown above. Or, you can request disavow links on specific pages within a site. This would be used for example, if you have built one good piece of content and have sourced it to that website, then you engaged in poor comment spamming throughout the site on irrelevant topics.

 The disavow file will work similar to a .htaccess file for your website. You will be able to upload, download and modify the existing file if there are changes you need to make.

 

How Long Do I have to Wait?

After all the long work and organizing, you’ve uploaded your disavow list, now how long? According to Matt Cutts from Google it will take 2 weeks to a month for Google to crawl your requested disavow links and re-index your site.

It is important to know that Google will treat all the disavowed links as “strong suggestions” treated similar to a “no follow” tag on a link.

 

I hope that this guide has helped you understand the steps you should take if you receive an unnatural link profile warning from Google or have experienced a dramatic drop in natural traffic. It is important that you employ companies that engage in white-hat SEO tactics and are constantly working and staying plugged in with that’s new and next with Google. If your website is a victim of poor link-building please contact Customer Paradigm today at 303.473.4400 to talk to a real person and have your website analyzed. Work with our professional SEO team to get your site back to health and move forward with solid proven SEO tactics today.

Jul 24, 2012

Internet Marketing Trend: Re-Marketing

Customer Paradigm eLearning Series

Customer Paradigm
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Imagine this: someone visits your website. They`re interested in what you offer. But they get distracted by that text / email / phone call / person calling out from the next office. They didn`t mean to leave your website, but… now they`re gone, probably never to return.

Now imagine this: the next time that specific person visits other websites, such as the New York Times, Fox News, USA Today, Boston Globe, LA Times and many, many more, you can have a big display ad show up on the site to “re-market” to the person, and get them to come back.

This concept is called re-marketing. I first saw a demonstration of this about four years ago. But at the time, it was really expensive – several thousand dollars a month just to get started. That`s a show stopper for most small organizations, especially when you want to test something before you make a big investment. I certainly said no, even though they spoke about a strong ROI.

Internet Marketing Trend: Re-Marketing

Here`s how it works:
1. You tell Google how you wish to re-market. You can re-market to someone who has visited a page on your website. You can select options that include the ability to have your re-marketing ads run on specific sites (such as USA Today), or on types of Websites (such as technology or home and garden). You use a system to build an interactive display ad, and then choose a maximum price that you want to pay if someone clicks on your ad.

2. When someone visits your website, a small line of code tells Google to re-market to that person if they visit selected sites in the content network.

3. When that person goes to another website in Google`s content network, your ad shows up on the page. You gain a valuable advertising impression, and create trust and confidence. After all, you`re organization is advertising on a major Website like USA Today.

4. You pay only when someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. This happens in a real-time auction.

5. The person is now back on your website — and hopefully will make a purchase, subscribe to your newsletter or fill out a contact form.

Here`s Why It Works:
Imagine you are a store owner. On average, it takes 6-12 interactions before someone goes from a browser to a buyer. Many people walk into the store, take a look around, and might come back a few weeks later.

Re-marketing allows you to create additional touch-points, and make the end customer feel more comfortable with you as a trusted business or organization.

To the person, your business or organization stands out: you`re advertising on really big, successful Websites across the Internet. Sites they just normally visit when they want news and information. And then your re-marketing ad pops up. “Wow,” they think. And then click through to your site or pick up the phone and call.

If you`re like me, you spent a lot of time and energy to get them to come to your site. You might be using Cost Per Click advertising (with rates between $0.50 – $12.00 and more per click), or email campaigns, direct mail, social media, radio advertising, TV and print.

Re-marketing allows you to place ads for your product, service or organization as they wander around the Web. If you saw Minority Report, this is what they did using retina scans in the offline world. We`re not there yet in the offline world, but online, we`re getting pretty close.

The Numbers:
In some case studies, re-marketing has helped decrease the cost per conversion by 40%. If you haven`t tested re-marketing yet, it`s worth a look.

Let me know if you`d like us to help you set up a re-marketing campaign for your Website. Our Certified Google Adwords team is here to help…

Thanks,

Jeff FinkelsteinFounder, Customer Paradigm
Jeff Finkelstein
Founder, Customer Paradigm
303.473.4400


We love referrals! Our Referral Promise >>

 
Customer Paradigm
5353 Manhattan Circle, Suite 103
Boulder, Colorado 80303
Visit our Website
direct 303.499.9318
fax 303.374.6104
toll free 888.772.0777
Web & Print Design • Programming • Email Newsletters • Search Engine Marketing • eCommerce

 

 

Jul 9, 2012

What Really Matters to Search Engines

Advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO): What Really Matters to Search Engines

eLearning Series

by

Customer Paradigm
888.772.0777
303.499.9318

It used to be enough to just have relevant text on your site, and get a few inbound links. These still matter.

But other factors are also incorporated into the overall decision for how your site ranks for specific keywords.

Read more below >>

View of the Flatirons in Boulder, Colorado.
(Photo by Jeff Finkelstein)

Search Engine Optimization Advanced Strategies:
What Really Matters to Search Engines?

SEO MathWhat Really Matters to Search Engine?

What really matters to a search engine like Google? Here’s a breakdown of the most important factors:



24%: Trust / Authority of the Website / Domain:

Nearly a quarter of your search engine ranking is based on the overall trust and authority of your website and domain name. If your site has original content, doesn’t appear "scammy" or "fly-by-night" and other people rely on your site as a resource for information, you’ll have a strong page rank and trust score.

Page Rank (named for Larry Page, co-founder of Google) assigns a numerical ranking to your site. Ten is the best — and only a handful of sites have a Page Rank of 10. Page rank 9 is reserved for top sites like the New York Times, CNN.com and others. Denver Craigslist is a 6, as is the Customer Paradigm site. Many sites have a zero page rank, especially if the site is new or doesn’t have much relevant content. Want to know your site’s Page Rank? Email me back, and we’ll let you know.

22%: Links to the specific page:

This does not mean any link to any page on your site (i.e. the home page). This measures how many inbound links you have to the specific page you rank for. The more inbound links to the page, the better.

That said, not all links are created equal. A single link from a highly trusted domain (see above) can be worth more than hundreds of inbound links from less relevant sites.

When CNN.com or NYTimes.com (both Page Rank 9 sites), for example, linked to my wife’s site, www.AdventureRabbi.org, this drastically boosted the overall relevancy of her site.

20%: Anchor Text of External Links:

Just having a link isn’t enough. Another 20% of your ranking is based on the words inside the link. You need the words in the link to specifically use keywords that matter.

For example a link that simply says, Click Here, ranks for the words, "Click Here." Not very helpful.

Instead, a link that reads – Visit here for Expert Magento Developers, ranks for "Expert Magento Developers."

15%: On Page Keyword Usage:

Content is still king. The words that you use on your page still matter. If you don’t have content on your site that matches what people are searching for, you’re likely not going to be ranked for those terms. Title tags are critical. H1 Headings show search engines what content is most important. Boldface text helps. Meta keywords, though, are just ignored.

7%: Traffic and Clickthrough Data:

You might think that it’s enough to have relevant text, a strong domain name, and great links pointing to your site. But if people "bounce" back to a search engine after briefly looking at your site, then your rankings will be diminished. Google and other search engines want to display the most relevant search results possible, and they track any time you:

  • Type in a search query
  • Visit a site
  • Hit the "Back" button to return back to the search results page

This is what is known as a "Bounce" in search engine marketing. In email marketing, bounces are when an email address doesn’t exist.

6%: Social Media Metrics:

Six percent of your search results rankings are based on social media metrics. For example, if there are a lot of people on Facebook or Twitter who post links to your site, this will help.

Think of it as a high school popularity contest. If everyone is pointing to you (via tweets on Twitter or "Likes" on Facebook or +1 on Google), then you’re considered the popular person, and seen as the authority. Google and other search engines reward you as a result.

I’d expect social media metrics to play an increasingly prominent role going forward in search engine rankings.

5%: Registration and Hosting Information:

Google and other search engines value websites that have "Withstood The Test of Time." Funny for an industry that’s only about 12 years old. But in order to prevent someone like me from registering a domain today, building a website tonight and stuffing it with keywords, Google places about 5% of your score based on domain name factors such as how old your domain is. A domain that was registered in 1999 will often outrank one that was just registered last week. In fact, many sites won’t even show up in Google’s index for six months or more. This is known as the Google Sandbox, although there are ways to have your site appear faster.

Top level domain name extensions matter. In the US, .com is considered the best for businesses. A .biz, .ws, .us or .net domain name is often secondary.

Where your site is hosted matters, too. If your site is hosted in Russia or China (the source of many shady businesses), you may be ranked lower than someone else who is hosted in the same country their business is located.

Finally, Google and other search engines look to see if all of your inbound links are coming from sites that are hosted at the same hosting company. For example, if all of your inbound links are from similar IP addresses, your site may not be perceived as relevant.

Summary:

There are many factors beyond relevant text and inbound links that matter to search engines.

 

Want help with your CPC Advertising or Lead Generation? We Can Help! Please call 303.499.9318 or 888.772.0777 to speak with a real person. Or click here to have a real person contact you now >>

 

I hope you found this case study helpful – please let me know if you’d like help with your online marketing.

Thanks,

Jeff FinkelsteinFounder, Customer Paradigm
Jeff Finkelstein
Founder, Customer Paradigm
jeff@customerparadigm.com
303.499.9318 x8282

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We love referrals! Our Referral Promise >>

 

 

 
Customer Paradigm
5353 Manhattan Circle, Suite 103
Boulder, Colorado 80303
Visit our Website
direct 303.499.9318
fax 303.374.6104
toll free 888.772.0777
Web & Print Design · Programming · Email Newsletters · Search Engine Marketing · eCommerce

 

 

 

Jul 9, 2012

iPad Review: Why You Should Buy an iPad

iPad Review: Why You Should Buy an iPad

eLearning Series

by

Customer Paradigm
888.772.0777
303.499.9318

Last week I purchased a new iPad (more on why, below), and everyone has been asking me for my thoughts. The summary: it’s a great product, and one you should consider purchasing.

Also, this Thursday, I’m going to be speaking on Website Personalization for the 3rd3rsday Group. If you’d like to join the Webseminar (it’s free), visit here >>
iPad Review: Why You Should Buy One
It’s a really amazing device.

Do I Really Need Yet Another Device?

I’m a heavy computer user. Part of this is because I’m in the tech industry. I have a big laptop, a dual-screen desktop, a computer at home, a netbook, and I carry around a BlackBerry.

So why would I want another device, too? The answer is that none of the other devices I own can do what the iPad can do.

Minimalism At It’s Best

Have you noticed that the expensive homes that people like to purchase are often devoid of lots of stuff? Kitchens have drawers for everything — so you don’t have anything out on the countertops. Closets have four shirts hanging on hangers. The focus is on what’s not there….

Instead of trying to cram everything into a device, so that nothing works really that well, the iPad is a device that’s been designed with as few buttons as possible.

iPad Home Screen screenshot

The iPad doesn’t do everything. It’s not going to replace a desktop or laptop computer. And to me, that may be part of it’s appeal.

No, it doesn’t have a USB port. No camera. No flash support. I can’t add more memory to it. The keyboard isn’t easy to type on. My model is Wi-Fi only – so some things won’t work outside a Wi-Fi hotspot. And it’s not dishwasher safe.

Is it more than just an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch? The answer is yes. The iPhone is a great device. It’s screen is much, much larger, and it opens up tremendous new possibilities.

Plus, my two daughters love it too. It’s a testament to good design that a 2 year old and a five year old can figure out how to use it without much trouble.

Want an iPad Application or iPhone application?
We Can Help! Please call 303.499.9318 or 888.772.0777 to speak with a real person. Or visit here for more information about iPad App Development or iPhone App Development >>

 

I Bought the iPad because of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Last week, we receive a phone call from the president of a major television studio, who found our company using a Google search. He’s interested in having us possibly develop iPad and iPhone Applications for their studio, and was flying in a day later.

So… I raced out to the Apple store here in Boulder to purchase one. It was busy, and while I waited a couple of minutes for a sales person to help me, I chatted with a former professor of mine from the CU MBA program, who was looking at them as well.

I raced back to the office to get started. The only downside: you have to have the most recent version of iTunes (a 93 mb download) running on your computer in order to even turn it on.

Designing Websites

Instead of looking at a screen, with the iPad, it’s easy to lay the device down on a table, and look at a website with someone else. Zooming in is easy, and as long as your website was designed to be compatible with Safari’s browser (and doesn’t have too much flash), it’s a great way to collaborate.

iPad - Safari Browser screenshot of AdventureRabbi.org
iPad Screenshot of Web Browser – click image for larger view

The browser is fast, and allows you to have multiple tabs open easily. If there’s a flash animation on the site, it displays as a white box. For this reason, I recommend if you have a website with a lot of flash in it, create a static gif or jpg image of the animation to load behind the flash animation, so that users without flash see something other than a plain white space on your web page.

iPad - web browser screenshot
iPad Screenshot of Safari Web Browser – click image for larger view

Displaying Photos

As a photographer with images on display in museums in three countries, it’s always a challenge to find a clean, crisp way to show people compelling images. Carrying a laptop is good, but the iPad allows you to import high-resolution images (via iTunes), and then display them easily in albums.

It’s really easy to hand someone the device, or place it on a table. The slideshow function allows you to have the iPad scroll through images automatically.

iPad iPhoto viewer
iPad Screenshot of Photo viewer – click image for larger view

iPad - Album view screenshot
iPad Screenshot of Photo Viewer – Album – click image for larger view

iPad Album View - expanding screenshot
iPad Screenshot of Photo Viewer – spreading album – click image for larger view

Reading Books

Over the weekend, I read two 500-page books on the iPad. Not having to read with a flashlight at night is nice: the backlit screen is clear, and easy to read. You can adjust the font size, and read in either a horizontal or vertical view.

I read the new Clive Cussler book, The Silent Sea, purchased for $9.95 through iTunes. I also read a free murder-mystery book, too, called Ransom X. In both books I found a couple of typos… it seemed that perhaps the versions uploaded to the Apple store were rushed and may not have been the final copy. But I also tend to find typos in the New York Times, too, so I’m a bit pickier than most.

iPad - iBook viewer
iPad Screenshot of iBook Viewer – click image for larger view

Winnie the Pooh is the sample book that is included with the iBook reader system, and my two daughters really love me reading to them before bed. Their favorite part is turning the pages… which consists of a simulated page turn by dragging your finger on the page and flicking it to the left.

You can download thousands of free books, too, and you can also download Kindle software to the iPad, too, although the Kindle reader for the iPad seems only to support books, and not newspapers and magazines.

Want an iPad Application or iPhone application?
We Can Help! Please call 303.499.9318 or 888.772.0777 to speak with a real person. Or visit here for more information about iPad App Development or iPhone App Development >>

 

Watching Videos

If you have young kids, you know that a car trip can either be a source of a lot of fun, or a lot of anguish. With the iPad, our 5 year old told me that the hour and forty-five minute drive felt a lot more like a 15 minute trip.

Before we left, I went to the Sesame Street Website, and subscribed to their weekly podcast. The iPad downloaded all of the movies, so it could be used offline.

iPad Video viewer screenshot
iPad Screenshot of Video Player – click image for larger view

The iPad can use headphones, but it also has a speaker that works pretty well. Our older daughter was able to select and start each video and hold the iPad so that her little sister could see the screen, too.

With a 10 hour battery life, the iPad was a hit in the car.

Lots and Lots of Apps

There’s already a lot of applications that have been designed specifically for the iPad. USA Today has a great news reader.

iPad - USA Today reader application
iPad Screenshot of USA Today news reader – click image for larger view

Bloomberg has an amazing graphical interface for the financial folks. The Netflix app allows you to manage your que, as well as watch videos.

My favorite app though for the iPad, though, is the iFish Pond application. It’s $1.99, and is also a big favorite for my two daughters. You can move your hands through the water and see the water ripple in reaction; you can feed the fish (or scare them if you touch the water nearby).

iPad - iPond application
iPad Screenshot of iFish Pond application – click image for larger view

Other great apps include Pro Keys, a piano simulator, and the Calculator XL, which turns the iPad into a retro-looking calculator.

iPad Calculator XL
iPad Screenshot of calculator – click image for larger view

Twitteriffic is a great Twitter application that leverages the larger screen size, and AstroGizmo is an amazing way to hold your iPad up and see the constellations and planets.

iPad AstroGizmo iPad application
iPad Screenshot of AstroGizmo – click image for larger view

My Congress is an app that allows you to find your member of Congress, and see news, information and how they voted. EyeWitness is an application that brings the most compelling news photo each day.

And all of the 150,000 iPhone and iPod Touch apps work, too, on the iPad. My five year old has been enjoying the Simon Classic memory game. Some of the apps look a little fuzzy if you blow them up to use the whole screen, but it’s nice to have everything available.

iPad - Simon Classic memory Game
iPad Screenshot of Simon Classic – click image for larger view

A few apps don’t work so well, however. The Men’s Health application seems to just be a scanned in version of their magazine… and the text was very difficult to read. The Time Magazine app is solid, but what I didn’t realize is that for $4.95, I was only downloading a single issue. I’m already a subsciber to the print version, so the one-time download of content is fine to read once, but it would be more ideal if it updated itself with content (like the NY Times and USA Today applications).

iPad - Time Magazine Application
iPad Screenshot of Time Magazine app – click image for larger view

The Associated Press (AP)’s news application is also top-notch, and has an intuitive way for navigating stories. Plus, it can customize the news based on your location, so I can get the AP stories local to Boulder, Colorado, for example.

iPad - iPhone Application for Associated Press
iPad Screenshot of Associated Press News app – click image for larger view

Mail Program

The mail program is a bit weak. Definitely not as good as a laptop or desktop-based mail system. I’m a heavy email user — I receive 800-1000 email messages a day. My biggest complaint: no way to mark all of your messages as "read" or do a bulk delete.

iPad email inbox screenshot
iPad Screenshot of Mail application – click image for larger view

The Mail program does display HTML emails nicely, however. What I wound up doing is creating a special, dedicated email address just for the iPad, so I could email from and to the device, but not have to worry about trying to download hundreds of emails each time.

For email users that don’t receive the heavy volume of email that I do, the iPad is a great secondary device, but because of the on-screen keyboard, it’s probably not ideal to replace your laptop or desktop computer any time soon.

Want an iPad Application or iPhone application?
We Can Help! Please call 303.499.9318 or 888.772.0777 to speak with a real person. Or visit here for more information about iPad App Development or iPhone App Development >>

 

Calendar

The calendar has a beautiful interface, and I was able to get it to synchronize with my Google Calendar fairly easily. Again, this won’t be my primary calendar, but it’s wonderful that I can see my calendar quickly and easily through the system.

iPad - iCalendar screenshot

Summary

The iPad is not meant to replace your laptop or desktop computer. It doesn’t do everything. And that’s the the point.

If you’re looking for an intuitive, well-designed device — you can’t miss. Enjoy!

Want an iPad Application or iPhone application?
We Can Help! Please call 303.499.9318 or 888.772.0777 to speak with a real person. Or visit here for more information about iPad App Development or iPhone App Development >>

 

Let me know what you think about the iPad….

Talk to you soon,

Jeff FinkelsteinFounder, Customer Paradigm
Jeff Finkelstein
Founder, Customer Paradigm
jeff@customerparadigm.com
303.499.9318 x8282

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Web & Print Design · Programming · Email Newsletters · Search Engine Marketing · eCommerce

 

 

Yes, Please Have Someone Contact Me Now About iPad & iPhone Application Development:

{contact}$ContactmeNow1{/contact}

 

Jun 16, 2012

SSH Key Implementation: A Mac user’s perspective

Using SSH keys has become the default method for accessing remote directories here at Customer Paradigm so making sure that everyone can access them can be a bit of trouble.  Typically the keys generated are OpenSSH keys making them available to all users.  Sometimes they are generated as Putty keys.  I will describe how a Mac user here at Customer Paradigm uses each type of key.

 

Option 1: OpenSSH key

Download the key into a given directory.

Open the terminal and enter the following at the command line:

cd /directory/containing/key (ex. cd /Users/ikua/ddo_keys/)

Make sure key is there by using the following at the command line:

ls

Change the permissions on the file by entering the following:

chmod 500 <name_of_key>

Now SSH into the server.

ssh -i <name_of_key> <user_name>@<server_ip>

 

Option 2: Use an existing Putty Key

Install MacPorts if you have not already.

http://www.macports.org/install.php

Open a terminal and enter the following to install Putty:

sudo port install putty

Putty will be installed along with Puttygen. Now you can use Putty for your SSH needs on a Mac.

 

You can also use Puttygen to convert the PPK to OpenSSH.

Here is an example of what to enter in the command line:

puttygen <key_name>.ppk -O private-openssh -o <key_name>

 

Good luck and share your Mac SSH experiences and any tips you might have with us in your comments.

May 22, 2012

Chrome Overtakes Internet Explorer (article)

Over the weekend, Google Chrome routed more Internet traffic than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which long has held its spot as the most-used Web browser in the world, according to data from StatCounter, an Internet monitor.

Read more here >>

May 18, 2012

Google bots learning to read webpages like humans

Here’s another really interesting article about Google’s bots… they are now starting to execute javascript, so that they can use sites more like humans… Google bots learning to read webpages like humans, one step closer to knowing everything. -visit here to read.
2012 Internet Marketing Trends: Google’s 12,000 Evaluators
Feb 3, 2012

2012 Internet Marketing Trends: Google’s 12,000 Evaluators

eLearning Series

by

Friends,

2011 marked a year of drastic change for Internet Marketing, and 2012 promises to be no different.

From Google’s Panda update last year that changed the rules on Search Engine Optimization, to increased competition for CPC marketing and the launch of Google+ in social media, the pace of change is accelerating.

This next series, Top Internet Marketing Trends for 2012, will explore in detail what these changes mean for businesses and organizations, and what you can do to make sure you stay ahead of the curve.

Today’s tip talks about how Google is using approximately 12,000 humans to evaluate the quality and experience of different websites, and what you need to know to survive the evaluation process.

I hope you enjoy the series!

Thanks, Jeff

P.S. Here is a picture of an Ibex I took on a recent trip to Israel.

Photo of an Ibex taken in Israel. View more images from Israel>>

Internet Marketing Trend #1 for 2012: Google’s 12,000 Human Website Evaluators

Recently leaked documents confirm that Google employs a huge number of people that do nothing but visit websites and evaluate them to help improve Google’s search ranking algorithm.  While definitive numbers aren’t available, industry estimates estimate that Google (through several subcontracting companies) employs between 12,000 – 15,000 people, who work from home for between $10 – $12 per hour. How many sites are being reviewed?

 

It’s difficult to know.  But if one human reviewer visits 2 websites per minute (one site every 30 seconds), and works 2 hours per day, five days a week for 50 weeks of the year, they would be able to review 60,000 websites over the course of the year.  Scaled to 12,000 people, that means that humans could sift through 720 million websites per year.  The cost of paying 12,000 people to work 2 hours a day, 5 days a week for a year? About $60 million. Which sounds like a lot of money, but Google’s revenue exceeds $30 billion.

 

So why is Google paying so much money to review websites?  Google’s mission from the beginning has been to provide their users with the most useful, most relevant information possible. The human website reviewers offer a way to test the Google search algorithm, and make sure that what appears high in Google search results are relevant sites that (a) are not spammy, and (b) are useful to end consumers.

 

According to SEO Moz, these humans are “Google’s fact checkers – the people who work to make sure the algorithm is doing what it’s supposed to do. Data from [human] quality raters not only serves as quality control on existing , but it helps validate potential algorithm changes. When you consider that Google tested over 13,000 algorithm changes last year, it’s a pretty important job.”

 

 

How Are Sites Ranked? Sites are ranked according to how useful they are to the end user.  If your site has unique, well-written content that educates people, it will do well. If your site is mostly comprised of vague marketing messages (“We have solutions”), or serves just to promote your product, it won’t do as well.

 

How Can You Survive the Review Process?

Google’s fact checkers like to see sites that:

  • Are well written, unique content that engages readers.
  • Contain compelling images, especially ones that you can open up and view more detail.
  • Displays video, especially videos embedded from YouTube with detailed captions.
  • Load quickly. People have little patience for a slow loading site.
  • Have fresh content, added each week (or day), that gives readers a reason to come back.
  • Does not contain technical HTML coding errors.

If your site follows these guidelines, you should be fine.

<p%

Jan 4, 2012

Building SEO-optimized E-Commerce Websites

In 2012, search engine optimization for ecommerce websites should start before the websites are even built. Updates to the search rankings algorithm associated with Google Panda and the rise of the social graph have made landing page hierarchy, usability, conversion rate, social engagement, and unique content more important than ever. Here are a few ways that you can get a head start on SEO for your ecommerce site.

 

Organize the site into categories that make sense for users and search engines.

 

Well-optimized product category pages are the most important SEO tool at the disposal of ecommerce websites. In 2012, Google and other search engines have placed a premium on unique, query-relevant content as a rankings factor. For sites that sell a variety of different products and services, creating targeted landing pages (pages created for the purpose of attracting a specific type of visitor) oriented around a keyword or group of keywords is critical to expanding search volume.

 

An ecommerce website selling snowboards, snowboarding gear, and accessories, for instance, may want to start organizing the site for SEO by dividing their products into broad categories that make sense from a user perspective. Dividing snowboards, snowboarding apparel, and snowboarding equipment are easy decisions from a user perspective, and allow for the creation of custom landing pages that attempt to engage the broadest search terms. Pages optimized for broad search terms, however, can’t hope to engage all of the more specific branded, product-type, or longer-tail search terms that your potential customers may be using to try and find the products that you sell. If you don’t optimize for more specific searches by creating more custom landing pages, you risk letting their business go to a competitor.

 

To gain insight into how I might organize my broader snowboard category, I consulted the Google Adwords keyword research tool. Here is my initial search:

SEO for ECommerce Sites

 

This search tells me how to organize my snowboard category. I can see that the highest volume searches are for snowboards by brand. K2, Burton, Salomon and others get by far the most searches. I know that I want to create custom landing pages for each of the major brands of snowboards that I sell, to draw in users searching for a specific brand. The second most searched metric seems to be “sale snowboards,” “discount snowboards,” or even “$150 snowboards.” This tells me that I want to create a category page with unique content and products that are on sale, to engage these search terms. Third, it tells me that the potential customers of my theoretical snowboard store are searching based on gender and age. “Kids snowboards” and “women’s snowboards” are popular search categories. So, I will want to create custom landing pages for kids, mens, and womens snowboards, to engage this search volume.

 

I’ll repeat this process for my Apparel and Accessories categories. So, after about an hour considering my business and some help from Google Adwords, I have a basic structure for organizing my ecommerce site. Here’s what I have:

 

Internet Marketing for ecommerce websites

 

Obviously, there is more research to be done and more variables to be considered than overall search volume, including competition, conversion rates, and profitability of different products, but you get the idea: Organize your site into categories and sub-category pages that makes sense from a common sense, usability perspective as well an SEO perspective.

 

*A note of caution: There are made-for-seo sites and made-for-seo sites. Creating a large number of landing pages to engage too many variations of similar keywords can hurt your site from a SEO perspective because you run the risk of duplicate content penalties, and hurt your usability (which also affects your search rankings) because it can create a bewilderingly large number of pages selling similar or identical products. Finding the right balance between SEO and usability is important, but error on the side of usability.

Here is a real-world example from our experience at Customer Paradigm:

 

Customer Paradigm does internet marketing and SEO for Discount Decorating, a large online retailer of wallpaper and wallpaper borders. In order to increase their organic search traffic, we built out their category and subcategory pages by creating static urls for pages that had previously been internal search result pages, and added unique content and meta data to most of the new category pages we had created. The new category pages allowed Discount Decorating to rank well for a wide variety of more specific and long-tail keywords. The impact was immediate and dramatic. Within two weeks, Discount Decorating’s organic search traffic had doubled, and sales jumped at a corresponding rate. Here is their traffic graph:

 

Search Engine Optimization for Ecommerce websites

Add SEO value to your landing and product pages with unique content

 

In 2012, the key to ranking well for Google and other search engines is uniqueness. This means each of your category and product pages should have unique text, images, schema.org or RDFA tagging, header tags, title tags, alt text, etc. Pages with duplicate content, meta descriptions, or title tags can negate the SEO value of your pages, and category page text or product descriptions copied from a manufacturers website can be very harmful. Search engines aren’t impressed with content that they can find elsewhere, and they may penalize you for it. You have to add something new and unique to climb up the rankings.

One great way to add uniqueness to your website as a whole is through a regularly updated blog. Include special offers, news, how-to guides, and other information relevant to your business and industry. Regularly updated content tells Google and other search engines that your site is an organic, growing site that is regularly adding unique content for its users. The search engines will reward you accordingly.

 

Usability is becoming increasingly important to ranking well and selling products

 

Not only is the usability of your site critical to your conversion rate (the % of people who visit your site who make a purchase), Google and other search engines are using increasing sophisticated ways to determine whether or not ecommerce sites are usable and using this analysis in their rankings calculations. Things like bounce rate, time spent on the site, number of pages viewed, and engagement metrics such as whether or not a person filled out a contact form, signed up for a newsletter, or made a purchase account for a significant portion of the search engine rankings algorithm in 2012.

The undisputed most important element to usability for ecommerce websites, particularly larger ecommerce websites, is the search feature. Almost every ecommerce site that sells more than a few products has a search tool that allows visitors to quickly find a product based on a series of custom filters. How quickly and with what precision a user can find the product they’re looking for often determines whether or not a visitor becomes a customer, and can go along way in determining the success of failure of an ecommerce site. Careful thought and attention must be paid to your search/filtering features.

*A note of caution: Many site owners and developers rely too much on search tools and other custom filters and ignore or under-develop their category pages. While search tools are great from user perspective, they don’t gain the SEO value that comes with category pages that have unique content and static urls that can be submitted in a sitemap. It’s important to keep both your users, and Google in mind when building an ecommerce site.

 

Prepare to engage with Social Media

Social media is a great way to interact with your existing customers and keep them coming back with updates, special offers, and other promotions. In 2012, social media signals can account for as much as 14-18% of the Google rankings algorithm: things like Google “+1s,” Facebook “likes,” and Twitter “mentions.” Adding social media buttons to your home page, category pages, and all product pages before the site is launced will give you a running start into social media.

 

SEO for ecommerce websites can be very competitive, but forethought, smart organizing, and awareness of SEO principles during the development of the site can allow your site to move up the search rankings faster, allowing you to make more money from you site sooner.

Customer Paradigm is a complete internet marketing agency for ecommerce websites, including search engine optimization, search advertising, and custom ecommerce website development. For more information, visit customerparadigm.com or call 303-473-4400 or contact us to speak to a real person now.

Dec 12, 2011

Magento Case Study: Integrating a 3rd Party API, Adding Affiliate Tracking, and Importing Products

By Senior Magento Developer Alan Barber

This week my team celebrated the completion of our most recent project: TeachMeToday.com. This is a heavily customized version of Magento which allows users the opportunity to pay for a membership which gives them access to over 400 eLearning courses.

    We developed the following custom functionality

 

  • Category and Product Import : TeachMeToday’s catalog was imported entirely from a 3rd party provider. We developed an extension to import a category hiearchy and assign products to these categories based on the external catalog. We also created a script to perform daily synching between the two catalog versions
  • Private Sales Functionality : We modified Magento so that a user must pay for a membership before they can view any of the eLearning courses
  • Recurring Memberships (Subscriptions) : We developed a custom extension which allows TeachMeToday to charge their active members on a monthly basis using Authorize.net’s CIM
  • Affiliate Landing Pages with Custom Checkout : My team integrated an external checkout path with TeachMeToday’s Magento installation. Essentially, affiliate traffic signs up on a highly optimized version of the Magento checkout (which is normally very clunky)
  • Affiliate Tracking / Reporting : We added some functionality to the Magento success page and admin area that tracks conversions and rejections

Each of these areas could have a full article written about them, but I will try and provide a few paragraphs about how we accomplished each

 

3rd Party Category and Product Import

This was probably the largest piece of the project. TeachMeToday had ~400 products and ~80 categories in an external catalog. Each of the products was essential an online “course” which launched a java application on the user’s computer. While we couldn’t import the java apps themselves, we could import the category hierarchy and metadata for individual courses. The process we developed for this is as follows:

 

  1. Create your module : We created a custom module in app/code/local.
  2. Add a sql update script to track custom data : Inside our module’s SQL directory we added an install script to add a custom attribute to both products and categories, which would serve to hold a serialized object representing metadata from our 3rd party catalog
  3. Add a helper to connect with the API : our 3rd party catalog provided a soap API to retrieve data. We created an API helper in our module which extended the php SoapClass. We used PHP’s magic functionsto allow the rest of our module to access API methods in the form of 
    Mage::helper("apihelper")->{api_method_name}
    — cool huh? The the other objects in the module, the API calls were just regular method calls…our soap class had built in functions to handle soap faults as errors and to parse the soap response.
  4. Get a parsable version of the external catalog : In our case, this was a giant XML tree of the entire catalog: Magento XML Tree
  5. Recursively walk through the tree and update the catalog: This is a big step. A few things were invloved:
    1. I wrote models to represent the different types of nodes in the xml tree : In the external catalog, categories were tagged as “groups” and products tagged as “assets”. I wrote some models which extracted relevent data from each of these node types
    2. I wrote a model to represent the tree as a whole : We needed a model to poll the 3rd party service, retrieve the tree as xml, parse it into php SimpleXML and then recursively walk down each branch of the tree. Depending on the current node’s type, a different operations was performed
    3. I wrote helper models to map the xml nodes into Magento models : Helper were created which took in a <group> and mapped it into a category (in the appropriate place in the category tree) and took an <asset> tag and mapped it into a product (and assigned it to the correct category). The helpers were also smart enough to make a distinction between: creating a new model and updating an existing model
    4. Handle errors : Seems simple, but you ABSOLUTELY NEED functions built in to methodically log and report errors. We could not have done this process without such logic. Magentohas a wonderful function: 
      Mage::log({message}, null, {filename})
      which allows you to put a custom log at var/log/{filename}
  6. Setup a cron job to recursively walk through the tree every night : In case the 3rd party catalog changed, we wanted our catalog to represent those changes. So we setup a cron in our config.xml to update the tree every night. Magento Crontab

Private Sales Functionality

TeachMeToday is based on a membership which gives users access to all products in the system. Be default, the community edition of Magento doesn’t enable this functionality. However it is surprisingly simple to implement this:

 

  1. Rewrite the customer account controller in your module’s config.xml
  2. Override the creatAction() in AccountController.php : In our case, we overwrote the create action to redirect the user to one of our landing pages so they could sign up. In this way, a user cannot navigate to /customer/account/create and get a new account…no matter how many times they try, they will alows get redirected to our custom landing pages Magento Controller Overload
  3. Remove the “launch course” option for user’s that aren’t active in the system: All of TeachMeToday’s products are virtual courses, and as part of the private sales piece, we needed to make sure a user that didn’t have a membership (or had an expired membership) could not launch the courses. We created a helper that checks a special customer attribute which is a Boolean flag specifying whether or not the user was active. So we use 
    Mage::getSingleton("customer/session")->getCustomer()
    to grab the current customer instance and check their is_active flag.
  4. Update the customer flag when a user signs up for a membership: We created a custom event for this. On our landing pages (which have custom checkout functionality) we call 
    Mage::dispatchEvent("our_custom_event", array("customer" => $customer))
    which passes the newly-signed-up customer to our custom module (which then updates the appropriate customer attributes). We created a similar event for when the customer is deleted or fails billing.

Recurring Memberships (Subscriptions)

We needed a way to continually charge customers (since the product they were purchasing was a monthly membership/subscription). However, it requires a lot of legwork and special infrastructure to store credit cards with and be PCI Compliant — and the community edition of Magento is not PCI compliant. Therefore, we decided to use Authorize.net’s CIM. CIM allows you as merchant to store credit card information on authorize.net’s servers, and then provides you a handle for each customer with which you can rebill them without storing their info — cool huh?
Our process was as follows:

 

  1. Create the CIM customer and payment profiles when the user signs up, and store the CIM token (handle) : We used the IDP Magento Extension to handle the requests to authorize.net (no point in reinventing the wheel, and this module does a great job creating a Magento Paygate-mapping to authorize.net).
  2. Create a cron task to bill customers: My team created a script (which runs nightly) that does a few things:
    1. Check which customers are due for a rebill : Using varien data collections we find a list of all customers which are due for a re-bill
    2. Attempt to rebill appropriate customers through their CIM token : try and bill the customer through their CIM handle (which bills them based on the credit card info they have stored in authorize.net)
    3. If payment failed, change their “is_active” flag, if not, create a new order

Magento Affiliate Landing Pages with Custom Checkout

>We needed a number of different landing pages for TeachMeToday to AB test affiliate traffic to. These landing pages needed to be highly optimized for conversions. The process for creating landing pages that could create orders in Magento was as follows:

 

Magento Custom CheckoutCreate CMS Pages with each landing page URL

    : If you wanted your landing page to be: TeachMeToday.com/signup-now, you would make a cms page with URL identifier of “signup-now”
  1. Set the CMS page layout to empty
  2. Add custom stylesheets via layout xml in cms_page–>design : If you need custom styles, you can add them on a per landing page basis there
  3. Create a phtml block in the CMS page to place your landing page code in : We had vastly different looking landing pages…which were all their own layout. The way I did this was to place a block as the sole content in each CMS page as: {{block type=”page/html” name=”signup.now.page” as = “signupNowPage” template=”landing/signup_now/body.phtml”}} Now the page would load its content from my custom phtml file:
  4. Create your custom checkout controller that your landing page submits to : This step is a pain in the @!@ … essentially you need to replicate everything Magentodoes when it creates an order, which is as follows:
    1. Validate customer billing info
    2. Create a new customer with an auto-generated password
    3. Create a quote model and load it with customer and product data : You will need to assign the quote to a customer and add a product to the quote. I’m not going to go into detail on how to do it as its a complicated process. Googling for “create a Magento order programatically” returns some relevent results
    4. Use a service quote to attempt to transform the quote into an order (and therefore charge the customer’s credit card)
    5. If the service quote threw an error, notify the user their payment info was invalid. Otherwise, get the new order from the service quote and move the user to /checkout/onepage/success

Magento Affiliate Tracking / Reporting

Since TeachMeToday receives a large amount of affiliate traffic, they needed to do a few things:

 

  • Store email addresses of leads: Even if a user didn’t not checkout, we needed to store all the email addresses that came through. We did this by associating everyone who comes through the site as a newsletter subscriber ( 
    Mage::getModel("newsletter/subscriber")
    )
  • Track conversions: Magento by default has a .phtml file in template/checkout/onepage/success.phtml that gets loaded on the checkout confirmation page. This is a great place to drop in tracking pixels or javascript for affiliate tracking (most affiliates will require their tracking pixel on the confirmation page). We passed in the current affiliate’s id in the url string to the confirmation page (as /checkout/onepage/success?aid={affiliate_id}). We then logged every order that had an affiliate id set in a custom table in our database (calling 
    Mage::getSingleton("checkout/session")->getLastRealOrderId() will give you the order id).
  • Create reports in the back end of Magento : I’m not going to go into how to add reports to the adminhtml. However, we used the aforementioned table that we stored aid=>order_id associations in to populate several custom reports for each affiliate

Conclusion

I’ve outlined a lot of complicated processes above. It was a considerable amount of work—but it goes to show how Magento’s modular structure allows you to do just about anything with it (and how awesome our Customer Paradigm Team is!).
Alan Barber is a Senior Magento Programmer at Customer Paradigm who specializes in systems architecture and application troubleshooting. For more information, or to get Magento help now, visit customerparadigm.com.

Dec 6, 2011

Great post about why NOT to use overseas / cheap Indian Programmers

The dad of one of our lead Magento Developers here at Customer Paradigm found this article about why he doesn’t fear losing his job to overseas talent, and it’s a great article: http://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2011/12/why-i-will-never-feel-threatened-by-programmers-in-india/ When I first started our company, I was lured into using inexpensive overseas programmers to handle building websites, etc. What I found by hiring an all US-based team of programmers for Magento Development and php programming was that: – The code the US programmers wrote is a lot better – The programmers here in the office were at least 5 to 10 times more efficient – Turnaround times were are lot faster – Customers like being able to talk to a real programmer – Project management costs and frustrations are way down / reduced by 2 to 4 times – There’s a huge premium for having programmers sit together in an office and tackle problems efficiently. Today, we have two of our top programmers traveling to visit one of our clients in San Francisco, CA – a short 2 hour flight from here. Thanks, Alan’s Dad!

Apr 22, 2010

SEO Tip #11. Avoid Industry Jargon

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11. Avoid Industry Jargon.

One of our clients, NewStripe, makes machines which paint the lines on football and baseball fields. Within the industry, the machines are known as wet line markers (or dry line markers). But customers don’t often use these terms. Instead, a typical customer might search for: ”Machines to put stripes down on athletic field”(Newstripe.com is the #2 search result.) Or, they might search for: “painting stripes on your athletic field” (Newstripe.com is the #1 search result.)

 

Does your site copy and content reflect the language a potential customer will use in a search?

If not, a prospective customer will either (a) have to learn the industry lingo in order to find you, or (b) visit your competitor’s site. Option B is a lot more likely.

So how can you tell if your site is using too much industry jargon?

1. First, ask your current customers to take a look at your marketing materials and website. It’s a great way to engage satisfied customers without trying to sell them anything. Most people are flattered when you ask them for their opinion.

2. Second, ask someone who knows very little about your industry to read through your site, and see if they can figure out what your company does for a living. If they are confused, then it’s likely your potential customers will be confused as well.

3. Third, pay attention to how the press covers your industry. Reporters try to communicate broad ideas, and try to cut through esoteric terminology.

Mar 21, 2010

Website Mistake #3: Your Links Do Not Look Like Links

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Your Links Don’t Look Like Links

People know that on the Internet, if something is blue and underlined, it’s a link.

If a graphic says: Click here >> … you can figure out what to do pretty easily.

 

Okay, if it’s red and underlined, people can usually still figure it out. But often links may be a slight shade darker than the text. And the only way to figure out how to navigate beyond the home page of your site is to move your mouse around and try to “discover” what you’re supposed to click on.

(Taken from Inovis’s site, from their Events section) People are busy. They’re often multi-tasking. They might be on the phone with someone, or watching TV. Make sure that when someone is on your site, they don’t have to expend a lot of additional cognitive resources trying to figure out where they should go. Let them focus instead on interacting with your company.

Mar 21, 2010

One Main Message Per Email

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Most people do not send effective email messages. I know. I spend a lot of time analyzing email messages for our clients, and measuring and tracking their effectiveness. Whether you send large email newsletters or just use email to communicate with friends, colleagues and customers, following these twelve strategies will make your email more effective. So, here’s my list, compiled and crafted from years of experience and quantitative analysis of tens of millions of messages we’ve sent out for our clients:

1. One Main Message Per Email

The most effective email messages have one main idea or concept. I spent a summer as an intern at the White House, helping to read and answer the mail. The writing staff taught that the strongest messages were ones that didn’t distract people with extraneous information. I’m sure you’ve received a message from someone that has eleven different ideas and thoughts that ramble from paragraph to paragraph. So if you’re like most people (myself included), you’ll just leave this complicated message for later, and focus on another email or task that’s much easier to accomplish. Before you start writing a message, write down what you’re trying to communicate. Or at least think about your message before you start writing. The most effective messages are ones that are crisp, clear and concise.

 

2. Keep it Short

If you’re like me, the phone rings off the hook, people walk over to your desk to ask you a question, and other people are instant messaging you. And then your cell phone starts ringing. It’s enough to make anyone a bit crazy and give you Attention Deficit Disorder. Our collective attention spans are very short. People simply have too many distractions to wade through a really long email. You might think they need all of the information. But when people are faced with dense blocks of text, many people’s eyes glaze over. And then they ignore the entire message. And thus, the most effective email messages are short. Two or three short sentences in length. Perhaps a couple of bullet points. And perhaps the short message is followed by supporting material, an attachment or a link to more information on a website. Enough said. I’ll try to keep this section short.

 

3. Keep it Relevant

I believe that attention is the most important asset of any business or organization. What do I mean by this? If your messages are relevant, your recipients will pay attention to what you are trying to say. If your messaging is not relevant, however, you’re quickly going to find that your messages are filed in the “I’ll get to these later” pile. If you send email that isn’t relevant — they will quickly stop paying attention to your messages. It’s easy to get into a mentality where you want to send everything to everyone. And with email newsletters or mass broadcasts, it’s not that expensive to do. However, once someone feels your messages aren’t that important, they will simply stop reading them.

 

4. Reply Early & Reply Often

With the huge volume of spam, it’s tough to know if your message got through. Right now, four out of every five emails sent over the Internet today is spam. With so much junk, it’s easy for your message to get lost, trapped in a junk mail filter, or simply piled up in someone’s ever-expanding inbox. So you start to worry when you haven’t heard back from someone that you emailed a couple of days ago. Hmmmm, you say. Did thatperson get my message? Should I send it again? If I do, will that bug them? Am I being too pushy? So when you’re on the other side of the email message, it’s really important to reply early and reply often. What you’re doing is letting them know you (a) received the message and (b) that you care. Even if you’re not able to take action on their message right away, replying back with a quick message indicates that you’re not ignoring them. Replying early to a message could be as basic as something like this:

Bob- Thanks for sending this over. I’ll work on this later today. Thanks, Jeff

We’ve found that replying early and often dissipates a lot of anxiety and tension, and allows the person who sent you a message to know that they don’t have to worry about it.

 

5. From Line

The single most important part of an email message is the From line. If the person you’re sending to doesn’t recognize your name, your message will be at best skipped over. At worst, it will be simply deleted without opening. Most email programs show a friendly display name instead of the plain email address. The From line of your email (friendly display name) should have your full name and organization in it. For example, when I send out an email, my from line reads: Jeff Finkelstein – Customer Paradigm. When someone receives an email from me, it’s pretty clear which person named Jeff the message came from. And if they don’t know me, but know my company instead, they won’t completely ignore my message. But at least a couple of times per week I get an email that was meant for someone else named Jeff, but works at a different company. The culprit is that many people have only their first names listed in the friendly From display line. Most of the time the messages aren’t too racy, but with email programs that automatically fill in an email address when you start to type a first name, it’s easy to email the wrong person something that could be seriously career limiting.

 

6. Subject Line

After the From line, the subject line is the second most important part of an effective email. If you forget to include a subject line, your message is much more likely to go into a junk mail folder, or just not be opened. Email marketing professionals live and die by subject lines. A good subject line will sum up what the message is all about, but still entice someone to open the message, read it, and take action. Personalizing a subject line with your company’s name or the recipient’s name or other information can also lead to higher message open rates. Including the company name in the subject line can increase open rates by up to 32 percent to 60 percent over a subject line without branding. (Jupiter Research)

 

7. Personalize Each Message

Except when being called into the principal’s office, everyone likes being called by their name. In this impersonal world of email messages, people like to know that you know who they are, and that you care about them as a person. Nothing is worse than a highly demanding email that is sent without being addressed to someone by name and is out of context.

A message that starts: “Can you make these changes ASAP?” puts you on the defensive right way.

You might think: Why should I care if they are in a hurry? It’s so much nicer to have a message that begins with: “Jeff – I hope you’re doing well. I just found out that we’re going to be mentioned on the front page of The Wall Street Journal tomorrow. Can you make these changes ASAP?” Wow. I’m much more willing to help someone who personalizes the message to me, and gives me a non-threatening reason why this needs to really be done by tomorrow.

 

8. Always include your contact information

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve not returned a call promptly because I didn’t have someone’s contact information readily available. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience. Someone emails you to please call them. But they didn’t give you a phone number, and there isn’t one listed in their signature line. You then have to dig through past emails, look in your address book, Google them, and still you aren’t able to find their direct line. In this age of iPhones, Blackberries and cellphones, it’s rare that I have a phone number memorized. I know this is a simple and basic thing. But so many people don’t follow it. If you want someone to respond to you, you’ve got to make it as easy as possible for them. Same thing goes for leaving a voice mail. So many people rush through their phone number, making it virtually impossible to write down the number without having to go back and listen to their message a couple of extra times. Ideally, you should always give your phone number, say it slowly, and repeat it twice so that someone can write it down and then make sure it’s correct. Effective emails always include a signature line with contact information. You should include your contact information in every new message or every message you reply to.

 

9. Strong Call to Action

In direct marketing or email correspondence, most of the time you want someone to take a specific action when they receive your message. You might want to set up an in-person meeting, or have them click through to a website to read more. Or respond back and say, “Yes, let’s go ahead with the project.” The most effective email messages always have a strong call to action, telling the recipient what you want them to do. I’m sure you’ve received long, rambling emails from people. And by the time you get to the end, you don’t really know what you’re supposed to do (if anything). Is this a message that is just nice to read and have for future reference? Or do they want me to actually do something? Email is a low context medium. It doesn’t transmit behavioral clues like voice inflection that might otherwise indicate what you want a person to do. So it’s important to be direct and ask what you want the other person to do. It sounds basic, but it’s a key to effective email.

 

10. Paste Links & Get on the Same Page

How many times have you felt that the person receiving your email just isn’t on the same page as you? A lot of times it’s literally true. You might be thinking that they are looking at one page on a website, when in fact they are looking at something completely different. I know I’ve been frustrated by this in the past. Simple pasting a link into an email is the best strategy. Again, it seems simple, but it can mean the difference between confusion and clarity. It’s also easy to do, and takes very little time. In your browser, simply copy the website address (i.e. www.CustomerParadigm.com) and paste it into the body of the email message. On a PC, the Control-C shortcut will copy; the Control-V will paste. Sending someone the exact link to the website page you are discussing gets everyone on the same page.

 

11. Use Folders & Filters

If you’re like me and you receive a lot of email, you can use folders to store messages from different people or clients. In most email programs, you can set up automatic rules (often called filters) that will place all messages from Joe into a specific folder. That way you can review all of the messages Joe sends over to you, reply to the ones that need attention, and not have to spend the time moving the messages from the inbox to another folder when you’re finished. All of the messages addressed to info@customerparadigm.com, for example, go to a different folder that I don’t check as often, because people who send to that address are usually trying to sell me something. This one strategy has made me amazingly more efficient at dealing with the large volume of email I receive each day (usually about 950 messages per day).

 

12. Know when email doesn’t work Pick up the phone instead…

Email remains one of the primary ways that businesses communicate internally among their staff, and externally with their customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. However, make sure you recognize when email is losing its effectiveness. It’s easy to hide behind email when we don’t want to speak to a scary client or team member. I’ve been guilty of that as well when I have a million things going on. But sometimes a three minute conversation can clear up the confusion inherent in five days of back-and-forth email messages.

Aug 23, 2009

Your Cell Phone Tracks Your Every Movement

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Your Cell Phone Tracks Your Every Movement

Boulder, CO – Someday in the not-too-distant future, you’ll be visiting a new city – lost – but your cell phone company will know exactly where you are and may market products and services to you based on your location. Your cell phone is generally toted around and used by a single person: you.

 

Unless you use an expensive, pre-paid cell phone, your cell phone’s unique ID is linked to your billing information (your name, address, social security number and credit card information). Helping stranded motorists find their way is good. Helping hungry travelers find the closest vegetarian restaurant may be useful. Helping police, fire and medical personnel find accident scenes more quickly can be a lifesaver. But a hidden cost of these tracking systems is that your location-based information is recorded and saved into a file that can be searched at a later date.

 

Think divorce proceedings, criminal trials or justification to fire employees for hanging out at casinos instead of visiting customers. Imagine a line of questioning that goes something like this: “Where were you on the night of the July 25, Ms. Smith?,” a divorce lawyer asks. “According to your cell phone provider’s records, your cell phone was located at the Hideaway Hotel.” Perhaps Ms. Smith should have turned off her cell phone before the alleged rendezvous. “There are some things you don’t mind other people knowing, but your location isn’t one of them,” said Gary Laden, a privacy program director for BBBOnLine, a Better Business Bureau subsidiary. Like migratory birds with radio collars strapped to their backs, the paths of wireless-enabled, wandering humans are increasingly recorded in meticulous detail (at least everywhere they’re in decent cell phone coverage).

 

Why is your cell phone’s location tracked? More than 190 million 911 calls are placed annually, and 25 percent of those are made from a wireless phone. When you dial 911 from your landline phone, you can be certain that within minutes of your call, police, fire and medical assistance will arrive to your location. It’s fairly easy to dispatch people to your location because your house is a fixed location. But for cell phone users who dial 911, precious minutes can be wasted trying to figure out where to send emergency personnel. In a former career as an emergency medical technician (EMT), I’ve been in the dispatcher hot seat. A lot of people really don’t know where they are and are often really freaked out by the emergency situation. Telling you where they are isn’t always an easy process. The FCC has required that all U.S. cell phone companies track their cell phone customers’ location for emergency purposes. Cell phone companies, in turn, see new revenue opportunities to offset the burden of installing these complex new location-tracking systems.

 

In the past, cell phones have given us the freedom to hide. I may not want someone to know that I’m in Iowa, just that I’m available to answer their questions and solve their problems. So before you wander carefree with your cell phone in hand, know that if you really want privacy from being located and found, the “off” button may be your best option.

Feb 4, 2009

Contact Me Now option can help boost Web sales

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Q: We’re not getting any sales leads from our Web site. I know we have lots of visitors (according to our statistics program), but we’re not converting them into prospects.

A: Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer. You’re sitting in front of your computer during another hectic, crazy day. And somehow, you’re compelled to visit a company’s Web site. Perhaps an advertisement led you to the site. Perhaps you did a keyword search on Google, and the Web site came up close to the top of the results. Perhaps a business card handed to you at a networking event piques your interest, and you open a browser and type in the URL. Or perhaps you just read about the company in Front Range TechBiz and want to find out more about its products and services.

So you go to the home page of the site, click around a bit, and try to find out what the company does. You tell yourself, “I should really call them.” But then someone or something distracts you. And you close the browser, never to return. We’ve all had this happen to us. But what could your company do differently to convert the site visitor into a potential prospect?

Our research shows that a site visitor is unlikely to pick up the phone and call. Why? Your site visitor probably has one hand on the mouse and the other on the keyboard. Picking up the phone takes them away from the Web browsing experience. The last thing a visitor wants to do is to navigate through a complex voice mail phone system to try to find the right person. And many people still share one phone line for voice and Internet connectivity (believe it or not, 80 percent of the world is still on a slow dial-up connection).

People are more likely to send a quick e-mail to the info@ or sales@ e-mail address pasted throughout the Web site. But even this takes time and energy to click on a link, open a blank e-mail message, compose a subject line and write a meaningful question in the body of the message. Sending an e-mail is still a bit of a high-commitment activity, and again takes the person away from the Web-browsing experience.

We’ve found the best way to convert site visitors into leads is to place a “Contact Me Now” form on every page of your Web site. But this isn’t the 50-question interrogation form you currently have on your site. At most, you should ask for the person’s name, e-mail address and phone number, and offer a small text box for comments or questions.

Why does this work? A Contact Me Now form, placed strategically on each page of your site, doesn’t require a visitor to expend extra energy by clicking around. People are really good at typing their own name, e-mail address and phone number into a form, clicking submit, and then waiting for someone to contact them. It’s a low-involvement, low-commitment activity, and makes your company responsible to follow up with them.

A couple more tips if you decide this is something you want to do on your Web site: When someone fills out a form, make sure you send a follow-up note by e-mail, thanking them for the request. Make sure an immediate “Contact Me Now Alert” message is sent to someone at your organization for a prompt response. Do you wait for sales prospects to call you? Or do you make it as easy as possible for you to contact them? It might not sound like much of a difference, but as an old soccer coach once told me, “The ball will not come to you. You must go to the ball.”

Jan 17, 2009

45% of U.S. Population Has Email.

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The Dot-Com hype is long, long dead. And the economy is trying to shrug off a recession. Anyone who currently has a job at a technology startup is nervous. And most of the Venture Capitalists are still licking their wounds. The threat to businesses that the Internet will “change everything” carries little, if any, weight anymore. But emerging from the ashes of the dot-conomy are indications that a whole lot of people are online. Last week, the Department of Commerce released a new study showing that more than half of the nation is now online.

In September 2001, 143 million Americans (about 54 percent of the population) were using the Internet – an increase of 26 million in 13 months. According to the study, the top reason Americans go online is to check their email. In September 2001, nearly half of the population used e-mail (45.2 percent, up from 35.4 percent in 2000). Of individuals online, 84% checked email frequently. So before you write off the Web and email as not important to your company, realize that the most cost-effective marketing is to people who have already purchased something from you in the past.

The next-most cost-effective group to reach is your list of prospects – people who have expressed an interested in your company’s products and services, but for some reason, haven’t purchased anything from you. Business people should ask themselves six basic questions:

1. Does your Web site or your retail store capture email addresses from people who are interested in your products and services?

2. What have you done to follow up with these sales prospects and turn them into buyers?

3. When was the last time your company sent an opt-in email campaign to past customers?

4. Do you know the size of your email marketing database?

5. Are you treating each sale as a one-time interaction, or are you creating long-term customers?

6. Have you ever used email to get rid of overstocked inventory in a hurry?

Web sites are like retail stores – they are destination locations, and require a prospect or customer to make a conscious effort to type in a website address or get in a car to visit your store. Email is an elastic medium that reaches out to people’s email inboxes and allows you to ‘snap’ them back to your business. Many people prefer email communications rather than voicemail, or even having to meet in person. People type slower than they can speak. But an email recipient can read e-mail faster than a phone conversation or a face-to-face meeting.

Email is a lower context medium, and is mostly limited to text and graphics (audio and video are available, but 80% of the population is still on slower, dial-up Internet access). People are generally willing to read messages that seem relevant, because they can typically read them quickly and know that a lot of effort usually went into a message and is therefore a set of composed, articulate thoughts.

You typically don’t go to a newsstand to purchase all of the magazines you’re interested in reading. Magazine publishers allow readers to subscribe to the publications so that the information may be pushed to their postal mailbox each week or month. Email newsletters and information is no different. Email allows businesses to instantly push relevant content to readers at a fraction of the cost of printing and mailing paper-based information.

Apr 23, 2008

Restart the Apache HTTPD Webserver Web Service from Crontab Each Day

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Server Hygiene Tip: Does your server seem to need you to go in every few days and restart the Apache Web Service via SSH or your control panel? If so, you might want to consider an automated solution.

Each night at 1:00 am, you can have a simple script run that restarts the Apache Web Server Service (httpd) automatically. This will help clean out any out-of-control processes and make the server run a lot faster.

Please note that this may not work on all servers. Please proceed at your own risk. Please also note that this fix may kick off legitimate visitors on your site if they are doing something at 1:00 am. If you’d like us to help you with this, we can help on an hourly basis (fill out the contact form at the bottom of the page).

Restart Apache via CronTab each day: Add this Crontab entry onto your server (this will run the script every day at 1:00 am server time): 0 1 * * * /root/scripts/restarthttpdservice.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

Here’s the contents of the file, restarthttptdservice.sh: #!/bin/sh/etc/init.d/httpd stop /etc/init.d/httpd start

This should do it. Good luck!

Mar 29, 2008

Port 25 Block Workaround for your Linux Server

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If you are having your outgoing email blocked by ISPs like Comcast that perform port 25 blocks, or can’t send out through your server because you’re at a wi-fi location, this fix may be for you.

Please note that this may not work on all servers. Please proceed at your own risk. Please also note that this fix may not work if the server is rebooted in some cases (you’ll have to do it again).

If you’d like us to help you with this, we can help on an hourly basis (fill out the contact form at the bottom of the page).

Port 25 Block – Server Fix: What you want to do is basically map an alternative port (say 625) to the normal port 25 process. Your ISP or wi-fi location is unlikely to block traffic from an obscure port. Here’s the command (again, we recommend extreme caution, as you can blow up a server easily with a typoooo or mistake): SSH into the server using a program like Putty.

SSH Terminal Session (logged in as root): iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp –dport 565 -j DNAT –to-destination :25

This should do it. Good luck!

Mar 23, 2008

Restarting Services on a Linux server from command line

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If you have a slow server, sometimes restarting these services from the command line can clear up all of the issues.

Here’s the easy process: Please use caution when doing this… you could break things if you’re not careful.

Log into the command line via SSH, and then type in each of these commans and press enter. The system will display information on restarting the services on the Linux command line: /etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail restart /etc/rc.d/init.d/xinetd restart

/etc/rc.d/init.d/syslog restart /etc/rc.d/init.d/poprelay restart /etc/rc.d/init.d/named restart

/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysqld restart /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart /etc/rc.d/init.d/webppliance restart

/etc/rc.d/init.d/MailScanner restart /etc/rc.d/init.d/proftpd restart

Please use caution when doing this… you could break things if you’re not careful.

Mar 23, 2008

Removing all root emails from your Linux Server from the command line

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If you have a bunch of emails stuck on your Linux server for the root user, here’s an easy process to remove the root user’s email from the system. Please use caution when doing this… you could break things if you’re not careful.

First, see how many messages you have: mail (This will display how many messages you have).

Press q to quit the mail application: q From the command line.

You’ll next want to go to the location of the mail spool: cd /var/spool/mail/ First, rename / backup the file: cp root root_bak.

Remove the root mail file: rm root Answer Y at the prompt: Y.

Then, you’ll need to recreate the file: touch root Type in mail again to see how many messages you have: mail.

Please use caution when doing this… you could break things if you’re not careful.

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