Dootch » Luke

New website – eCommerce Economy

Luke — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:23:35 +0000

Hi Everyone, Just letting you know I’ve built a new website where I’m sharing all of my information on building websites, internet marketing and online business. It’s called eCommerce Economy. Check it out! Cheers, Luke Related posts:Make sure you have a phone number on your website 8 questions in an ecommerce conversation Top 8 reasons [...] Related posts:

Why you shouldn’t trust inexperienced web designers

Luke — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 06:11:03 +0000

An old client of mine contacted me today in an utter panic.

When I worked for him, we got his site to #1 for a pretty competitive keyword, and we also setup an Adwords campaign for him.

A few months ago, they asked me to quote on a redesign for their site. I submitted a quote, and apparently so did the 19yo grandson of the boss.

Well the bosses grandson won.

Over the last few months, the new site was made, and a few days ago it launched.

So the e-mail I received today was to the effect of: “Our site is nowhere on Google! Our organic listings and Adwords have dissapeared. Now I’m getting blamed from my boss for not having any sales!”

So I investigated the issue, and what I found was this line in the code in the new website:

For those that don’t know, this line tells Google that it shouldn’t keep this page in it’s index.

The Adwords issue turned out to be that the landing pages were removed, and the ads were disapproved accordingly.

This is why good web designers are important.

Making a website is relatively easy.

It’s the extra stuff that newbies will mess up.

They don’t pay attention to detail
They don’t understand important issues (like the noindex one!)
They don’t take the time to make sure the integration will be seemless (like forgetting pages that were used as landing pages?)

My client said it best:

I’ve always trusted your work and advice, but times are tough with us and why i couldn’t get you to do the website last time. But now we’re learning from the mistake because it was done by an amateur!!

Calendar template and css for CGCalendar

Luke — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:21:30 +0000

Someone asked me for the calendar template that we used for Sun Country on the Murray so I thought I would post it here.

Download the CGCalendar template here

CGCalendar is a calendar module for CMSMS.

To get it to work, copy the contents of “Calendar Display Template.txt” into the “Calendar Templates” template. And add a stylesheet with the contents of “Calendar CSS.txt”, and attach it to your template.

How to setup a template in CMSMS

Luke — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:25:19 +0000

A quick checklist on how to convert a static site to a CMS Made Simple powered site:

Install CMSMS (instructions here)
Add in the template and enter all the tags
Add in the stylesheets
Link the stylesheet to the template
Add the pages
Create the menu template
Done!

“This category is empty” message in CMSMS Products module

Luke — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:46:06 +0000

I have a site where I’m using the products module. The company I’m doing it for runs specials every now and then, and wants them to show up as a page on the site. So what I did was create a category “specials”, and when a product is in that, it shows up on the products page.

However, as far as I know, there’s no default functionality to give a “This category is empty” message if there are no products in a category. And also, if a category is empty, the products module doesn’t render the template, so you can’t put some logic in there to display a “this category is empty” message.

So with a little bit of Smarty, this is how it’s done.

{capture assign="is_empty"}{Products category="Specials" summarytemplate="specials"}{/capture} {if $is_empty != ''}{Products category="Specials" summarytemplate="specials"}{else}There are no specials on right now.{/if}

TinyMCE config for when non-technical people will be using it

Luke — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:33:14 +0000

So I’m working on a project where people that are completely computer illiterate will be using a WYSIWYG box. I didn’t want them pasting from word and it keeping all the messy html from word. I found this config to work very well.

tinyMCE.init({ mode : "textareas", theme : "advanced", plugins : "paste", editor_selector : "mceEditor", forced_root_block : false, force_br_newlines : true, force_p_newlines : false, theme_advanced_buttons1 : "bold,italic,underline,separator,bullist,numlist,separator,link,unlink,separator,code,pastetext", theme_advanced_buttons2 : false, theme_advanced_buttons3 : false, apply_source_formatting : false, paste_auto_cleanup_on_paste : true, paste_remove_styles : true, paste_remove_spans : true, paste_text_sticky : true,


			setup : function(ed)

	        {    ed.onInit.add(function(ed)

	            {    ed.pasteAsPlainText = true;

	                ed.controlManager.setActive("pastetext", true);

	            });

	           }

});

More info about the paste as plain text stuff.

Serving a different image for each page in CMSMS

Luke — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:41:09 +0000

In one of the sites I’m working on, there is a large featured image that is different for each product page, but is the same for the rest of the pages on the site.

Heres how I did it.

1. In each page where you need a different featured image, go to the options tab, and set the Image variable

2. This variables is accessible in the menu manager as $node->image. To use them in a template, you can use the tag {page_image}. However, I needed to be able to check if there was an image because if there is no image set, I wanted to be able to have a default image. Since {page_image} is a tag and not a variable, you can’t just do isset(page_image). Instead, you first need to assign it’s output to an image.

You can do that like this:

{capture name="is_page" assign='is_page_image'}{page_image}{/capture}

3. Now that we have a variable, we can check if the page we’re on has an image, and then display the image. If it doesn’t, we can display our default image.

{if ($is_page_image ne '')} {else} {/if}

4. Done! Now on each page, the page image is displayed, and if there isn’t one, a default image is displayed.

Super fast responses and happy customers

Luke — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:35:07 +0000

I remember in uni, we had a topic about “expectations”. Firstly, through marketing communications, the marketer sets the expectation for the product or service.

If you deliver on the expectations, the customer is satisfied.

If you under deliver on expectations, the customer is dissatisfied.

If you over deliver on expectations, the customer is pleased, happy, sometimes even ecstatic.

So the point I’m getting at is that buyers have an in built set of expectations. This set comes from past experiences they’ve had with other companies. For example, as a buyer, an in built expectation I have when hiring an Indian programmer is that they will do the least possible work required to get their money. So if I find one that isn’t like that, I’ll be very happy.

Another example is, when you ring into a big company, you expect it to be a pain in the arse, that you’ll have to wait on hold, that you’ll have to navigate at least 3 menus. So when you have an experience where you speak to someone in 3 rings and they can help you, you get happy.

And so it is with email response times too. People have an expectation of receiving a response in a certain time frame.

My experience is, people don’t have high expectations on response times. If I had to guess, it would be that people expect a response in about 8 hours.

So you see where I’m going. All you have to do to give a customer a warm fuzzy, is to answer emails quickly.

Over the last month or so, at Photography Orders I’ve made an extra effort to answer all emails as soon as possible.

The effect has been quite interesting.

A majority of recipients have made a good comment about the quick response. It might be like “thanks for the quick response!”. (no worries)

But what was also cool was that those warm fuzzes directly translated over into product satisfaction.

When I answered someone quickly, they were more likely to send unsolicited good feedback about the product. And not just straight away, but over time as well. The product experience plays a bigger role in satisfaction than the actual product.

I should mention here that I haven’t done statistical testing on it, and that these are just my observations.

The main point I’m trying to make is this.

People have in built expectations
Exceeding expectations is the key to euphoric customers
Super fast responsiveness blows away these in built expectations and results in happier customers

Agree? Disagree? Am I stating the obvious? Let me know in the comments

The recipe for being right: Squeeze out the belief from a cup of evidence

Luke — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:34:23 +0000

I was talking to someone today and the conversation touched on the topic of poker. I played a lot of poker during my uni years and while I wasn’t earning massive amounts off it, I made over 30k in about 2 years.

Without knowing my background, the person I was talking to said something to the effect of “isn’t poker gambling? you always lose at gambling”. I said “no, in poker you can win because you don’t play against the house, you play against other players.”

She looked at me as if to think I was crazy. She couldn’t get past the concept that gambling isn’t always losing.

The point is this: Thinking something doesn’t make it true. Believing something strongly doesn’t make it true.

Truth lies behind evidence. Truth lies in the facts.

Everyone has things they believe which are wrong. Right people are just better at updating their knowledge when they’re proven wrong. Just look at scientists. A scientist will throw out a lifetimes worth of work with glee if it helped someone else to prove them wrong and further human understanding.

So next time someone tells you something that sounds utterly absurd, just quickly think, “why and how”. Also think about “why and how” you believe the opposite. You never know, you might learn something that’s true.

Recent reading: Thoughts on “Rework” and “Click”

Luke — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:34:36 +0000

Reading books is something i love doing and wish I would do more of.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been in a bit of a reading frenzy and read 37 Signals’ new book Rework by Jason Friend and David Heinemeier Hanson and “Click” by Ori and Rom Brafman and I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you.

Rework

Rework is a collection of essays on running a business. The main point in the book is “Don’t worry what other people think or do, do what is best and what makes sense”.

I’m a massive fan of 37 Signals and of the ideas they put forward. I totally love what they do and how they write. I think the book is worth the read just to give you some time to think about the way you currently do things.

However, being a huge fan of 37 signals is kind of a bad thing for this book. If you read all the blog posts, there’s not much new material here.

I got two main benefits out of it. Firstly, it’s all collated and in a good format. Secondly, it’s very inspirational. It makes me want to start doing things as soon as I finish the book.

Go read it.

Click

Click is a book about why you instantly click with some people, but can’t do any better than an awkward conversation with other people.

I heard of Click after watching this interview on Mixergy with Ori Brafman (the author).

I liked the way the book was set out (very similar to the format of Malcom Gladwell’s books), and I really liked how the concept of “clicking” was broken down into it’s components. For example, one component of “clicking” with another person is “vulnerability”. When you trust someone with something you could be hurt about, it helps build an instant bond.

The book breaks each component down into a number of examples, and explores each one in detail.

I thought it was an ok book. It wasn’t as captivating or inspiring as Rework, but still worth a read.