I have gone through the process of changing one of my clients over to Flo2Cash payment gateway from PayPal and wanted to report on their reaction. ‘Absolutely delighted‘ and ‘Fantastic‘ and ‘This is saving me so much time!‘ are just some of the comments from Gina Roberts of Soapcraft.

When I was telling her about Flo2Cash she wasn’t totally convinced at first, thinking that Paypal was more cost effective. I did a comparison from a couple of months trading of what she was paying in fees to PayPal and what the cost for Flo2Cash would be and she was very surprised at how much she would be saving. PayPal has some hidden costs from transactions from people who are not PayPal customers themselves and that actually drives up the cost quite a bit.

Installing and migrating to Flo2Cash was not a big drama. Soapcraft is using CubeCart as the shopping cart and there wasn’t an interface with Flo2Cash for the version I had installed, but a developer associate of mine, Ian of Havenswift-hosting.co.uk who specialises in e-commerce and CubeCart in particular was able to code the necessary interface without any fuss at all.

Once to changeover was complete we were on stand-by for any customer issues – but there were none!  Everything went exceptionally smoothly I’m pleased to report. One thing Gina really loves about Flo2Cash is the ability to take credit card payments via an app on her iPhone, so if her customers drop into the factory to pick up some goods she can get the payment there and then without any fuss.

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Transacting payments over the internet has become more commonplace today, from the first online shop in 1994 (research from Wikipedia) to the multi-billion dollar business it is today (see PayPal’s quarterly results).  The public seems to be more confident about buying stuff online despite the phishing scams and fraud which also has increased exponentially.

As a web developer I have a number of clients with online stores and one of the issues that they face is getting their customers through the online payments checkout process as smoothly as possible. Cart abandonment is when the shopper fills up their cart and them does not proceed all the way with the sale. So getting the confidence and trust of our shoppers is a priority and there are a number of elements that need to covered to make a successful online shop.  This article addresses one of them, payment gateways.

Payment Gateways

Most of my clients use PayPal as it is easy to set up and reasonably priced, however from the point of view of the shopper they get to the checkout and if they are not familiar with PayPal they baulk.  It is not immediately obvious that you don’t have to be a Paypal member and that you can pay using a credit card.  Also if you are a frequent visitor to the shop and do not have a PayPal account you will have to fill in your details over and over again to pay by credit card. This gets annoying. So I have been looking for a viable alternative to offer my clients and am pleased to say that I have found it! New Zealand’s very own Flo2Cash.

Flo2Cash – Why They Are So Cool

I decided to partner with Flo2Cash recently after meeting with Roger Wang (the CEO) and learning more about the company and the products they offer.  Not only are they a payment gateway for online shops, they have a direct debit product and the totally awesome product which accepts payments over your mobile device! Their pricing is very competitive and I was particularly impressed with the fact that Flo2Cash handles the merchant side of things with the bank – so you are dealing with one company, not the company AND your merchant facility with your bank.

I have just done a test transaction on my iPad and all I have to say is “Wow!

Here is some info in their own words:

Introduction

Flo2Cash makes taking online credit card and direct debit payments quick, safe and easy.

Quick: Flo2Cash can have you setup to accept payments in just 3 working days.

Safe: Flo2Cash is PCI certified as a Level 1 Processor, an international standard that means you can trade with confidence.

Easy: You only need to complete one application to get everything you need to accept payments online. A Flo2Cash facility includes a merchant facility, paperless direct debit facility and payment gateway. There’s no need to deal with the Bank or payment gateway providers.

More on Credit Card Payments

Whether you need to take payments online through a shopping cart, ongoing payments from a credit/debit card or bank account, one-off payments over the phone/in person or allow your customers to pay for an invoice online or by IVR phone, Flo2Cash can help. The Flo2Cash payment suite allows you to process payments at virtually any location, now, and in the future. By offering more payment options, you can be paid quicker – improving your cash flow, or make it easier to make a sale. With real-time payment processing, no paperwork and automatic reporting you can also reduce your administration costs.

More on Direct Debit Payments

A Flo2Cash Direct Debit facility puts you in more control. They are more likely to be accepted as a payment method by your customers where billing is regular or installment payments are widely accepted. Flo2Cash not only can issue you a direct debit facility but also automate the processing of a direct debit schedule for you, taking away most of your processing and reconciliation costs. With paperless Direct Debits, Flo2Cash enables you to accept a direct debit instruction online or by phone, making the sales process much quicker and simpler, with less paperwork and associated costs.

Check out their website and if you are keen on finding out more give me a call.  As a reseller I can help with getting you set up and making sure you have all the right information to make the transition as smooth as possible.

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I am moved to wax lyrical about a website I have just visited – and no, it is not one of mine.  It is not even coded in my ‘platform of choice’ WordPress, but in Drupal.  Never-the-less, I was so impressed that I wanted to share what I liked about it. (I will let you know the URL at the end.) I thought it was a brilliant website for three simple reasons:

1. Functionality – this website really did what it set out to do.  I went there for a particular purpose, and it helped my get what I wanted – specific information and assistance – with the minimum of fuss.  There were no layers of sub menus to trawl through and no confusing clutter.
2. Technically slick. No nasty Flash (a whole article could be dedicated to why I hate Flash) but beautiful jQuery animations that were smooth and sexy and back to point 1 – functional.  No animations were there just for window dressing. They helped assist the visitor through the process.
3. Designed by angels.  Loved the colour scheme and the layout. Very pleasing on the eye. While this is not the number one criteria it usually happens that if a site has the first 2 points right they get this one horribly wrong and if they get this one right the others are not in attendance.

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I have been doing some reading on the effectiveness of email marketing – or sending out newsletters via email- and was surprised at how it stacked up against social network profiles and optimising websites for organic search. Here are some facts and figures for those who like to read them. Email Marketing Reports.Com E-consultancy.com with a paper on Email Marketing Census 2011.

Why it surprised me is the amount of spam in my inbox is exasperating at times as I sit there going delete delete delete. However, and this is the key, the newsletters that I want to read are very welcome.  I have my favourites that come like a free magazine subscription, and I read them over my morning tea.  Even the ones that I delete without reading I don’t unsubscribe from as they may have something interesting at some point, like a special offer, and so I keep them on even though they go largely unread.

The beauty of email marketing – when it is legitimate (more on this in a minute) – is that it keeps your brand in front of your prospects. Prospective clients may not need your services today, but in six months when they do – you want them to remember and call you. This is the very simple secret of why this type of marketing works.

What do I mean when I say ‘legitimate’? Governments have been legislating to prevent spam or unsolicited email marketing and although each country has its own laws, in general terms it is about the recipients ability to opt in or opt out of the marketing that legitimises it. If I opt into receiving updates that means I am interested.  If I know I can unsubscribe at any time it gives me the feeling that I am in control.  I hate getting emails that I can’t unsubscribe from and I do report spam through a service called spamcop.net.  (Here is a handy reference to decide what is spam and what is not when you send out your emails.)

In conclusion it seems clear that email marketing, when done right, is very effective and is certainly cost effective. Watch for upcoming articles with tips on how to get your email marketing working for you.

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3 Popular Misconceptions

WordPress is becoming one of the most widely used website platforms these days with over 25 million installs. Just to clarify, I’m not talking about the blogging site WordPress.com which is a way for people to sign up for a free blog on Automattic’s servers. I am talking about the WordPress software one installs and creates a website within ones own server environment, sometimes referred to as ‘self hosted WordPress’.  Some major players are now using WordPress such as CNN and The New York Times. An excellent article on why WordPress is such a good solution can be found here.

The sharp eyed will notice that WordPress is free! That is the software is free, however the installation and set up may not be.  I have read a lot of articles about ‘How To Set Up WordPress’, the 5 minute install, etc etc and while that is true there are some misconceptions, and a lot of people go horribly wrong at this point.

1. WordPress can be installed at the click of a button. Hosts that have a push button install fail to mention the security issues that surround a web programme like WordPress.  True you could choose to do that one minute, one button cures all approach, but with the number of hack attacks against PHP sites, it is strongly advised that an install procedure includes ‘hardening‘ methods to prevent hacking.
2. Once installed you can choose a free theme and away you go. WPMU.org has written an excellent article on why you shouldn’t use free WP themes, I recommend reading it. Basically the upshot was that 8 out of 10 of the top free themes in a Google search contained malware.  The WP file structure is so large and complex it is often difficult to track down where malicious code is, and having found it you need a php developer to clean it up. PHP code is such that a misplaced space or an extra comma can shut down a site completely. The code is unforgiving.
3. You can easily get help in the forums. Yes and no to this one. If you understand code and are willing to learn php code and read the Codex, then yes, help is at hand. But if you are a complete newbie then there is no hand holding to walk you through your first steps. With 25 million installs there are not enough volunteer helpers to hand hold anyone. Expect to learn, and keep on learning. There are other blogs dedicated to helping, but finding which are good and which are useless is also time consuming.

So while the software maybe free, unless you have the time to learn quite a lot about how the code works you will get stuck pretty quickly when you want to make any little changes to the basic theme. And as far as customisation goes, you could spend months scratching your head over the so called easy to customise options such as Headway themes.

The Answer

Use a WordPress developer to build your site and then take over the reigns.  (Alirat does offer an excellent training resource to their clients). Once built, the back end of WP is pretty easy to use. Stay friendly with that developer in case anything bad happens, such as your site being hacked, or a Plugin failing with one of the many upgrades.  Best of all have an ongoing service agreement with your developer so that they take care of updates and keep regular backups. It will save you money in the long run.

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BundleHunt 5 Now on Sale with Unprecedented Value for Designers and Creatives

What follows is a press release – but just on a personal note, I really recommend ColorSchemer App – I use it all the time.Shame that I already have a licence – but the value of the rest of the bundle made up for that!

BundleHunt has begun its two weeklong software bundle sale of some of the hottest apps for Mac OS X / WIN OS and an awesome set of design goodies.

The software bundle includes 7 Mac apps and 9 great quality Design resources. The retail value of all the items is over $450. The bundle is selling for $49.99, at a 89% discount. There’s some great apps here that almost anyone should find tempting including LaunchBar, ColorSchemer Studio 2, WriteRoom.

The bundle is now on offer over the next two weeks and expires on Sept 22nd, 2011. The applications within the bundle are all latest release versions from the developers.

This bundle not only saves you big money but also could win you a $500 in Cash once you join the referral program. For more information, visit this page: http://bundlehunt.com/affiliate

BundleHunt 5 Package includes 11 items with an incredible discount:

1. LaunchBar Mac OS X (priced at $35) – A smart and powerful, keyboard driven productivity utility that lets you access and control every aspect of your digital life. Whatever you want to get done on your Mac – with LaunchBar it’s only a few keystrokes away.
2. ColorSchemer Studio 2 Mac OS X / Win OS (priced at $50) – Use ColorSchemer Studio to identify color harmonies for the web (RGB) or print (CMYK), create palettes from photos, mix colors, create gradient blends, and more…
3. WriteRoom Mac OS X (priced at $25) – A full screen writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you’re used to, WriteRoom lets you just focus on writing.
4. Seamless Studio Mac OS X / Win OS (priced at $49) – A desktop Mac / PC app that makes it super simple to design great-looking vector patterns for all kinds of web, print, craft, fabric, & design projects.
5. Divvy Mac OS X / Win OS (priced at $14) – Divvy is an entirely new way of managing your workspace. It allows you to quickly and efficiently “divvy up” your screen into exact portions.
6. SmashingMagazine e-books (priced at $30) – Included are the latest 4 E-books in Smashingmagazine store: Mastering CSS for Web Developers, Modern Web Design & Development, Professional Workflow Package, Mastering Photoshop, Vol. 2. The 4 e-books are available as PDF, ePUB, Mobipocket.
7. Tumult Hype Mac OS X (priced at $30) – Create beautiful animated and interactive web contact with Tumult Hype! Its HTML5 output works on all modern browsers and mobile devices like iPhones and iPads. No coding required.
8. Xslimmer Mac OS X (priced at $15) – The friendly way to right-size your apps without losing functionality. Xslimmer not only frees space wasted by unused code, it can even increase your Mac’s performance.
9. Geomicons (priced at $16) – Hand Crafted Icons for User Interface Designers. 315 royalty-free vector icons in EPS format, built on a grid and sharing the same visual language.
10. ThemeTrust WordPress themes (priced at $147) – are offering 3 WordPress Themes (3 themes of your Choice) with Standard license. All themes come with custom options and widgets that allow you to make changes with ease.
11. TN3 Gallery (priced at $37) – TN3 Gallery is a full fledged HTML based customizable image gallery with slideshow, transitions and multiple album options. Powered by jQuery.

For a great selection of utilities at a great price, check out the BundleHunt 5 Creativity Bundle.

The sale ends on midnight, EST, SEPT 22. For more information, visit bundlehunt.com.

Alirat Website Design

What makes a good website great? Is it increased traffic to the site? Is it visitor engagement? Is it increased turnover? It is none of these things, although all of these items help toward the one goal we look for in a successful business. The best websites will increase your bottom line.

Isn’t increased turnover increasing your bottom line? No it isn’t. Picture this. You have a shiny new website and you want to get people to come and visit it. So you buy AdWords, or other Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. You pay to be listed in the best online directories. You spend hours of precious time (remember that time=money) and you have success! Thousands of visitors! Fanatastic! Or is it? Your web site is humming, but the sales are stagnant. And you have spent all that money on advertising – net result your bottom line is actually suffering!

So you try the social network way. You have a FaceBook Page. You have a full time Twitterer reaching out to the masses. Hundreds come and ‘Like’ your Facebook Page and you have jolly conversations with your new found cyber-tweeting buddies. But sales are still dragging. And all your staff spend all day on social networking sites looking at Lolcats. Bottom line reduced – hairline recedes. Not good.

What do you need from your website? Well yes you need visitors, but be careful not to pay too much for those visitors. Have a look at your conversion rate. For every 100 visitors how many convert into a sale? What is the value of that sale? These are the numbers to crunch and this is the strategic information that needs to be gleaned. This is the gold.

If you have a high conversion rate then the value of AdWords or PPC advertising is clear. If your conversion is a little more subtle then you need to really think about what your goals and strategies are. Is your website a branding exercise where the site reinforces the brand image and core values of your company. If this is the case then perhaps PPC advertising is too costly.

When designing a website – the function of the site must be defined clearly. Not all websites are the same or have the same goals. Consult a professional This is what we do – and we are only too happy to help.

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I get asked this question a lot. First, what is a  Facebook “Fan Page”?  When you have a “Page” in Facebook (that is a marketing page for your business) people who ‘like’ the page then get your updates when you post as your page.  A “Fan Page” is the page a first time visitor lands on.  This should be your conversion message to get them to “like” your page.  As an ongoing strategy you should also have a plan to engage your fans to ensure they keep receiving your messages.

So how to get one.  There are a great many products in the marketplace, with a variety of costs attached. I have seen products as high as $1,000 a month although I could not see any super fantastic value in that particular product.  Also a great many sell a subscription rather than a one off cost.  There is an advantage to the subscription model, and that is that FB often changes the API (or the rules around application development) and any service that you use has to be up to date or your Fan Page will disappear.  I also recommend using a service from people that have a lot of experience in this field, and who specialise in this type of marketing. Have a look at their examples and do some Googling. It’s interesting that people’s forum discussions, especially problems arising, come up in Google searches around specific products.

As a side note, my thoughts on marketing through Facebook are that while it is important to be market where the audience is and the audience is definitely in Facebook today, that may not be the case forever. Trends come and go, Myspace, Facebook, Google+ etc. I recommend that the foundation of a company’s online presence be their own website. After all, you can totally control your own website and are not at the mercy of an ever changing environment.  Make your marketing flexible and go with the flow.

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Are New Zealand businesses losing out because of the lack of a website? MYOB Business Monitor recently published a report  showing that businesses with websites are performing better. Here is the link to that report. The report is a pdf and is dated July 2011 – it is at the top of the list at the time of writing.

The report states that:

Businesses with a website are performing better. Businesses with a website have consistently higher revenue performance, more work in their sales pipeline and are more optimistic about future prospects.

There is a lot of really interesting material in the report and I recommend downloading the pdf and having a good read. What I find quite alarming is that of the over 66% of businesses not having a website half of them do not think a website would benefit their business! The figures in this report quite clearly show the opposite, businesses with websites have consistently higher revenue performance.

It is true that a large proportion of websites that I am commissioned to do are businesses with an existing site that has become outdated, or have a developer who is no longer around to maintain the site.

When you look at the cost of a website – and it is a one off cost with a very small ongoing cost for hosting and maintenance – it is a small price to pay for the coverage, and branding opportunity. A website is the ‘front door’ of the business, often the first place of contact for a prospective customer. An unprofessional looking website just turns people away and no website at all loses who know how many sales! What is more when your potential customer is looking for a product and service and doesn’t find you – they find your competitor. Such is the nature of Search.

Alirat Website Design

People today want to manage their own website, and it seems a good idea – on the surface.  I get a lot of calls for little updates and tweaks on people’s sites and much as I love my clients it does break into the day a bit. On their side they hate getting the little bills from me!  I’m not saying I’m not available – far from it! But people kind of like being in charge of their own stuff. What many people don’t realise, though,  is that there are many pitfalls to running your own website – because they don’t understand what websites are.  Here are some simple rules to help you come to grips with your own website.

Rule #1 – Websites are not Word Documents

All websites are code, html, css and php, with some scripting languages like jquery and ajax thrown in. Forget about the difficult stuff and stick to understanding the first two – html and css. Now you don’t have to learn these coding languages to be able to manage your website through a CMS like WordPress, or Pulse or whatever CMS your web designer has set up for you, but it is important to understand the limitations to a non-coder.  If you do come across a website management system that appears to let you drag and drop things around the screen (Squarespace springs to mind) it is because a truckload of coding has gone on behind the scenes. Mostly you are limited in what you can actually edit. For example the menus can’t be moved around from the place the designer or builder has put them.

The placement of the layout is controlled by CSS code which is a site-wide way of setting the styling. (CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets). Some designers will build in a couple of colour schemes and make separate CSS files for each style so that the user can just click a button to change the colours.  This does give the impression in some cases that it is quite easy and quick to change colour schemes – but it is because of the coding behind the scenes.

Images behave differently.  In a website you can do 4 things with an image. It can float left (text will flow around it while it sits to the left of the space it is in), it can float right (again with the text flowing around it) or it can sit in the middle with white space at either side (no text flow).  It can be in the background. This is a lot different to the many options for text flow in a Word document.  To get around the limitations, web designers make changes to the images – sizing them and adding white space etc. The appearance of images can be enhanced using CSS for borders, and shadows etc.  WordPress does give users the opportunity to apply some styling to individual images, but mainly the styling is handled with CSS on a site-wide basis.

CSS also controls the appearance of fonts, the paragraph style and the heading styling. Which brings me to…

Rule #2 – Websites Need to Obey The Rules of The Web

Because websites are read by many different browsers (each with many different versions) on many different operating systems (Mac, PC, Linux etc) there are certain “rules” in html that are set down to enable the greatest accessibility to the largest number of people. I won’t go into the W3 Consortium or any of that stuff, but suffice to say there are sets of rules that html must adhere to validate. There are different versions of html and I really don’t want to get bogged down in this.

Breaking the rules in html won’t stop your website from working – but it won’t do you any favours. Your site might look ok on your browser but completely fall to pieces on another.  So what has this got to do with your managing your site?

Well fonts are a good example.  There are about 7 web safe fonts that can be used with confidence. And deciding on which fonts are to be used is best dealt with in the CSS not what we call ‘inline’. (Actually now that Google has the webfont API there are hundreds of cool fonts – but the code needs to be set up for them).  Too often I see people either cutting and pasting from a Word document into their visual editor (the box where you can edit your content) or trying to force their content to have different typefaces. I know that iWeb lets you choose any and all fonts on your computer, but don’t. Trust me on this one.

Styling in your visual editor also makes use of a box which tells you whether your text is paragraph text of a Heading 1, a Heading 2, a blockquote, etc.  It is very important to use this for a couple of reasons. One is SEO – the search engines want to know what your page is about so they look for a Heading 1,  h1, and there should only be one, and the Heading 2, h2, tags which tell them what the sections are about. The second reason is that the CSS is tied to those definitions to to pick up the correct styling you need to follow along with the plan, man.

#3 – Never Ever Copy and Paste From a Word Document

In WordPress there are buttons to use which strip out Word’s formatting. Best thing to do is use a non-formatted text editor and paste from that. One thing that can go badly wrong is getting curly quotes or the foolishly named “smart quotes” in amongst the text. Then all sorts of weird characters pop up.  I swear curly quotes are straight from the devil.

Alirat Website Design