The Cart Blog

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Latest Dilbert Book

Filed under: Books — thatsoftwareguy @ 7:20 am


Stick to drawing comics, monkey brains!

Scott Adams is a genius. Just ask him. If you haven’t read his latest book yet, you need to read it immediately; any delay will markedly reduce your quality of life.

Seriously, this semi-autobiographical work by Adams about creating Dilbert, marriage, work and life was good fun and worth the time.

In other Dilbert news, I was disappointed to read that Scott will be reducing his blogging frequency. Hopefully he’ll get bored and change his mind.

Miami Herald columnist Richard Pachter provides an interesting review of the book, along with comments from other readers.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

What does the CBO’s latest tax report show?

Filed under: Economics — thatsoftwareguy @ 8:08 am

The CBO just released its report on Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates for years up to 2005 (latest available data). It shows several interesting things:

  1. The top quintile of Americans is getting richer much faster than the bottom (Paul Krugman). In terms of calculus, the first derivative of income growth increases with income. You must go to sheet 2C to see this.
  2. The top quintile is paying the majority of the income tax (Greg Mankiw, Wall Street Journal).
  3. The regressivity of Social Insurance payments has increased since 1979. Bottom quintile taxpayers have seen a 53% increase; top quintile taxpayers have only had an 11% increase (my analysis).

So in other words, the narratives of both John Edwards – who says workers are paying most of the taxes – and Mitt Romney – who says this is the greatest economy ever – are wrong.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Usability suggestions from Virtual Hosting.com

Filed under: Cart Design — thatsoftwareguy @ 7:12 am

Amy from VirtualHosting.com sent me their site’s latest post, called Holiday Cash: 50+ Ways to Optimize Your Website for Christmas Conversions. I really enjoyed it – there are a few very innovative ideas for your business in this post. My favorites were:

  • #32 (Don’t end the cross sell at the transaction) – we have discussed this topic before here.
  • #44 (Create a sense of urgency) – the idea of a “good until” date is something I’d like to add to my Zen Cart™ discounting software.
  • #42 (Offer alternate ordering methods) – I’m a huge fan of putting contact information on every page, especially the checkout pages.

Thank you, Amy and VirtualHosting.com!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Mini-carts in CMS systems

Filed under: Cart-less selling — thatsoftwareguy @ 6:17 am

I’ve seen a couple of interesting posts on this topic lately – this one for Drupal and this one for WordPress.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Shopping with a purpose

Filed under: Charity,Social Networking — thatsoftwareguy @ 7:40 am

This article from Brandweek was interesting in its own right as a validation of the importance of Social Networking to e-Tailers – but what I found particularly interesting was this quote:

One of every three consumers said they would be more likely to buy a product or service if they knew that a certain amount of the purchase price was being donated directly to a cause or campaign.

Seems like a fairly straightforward feature to add to a shopping cart, but I haven’t seen it before. Maybe That Software Guy will add it to Zen Cart.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Link Building

Filed under: SEO — thatsoftwareguy @ 6:39 am

I enjoyed this article on link building from SearchEngineWatch.   It seems that all of the link exchange proposals I receive have a spammy feel, so I generally just give them a quick glance before deletion. If they were well-written value propositions, as Jennifer suggests, I would take them more seriously.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Mashable Social Shopping Awards

Filed under: Social Networking — thatsoftwareguy @ 7:24 am

Mashable closed its call for nominations in the social shopping space a couple of weeks ago, and just finished announcing finalists. As background, they provided a link to a post last summer reviewing 18 social shopping sites.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Google Checkout extends free period

Filed under: Payment Gateways — thatsoftwareguy @ 1:57 pm

Looks like it will go on through the holidays into February 2008.

Why you don’t need a website

Filed under: Websites — thatsoftwareguy @ 6:12 am

A brilliant post from Scott (“The Nametag Guy”). Lots of things to chew on here.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Selling Services to the DIY crowd

Filed under: Consulting — thatsoftwareguy @ 1:03 pm

This story is an interesting recounting and analysis of a conversation I had with a client recently, told by a fellow freelancer.    If you sell services in your e-business, you will no doubt be able to relate. 

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