Accidental spamming is an easier to make mistake than you might think. MailChimp offers some do’s and don’ts for a successful email campaign along with tips for talking to stubborn clients.
New to email campaigns? This is a great primer on email campaigns, also from MailChimp.
So few things are as annoyingly hopeless as the practice of using Chinese math. You know – the idea that “if you can only get 0.00001% of the population, you’ll be a success.” Here’s the problem with Chinese math: it doesn’t work. Small percentages do not translate to easy results.
So why are Chinese business websites using this discredited form of reasoning?
PS> If you’re thinking, “if Chinese math doesn’t work, what does?” then here’s your answer. Don’t use comparative figures aspirationally; instead, show trends and figures from ideas that already work that demonstrate how your parallel idea is plausable.
Well, the RatePoint boys really came out of the woodwork and did a remarkable job converting me into a customer and a fan. You can see That Software Guy’s RatePoint reviews page to see how I’ve got my clients to write some testimonials.
Blogger Sally McKenzie wrote a useful bullet list of things to consider when hiring an e-commerce consultant. My only beef with the list was that the final unnumbered item
Think about what the project is worth to you.
should have been number 1. Underlined. Twice.
Being coy about your budget doesn’t yield a lower price; it makes your consultant roll his eyes and think you’re not being serious. Everyone has a budget – that’s a given. But being upfront about it shows respect for your consultant’s time and will help your consultant make appropriate recommendations.
Entrepreneur Magazine provides an interesting writeup on RatePoint, a new service which hosts and manages customer feedback. I thought RatePoint’s service was very clever and nicely implemented, but not well suited for online enterprises like That Software Guy because of the prominence of map and address information on the review page. I would have also liked some way of culling out people who I hadn’t actually transacted business with (but then this raises the question of whether the business is tampering with the reviews). I wonder why PayPal doesn’t offer a service like this?
BTW, has anyone else noticed that rating requests have become standard for Amazon Marketplace purchases? I don’t remember receiving these (at least this often) in the past.
Business Week (06/30/08) reports that a number of vendors are upset about eBay’s recent fee increase. I wonder if this will lead to the migration of larger merchants away from eBay and onto their own shopping cart sites (hosted or not). We’ll see.
OK, it’s impressive. It took me less than an hour to convert The Museum of Vintage Coffee Cups to a store.
Listing pages (multiple rows) have an add to cart button on each row.
Product pages have an add to cart button for each page.
Obviously I could have made it nicer, but this was just intended to be a proof of concept. I will definitely be adding FoxyCart to the list of tools in my kit. Thanks, Brett and Luke!
I chatted with Brett Florio and Luke Stokes of FoxyCart earlier this week. Here’s the transcript:
TheCartBlog: Tell me about FoxyCart.
FoxyCart: FoxyCart is a hosted service that provides shopping cart functionality to developers and designers in a unique way: we only provide the cart and the checkout. That’s it. You bring your content management solution – or even static HTML pages – add a little Javascript, and boom! you have e-commerce.
TheCartBlog: Just the cart and the checkout?
FoxyCart: That’s it. We look at it this way: rather than doing a half-baked job at, say, newsletter production or inventory management, we encourage you to use your existing tools which are purpose built for those tasks, and simply integrate FoxyCart. Rather than forcing you to use a content management system that we created, we tell you to use your own, and just add FoxyCart in. FoxyCart is platform as a service.
TheCartBlog: Well, to the best of my knowledge that is unique.
FoxyCart: And because we don’t provide those facilities, the amount of data duplication you now have to deal with is really minimal. We give you data in XML or as a JSON object, and you deal with it in whatever way works best for you.
TheCartBlog: What do you mean when you say, “designers or developers?”
FoxyCart: Designers have deep expertise in layout, css, and the user experience, but they’re not computer programmers. So for them, we have pre-integrated offerings like MODx that don’t require any programming. But for developers who want to get under the hood, do complex integrations and make adjustments to how things work, we say, “here’s the data; do what you want.”
TheCartBlog: Now what about merchants?
FoxyCart: We really don’t target merchants or sellers. We assume that if you’re a seller, you’re working with a professional to develop your web presence.
TheCartBlog: If you’re serious, you want to build business, not your website.
FoxyCart: Exactly.
TheCartBlog: OK, so the cart and checkout. What does that encompass?
FoxyCart: adding and removing things from the cart, taxes, shipping, and payment gateways.
TheCartBlog: … and for everything else, you bring your favorite solution and do the required integration.
FoxyCart: Exactly.
TheCartBlog: And how is the pricing structured?
FoxyCart: Basic service is $15/month. Billing begins when you migrate from a test gateway to a production gateway. You can test for as long as you like and not get billed (but you also won’t get paid).
TheCartBlog: That’s it? No percentage of sales?
FoxyCart: Nope. Flat fee. Now there are a couple of other optional fees: if you want to offer multi-ship (multiple ship to addresses in one checkout session), you pay an extra monthly fee. And if you want your own domain name, you pay a small yearly surcharge.
TheCartBlog: I’m impressed that you offer multi-ship.
FoxyCart: To the best of our knowledge, it’s just us and Magento.
TheCartBlog: Let’s talk discounting.
FoxyCart: We have lots of flavors of Quantity Discounting, including BOGOF and related discounts.
TheCartBlog: Coupons?
FoxyCart: Coming up in the next release.
TheCartBlog: And how do releases work?
FoxyCart: Well, it’s really feature driven, and we try to do something every month or so. But one thing that we do that’s also unique with respect to releases is that each cart has its own version, and we allow customers to time their own upgrades. It’s a pushbutton upgrade, but you schedule it so there’s no risk of things breaking while you’re on vacation.
TheCartBlog: OK, what’s an implementation going to run me?
FoxyCart: Once you learn how the system works, you can do a simple implementation in a few hours. We have a wiki and a forum so that people can learn about how our system works.
TheCartBlog: What about support?
FoxyCart: Support is done through our forum, but we’re pretty active participants.
TheCartBlog: Can I hire a pro?
FoxyCart: We have preferred providers for design, programming, etc.
TheCartBlog: Let’s talk competition. Magento and Shopify – your take?
FoxyCart: Magento is a fabulous product – as is Shopify. We admire them both. And for some people, they will be more appropriate solutions than FoxyCart. But both of them have downsides. With Shopify, you’re paying fees on every sale. With Magento, you have the headache of maintaining your cart. And neither of these systems let you bring your own CMS to the party.
TheCartBlog: Well guys, I think you’ve built something really special. What I’m going to do is sign up for FoxyCart and build a cart out of an existing website (and time the process) so that people can get a sense of how it all works. I’ll keep you posted.
Looks like those wacky FLDS fellers have set up their own cart. One missing yet obviously required feature: quantity discounts. 
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