0Intranerd Communications - Maintain a clear line of communication between clients and developers

Why can’t developers just speak English? – A guide to intra-nerd communication.

Communication is the single most difficult aspect of any development process. It can literally cost millions of dollars. Most of the people who can’t write a ‘hello world’ statement that have to tell me what to program think the problem is that they need to understand more about my job. They hear a couple of us developers get into a room and swap intimidating acronyms and phrases like ‘refactor query methods’ and ‘extrapolate abstraction layers’ and think that what they need to do is understand this gibberish. I don’t know if I could truly relate to the reader how terrible this notion is. Please, if you don’t understand what your programmers mean when they talk about ‘instantiation’ and ‘parsing’, don’t try to understand now. Remember, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. You want to back as far away from that as possible, or you might as well just pour kerosene into your wallet and light a match. We simply want to know what you want to do, and what you want to happen when you do it.

What did you do, and what did you expect to happen.

The phrase “what did you do, what did you expect to happen” was a product of a meeting between several of my co-workers and I as we were trying to determine a way to phrase the instructions of a bug report for a web application that would minimize such infamous bug fix requests as “site broken”, “doesn’t work”, and “numbers wrong.” None of which are even requests.

Of course, the biggest catch is asking a user to ‘repeat’ what they did. They get asked that a lot, and the responses may sound reasonable to all of the non-initiated, but to us geeks getting that information is exasperating to the extent of promoting suicidal thoughts at best. Computers don’t think like us. They take everything so absolutely literal it can boggle the mind of the technologically naïve. Computers don’t make sense to most people. Even those trained to communicate with computers will frequently lose control and shout at their monitors. The most staunchly religious conservatives I’ve seen who work as web developers will stand up and shout shocking threats at inanimate objects that make me feel nervous, and I have an awful reputation of running my mouth like a sailor in front of the most sensitive folks.

So there was some understandable skepticism that these instructions would promote a user to give us the information we needed. But when people came to us with troubleshooting requests and we asked them to do what they did again and tell us what they thought would happen were unlike anything I had seen before. I could actually, for the first time, understand a client. For the first time I knew what someone really wanted. I felt like I had struck gold, found Avalon, and then rode a unicorn.

It’s not a question, it’s a new philosophy.

So it came to pass that I was in a meeting with four other individuals asking me to do something that seemed to make sense to all of them, but when I asked for some clarification they all looked at each other with some silent question which, from the looks on their faces, I could only assume was “how do we stop this alien monster from sucking all intelligence from our brains?” The answer, of course, is to tell the antisocial alien with the creepy beard and magnifying lens glasses exactly what you want to do and what you want to happen when you do it. I finally understood, this wasn’t just a question that was helpful to getting a user to tell me what they did to break a web application that successfully passed all of my unit tests, it was a concept that I had to practice allowing to pervade all of my thoughts as I communicated with non-developers in order to understand, and make myself understood. The question itself may not be much, but keeping that vision in mind has changed my experiences with evaluating requirements with people who still refer to the internet as “the email.” What’s more, as I evolved in my communications with clients, so did they. They came to understand what I expected to hear from them.

This new philosophy in understanding what a client wants transcended the concepts that I had previously held regarding web development. The client hates the development process. They don’t want the development process to be easier; they want to buy the product like they buy a stapler from an office supply store. What’s more, we already know what clients want to do, and what they expect to happen when they do it. And yet so few people are able to deliver a single product that delivers on this expectation to their clients.

Where this change in thinking has taken us.

Lexy Sites can handle all of the needs of 90% of the clients I’ve developed a website for, but every blue moon a client needs something very specific, and if they want to get it as cheaply, quickly, and accurately as possible I hope this advice helps. First, focus completely on the user interface. This is the furthest you can get from 1’s and 0’s that your developer is going to actually understand, and the closest you can get to writing computer code that you will understand as well. Second, be as clear as possible as to what you expect to happen for all use cases with the user interface. Clients are particularly bad about assuming their expectations are obvious, and developers are particularly bad about understanding how things in a company work beyond the user interfaces of the software they develop.

Communication always takes time and effort. There’s no way around that, and it is particularly difficult to communicate to a developer if you don’t know how to write computer code. Just remember that the furthest away from the computer’s logic that your developer is likely to understand your business is the user interface, and so the battleground in the war of developer-client communication should focus almost entirely on the expectations of the user interface.

12The Mobile Explosion – The Device Changing the Face of Retail

This post is written by guest author Rachel Modiano.

Rachel is the Director of Marketing for iGoDigital, the leading provider of personalization and product recommendation tools that guide smarter retail. The company currently serves many of the world’s most successful and respected retail brands, including Best Buy, Walmart, Nokia, Lids and Scholastic. iGoDigital is headquartered in Indianapolis, IN and was named to the 2008 “Inc 500” list of the fastest growing private companies.

As I scroll through the pages of my favorite industry pubs, it is hard to avoid the topic of mobile shopping. It’s everywhere! It’s going to be a race to the finish line for the top 500 retailer to see who wins the mobile shopping race.

You might ask why is mobile so important now?

Mobile is changing the way consumers shop. According to a recent Internet Retailer survey completed by Oracle and ATG, 29% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase of digital or physical merchandise using their mobile devices. 40% of online consumers ages 18-34 have made a mobile purchase. That figure is 27% for ages 35-54 and 17% for age 55 and older. What does a retailer need in order to have a successful mobile site? The site needs to be optimized for mobile – the jury is still out on which platform retail should use to launch their mobile site - weather an App, WAP, or m. site is the best option.

The Mobile Shopper vs. the Mobile Researcher

Putting actual mobile sales aside there is another trend emerging – the mobile researcher. Even more than purchasing on their mobile devices consumers are researching products on the web, the survey finds, showing that mobile sites and apps hold potential for boosting multichannel sales. 48% of U.S. adults have browsed or researched products on their mobile devices. Additionally, at iGoDigital, we’ve seen consumers take their researching to the next level with the ability to transition their search from mobile device to web.

This might sound great in theory but let me show you a practical example as to why this multi-channel continuity is so important. I was recently at a beauty store and forgot the SKU number of the makeup I usually use. I know I had purchased the product on my home computer so; I took out my phone, launched the company’s mobile app and signed into my account – under recent purchases there was the SKU of my makeup, clear as day. The connection to my information “offline” was the key differentiator weather I made a purchase or not.

Exponential Impact – Mobile + Product Recommendations

You could also use this multi-channel connection in the form of product recommendations and ensuring the recommendations are accurate regardless of channel. Let’s revisit my makeup scenario again. I am standing in the beauty store, I’ve logged into my account, I have my makeup sku and I click through to the product page to ensure this is my makeup. Along the right hand side of the product page are product recommendations – “shoppers who bought this may also like…” - I see a smoky eye shadow kit and decide that would be great to purchase and try out this Friday night. So I also purchased the smoky eye shadow kit. I went to the cash register and paid for my foundation and eye shadow.

I am going to pause the story for a second – this personalized recommendation was instrumental in increasing the value of my basket, which in turn positively impacted the retailer’s bottom line.

Here’s how a retailers can dramatically increase their basket value by adding recommendations:

Pre- recommendations basket value: Foundation = $38
Purchase total = $38.

Post recommendation basket value: Foundation ($38) + smoky eye shadow ($24)
Purchase total = $62.
Recommendations $ impact = 61% or a $24 impact.

On a single purchase this might not seem like a like a big deal but, let’s say 100 people per day utilize product recommendations to boost their basket value.

Let’s check out the impact:

100 people x $24 basket value increase = $2400 more rev/day
= $16,800 additional revenue/week
= $873,600 additional revenue/year.

You can see how much on an impact recommendations on any channel can make. (For more information on iGoDigital’s ability to add personalized recommendations to channels check out the channel page on the iGoDigital Website.

Connecting The Dots Across Channels

Now that we understand the impact of mobile product recommendation Let’s get back to our story. Later that night, the beauty retailer sent a batch file of in-store purchase history to their personalization provider – this tied my in-store purchases to my customer profile. Now the next time I am standing in the store forgetting the shade of foundation I wear or that awesome smoky eye kit I purchased I’ll be able to connect the dots using my mobile device.

This small nuance is changing the way retailers utilize their mobile platform as well as the impact of additional tools, like a basket builder or product recommendations can make in a retailer’s bottom line. Additionally, retailers need to change their thinking in regards to “window shoppers” or shoppers “just researching.” You never know when customer might jump across channels and become your next customer.

5Should my email marketing match my website?

It’s very important to use design elements—such as color, art, logos, etc.—to make visual connections between your Web site and your email. When you sign up email list members on your Web site, you want the email to be an extension of the site that your customers recognize. If there is a disconnect because the email doesn’t look like the Web site, your subscribers may think your email is spam.

Conversely, when you send out emails with a call to action that takes recipients back to a landing page, you don’t want to confuse those readers by sending them to a Web site that doesn’t look like the company you portray in your email.

This happened to me recently. I got an email from a major airline that featured a color scheme that was predominately the company’s trademark yellow and orange. Clicking through to the airline’s Web site, I was shocked to land on a page that was mainly blue and purple. My initial thought was that I was on the wrong page. What I learned is that the company rebranded its Web site but has not carried the new branding elements through to its email program.

While it’s not unusual for companies to rebrand or to freshen their brand, it’s important to keep some of the old elements—at least on a temporary basis—to bridge to the new brand. You also need to make sure that your email program catches up at the same time. This can be a struggle if email marketing and your Web site are managed by different groups, but the outcome is worth the effort.

When designing your emails, look to your Web site for design elements and incorporate some of those elements into your email. If you have an html Web site, you can even use elements from the Web site to easily design your email.

Remember: it’s all about integrating the same look and feel from Web site to email, and even to printed marketing materials. Carrying a similar look throughout all these customer touch points makes customers comfortable with your brand, which in turn makes them comfortable pulling out their wallets.

Carissa Newton is director of marketing for Delivra, an email marketing software and services company.

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2Cuts to Your Email Marketing Budget Could Leave You with Fewer Dollars than Before

As 2011 commences, today’s business world continues to see positive signs of a fading recession. But we’re not there yet and companies are still looking for ways to lessen their spending budget. Unfortunately, because every company’s needs are different, there is no single right way to do this. A common belief is that marketing dollars are discretionary expenditures and they hold less importance than, for example, operating costs. Recent studies and statistics prove otherwise.

Email Marketing

One particular form of marketing that’s seen significant success in recent years is email marketing, an ever-increasingly popular form of customer contact that’s proven its effectiveness time and time again. According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. The expected figure for 2010 is $42.08. Furthermore, email marketing effectively enables a company to make direct contact with past, present, and future clients, rather than repeatedly requiring them to visit a website to see current promotions. That’s a good thing since, according to ExactTarget, consumers prefer email for marketing communications more than 3-to-1.

If your company is considering utilizing email marketing, there are three main methods to consider:
Direct promotional email usually asks the recipient to take some kind of action (make a purchase, sign up for something, etc.) and can be used to acquire new customers as well as persuade existing customers to buy again. Consider it the electronic equivalent of direct mail or “junk mail”.
Retention email, conversely, is like a print newsletter whose ultimate purpose is to encourage customer loyalty. While a retention email may still include special promotions or advertisements, the overarching goal is to help the reader. By providing value to your clients (relevant information, help or assistance, entertainment, etc.) you are developing the relationship and further guaranteeing a long-term impact.

The final type of email marketing is simply placing advertisements in someone else’s newsletter, the electronic counterpart of purchasing ad space in a subscription magazine or newspaper.

No matter how you decide to approach your customers in your email marketing, rest assured that the money you invest will not be wasted. Again quoting the Direct Marketing Association, The Ad Effectiveness Survey (commissioned by Forbes Media in February and March of 2009) revealed that email and e-newsletter marketing are considered the second-most effective tool for generating conversions, just behind SEO. You may think you’re saving money right now by cutting your marketing budget, but if you fail to acquire new customers and retain existing ones, you might not have any money at all in the future.

4Salaries in the Realm of Design

We recently put together a visual report of average salaries for web designers according to specialty, location, and industry.

Do you want to know how much the average U.S. web designer makes at a hospital?

How about the average salary for a systems administrator of a school district?

Maybe you want to know just how big is the difference between the average web developers salary in the U.S. vs. India? (hint: it’s big)

If you’re hiring web technologists or just looking to see what your value might be in the open market, then you’ll want to check out our report on web design salaries.

1Guerilla Website User Testing: Small Scale Usability Testing, Massive Benefit

Today’s post is from Brian Lehmer of UserTesting.com, a Mountain View-based company committed to helping website managers, developers, and designers — anyone who feels responsible for a website — improve their sites.

It seems like we’re all into website usability these days.  And why shouldn’t we be?  Usable websites appeal to the masses, achieve record conversion rates, and make the people behind their implementation look like heroes and marketing geniuses.  Indeed website usability is brilliant marketing strategy.

Website usability research is readily available and every major online retailer has taken notice, investing time and energy into usability testing.  As a result, the list of usability experts is growing everyday, including well known names like Jakob Nielsen, Steve Krug, and Bryan Eisenberg.  Retailers and experts alike speak of the importance of user testing – getting websites in front of real users to test usability.

User testing provides essential feedback.  You will be surprised by how your customers use your website. After your first test you may even be shocked by what the users actually did in response to the objectives you gave them.

Fixing embarrassing usability problems before you release your website to the public will help you achieve that good first impression – perhaps the difference between success and failure.  It’s also a great way to discover how you can boost your conversion rates.  After conducting user tests, many companies have found ways to increase sales by tens of thousands of dollars.

Maybe you have an existing website with a problem.  Analytics is screaming that a particular section of your website is a trouble spot.  Analytics data shows you where the trouble is, but it doesn’t explain why you have a problem there.  User testing will show why.

Test a competitor’s website to understand what works and what doesn’t.  Offer to test your favorite client’s other website property – you know, the one you’ve been dying to get your hands on, but can’t convince them it needs an update.

Many times, user testing is the fastest and most productive route to discovering what causes users to get stuck – and leave.  That’s critical information if you don’t want to waste time guessing what to fix.  Once you see a user struggling on your website you’ll know exactly what you can do to correct it.  And it won’t take very many struggling testers for your client or executive management to agree that change is needed.

You can afford it too.  It’s not just for those with deep pockets anymore.

Once upon a time (not so many years ago) the cost to setup user tests was between $10,000 and $50,000.  Not anymore.  With usability experts recommending that you spend about 10% of your website development budget on usability testing (largely by having users try it), anybody can now afford to allocate that portion of their budget to user testing.  The relatively new concept of crowd sourced low-cost online user testing is what makes it possible.

Sites like UserTesting.com are perfect for fast cheap user tests.  Their large panel consists of quality pre-screened and client rated user testers.  You can order a single user test for $39.  You’ll get a video of a visitor speaking their thoughts as they use your website.  You’ll also get a written summary describing the problems they encountered.  There’s nothing to download or install and you can share your results with anybody.  Most tests are completed in about an hour.

How many user testers you need is a point of contention amongst usability experts.  Some argue that for statistically valid and measurable results you need a large number of testers.  Others argue that increasing the number of testers only complicates analysis while decreasing the amount of useful information you’ll get per test.

Let’s take a look at what small scale testing achieves.

Website user testing is a qualitative tool, and is not meant to provide large volumes of statistically significant data.  It’s perfect for quickly finding what causes common problems.

Doing small, frequent online tests could be called guerilla user testing – a low cost tactic that gives you an edge in usability analysis.  You use small numbers of testers to get dense amounts of usability information.  It’s very affordable, easy to analyze, and chances are you’ll find the biggest usability problems first.

There’s something strangely addictive about eating website abandonment rates for breakfast, thwarting embarrassing website launches, and taking out analytical anomalies.  Once you start carrying out guerilla user testing you’ll get hooked.  After all it’s tough not to like being the genius behind website marketing success.

1Cloud Hosting May Offer Some Welcomed Shade for Web Designers

Cloud Hosting

While not a new concept by any means, cloud hosting has certainly moved into the forefront within the last couple of years. What is cloud hosting? Simply put, its primary function is to allow companies to scale up server space almost indefinitely, while only paying for what hosting space they actually use at any given time. (note: that’s a very basic definition of cloud hosting) I know what you are thinking. That sounds like an amazing benefit for a company who has a lot of seasonal traffic, or who expect to increase downloads next month by 500 percent. But what does that have to do with design, and how does any of this affect the designer? Well, to be perfectly honest, we don’t really know quite yet.

Every day, consumers are requiring more and more from each web experience they encounter. Users want more social media, richer content, and more ways to access and share their information. All of this information takes up space on the face as well as the back end of a website. This means more clutter and more time to load. Much like their counterparts elsewhere in the web industry, web designers have been feeling the heat from these demands. Here is where cloud hosting may provide some relief. While no one is quite certain the full impact that cloud hosting will have on the industry, there is one thing we can be sure of. It will breed creativity. Options always do. As cloud hosting gains popularity and exposure, there may be no end to the benefits it may offer resource hungry programmers and designers. Where doors are closed currently, access to nearly unlimited computing power may open them up. New application and software designs. New browser platforms. New code languages being written with the computing power of cloud hosting in mind. The possibilities could be endless. Where designers are concerned, they could be equipped with better tools and greater options. As we all know, having the right tools for the job makes all of the difference. So although we don’t know just how far reaching its usefulness goes, cloud hosting has a lot of potential to be realized as of yet. Hang in their web designers. I know there are a lot of changes floating about in the atmosphere. What may look like an ominous dark cloud of demands right now, with a little luck, could provide some well-deserved shade for you in the coming months.

1Winners of our Magic Toolbox Giveaway

This month we partnered with our friends at Magic Toolbox to give away 5 licenses to any Magic Toolbox product, worth up to £99 (that’s currently about $154 for all of us in the United States).

Who is Magic Toolbox? They’re a team of designers and usability experts who have built beautiful and easy to use tools for displaying product images on your website.

Their most popular tools include:

Magic 360 Plus™ - spin products around and magnify into them.

Magic Zoom Plus™ - zoom into your images or enlarge them on click.

Magic Slideshow™ - over 30 options to create beautiful slideshows.

We asked our subscribers to retweet a message, friend us on Facebook, or simply reply to our email, and then we randomly selected 5 winners. Those winners are:

Elliott Benzle – Shatter Box Web Design

Shatter Box Web Design is owned by Elliott Benzle and has been designing, coding and managing web sites since 2002. Our skilled group of freelance professionals focuses on providing high quality, customized websites for small businesses. We work with customers, no matter what their level of internet knowledge to make sure that they get the most out of their website. Our design process keeps you involved in every step of the creation process from the initial sketches to the final coding. We are able to work within both small and large budgets, making a web presence for your business no matter what size.

Matt Baylor – Natural Selection Web Design

We design and support Joomla! CMS websites. Our primary goal is customer satisfaction. We want all of our clients to succeed in their endeavors and strive to provide them with the tools they need so they can focus on running their business and not worry about the operation of their website.

Graham Robinson – Northern Computer Services

Northern Computer Services offers a variety of services to help meet your personal and business goals. Whether looking for a small Web site, custom application or an e-commerce database driven storefront, Northern Computer Services will provide you the absolute best solution to accomplish your needs.

Debiprasad Sahoo – Indibits

Indibits is a small web development company from India. We are building web applications on open source infrastructures for small and medium businesses across the globe. Indibits is founded by Debiprasad Sahoo, who has a good experience in developing web applications using PHP, MySQL and Ajax.

Iggy Makarevich – IFM Productions

IFM Productions offers a complete web design package, including arrangements for your domain name and hosting; the design, build, testing, optimization and publishing - along with “extras” like tweaking basic on-site SEO tools for each and every one of your pages; verified submission to Google; making you a favorites icon, and so much more.

IFM Productions has satisfied a diverse group of discerning small business professionals with custom tailored, hand crafted web sites since August 2004.

7The Number One Tip For New Freelancers.

Freelancing is a subject that brings all manner of fire and brimstone and everything in between these days. Between the corporations who will try to bring you “in-house”, to the Non-Profits who may try to get a free lunch every day of the week, the very idea of going rogue as a freelancer may seem more daunting than it really is. What with all these distractions, cheap off-shore labor and industry-killing-contests on every corner of the web, you feel like you’re doomed to either starve or become a sell-out.

Well, you could probably stand to lose the weight, anyway.

Actually though, it’s quite possible to not only become a freelancer, but to become a profitable one and indeed, a successful one. In my years of experience I’ve learned a number of very difficult lessons on the hard road to bootstrapping your way to freelance success. I could spend a good thousand words or more telling you all of them, or I could cut to the chase and give you la lección más importante.

The number one tip I’d give to any budding freelancer is this: get arrogant.

I mean arrogant. I mean arrogant like Steve Jobs. Or David Heinemeier Hansson.

Now how would a people-friendly, service-oriented youth pastor like myself know anything about being arrogant? I’ll be the first to admit that you may not be able to tell when you first meet me just how arrogant I really am. I’ll seem nice. I’ll listen to your ideas. We’ll talk about what you want to achieve and the possible solutions to get there. But it’s all a facade, because in the end I’ll get nasty and tell you it’s my way or the highway. And you’ll love me for it.

Okay, I may have exaggerated just a bit about our hypothetical meeting, but here’s the honest-to-goodness truth: a company or organization is going to hire a freelancer because they have a need they can’t fill themselves. They either don’t have the resources, the knowledge or even just the desire to get it done, although they know it needs to be. They may be willing to admit that their creative is sub-par in this particular area, and they need you, the brilliant freelancer, to help them out.

And then you blow it by stumbling your way through the phone call, or doubting the quality of your work, or giving in to the awful demands of your pea-brained client.

I can see the comments now: “Aren’t you getting arrogance confused with confidence? Arrogance is such a strong word.” You bet it is. Arrogance is absolutely a strong word that provokes emotion and often intimidation. It’s like confidence smothered with smugness. It can leave people feeling upset and appalled.

But the thing I like about arrogance is it’s abundantly clear in it’s nature. People who know their skill-set and are somewhat arrogant about it get stuff done and they tend to do it right the first time. They have a laser-like focus on the end-result and no amount of feature-creep is going to get in the way. Lastly arrogance in communication leaves no room for misconceptions or confusion. It’s hard to take it the wrong way when someone tells you, “Your stuff sucks.”

You’ve got the training to do what you do best, don’t let anyone tell you differently. Yes, it’s good to be confident. But when your client insists on that flash animation that you can’t skip or they tell you to add so many buzzwords to the copy you’d expect to it be dripping honey - it’s necessary to be arrogant from time to time. Because as freelancers often forget, it’s not just their name out there, it’s yours.

1How PCI Compliance Can Impact Your Web Design Company

In the course of the last four days, I’ve spent nearly 30 hours reading and reviewing blogs, articles, news items, videos and webinars in regards to PCI Compliance. I’m utterly shocked at the lack of knowledge and clear lack of concern most web design and development shops have for these important standards. While the large development teams handling large merchants are exposed to the PCI-DSS procedure, smaller teams and one man shops are alarmingly unaware of what PCI compliance means to them and their business. there are still small shops and one man web design businesses that are designing and building ecommerce sites based on insecure non-compliant ecommerce websites. They are building them using non-compliant open source and commercial versions of ecommerce shopping carts. I’ve even talked to some larger teams working on mid-sized client websites who are actually ignoring PCI-DSS as something that will not affect their business or their client’s businesses.  Unfortunately, there are consequences to both the merchant and to the web design company.

What is PCI-DSS?

PCI-DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards which is managed under the PCI-SSC or Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. The PCI SSC was  founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, Inc. The main driver behind its inception and the resulting PCI-DSS was the increasing financial losses due to credit card fraud resulting from security breaches.

PCI DSS is a series of standards under 6 group areas with 12 sub areas and many sub requirements under those ares. It covers what is requried to maintain a secure cardholder data environment. The security standards range from network security, software and database security standards to physical location policies and procedures. Web applications represent only a portion of the requirements to be PCI DSS compliant. Your can review the full set of standards at http://www.pcisecuritystandards.org

While it may seem as though large companies are the target, they aren’t the only target. They are just the most visible. National news outlets do not focus on small businesses. Small businesses are often the hardest hit by fines levied by their associated merchant account banks when a security breach is found and cardholder data is lost. Not only are they fined, they have to pay forensic investigation costs and may additionally be sued for the cost of reissuing credit cards to consumers by banks who originally issued compromised credit cards.

Furthermore, experts say hackers are attacking small commercial website more rapidly. Criminals are able to access a website’s transaction process and credit card handling to steal credit card numbers. While small businesses have fewer transactions and therefor fewer vicitims, they are an easier target due to more frequent software and network architecture flaws. In many instances flawed software can be found through search engines using common version numbers and software brand references with known vulnerabilities.

How PCI Compliance can impact your business

If you don’t advise, build or implement ecommerce websites, PCI DSS will not affect your business. However, if you advise, build or implement ecommerce websites, PCI DSS will impact how you do business. There are a varying set of consequences that can affect your business as follows:

Acquiring Banks must ensure merchants and independent sales organizations are using  PA-DSS or PABP compliant applications. (PABP is Visa’s application certification prior to PA DSS - Payment Application Data Security Standards complaiant)  According to Visa, the deadline is July 1, 2010. While each card brand can and has set their own deadlines (and in some instances that varies by geographical location) and each acquiring bank can and has sent varying deadlines, July 2010 is a date to be aware.

What this mandate means is that acquring banks are going to take a harder look at their merchants and independent sales organizations, service providers (those providing merchant account services) and pass out fines for non-compliance and/or shut down merchant accounts due to non compliance. Where will you be when your clients are fined or shut down due to the use of non compliant shopping cart software. Will you be left behind for web design and development companies ready to help them navigate through PCI Compliance?

Lawsuits

Nobody likes to mention lawsuits. Right now most of the lawsuits over security breaches are directed at merchants and acquiring banks. These lawsuits are mostly being instigated by banks issueing credit cards to consumers whose card was compromised during a security breach. They are sueing for the cost of reissuing credit cards to their clients, the consumers. Right now, their lawsuits are a hit or miss. PCI DSS isn’t a get out of jail pass for merchants in regards to these lawsuits. Actually, it is no longer a safe harbor against fines. Visa changed their stance from “safe harbor” to “may waive fines” if the merchant was found to be compliant at the time of a security breach.

The tide may be changing. Merchants are getting tired of holding the bag over something they do not fully understand. Seven restaurants in Mississippi and Louisiana are sueing a software development company and one of its retailers over a security breach that has cost them tens of thousands of dollars. The Point of Sales system was hacked allegedly by a Romanian hacker. You can read more about the case at http://radiantsystemslawsuit.wordpress.com/ 

So what does this lawsuit have to do with web design and development? You are either in the position of writing or redeveloping a web application that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data or in the position of advising and implementing a prewritten web application that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data. Guess what, you’re in the same position as the software development company and/or the reseller. You’re a sitting duck for a lawsuit if these types of lawsuits become a trend.

So What Now?

Most small web design shops will need to either stop developing ecommerce websites altogether or make adjustments in the way they do business. You just cannot afford to sit back and ignore the situation.  I currently advise my very small ecommerce clients to maintain a cash-only business where they accept things like PayPal using PayPal’s hosted solution. The other option is to use hosted payment solutions like Authorize.Net’s SIM and Element Payment Services Hosted Payment Solution. There are other options out there. My best advice is to get familiar with PCI Compliance.

Web Out
Des

Desirea Herrera is an amazing web development geek who does web design and specializes in technical training of web development through webinars. A twelve-year veteran of the field with vast experience, Desirea has forgotten more about web design than most people will ever know. You can find out more about Desirea and her projects at Inphotek.

1310 Ways to Help Your Website Sell

Like most people in different professions, we as web designers have a tendency to neglect our own websites. My own site is now under redevelopment because I couldn’t believe how long ago it had been since the last time I worked on it. While most of my customers are referrals, they still go out and look at my website. This makes it important enough for me to pay attention to my website’s content.

Update Your Website Often

Of course any SEO expert knows the value of updating their website. It draws the attention of the search engines. Search engines aren’t the only reason to continually update your website. Clients want to know that you are staying up with the times. Update your design once a year to reflect the current design trends on the internet for your core client base. Content updates help your site to stay fresh and give the customer plenty of reasons to stay on your website. Copyrights should have the year they were developed, but you should also list current year. For example, list your copyright like this - © 2000 – 2009.  This also gives your potential client an idea of just how long you’ve been in business as well as an idea of your experience level.

Fix your broken site

This is something that shouldn’t have to be mentioned but I’ll put it here because it bears repeating. You simply have to make sure your website is working. It’s not just broken links to outside resources you need to fix, it’s the way your website works in the different browsers. You need an nice clean exciting layout to promote yourself but more importantly you need a website that works. Test your website often. Visit it once a week to check that everything is working in multiple browsers. Make sure all links are still working. Check your site as you check your website’s statistics. You are checking your stats right?

Don’t Be Pushy

You’d be surprised at how many times I’m browsing the internet and find people using the old tactic “buy right this minute or you’ll never see this price again”. While promoting specials are great, reserve most of them for your current clients. Attach real dates to them. And don’t be pushy about it like the above sales copy. No one likes to be pushed into purchasing something, especially in web design. You need to let your problem solving and benefits make the sale. There is also the fact that most large web development projects are custom projects with specific price tags attached to them. When you set a price, you open yourself to projects with unexpected commitments that you cannot recoup. Now that’s not to say that you shouldn’t run a sale occasionally. But, if you do, list the time period of the sale for everyone to see. Just make sure you don’t tell every customer that visits that they must purchase now (today), because most customers will price shop and compare products before they purchase.

Solve Their Problems with Your Services

Most web designers list the product or service features, but that doesn’t tell a potential client how this will help solve their problem. Remember that your website is also your salesman. Salesmen find out someone’s problem so they can fix it. Just the other day I had a young lady come to my door selling a cleaning product.. She was quite good in an infomercial sort of way. The key thing that she did was to get me agreeing with her about my problems and that I wanted a safe product around my pets and my kids. So as you write content for your website, think about how you can get your visitors to agree with you about different problems they are facing. Then, show them how you can fix their problems. Show them the benefits of using your services. It’s easy to say you’re the best web designer, but go a step further and tell the customer what that means to them. In other words, what’s in it for them? If you have trouble defining your benefits, ask the one person that would know best – your customers! If they are happy with your products or services, they will be able to tell you what problem it overcomes and the benefit they receive. Besides, what better way to find out how you’re doing in servicing their needs?

Include Contact Information

As the internet has grown, so has the number of fly by night operations. One day they are here and the next they’ve disappeared. Make sure you have physical address location posted on your website as well as a phone number. This information is reassuring to potential customers. It gives your business a professional polish rather than the appearance of hiding yourself behind the internet.

Make It Easy to Pay

With a web development company, this can be tricky. Most web design customers don’t purchase until they talk to you or have reviewed a proposal you’ve sent them. However, you can still offer them a way to make a payment on your website. The best way is to accept credit cards.. If you don’t have a merchant account already, the easiest way to get set up immediately is through services like Pay Pal, Clink Bank, and 2Checkout. For those of you willing to offer products to the Do It Yourself course, you can sell templates and guides. Sometimes the DIY people end up becoming clients because as you know, building a website is harder than they think. You are then in the position of offering your services to these potential clients.

List Your Guarantees

Everyone wants to feel that if a service or product they’ve purchased is not up to the standards or expectations they thought, that the company will take care of them. And because of that, you should always list a guarantee. It doesn’t have to be a full money back guarantee, but it should be a reasonable amount of time or a reasonable procedure to follow in order to rectify the issues. And better yet, if you have a web application or open source application that you customize for clients, you could allow a limited amount of time for a “test drive”, it will decrease the apprehension some people have about doing business with someone they don’t know.

Include A Privacy Policy

This may not seem obvious but a privacy policy makes your website more professional. When you include a privacy policy, you are saying to your potential customers that you have policies in place to protect them. You’re also saying you’ve thought about how you will run your business. It’s another element to your website that tells the customer that you are not a fly by night operation that will disappear once you have their money.

Include Terms and Conditions

This is also a way to convey to your customers and potential customers how your company does business. This is the place to list exactly how you do business and in what conditions you will offer a refund. You have to take into account that the majority of your customers or not looking for something for nothing. Now I will admit there will always be a small percentage of your customers that will try to take advantage of you, but you’ll find most customers just want to be treated fair and know you’ll take care of them. Setting up the terms and conditions on your website will also help deter people whom you probably wouldn’t want as clients.

Tell Them What’s Next

After they’ve purchased or started the contact process, tell them what the next step will be. If they will be downloading a template or application, let them know when or how they will download it once they’ve completed their purchase. Or, if you will contact them, let them know when you will contact them and how. Or better yet, give them options on a form. Let them choose how you will contact them. Of course, the best way to handle it is to contact them within a day. You don’t want to give them a chance to change their mind. Make sure you explain each step and show them what great customer service you provide right from the beginning.

We preach to our customers all about how important their website is to their business. As web designers it is important to practice what we preach. This list is only a partial list of things that we as web designers and developers need to do to our websites so that they do the sales job we need them to do.

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53 Methods for Design Firms to Increase Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is a vital for any business, but especially for a small web design companies or freelancers. You do not have the marketing resources of larger organizations so it’s important to work hard at keeping the clients you do have.  Here’s three tips for keeping your clients coming back:

1. Regular Communication

Regular communication with your clients does not just mean talking to them about their particular project.  Obviously you do want to be accessible as you work with your clients.  But you should also remain in contact with them long after you are finished working on any specific task.  Regular newsletters, seasonal cards, appreciation gifts, and simple follow up phone calls are all great ways to remind your customers about your company.  The idea is to keep your company in the front of their mind on an on-going basis.

2. Offer Referral Incentives

Your existing customers are the best resource for finding new customers-and rewarding them for those referrals is a great way to make sure they stay loyal to you.  Be sure you take the time to regularly remind them about your incentive program, and be sure to follow through in a timely manner.   Referral incentives can come in many forms including cash, concert tickets, discounted services, and gift certificates.

3. Under Promise and Over Deliver

But perhaps the most important way to ensure your customers remain loyal is to under-promise and over-deliver.  That means giving your clients a reasonable expectation that you are certain you can meet and then finding ways to deliver above and beyond your promise.  Your customers will be delighted when you are finished with their website a whole week before the deadline; or when you are able to add the additional features without having to charge extra the extra time you originally estimated.

These three suggestions are easy, inexpensive and tried and true.  Remember, that as a business owner, it costs more to win new customers from a marketing standpoint than it ever does to maintain relationships with existing ones.  You may want to re-evaluate how you have your marketing budget structured in order to take better care of your past and present clients.  Finally, the key to any of this is to make sure you keep a comprehensive, updated, and well maintained database of your clients and prospective clients (more on that in a future post).