Some of you may have heard by now that our family’s life is about to change dramatically. Over the last few months I have been able to consolidate our business life to focus solely on the launch of my wifes new company, Storybook Anytime and my new full-time dream job...
Several weeks ago I accepted an offer from the San Francisco based company, Millions of Us, to become their full-time technical director. I will be working on 2D and 3D virtual worlds as well as marketing systems for major brands inside video games and social networks. It’s going to be fun, challenging and ground breaking.
This will of course mean that we will be relocating to the San Francisco Bay area in January. We are currently in the process of house hunting in Marin County and are excited about the opportunities that Silicon Valley brings to both Storybook Anytime, my career and our overall quality of life.
We suspect that we will miss Atlanta greatly but are excited about this new adventurous chapter in our life. My website, http://www.mikejsolutions.com, will be updated soon to reflect all the new happenings and will be a great place to keep up with our progress. There you will find access to our Flickr! photos, Blog and daily Twitter updates in a single location.
Great things are on the horizon!
I have never been convinced that there were compelling reasons to use any specific language over another. Specifically Ruby on Rails over PHP. RoR provides many great advantages relative to data-basing and prototyping that make it attractive to those looking to increase productivity. Would not becoming an expert in any language increase productivity? For the most part I believe that programmers should code in the language that they enjoy. This by default helps them become experts.
My belief has always been predicated on the theory that the grass is not always greener on the other side. Your customers require expertise and knowledge about how to apply technology to their business problems. Global knowledge of all programming options available to solve these problems is a good thing relative to knowing the technology landscape strategically. It is insignificance however when actually solving the problem if you don't understand the ramifications of your decisions. Expert knowledge on a subject will always trump speed when it comes to productivity. In most cases, speed is a direct result of expertise.
Derek Sivers has written an excellent article on this topic called "7 Reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails". The reality of any programming language is that you the programmer, regardless of language, must be able to accomplish something real, tangible and profitable with it. The ability to do this is directly related to your fundamental knowledge of a language and its ability to interact with a database structure. After all, any application (web or otherwise), is comprised of presentation, interaction, and database layers respectively. Read his article now and make your own assessment.
Cartoon from http://www.bokardo.com - Home of Joshua Porter, Social Design Engineer.
Profit from your product(s)- Ship for free!
It's sad but true. I get excited about new Apple products these days. Although I will not own an iPhone until the price is right, the new iMacs look very promising. The new upgrades allow them to be real options for the professional office environment.
Many businesses that I consult with are looking to move into online video, blogging and podcasting. Traditionally these have been time consuming and complex to create and maintain on a regular schedule. The new iMac combined with a completely re-written iMovie and updates to Garage Band is simplifying these things.
Leveraging these capabilities you can work to increase site conversions and sales by adding video information on products and weekly podcasts containing product reviews. This is something that can be accomplished in an hour each week on a Mac. This is, unfortunately, not exactly the case on Windows machines.
Make prices readily available and easy to find
Many people are using the web for price comparison and research. This means that, unless you have a single unique product, your customers are going to judge you as much on price as anything else at your store. In today's world people hit a web page and make a decision on where and what to click next within 4-15 seconds. Do you want the conversion?
Case in point: The worse usability idea ever was seen during the Christmas shopping season last year. The day after Thanksgiving (the single busiest shopping day in the US) Circuit City decided to force all visitors to add items to their shopping cart prior to seeing the "deal" price. This meant you had to register before you could find out how much an XBOX costs. It took almost 5-8 clicks to actually see a price. By the time you completed this asinine process you were to tired to buy.
Simple Things Sell Better
An article in “Practical Web Design” magazine from December of 2006 talks about the “Appropriateness of the product to the medium”.
A graphic from that article has been recreated and placed here for reference.
In general, the higher the cost of the purchase relative to the complexity of the checkout process will make your product much more difficult to sell online. Higher priced products with a more complex purchase process will enjoy its best conversion rates through a face-to-face sell (Real Estate and Automobiles) while lower priced products with an easy purchase process are much more successful online (Books, Software and Music).
Remove Barriers to Purchase
Make it quick and easy for people to purchase your product. Don't make them fill out more information than is absolutely necessary to process the order. Don't force them to opt-in to your newsletter. Don't make them provide shipping details for software download. Most online credit card processing companies can determine the type of credit card (i.e. Visa, Mastercard) from the number. Don't force your customer to select a credit card type. It an unnecessary step. If you sell software online, take a tip from these guys.
Online Orders Only
Save yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and only accept online credit card orders. You may loose 10% in overall revenue (potential profit) from those who may purchase in another way, but you also loose 40% in customer service and time costs (expense) dealing with those who "don't get it". That's a 30% revenue increase.
Take a break from the normal and learn about the adventure of working on your own terms. Sound like a vacation you'd like to take? Then The 4-Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferriss is for you.
Entrepreneur Timothy Ferriss rewrites the rules and upsets conventional wisdom about work and success in his self-help guide to the new, rich economy. It is not necessary to toil for 70 hours per week, according to Ferriss, who runs a company called BrainQuicken. Successful people, he says, have actually mastered a system of working less by outsourcing tasks, severely cutting back on timewasters such as meetings, and working offsite. Ferriss tells how the principles that made him rich are transferable to other companies.
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