What have I been up to?
Friday, September 21, 2007 10:20:01 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
It's been rather quiet on my blog recently, if you're wondering why (and don't chat to me on/off-line) I thought I would share with you what we've been working on recently.
For the past month or so The Site Doctor has been developing a new web site (www.wineandhampergifts.co.uk) for Porter and Woodman Gifts Ltd - a local company that produces personalised corporate hampers and gifts. It's been quite a challenge as they have a rather unusual ordering system that allows multiple recipients/addresses multiple items. Looking at it now, it's not so complicated but the delivery charge calculations and initial specs took a while to fully grasp. It's been really enjoyable.
I'll probably cover aspects of the site over the forthcoming months but there are a few really nice features to the Wine and Hamper Gifts site (or at least I think so), some of which the end user will never know about such as the use of generics to calculate the address/recipient/gift variations) and those that they may -for instance the use of the JavaScript1 Zoom function on the product details page (courtesy of LuckyZoom), also the design created by our excellent designer Gareth Brown all adds up to what has to be one of the best sites I've developed to date.
1 Yes, I did just say I've integrated some JavaScript into the site ;)
I doubt most of my readers are interested on the in's and out's of the project itself but from an SEO perspective, I for one am expecting pretty decent results. We opted to use the URL Rewriting ISAPI from Helicon this time round over our usual IISMods URL Rewriting ISAPI as for some reason the IISMods site has been offline for a while (and checking now has been converted into a very weird site).
Another aspect that some people may be unaware of is that the majority of the Wine and Hamper Gifts site operates the same without JavaScript as it does with JavaScript, this is important not only for screen readers but also search engines. There is only one area of the Wine and Hamper Gifts site that I'm aware of that doesn't operate without JavaScript and that is the "Personalise this gift" link on the cart page that allows the user to either edit the existing message or add one that doesn't already exist, that's because it uses a LinkButton, but I may find a way around that later.
Other features that I really like are little things like the way the drop down lists on the left hand menu are created -they're not actually drop down lists but unordered lists that are then manipulated using JavaScript, I think the JavaScript could do with a little tweaking but the result is superb. The Wine and Hamper Gifts site also creates a PDF receipt for the user which is emailed to them, this is something I've been meaning to look into for some time but haven't had the chance, luckily while I was developing the site, Sean Ronan posted to the MsWebDev list about an ASP.Net PDF library iTextSharp (a port from a Java library) which, despite a few oddities from the POV of the Java port does exactly what I wanted. The library is pretty easy to use once you get your head around it and certainly produces some nice results.
There's still more work that's needed to finalise the content and various aspects of the Wine and Hamper Gifts website but if you have a chance, check out the new Porter and Woodman Gifts Ltd Wine and Hamper Gifts website and leave a comment here letting me know what you think :D
Oh, and they've given us a pretty high target to get before Christmas so if you're thinking about treating your customers to a personalised corporate hamper or gift give a little thought to using www.wineandhampergifts.co.uk
Wording a letter/email to get something
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 8:16:46 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
When running any business, there will inevitably be a time when you need to ask a client for permission for something, whether it's to use their name as a reference or to bill them for a service. These letters are always tricky, get it wrong and your client will be able to avoid taking action on your request, get it right and you'll be able to reap the rewards of success (or so I'm told!).
I had one such occasion recently and thought it may be of use to share my experience/findings with others. Take a look at these two emails (semi-fake), one got what it was after, the other not. Once you've read them, I'll explain why and how you should word something so you can get what you want (which is most likely money!).
Example Email 1
John,
As the system has been in place for a number of months, I feel it is important that we have a support agreement put in place to avoid any unexpected invoices.
As previously discussed, we recommend an initial support level of 10 hours per month, please let me know if you have any objections to this.
Regards,
Tim
Example Email 2
John,
Now the system has been in place for number of months, I would like to implement the SLA as previously discussed.
If you have any concerns with the SLA being 10 hours a month, please let me know by Friday 31stAugust.
Regards,
Tim
It should be fairly obvious which one got what it was after but incase it isn't, the second email got what it was after (an SLA of 10 hours a month) but why?
Lets look at the two emails in more detail:
As the system has been in place for a number of months, I feel it is important that we have a support agreement put in place to avoid any unexpected invoices.
Does the reader really care what you feel? Unlikely. Do they care about avoiding unexpected invoices? Most likely yes but would they be worse off paying the odd (semi) unexpected email? Probably not as if you're an ethical company you'd keep them up to date with their time usage at any time...
As previously discussed, we recommend an initial support level of 10 hours per month, please let me know if you have any objections to this.
This first call-to-action required the reader's input for something, if (and this is most likely the case) your reader is either a business owner or executive, their motive to respond is almost nill as it's unlikely they're going to want to respond to your request just so they can give you money.
You may also notice that there's no penalty to this first request, it's open ended i.e. if the reader doesn't do anything, he's no worse off -in fact, he's actually better off!
Now lets look at the second email:
Now the system has been in place for number of months, I would like to implement the SLA as previously discussed.
Although similar in wording and still expressing what you would like to happen, you're not over complicating the issue and remaining factual.
If you have any concerns with the SLA being 10 hours a month, please let me know by Friday 31stAugust.
Notice that this time, the call-to-action is reversed, instead of asking for action to do something, you're asking the user to action something if he doesn't want it to happen? This may only read like a small difference, but it's a massive difference from your POV.
The second thing to notice is the deadline (or penalty) -this time, if the reader doesn't respond by the given deadline, the action will go on regardless of whether they have given their input.
So there you have it, two ways of writing what looks like the same email but with two very different results, just remember, next time you want something, tell your client it'll happen if they don't do anything -I'm sure you'll get more success!