| LED Digest 1974: Cancelled Orders |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. May 25, 2005 Issue #1974 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Cancelled Orders ==-- ~ George Oliver "...orders from my website have been getting cancelled and refunds requested." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== PHP & SQL ==-- ~ Janet Attard "...you'll probably want some kind of URL rewrite script in place..." ~ Reg Charie "...all PHP / MySQL programs are not created equal." ~ Shari Thurow "What you have to look out for is a problematic URL structure." --== Site Quality & Customer Confidence ==-- ~ Tom Anson " It all depends on what the site is about." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== The Incredible Disappearing Ezine ==-- ~ John Barendrecht ~ Richard Dudley ======== NEW ===================================== From: George Oliver Subject: Seeking E-Commerce Wisdom... Hello everyone, As I venture further and further into this thing called e-commerce, I am finding that there are some holes in my current system, holes I'm not quite sure how to fix. I'm hoping the wisdom of this brilliant crowd will be able to shed some light on my current situation and instill me with some guidance in this time of need. You have always come through in the past and I hope this time is no different. Recently, orders from my website have been getting cancelled and refunds requested. The reason given has been "this order was made by mistake". I sell digital content that is sent to the customer on CD-ROM. When it is this easy to cancel an order, request a refund and essentially get free product, you'll understand my concern with this particular issue. At the moment, I do not have a terms of agreement but I have a feeling I'm in desperate need of one. I'd like to ask the LED list for advice and or tips as to how I should best go about thwarting this process of cancelling an order and issuing refunds. I know I'll probably catch some heat for this and that's cool. I've made it half way through life by learning from my mistakes; I suppose it's just how I operate. Luckily, it's only happened a few times; so I'm hoping this will open a huge topic of debate where info to protect the e-commerce community will fly freely. Thank you very much! George Oliver (website withheld for good reason) ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Janet Attard Subject: PHP SQL > What are the feelings about providing content that is > called up through databases, rather than through > plain old HTML? Do search engines read it with > a difference? - Wanda Gersheid, LED 1973 If you are planning to take all your exisiting content on your website and put it into PHP-SQL, the first thing you need to realize is that all your page names will change - which means that you'd need someone to set up a way to redirect pages or rewrite URLS so that search engines don't lose the pages. To make sure new pages get found and indexed highly, you'll probalby want some kind of URL rewrite script in place to change long database URLs to search engine-friendly URLs. As far as plain old HTML, well, if all you want is to add forums and blogs and such, you can leave your existing HTML and add on forums and blogs or other features. We use plain HTML for all our articles on www.businessknowhow.com, for instance, but we also have forum software and databases, and soon a blog. We just have links on our pages pointing to those features. Janet Attard Small Business / Home Business Resources http://www.businessknowhow.com -------- new post - same topic ------- From: Reg Charie Subject: PHP SQL Hi Wanda, I felt the same way you do about PHP / MySQL, and I put off using it for a variety of reasons, (mostly fear), until I needed a solution for a database / website for a new client. I have been working with it for about a year now and I can heartily recommend the switch over to PHP / MySQL. However all PHP / MySQL programs are not created equal. After much investigation and testing I settled on CRELoaded (www.creloaded.com) which has all the features that I was looking for, including great search engine rankings. (MSN search for "swarvoski crystals" - without quotes and my sundancecrystals.ca is #1) Each time you add a product to the catalog you have fields to enter the keywords and description for the meta tags. While I only have the site in English, there are multi language and currency options. I would have to say "Go for it". You can still keep your index page in HTML if you put your PHP section in its own folder. Reg Charie www.dotcom-productions.com -------- new post - same topic ------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Newsletters, HTML, SQL, PHP, RSS File format (ASP, CFM, PHP, etc.) does not matter to search engines. They can index "static" HTML sites as well as database driven sites. What you have to look out for is a problematic URL structure. URLs with too many parameters or problematic characters (?, =, &, etc.) act as a stop / warning sign to search engine spiders. Reason? They don't know if they will be delivered redundant content (such as URLs with session IDS) or trapped in an infinite loop that will crash the spider. If you change your URL name, you will have to make sure all of your new URL names are redirected in a search-friendly way. A 301 redirect is the safest route. But that doesn't even address the human element. If a site has outstanding link development, then it might be a good idea to send link change requests (or a URL change request) to key Web site owners. > What are the feelings about providing content that is > called up through databases, rather than through > plain old HTML? Do search engines read it with a difference? No difference, except maybe in server performance. Sometimes, servers often serve up dynamically-generated pages more slowly than static HTML pages. There are many different factors that affect server speed. Just make sure your servers are serving up site visitors and search engine spiders with Web pages in a timely manner. > But I've recently had more than one younger consumer > extolling the virtues of PHP and SQL and pointing me > toward moving to a centralized ecommerce solution... You know, you practically lost me when you said "younger consumer." To be perfectly honest, I don't bow down to the short attention span of many "younger consumers." (My apologies to younger consumers who do not have short attention spans. And I'm not that old.) You have a business to run. You have to balance business goals and user goals. It's okay to have more bells and whistles onto your site because you feel it will enhance the user experience. In fact, I'm adding more bells and whistles to my own site(s) because, through user testing and focus groups, participants felt that the animations did not distract from user goals. So I added them. Don't abandon usability for the "cool" factor. The "cool" factor is often short-lived, time consuming, and expensive. I don't jump on the "younger consumer" bandwagon just because a salesperson, marketer, or one client tells me to do so. Want a blog? Fine. Then add one. Keep in mind, though, that most blogs are abandoned within a year, and do you have the time to maintain a blog? How many events do you have per year? How many non-English speakers do you want in your target audience? Be realistic. You can maintain your site's search engine visibility with design and database enhancements. Just plan ahead. Sincerely, Shari Thurow http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Quality of code > I'm wondering how many people, like me, look > at a site's code before doing business with them? - Nancy Cardinali, LED 1972 Hi Nancy, You're not alone. Since I started building web pages -- more precisely, when I finally learned enough to make any sense of the code (instead of relying on a WYSIWYG system of tools) and learned of the benefits of using CSS instead of tables for layout -- I developed the (semi)habit of looking at the code for certain types of websites. It all depends on what the site is about. I would feel pretty skeptical about using any service for my web business if that service's website was poorly coded. And I've seen my share of websites that were trying to sell me SEM, SEO or design services where the coding was amazingly poor. Obviously, they didn't get my business. I think some things require a certain level of professionalism, and a poorly coded website does not present that image. Tom Anson Anson Digital Concerns http://www.ansondigitalconcerns.com/ ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: John Barendrecht Subject: Disappearing email Johnn Four wrote inserting a 1 x1 gif would indicate receiving the email. I use Microsoft Outlook and it's default (out of the box) is not to download any graphics. All HTML mail comes with placeholders for graphics and alt text "Right click to download graphics". In previous versions of Outlook, we instructed our firewall to block port 80 for the mail program. Those who send out HTML newsletters may want to preview it without the graphics. Some are hilarious. I have a 27 inch, 16 x 9 monitor (not a typo) and some newsletters don't fit the screen! I have to scroll sideways to read. The best HTML newsletters have a "click here if your mail program can't read HTML". That way, if I want to see graphics (about 5% of time), I can just click and read the newsletter on your site. Our mail server uses a combination of techniques to determine spam. Before training it, it was about 98% accurate on email but only 50% accurate on newsletters. If my mail server is any indication, you should assume that 50% of your HTML newsletters will never reach the end user. BTW, Adam, LED fills less than half the screen, could we make this newsletter twice as wide? John Barendrecht http://www.centralhome.com <Moderator Comment> I've never been able to set margins successfully for all widths. Weird things happen with our mailing software when we disable word wrap, and wide margins throw it fits, so we have to set them fairly narrow. Sorry for the inconvenience! I know it can make reading a little tedious. ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Richard Dudley Subject: Disappearing email Services like Constant Contact allow you to create both an HTML version and a text version of your e-mails. E-mail software (such as on my smartphone) will display the text version, while richer clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird will display the HTML version. The messages are sent in a multipart MIME format, which modern e-mail clients can sort out properly. > Place a 1x1 transparent gif graphic at the very > top of the HTML newsletter... - Johnn Four, LED 1973 This is less reliable than in the past. Outlook 2003, Mozilla Thunderbird and GMail do not download images by default. Rich Dudley www.bloomeryweddings.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains © Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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