Where Were We?

Well I have been tagged by Gary, via his latest post "Where Were You?" - So, here goes:-

1 Year Ago - Just got back from a month visiting the in-laws in China - Great time there - Cant speak the lingo but love the fact that you can buy beer (in a restaurant) for less than 20p a litre and that their chinese wine is about 55% proof! Anyhow, survived the trip to get back to the UK just in time to take ownership of the new warehouse which I then spent the next few months kitting out. Had been married for 2 years then, with the one son (18 months old then and an absolute handful!)

5 Years Ago - Travelling the world in the merchant navy, a wealthy, single man! Blissfully unaware of terms like osCommerce, Blogs, php, css, etc, etc... The only thing I used the computer for then was watching dvds, listening to music and playing the odd 2 week game of civilisation. I was working for a company called the RFA - thats the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (Forget the jokes about dyslexic wannabe airforce pilots ending up at sea instead of flying). Employed by the mod to travel the world supplying the Royal Navy ships. It meant getting the perks of travelling with the RN but still being civilian so not having to put up with too much bs. I was an Engineer, which meant I spent alot of time up to my elbows in oil in the engine room but when not working, most time was spent either sunbathing or in the bar - it was a pretty good way of life for a single bloke.

10 Years Ago - Well, I had pretty much just qualified as an engineer and was probably on my first stationing out in Dubai. This was where I eventually met my wife (so, my life at sea started out in the gulf and finished there!).

My life up till now really has evolved with apparently very little input from myself - I was pushed from school to University as I had reasonable results at school - I flunked University within 2 years due to spending most of my lectures in the pub! I joined the navy as I had little else to do then. (I remember the job interview by the RFA - it went along the lines of:- "So, Mr Hurn, have you heard of the RFA? - No, Do you have any family members who have worked at sea? - No, Do you know anyone who works in the Navy? - No, Are you sure this is reallly the job you are after? Not Really! - They consequently offered me a job... must have been pretty desperate and I thoroughly took to it.) Prior to finishing in the navy, I invested all the money I had in buying a gift shop, partnership with my Dad, seemed like a good idea at the time - I didnt need a house as I was working away all the time. Then I got hitched so had to take on a 95% mortgage for a house! 2 Years ago, I set up heritage-gifts.co.uk and a flurry of orders followed, leading to having to setup the warehouse.

One thing really has just led into another - makes you wonder what I will be writing in 10 years time - assuming my bad habits havent got the better of me of course!

Anyhow, I had better get back to work - Heritage-at-Home.co.uk ( heritage-housewares, heritage-hardware, heritageinthehome.....!!??!?) Whatever...... the next online shop needs working on.

Thanks for the distraction Gary. Now, I reckon I had better pass this across the atlantic to Pete, JC and Dan

Cheers,
Rich

Simplifying the osCommerce Checkout System

I am back to building an osCommerce site and am taking the opportunity to work from the ground up. One of the things I have never changed alot from my current osC store is the cheockout system.

Now, I know from doing a lot of reading that many osC owners/developers but a lot of effort into reducing the number of stages in the checkout procedure. Not just osCommerce users but also, it is very eveident that any online retailers do the same. Currently, I am not convinced of the benefits. I know this goes against the grain and I am standing by for the backlash. My resoning - well, think about your own online purchasing. How much time do you usually put into making a purchase online? Including deciding on what it is you want to buy, checking any other similar options, comparing prices, evaluating the credentials of a seller - In my case it is quite often hours, if not days. Assuming that I find the right item at the right price, from a seller I am willing to trade with, I am just not likely to be put off by an extra page or two in the checkout process. In fact, if there is a problem with the online checkout, I am likely to go to the effort of finding a contact telephone number and actually trying to get in touch with the seller.

Of course, like anything else in the online retail world, you have got to play the percentages - assuming you have your prices right and you are in the right search results, to have one page less than your competitors in the checkout, all other things being equal, you may get the sale.

I still think this obsession with reducing the process is over-rated but, in view of the fact that I am starting from a vanilla osC setup, I have nothing to lose in trying to slicken things up. So, how to modify it? I have read Wizardandwars thoughts on the matter and to be honest, I reckon his original solution is the best way. Having read alot on the osC forum and looked at other contributions, I think many of the solutions are going to far. One in particular that I have taken a good look at tonight is the Fast Easy Checkout. Two things worry me - firstly, too many changes to the stock osC code, possibly causing problems with integrating payment modules and the like further down the line, but more importantly, this idea of buying without an account.

I can well understand the theory behind the "buying without creating an account" way of thinking but disagree with it entirely. Surely, in order to send someone their goods, you need their address. If their is a problem with their order you need to be able to contact them, so having their email/contact telephone number is essential, whether they create an account or not. Now, what is the difference? There is none. So long as you can word the account login system in such a way that the customer doesnt realise they are creating an account - the details are the same - the big difference to me being that if they do create an account there is a chance they will sign up for the newsletter.

So, for anyone who shops online, what do you look for in a checkout system? Is it of any importance?

Right now I am thinking of following Wizardandwars guide to the letter and going for the combined login/create account page and keeping the number of details asked for to a bare minimum. Just one last thing I cannot decide on - automated passwords or user created ones.

Any thoughts from either osC owners or developers or, maybe more importantly, online shoppers would be very welcome.

Cheers.

Stress of a Server Move

One of the reasons for the lack of posts this month is down to moving my main site - Heritage Gifts, onto a new server. In the run up to xmas, the site slowed dramatically due to the shear volume of seasonal traffic it was generating. I am sure this must have had a fair impact on sales but given that we were flat out with order processing at the time, there wasnt alot I could do about it. In fact, it was probably no bad thing that we didnt recieve any extra orders.

Since xmas, things have calmed down alot, but there was still enough traffic to slow the site. This was down to three main factors, traffic, a large mysql database (both with cutomer info and products) and shoddy code - well, maybe not shoddy but certainly my cart has been modified extensively, over a period of time and with plenty of contributions added over the top of each other.

The upshot, I had to move the site onto better hosting and now is the time of year to do it. As I posted before, I am more than happy with my current web hosts and after speaking with them, they offered me a tailor made package on a "shared dedicated server". Great.

The problems I had with the move came in two stages. The first attempt ended up with the site being moved to a new server but there were big problems with the server in question. There were large load spikes being caused by one of the sites on the server. Consequently, my site was pretty much down for a period of about 48 hours. Costly. Lost a good few orders and a lot of sleep!

The hosting company moved my site back to its original server, and after consultation, agreed to set me up on a better server, with a couple of days to test the site before actually moving it. I duly set up an exact copy of my site, tested it thoroughly on the new, better server and was already to go ahead with the move. As the hosts had offered to move the site for me, when it came time for the actual move, I figured it would make sense for them to copy the site across afresh, just in case I had missed something. Man, disaster struck again - For some reason, the mysql database became corrupted. No idea why, it still remains a complete mystery. However, because of this, another day of trading was lost.

The other thing that was lost was my rag! I got pretty shirty with the support team. I was under alot of pressure - to lose three days of sales in a month is not good. The main thing though was their apparent lack of concern in with their replies in the support ticket. I have since learnt of how hard they were working to try and resolve the problem but due to their comments in the ticket, it just wasnt apparent to me at the time.

The issue was finally resolved very late on in the evening, nearly 24 hours after the move and it was resolved by reinstating a backup from the original server to the new one. Why this should work when transferring all the same files and database didnt? Well, only him upstairs knows the answer to that one!

The reason for posting about this however is not to convey my excuses for not blogging but to mention how I feel about the hosting company now. After having 2 trouble free years with them before the move (including accomodating the site before xmas when it was using more than its fair share of server load), they have gone out of their way to set me up a personal hosting solution, the server my site is now hosted on is lightening fast (despite the mixed up code and large database!) and after explaining my problems with the way that the support ticket was handled, they have already implemented changes to how they deal with server moves and support tickets.

You cant really argue with that can you? Sure I lost three days takings but if you stand back and take this over two years of hosting...... Well, I reckon I will recover the takings over the next few months due to the speed of the site on its new home.

After having recently read a couple of other bloggers posts about a couple of the large UK hosting companies, I reckon my site is in pretty safe hands.

AIS well and truly on the backburner

Ok, for the time being I have got to admit defeat. Well, maybe not defeat - depends on how you define it. I have thoroughly enjoyed setting up a couple of sites and believe that I now have a system in place whereby I could quickly and easily expand the "empire"!

Unfortunately, as it stands, I only have a couple of properly finished adsensers and havent put enough time in into promoting them to give them a proper chance of bringing in any kind of worthwhile income.

What I have gained is a greater knowledge of hosting, site design, seo, etc, etc.... and its been alot of fun.

Why has it got to come to an end (at least for now?). Well, the simple fact of the matter is that any work I put into my main business, the online store will pay back far greater rewards than the Adsensers. I hope to find time for both in the future but right now, I am struggling to find the time to run the business and balance it with the family, let alone spend time on adsense.

Having said that, I do hope to finish a few rssg sites later in the year (content based rather than out and out scrapers), so "watch this space"!

March Already.... Slight change of focus

Ok, I know alot of you are posting your adsense/affiliate earnings at the end of each month and I am very appreciative of it. It makes for great reading and is an inspiration - for this reason, I am not going to publish my adsense earnings as they are still less than 10 bucks (by a fair margin!)

I know I have posted a lot this month about AIS but the truth is, I only have the one site properly indexed by the search engines at present.

However, I have been busy this month and have setup the sites that are part of my NPM subscription. I have set one up on its own domain, and the rest on a subdomain with a wordpress site on the main domain. I have worked so that I can now add the new sites, with their own templates into the same environement each month with very little hassle. In this case though I am not changing the content so how effective they will be, only time will tell.

Other AIS news, well, the original content site is still "under construction" and could be for some time. But, I have been going flat out on an rssg site. This is going to be my Supersize me site and will only use rssg to provide "padding", the site will use Wordpress as the front end. I have just taken out some reseller hosting to put the site on so it will become a reality over the next few days (hopefully).

Unfortunately for my AIS plans, I have got to spend the next month or two creating a new, genuine, osC site. My business partner ("Dad" - nigh on 60, one heart attack, no knowledge of computers, but loving the way the internet business is going!) has decided we should move into gardening and housewares. This is what he sells in his shop but, due to the success of the gift shop, we are now going to try it online, selling through my warehouse.

I wouldnt be surprised if it doesnt overtake the Gift Shop by this time next year. We have one major wholesaler who stocks about 18000 lines and can deliver twice a week so I am hoping to just create/design a suitable osC store, upload the suppliers catalogue and get selling! Timescale? - A month or two? Sound realistic - sure if I start to work on this instead of the AIS until 2 am every night.

Wish me luck and hopefully, the couple of AISers I have managed to churn out will start to bring me in a little "pocket money" sometime in the near future - Who knows, maybe I will be able to publish my adsense earnings next month, provided they break the $10 barrier ;)

Cheers,
Rich