36 posts tagged “istudioweb.com”
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
There were so many times when this had happened, it actually became one of the internal internet memes. The phrase "but this is a brand new computer, we only bought it year and a half ago" isn't that funny anymore. People are becoming increasingly overprotective of their computers, calling them their "friends" and "babies" - "my baby is sick, can you fix it", "my dear friend have been acting strange lately, maybe he'd caught a virus or something".
Worse yet, when you point to those issues you face further complaints that you are trying to avoid your responsibilities and you should make web site work with any browser on Earth. While in general it is true, the task is all but impossible - try stuffing that intro flash movie down the throat of Lynx and you will get the idea :). Or, more realistic scenario - the famous Internet Explorer 6.0, that some people still think is good enough browser. In fact, according to statistics on my most traffic-heavy clients' web sites the IE 6 is 4th most popular browser, after IE 7, IE 8 and Firefox (all versions).
Unfortunately, quite a few things are simply impossible to achieve in this world. One of them is the browser compatibility. However, there's a pretty good chance that if you make something look critical and urgent and very important overall - people would listen, look and take action.
So from now on if you venture to this web site using one of the older browsers (Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox are supported at the moment) you will see a bright yellow bar on the top of the page saying that your browser is old and needs to be updated with a link to a page where you can choose what to do as well as a link to page where I explain why it is important to keep the browser up to date. If you are using the latest and greatest but just anxious to to see what the page looks like - feel free to look here: http://www.istudioweb.com/browser-information/.
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
Imagine you are running a small retail store. And the online storefront as well, where you sell exactly the same stuff you sell in your brick-and-mortar. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but main issues you'll be working with are:- keeping track of the inventory (N units in stock, X units on order)
- keeping track of sales receipts (since you have cash/credit you have to learn what the heck is accounts payable and accounts receivable)
- keeping track of employee hours worked or units of work completed (like packages prepared and shipped or units assembled)
- keep track of all your money movements, including both direct and indirect costs (like paying salary to employees and paying handyman to fix your delivery truck, or paying your smart-ass business consultants to improve your business), i.e. all of your costs of running business
- keep track of your customers' records, personal requests (if your business is of such sort) or general requests (for certain merchandise)
- keeping track of long term projects not directly related to running a store, like marketing (ads in newspapers, AdWords campaigns) or IT (web site redesign, integrating store's POS with online ordering)
I'm sure there's so much more than this, but I just want to stop here. So far we have operations, sales management, human resources, accounting/finance, customer relations and executive management. Did I miss anything (ah, yes, legal, let's just skip this for a moment) else?
Now, from my experience pretty much all the business owners are keeping all this in their heads. Their bookkeeper does their bank reconciliation once a quarter or once a year. Their full time store sales person probably remembers what needs to be ordered by week's end. She also knows most of the customers by face and name and sort of knows what they like. And every night the owner pulls cash out of the register together with thick pack of credit card receipts to try to make some sense out of them before the store opens tomorrow morning.
Sounds totally wrong? Or too familiar? That's what I'm getting at!
Over 80% of business owners don't go above Excel sheets in order to keep track of all of the above information. One spreadsheet - inventory, one - list of vendors, one - credit card transactions, one - payroll. And these are very well disciplined businesses, because about 60% just don't keep track of everything. About 20% of business owners don't keep track of anything at all, judging about their current situation by the current balance on their bank account. And that, mind you, could be a personal account, because they aren't incorporated, just d/b/a.
Why? Because they don't know any better. And they don't want to pay for it, because the money's tight, the crisis is upon us and there are more important things to do. Nobody wants to spend their time and money on something they can't immediately use or profit from. And that is totally understandable and just as well totally wrong.
Keep reading, this is just the beginning :)
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
Since my last post was about iPhone, I will start with iPhone again now. So far it has proven to be a wonderful device, although it still has that toy feeling. Throughout all these four months I couldn't help but think that I can't wait to put this toy aside as soon as something more suitable comes along.
By being exposed to AppStore and the multitude of iPhone Apps, I kind of got an idea of the market, the possibilities and the progress one can make. What happens on iPhone market is very much similar to PC shareware scene back in the eighties. Lots of free programs with limited functionality with bunch of nagging screens asking for money in exchange for a full version. Lots of small software teams of few people (sometimes it's just one person).
If current state of PC software market is any indication, in just a few years we'll see the next generation productivity tools, massively multiplayer online games of all kinds, collaboration and communication suites.
And speaking of communications - recently I had a chance to try out Google Wave. My first impression - imagine Microsoft Work stuck in review revisions mode when a lot of people are making changes and you're looking at them in real time. And instead of that annoying (at least to me) "copy column" you get to have instant messenger right inside the very document you're editing. And you can play it as a movie to see who said what and when. And you can use it to blog (I am looking into that!). And share pictures. And create automated "bots" that will annoy people who try to talk to you when you're away.
At some point during the I/O presentation (which I had to watch just to get an idea how to use the Wave) I got this funny feeling that Google is a self-improving artificial intelligence network that keeps googlers as ambassadors to humanity. Come to think of it - when you have a project (and you can call a project either building a web site or a vacation) and you communicate among a number of people, it's hard to keep everything in order - meeting minutes, e-mails, instant messages, phone calls, to-do lists and so on. Google Wave takes care of all that. In fact, it does it so good that you don't even need to come back to your old e-mail anymore. Each wave - is a task, an e-mail thread, a repository of documents and a to-do list. Once you start thinking in waves - I haven't seen anyone using this expression, but it's pretty obvious - you just can't go back to old-style technology.
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
So I went around my own clients as well as their friends - whoever happened to be a small business owner had a chance to respond. The question I was asking is simple - how would you be able to benefit from the cloud services in your current set of operations. Plain English version: we are not changing the infrastructure of the business, we're just trying to see what cloud services would be helpful to the business as it is.
The responses I got were surprising - to say the least. None of the business owners would trust cloud or any other internet service with any kind of critical part of their operations. Why? Because their internet connectivity is NOT 100% reliable. Why? Because their operations are mostly based on offline interaction.Why? Because their internet connectivity is not 100% reliable. See the pattern?
It makes little sense for a small business to justify paying for SLA-backed lines like T1, T3 which are a lot more expensive while providing significantly lower speeds compared to general consumer-grade connections (like cable or FiOS). Yes, they do use internet for job-related tasks - like downloading forms and brochures, doing competition and marketing research, advertising and so on. However, none of them could justify purchasing a dedicated commercial-grade internet connection for what they are being offered. Which means - business cannot rely 100% on their stuff being available online. Therefore - no cloud services.
It just boils down to this - we are not connected enough to use cloud services. Yes, a few of us live off their smart phones. If pushed hard enough I guess I could do away with any of my smart phones - if I am on the go (although I do lug my X61s pretty much always these days). But for the rest of small business owners I had a chance to talk to - this is not an option. Contacts must be local. List of clients, leads, price lists, suppliers, data backups - everything must be local and available offline. The longest shot I've seen to a mobility so far - is a take-home laptop that is synchronizing everything daily.
So while I am happy to see new cloud services every day, I guess the more important question to ask - before asking which cloud service could benefit your business - is this: are you connection good enough to rely on cloud services? Chances are - you still must keep an actual copy locally. Just in case.
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
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Just when I was about to write how our local UPS office picked up the ball after main office dropped it - they blew it above the sky. Hour later I got a call from our local UPS office and nice lady promised that driver would contact me about an hour before dropping off my package AND drop-off will happen after five. Well, I said, thank you, this really saves me a lot of trouble.
I got home something before six o'clock and find a third UPS InfoNotice flying on the floor. Which means that driver didn't call me, at least I haven't seen any missed calls on my phone. Tough luck, I said, and drove my 30 minutes to UPS pickup location. Today was a lights-on day, since the garbage truck garage across from UPS yard was lit to its fullest. Nice teamwork! Got inside at around 9:30pm - and the line was worse than those at the airport on Thanksgiving. In just under 30 minutes I got to the clerk who grabbed my InfoNotice and went after my package. In about two minutes he emerged back only to tell me that... they lost my package. "It's somewhere in the building, we just can't find it". Nice. The guy seemed upset that I came over for the missing package and I kind of agreed that I was better off picking up the package that wasn't missing. But this is life and my package that UPS was trying to deliver three times got lost. Guess it got upset too.
Now to the brighter part. Few hours after I've published the previous post I got a comment from UPS's PR lady. I held off the comment until I came back from pickup to at least say that the problem got resolved. Well it's not and it's not actually my problem. Here's why.
UPS is best if you order something to the location where you are present during business hours. These guys probably great for serving businesses and all, but regular folks who work day jobs and hope they can get their stuff after hours get sidestepped. I'd rather take my wife to a movie or take her out on a Friday night than spend hour and half picking up stuff that was supposed to be delivered three days ago. So, here my words to Debbie, who wrote "you’ve really had a hassle with this shipment". Debbie, I hadn't had a hassle. It's the way UPS works for all who can't schedule a delivery to their work address. That's the kind of service (or rather lack of it) that all those people in line at 10PM on Friday night are getting. It would be just honest to state right there on your brown web site: "We're doing business from 9 to 5. If you want to pick up your stuff any other time - come and get it yourself, you loosers".
Rant mode off. Debbie, this is still for you, though. The economy is tough, and if tomorrow someone's gonna start a shitstorm on Twitter about how not to use UPS but use FedEx or USPS instead - you gonna have a problem. I don't depend on UPS in my ways of doing business, but I have plenty of clients who do and they aren't all that satisfied either. Here's the moment of opportunity and innovation for UPS. Google the term "cell phone". I've heard they're good in establishing a two-way communication between two people, in your case - the driver and dispatch. You can also google "blackberry" and "gps phone". Sending one-way messages to driver's pager is so last century. Call those guys at Sprint, AT&T or Verizon, get a contract. I'm sure with tough times like these you will have an upper hand in negotiation a good deal. Next step - map your drivers. Know exactly where they are any time of the day. If you need someone to do it for you - hire me, I can get this done for you. Next step (here comes the trick!) - ask your customers when they want their package delivered. Seriously. For real. Don't just game the numbers ("we deliver more packages..."), but actually deliver them. When customers want. Here's how: you have live traffic maps (Google does it as well as other providers) plus you have exact location of each of your drivers. You can minimize their time driving by reshaping their route in real time according to traffic patterns. This means less gas burned, less time wasted, less destinations visited multiple times. With the money saved ask a quarter of your drivers to work second shift - from 2pm to 11pm. You won't need many people because I imagine most of the deliveries would still be within 8 to 6 time frame. You already charge a bit more for residential deliveries, so here's a way to put those extras plus whatever you saved to good use. This will unload the 8 to 6 schedule somewhat and reduce return trips. I'm sure you can have your own quality improvement department cough up the real numbers to do the math. But in addition to this all - you will get a customer satisfaction beyond any imaginable level. Which means - more business for your company. Isn't it a win-win?
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
That's when the fun starts. In case you live in the UPS local center you should know that annoying female voice that reads all the voice prompts. I needed the customer service rep, but she insisted on choosing either to track a package or order shipments. Once you concede - she will read you the status of the package. Hm... let's see... I know what the status is, that's exactly why I am calling! Let's try to ask for customer service again. "I can connect you, but this is the latest information on your package that we have". Right, why else would I want to talk to the operator - to find out if UPS is hiding the status of the package. Black helicopters, anyone?
The operator was slow enough not to realize what exactly am I asking of him. Once he told me the UPS will call me to notify of the time I will be able to pick up the package I asked where would I be picking it up - at home or at local UPS? I asked this question no less than six times, only to be told that (these are actual responses to my question, I omitted repetitions only):
- The UPS will call me
- I will receive the call from UPS within an hour
- I could be anywhere to receive the call
- UPS drivers leave early in the morning before anyone else is up
- all UPS drivers drive UPS trucks
- UPS drivers come back to local station around 6 PM
- the UPS will call me to arrange pickup
This guys is a genius, I think he's a next UPS's CEO. Too bad no one cares about UPS's customer service for individuals.
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
That's when the fun starts. In case you live in the UPS local center you should know that annoying female voice that reads all the voice prompts. I needed the customer service rep, but she insisted on choosing either to track a package or order shipments. Once you concede - she will read you the status of the package. Hm... let's see... I know what the status is, that's exactly why I am calling! Let's try to ask for customer service again. "I can connect you, but this is the latest informatio on your package that we have". Right, why else would I want to talk to the operator - to find out if UPS is hiding the status of the package. Black helicopters, anyone?
The operator was slow enough not to realize what exactly am I asking of him. Once he told me the UPS will call me to notify of the time I will be able to pick up the package I asked where would I be picking it up - at home or at local UPS? I asked this question no less than six times, only to be told that (these are actual responses to my question, I omitted repetitions only):
- The UPS will call me
- I will receive the call from UPS within an hour
- I could be anywhere to receive the call
- UPS drivers leave early in the morning before anyone else is up
- all UPS drivers drive UPS trucks
- UPS drivers come back to local station around 6 PM
- the UPS will call me to arrange pickup
This guys is a genius, I think he's a next UPS's CEO. Too bad no one cares about UPS's customer service for individuals.
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
To much of my surprise someone from Advantage Rent-A-Car actually called me next day. Imagine that! I was told that they have recalculated my rates and the final amount would be something around 20 dollars less than the amount on the receipt I have. However, the representative declined the responsibility for overcharging my account. Overall I had a feeling she thinks she's doing me a favor.
Therefore I guess the issue is resolved. I will try my best to avoid Advantage Rent-A-Car given how horrible their service is and how time consuming it is dealing with this company. Please understand - I am still at a loss here, since aside from the overdraft of the account I had to spend a few hours waiting on hold, dealing with ARAC customer service and so on.
Below is the text I had included with the documents from my car rental for Advantage Rent-A-Car.
The following contract is the only receipt I have so far for the Advantage Rent-A-Car rental that has occurred between May 24th to May 31st. As you can see the amount on the receipt is $XXX.xx whereas the amount that was billed to the card is $ZZZ.zz. Overcharging the account has also resulted in bank fees for funds overdraft.
The reservation was first made through Expedia.com. After 40 minutes waiting for shuttle to pick us up I have arrived at ARAC location near the Orlando International Airport. I wanted to upgrade the rental to a better car - Ford Mustang, of which a contract has been prepared by customer service rep. At the time of creating the contract I have declined personal insurance but kept the insurance that would cover the car.
At the time of loading my luggage into the car I have discovered that the car was infested with ants. I have quickly removed my luggage from the infested car and asked for a replacement. The car I was given (Toyota Avalon) was showing rusted spots. It also had mechanical issues at the speeds higher then 35 mph which were obviously impossible to spot while driving through parking lot to the exit.
Upon agreeing on the car the customer service rep decided to amend the receipt by hand writing on the existing contract instead of printing out a new one. At this moment the overall time spent at the Advantage Rent-A-Car facility was about one hour, which is about four times longer than any other rental car agency I have dealt with so far.
At the exit gate of the Advantage Rent-A-Car parking lot the security guard stated that the contract is wrong, but he's going to let us through anyway because he's tired of diverting people back to the office.
The car was returned on May 31st, at which moment I was called into the reception area because of "some problems with contract". After waiting just short of 20 minutes, I was told that the contract I had all along is wrong and not valid. A customer service representative spent another 20 minutes trying to enter a new contract into system, but for some reason was unable to do so. Another Advantage Rent-A-Car representative, who I believe was a manager, asked the rep who was working on our contract to draft one on a hand-written form to be able to let us go in order not to miss the plane, since the total time we have spent there was approaching one hour. The form was prepared by Advantage Rent-A-Car representative and signed by me. This is the only receipt I have in regards to this rental. I was also assured by Advantage Rent-A-Car customer service representative that $XXX.xx would be the final charge that should appear on the credit card statement.
Since Advantage Rent-A-Car failed to produce any other receipts that confirm that I had a rental agreement with Advantage Rent-A-Car/SimplyWheelz, I understand that the $XXX.xx is the final charge I am responsible for. Having my credit card charged for a greater amount resulted in overdraft of funds, and me incurring additional bank penalties of $68.00. Therefore the following charges are disputed:
Rental overcharge in the amount of: $65.24
Bank fees resulted in account being overcharged: 68.00
Total disputed: $133.24
On June 3rd, 2009 I have called Advantage Rent-A-Car customer servce and spoke with representative called Denise. She asked me to fax the receipt and bank statement showing the overdraft charges to the fax # (800) 654-9925, which I did at around 3:40pm - 3:50pm same day. Denise promised that someone from billing department would get back to me within 24 to 48 hours period. Today is June 16, 2009 and I haven't head anyone calling me with this issue.
I would like this issue resolved promptly and completely as soon as possible. So far Advantage Rent-A-Car customer service hasn't demonstrated that they have any concern for the clients whatsoever. Hope you can break this impression and straighten things out.
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
So I went around my own clients as well as their friends - whoever happened to be a small business owner had a chance to respond. The question I was asking is simple - how would you be able to benefit from the cloud services in your current set of operations. Plain English version: we are not changing the infrastructure of the business, we're just trying to see what cloud services would be helpful to the business as it is.
The responses I got were surprising - to say the least. None of the business owners would trust cloud or any other internet service with any kind of critical part of their operations. Why? Because their internet connectivity is NOT 100% reliable. Why? Because their operations are mostly based on offline interaction.Why? Because their internet connectivity is not 100% reliable. See the pattern?
It makes little sense for a small business to justify paying for SLA-backed lines like T1, T3 which are a lot more expensive while providing significantly lower speeds compared to general consumer-grade connections (like cable or FiOS). Yes, they do use internet for job-related tasks - like downloading forms and brochures, doing competition and marketing research, advertising and so on. However, none of them could justify purchasing a dedicated commercial-grade internet connection for what they are being offered. Which means - business cannot rely 100% on their stuff being available online. Therefore - no cloud services.
It just boils down to this - we are not connected enough to use cloud services. Yes, a few of us live off their smart phones. If pushed hard enough I guess I could do away with any of my smart phones - if I am on the go (although I do lug my X61s pretty much always these days). But for the rest of small business owners I had a chance to talk to - this is not an option. Contacts must be local. List of clients, leads, price lists, suppliers, data backups - everything must be local and available offline. The longest shot I've seen to a mobility so far - is a take-home laptop that is synchronizing everything daily.
So while I am happy to see new cloud services every day, I guess the more important question to ask - before asking which cloud service could benefit your business - is: are you connection good enough to rely on cloud services? Chances are - you still must keep an actual copy locally. Just in case.
Originally published at Small business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design. Please comment there.
Starting with my own area of expertise - web site creation. If your web site isn't on Google's first couple of pages for your search terms - you're effectively off the market. Why? Because no matter what FTC would do, we, the people, will "google it" first. Google didn't just buy those 80% of search market - we handed it to them on our own.
If your video isn't on YouTube - there's hardly any substitute on that. Recent TechCrunch post on percentage shares of US video streams confirms that. I don't remember YouTube stalking me with a bat to make me use their services.
Next - social networking. While MySpace/Facebook/Ning leave some room for competition, Twitter is the only game in town so far and so are Flickr, Last.fm and LinkedIn (to a point).
It's not that these companies are brutal in extinguishing their competition, something Microsoft did to Netscape back in the old age of browser wars. Also, there are alternatives - technically speaking. But there is no real competition in terms of services' social population and amount of interaction one would encounter. Heck, the reason Twitter crumbles every now and then because there is no competition, so there is no other place to tweet. It's just that after we played with most social web sites out there, we tend to come back to one or two most populated, since being where the social action occurs is the whole point of exercise.
