Click-ITNEWSOctober 2010

NEW: Voucher Special Offers Wizard

Cast Your Vote for the next feature...

“Tell us what you want next”

PopIT Buy Now Buttons

Everyone has special offer feverthese days. We all want to findthe best deal, cheapest prices

and bargains for everything we buy.Once it was only after Xmas when theshops opened their sales, but nowthey are any time of year, and in mostcases all year long. If you are notproviding special offers then youcould be losing out on sales.

Photographers and artists are no differentto any other service or retail market, andthey need to be flexible with their pricingand with the rates they charge in order toremain competitive.

The most flexible solution is to offervouchers to your customers, which is themost popular special offer method usedby advertisers. You can issue a vouchernumber in so many ways, either in youradvertising, direct mail, by email, over thetelephone, on your blog, and on yourwebsite.

The EditorSummer has gone again, and if you livein the North West where we are based,summer never arrived at all.

We all have our expectations, and I justexpect to have sunshine and fineweather in the summer time. It’s not toomuch to ask. Never mind, maybe nextyear eh?

The general expectation in the marketplace is to have lots of special offers andbargains. We all want our money to gofurther these days, so everyone is used tobrowsing for the best deals.

This leads me into the first feature ofthis month’s newsletter... our latestupdate with special offer vouchers.

Now you can join the rest of the marketand compete with your own special dealsand incentives to get your customers tospend more to get those lovely discounts.

Our next development is being openedfor debate, and your vote, so we want allof you, our customers, to tell us whatyou want us to work on next in ourfuture update.

There are so many options for use as weexpand our business, but we want toensure that our customer’s come first inall our decisions. So take advantage ofthis opportunity and vote.

Trevor Hirst (Managing Director)

NEW Voucher Wizard

Vouchers are ideal because you can makeeach voucher a unique offer, and restrictit to selected customer groups or make itpublic for everyone to use.

They create the incentive for yourcustomers to spend more on their order inorder to qualify for your discount.

You can also make the offer limited toselected galleries, so you can promote acollection of fine-art photos, or a specificwedding gallery for example.

Vouchers can also be limited in thenumber of times it can be redeemed, soyou could make it a one-off special offer,or leave it unlimited.

The other advantage of vouchers is that itis easy to monitor and control. You cansee at a glance how many vouchers havebeen redeemed, and therefore howsuccessful your campaign has been. Youcan also switch the offer on and off asrequired, so you can create special offersfor Valentines and Easter etc.

Special Offers can be defined in manyways, either as a percentage discount or

as a value discount, and subject to aspecific minimum order.

The Voucher Wizard makes it simple tocreate as many vouchers as you like. Ittakes you through the process step-by-step, and you can edit your voucher laterat any time. A voucher field auto-appearsbelow your eCommerce galleries to allowyour visitor to enter the vouchernumber/reference (if they have one) andprompts them to login if it is a privatevoucher. The discount is then applied totheir order.

This new feature is a very important newdevelopment for our Pro-Gallerysystem, and it arrives at a time when itis most needed.

We are pleased to offer this as anotherstandard feature in our long list ofenhancements and upgrades, and wehope you enjoy using it and benefit fromextra sales it can generate for you.

Public offer on all galleries...“Spend over £100 on print orders and get 20% off”

Public offer limited to a specific gallery...“Get £5 off when you spend over £50 on prints in the Fine-Art Gallery”

Private offer on all galleries...“Members of the Acme Sports Club get 25% discount on all orders over £150”

Private offer on a specific gallery...“Members of the Smith family get £15 off their order when they spend over £75 onprints from their portrait gallery”

There are so many newfeatures that we want tocreate, and only so much

time to devote to it. So, we areoffering you, our clients, theopportunity to VOTE for the nextmajor feature that you would like usto develop. This seemed to be themost diplomatic and fairest solution,so I hope you all cast your vote andmake your voice heared.

As you will appreciate, we get tons ofrequests for ideas and features, butsome are very specialised and have avery limited appeal. We have to focuson the benefits to the majority of ourclients, rather than pander to a minoritygroup with very specialised needs.

Although our primary market is thephotographer and artist, we also supplyour website system to general businessranging from catering services to travel

agents. The only difference is theydon’t use or need the photo gallerysystem, but everything else is the same,so even the general business voicemust be heared, which is why some ofthe features we are proposing are notentirely photography related.

Take a look at the four new featuresopposite that we are proposing todevelop, and let us know which ofthem would be of most interest to you.The one that gets the most votes will bethe next feature we create.

You can cast vote and/or offer yourown suggestions and requests on oursupport website www.catamatic.com

The result of the vote will beannounced in the Novembernewsletter.

1: Shopping Cart

The Pro-Gallery system is designedfor selling prints in all formats andsizes etc, but it is not designed for orsuitable to sell general products.

We do have our PopITShop facilitywhich allows adding Buy Now Buttonson any page to sell any type of product,but it is a manual process that requiresadding a line of PopITCode to a page,which is something that not everyoneis comfortable with.

Creating a shopping cart module wouldallow anyone to sell any product withany combination of attributes (eg: sizes,colours), and include multiple productphotos and testimonials, reviews,suggested products, special offers etc.

We have reviewed all of the currenteCommerce solutions and found themall to be much too complicated to use.Most of them were developed manyyears ago when only web designersunderstood how to use them (youshould see the size of the manuals thatcome with them!).

We recognise that there is a need for asimple eCommerce shopping cart that

is very easy to use, with all the featuresrequired for most retail services, butwithout the complexity and highmaintenance that comes with most otherhigh end solutions. It needs to be simpleenough for anyone to add and sell aproduct without having to refer tomanuals or contact support.

The reason why other hosted shoppingcarts are so expensive is because of thehigh level of support that is required tomaintain them for their customers.

We want to offer the shopping cart as astandard feature of our website system,at no extra cost. This will make itunbeatable value in the market, just likeour Pro-Gallery system, and enable youto expand your services and sell otherproducts as well as prints.

2: Contact Relation Manager

Often referred to as a CRM, this facilityis used to manage all your business,customer and sales contacts, andincludes a calendar of events and tasks,to-do lists and diary manager. It allowsyou to see at a glance your schedule ofevents, meetings, sales leads, contact

lists, support requests, sales enquiriesetc etc.

Many of us will use Outlook to keeptrack of all our contacts and view ourcalendar of events, but unless you goto the extent of using MicrosoftExchange and shared calendars etc, youwill find it difficult to access yourcontacts when you are away from theoffice.

The CRM is designed to provide fullremote access to your contacts anddiary via any web browser or smartphone. It can also be set to send youtext message reminders of scheduledevents. You can create calendars anddiaries for different colleagues, so youcan each manage and view your ownevents.

Most of the CRM packages we havereviewed are far too expensive andmuch too complicated to use. They arefull of features that most people willnever use, and you can’t switch themoff, so the screen appears complex andvery busy. Another example ofsoftware bloat (ie: software that tries tobe everything to everyone).

Our proposal is to design a hostedCRM that is easy to use andexpandable, so you can add just theextra features that you need, and switchoff the ones you don’t need. It will bea separate utility hosted on a domain(or sub-domain), so it can be offered toanyone, even if they don’t use ourwebsite system.

If your contact list is growing and yourdiary is getting full, then a CRM maybe just what you need.

3: eCards & Lightbox

If you produce fine art or creativephotography then you may beinterested in offering your visitors theoption to send one or more of yourphotos to a friend as an eCard with amessage.

This is a feature that has largely beencaptured by specialist on-line greetingcard suppliers, where you can selectfrom hundreds of designs and messagesand send them as an eCard to anyonevia email free of charge.

Some photo-galleries also provide thisfacility, and it can be used as a meansof attracting visitors to your websitewho otherwise may never have foundyou, resulting in a possible newcustomer.

The eCard is not viewed directly in therecipient’s email, but it requires themto click a link in the eCard email toview the photos on a special page onyour website on which you can addyour own welcome text (and evendisplay a voucher for them).

Our proposal is to add a new button tothe basket page which allows the visitorthe option to send any or all of thephotos in the basket to up to ten emailaddresses with a message. The email issent to the recipients with the messageand a link to view the selected photo/son your website (also with the message).

Due to strict legal rules regardingcollecting emails, the system will notsave the email addresses that the visitorenters, but it will record which imageswere sent and on what date.

4: Page Layout Wizard

Our website system usesthe most popular andeasiest of page editorsavailable, the FCK Editor.

However, it still requires alearning curve tounderstand the concepts ofadding a simple table to thepage using the table icon,and then inserting text andimages into the table cells.This allows you to createan almost unlimited varietyof page layouts (thepositioning of text and images on a page).

In practice the results are far fromguaranteed, and it depends on manyvariables such as the width of the tableand cells, font and image sizes, and evenimage alignments. It also depends onwether you have copied and pasted

directly from MS Word (which cancause a whole heap of trouble), orentered text directly into the page editorand added spaces, or inserted imagesthat are too large to fit in the table cell.

All of these factors can be controlled viathe editor, but it still defeats most peoplewho are not familiar with basic pagelayout techniques for websites.

Our proposal is to create a special pagelayout wizard that presents the userwith a range of classic page layouts forthem to choose. The wizard thendisplays simple text boxes for each textarea of the selected layout, and an imageselection facility to select the images for

each image in the layout.Once the user has enteredthe text and selected theimages the wizard willgenerate the page layoutand resize the images to fit.

The wizard will even allowthe user to insert a slideshow or random image intoany image space in thelayout. It can be used toadd a layout to an existingpage or create a new page.Once created, it can beedited as normal from the

main page editor to allow addinginternal/external page links etc.

It is hoped that this new feature willmake the whole process of creating aprofessional page layout as simple as afew clicks of the mouse.

PopIT Buy Now ButtonsThe PopITLinX facility allows you to display aBuy Now Button anywhere on any page usingthe following PopIT code...

[[B100.00:item=Booking Deposit]]

B = ButtonThe number after B is the price of the item.item = the name of the item or service

You can also display a photo above the buttonby adding the image ID like this...

photo=564

If your item comes in different colours then addthem like this...

option1=Colour,Green,Brown,Red,Blue

...where the first name is the name of theattribute (Colour)

You can add a free text field to the button likethis (for the customer to enter a reference)...

text=Photo Ref

For full details and instructions visit oursupport site www.catamatic.com

MasterClass

PopIT Tip 3:

If you enter a PopIT codeincorrectly then hoveryour mouse over the errorcode that appears on thepage and it will tell youwhat is wrong.

[Invalid PopIT Code]

~IF~If you think you are beaten, you are

If you think you dare not, you don’t

If you’d like to win, but think you can’t

It’s almost certain you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost

For out of this world we find

Success begins with a fellow’s will -

It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you’re outclassed, you are

You’ve got to think high to rise

You’ve got to be sure of yourself before

You can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go

To the stronger or faster man

But sooner or later the man who wins

Is the one who Thinks he can.

Anonymous

Click-IT Internet Ltd