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Shipping Estimator V1 Mod for Cube Cart 3 CC3

Announcing the Shipping Estimator V1 modification for Cube Cart 3. If you are using “By Weight” shipping method.

The shipping estimator allows customers to open a window, which allows them to select the destination country. It then simply shows an estimate of the price.

Cube cart 3 Shipping estimator v1

Are you loosing customers because when they get to your shopping cart page they don’t know how much they will be charged for shipping / postage?

loosing sales from lack of shipping cost

This screen shot is taken from google analytics, it shows that customers are getting to the shopping cart first page. But not all are proceeding to the final steps. This is probably because your customer doesn’t know the postage.

We believe customers should know the shipping price before signing up to make a purchase.

Use the links below to purchase, we’ll then email out the instructions once payment is received.

$10 – Worldwide £6.40 – UK



Mindwarp Consultancy Ltd 2009 – Please note we do not provide refunds!

For further information please contact :
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2008 11 09 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (0) Permalink

Google products base file updates

When I first discovered how great google base files were I spent about two weeks trying to find advice on how to make the most out of them. I found that almost anyone who sells things on the web can use them and you can create them and forget about them.

During these time I made refinements and was happy in the end that I’d done a good job.

I sat back and waited to see what would happen, on one of my sites I got sales and still get a trickle of sales. But I never got my google checkout buttons, that still a mystery.

Anyways, I now need to update my files as I’ve change almost everything about the products they include.

Last time I did an output from the database using the rather basic froogle export, from then on I played with my spreadsheet and produced a good file.

I did wonder at the time how I could improve this process so I wouldn’t have to do that each time, but I thought, until I get it right these no point in doing anything fancy.

However at the time it did seem to make sense to have everything in the cubecart database then I could maybe produce a feature which I could sell at a later date.

This time round I’m thinking, I want to do something quick that I can re-use and will give me a good file, I doubt if anyone would buy a cube cart mod anyways (even if they did I wouldn’t make much money out of it).

So I’ve decided to write a program in VB.Net, I’ll have it access my cube_cart database or I’ll figure out a way to dump data for my program to access. Then I’ll have some data in a small database or text files which I can use to add data to my base files.

Then I can still access updates in my products and have a great file.

Thoughts?

by
JM

2008 11 07 Dipsy Google Product Search Comments (2) Permalink

How to build links for your websites – Link Building

When this thread is finished the meat of this thread will be compiled into this page Link Building Guide.

I guess the obvious method I’ve been using is submitting to link directories using mikes submitter program. However you can’t submit sub pages and you can’t be certain which pages you’ll end up on or what PR that page will have.

The next method, where I’ve been able to cheat a little, is posting on forums and blogs. I’ve been able to cheat by modifying my global signature for my posts on the Real Basic Forum. Also theres blog posting here. But I think I need to work harder on this, by submitting to a lot more different themed blogs and forums.

I always think that those link directories seem very small time, I guess more established directories and listings sites would be a good place to submit too, although none come to mind at the moment.

I guess becoming a blogger would help to.

Another method is press releases, not something I’ve heard mentioned for a long time. And not for the purposes on link building even then. But I guess lots of sites use these on their sites too. But its a one off sort of thing, also I’ve not sure what I do for my jewellery site.

As part of this mike has offered to let me make some postings for his own blog.

The biggest problem with these method is that time that it takes to post and you only benefit from one link, but as I can hear mike saying, you can get people visiting your site from these posts. I guess another problem is finding blogs / forums on the topic relevant to your site.

Another popular and new method (I believe) is to create a pad file for your site and a program which can be a catalogue of your site. I intend to produce a demo, maybe a video for my maths programs on my shop site. However, on softtester I’ve seen listings for a hand bag site, where the program is a mini catalogue of your site. I haven’t deleted it yet, I guess I should.

Reciprocal links, when I started submitting to links directories I asked mike if I should provide RLs and he said no and your giving away PR to these sites. But I guess there must be some value in RLs as we’ve got links to each others sites on your sites?

Hmmm can’t think of any more and I don’t really have a plan to move forward on this 🙁

by
JM

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2008 11 07 Dipsy Link Building Comments (18) Permalink

How to sell some PHP code?

I’ve been developing a modification for my shop site.

Mod’s are quite common for cube cart shopping carts.
However due to the fact that code relies on an existing script the user has to insert bits of code etc, again this is common.

I’d like to provide a working version for people to try.

But I’m going to have difficulty adding any sort of protection to the code as its bits here and there.

I can’t provide full files as I’m re-using (copying) a script provided in cube cart and its not open source.

Any suggestions?

Also, if I overcome this obsticle I’ve got to figure out how to provide licenses etc, if needed. And how to accept payment, alothough a paypal button might do.

I’ve developed add-ons for software etc in the past and I’ve never made much money from it so I’m not really able to put much effort into the process, so things will have to be simple.

by JM

2008 11 06 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (1) Permalink

Picking good keywords for your home page

I’m currently trying to get to a certain level of completion with my shop site(s) before I start to do some serious link building (although I haven’t figured that bit out yet).

I’ve optimized my sub pages with carefully chosen keywords that I think should produce visitors which will buy that item. Although the keywords haven’t been my first choice keywords, they have a good projected traffic level, look to be achievable from the results shown on google and the competition level looks good too.

Now I need to choose the keywords for my home page, I have spent time looking for keywords and time thinking what to do for the best, over several days. I haven’t been able to find achievable, relevant keywords. Unlike my sub pages I feel the home page needs to use keywords which are really quite relevant and that users will use.

After much thought I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to use keywords that people will use, even if these keywords look unachievable.

I’m hoping PR will seep through from my sub pages and raise the PR of my main page.

I looked, with surprise, the other day and found that I hadn’t used mike submitter tool on my jewellery site (the site I’m talking about in this post). However, as the url of my site is http://www.mcls4u.com/shop I’m worried that as this is a sub page I might not be able to use mike program and maybe a couple of months ago, this is the reason why I didn’t use mikes prog in the first place. For those of you that don’t know, must directory sites don’t accept sub pages.

I just wanted to get that off my chest as I’ve had this issue bouncing round my head for several days and I keep changing my mind. My main worry was that I’d be using keywords which would never get visitors, like the keywords I’ve used on my older sites in the past.

But as I say I don’t think I have any choice. This decision does worry me though. 🙁

by
JM

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2008 11 05 Dipsy Search Engine Optimisation Comments (2) Permalink

Differences between AWStats and Google Analytics

For a while now I’ve been scratching my head as to why Google Analytics always shows less visitors to my sites than AWStats. On a couple of sites, I’ve also got Adsense running and this reports less page views too.

I posted a thread about this on DP a few months ago but didn’t get any definitive answers. The most sensible answer I got was that since the Analytics code was at the bottom of the page, if people don’t wait for an entire page to load, the Analytics code doesn’t run though AWStats still counts the page as loaded. I’m prepared to accept this as a reason why some pages don’t count but on one of my shareware sites, AWStats is showing around 2500 page views a day while Adsense shows a measly 450 or so. I don’t show ads on the submit page but since I’m only getting 80 submissions a day or so, these should only account for about 200 on top of the 450 Adsense tells me I’m getting.

Am I reading the AWStats figures incorrectly? The way I read the figures, robot visits (like Googlebot or Slurp) aren’t included in the headline visitor/ page views. Is this correct?

by ML

2008 11 02 MikeL Tech Talk Comments (3) Permalink

Copyright infringment and use of images of websites

Recently I’ve had communications about images on one of my websites. Which included a bill for several thousand pounds and quite a threatening letter.

I’m not going to go into the details here, no doubt a few of you will email me in shock.

Anyways, I just wanted to warn you about using ANY images on your websites where you can’t prove that you have a legitimate right to use them. Its far better to pay a small fee and have proof of entitlement / license than to use free images.

by JM

2008 11 01 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (1) Permalink

More shareware site spam filters

I’ve now got in place a limit of submissions per author by category.

I’ve also noticed that some authors are using the same home page for a lot of programs.

To me this says, that there trying to sub-promote other people programs.

So I’ve also put into a place a limit on authors, program home page by category.

Also, I discovered that I was producing broken links and therefore getting a lot of extra search engine bot visits. Previously I was showing the correct page but with a different URL and therefore producing duplicates for google. So instead, I’m now doing a search on the page name instead. Which is producing a list which will include the correct url and any other matching records.

Gutted that I was producing bad links 🙁

by JM
by JM

2008 11 01 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (1) Permalink

Support for customers in non-English speaking countries

This might be a strange post since we have a German contributor but I’d like to see if anyone has expxerience of providing support to people in non-English speaking countries.

At the moment, I sell software in English only via a .co.uk site. This allows me to target the UK, US, Australia, India etc. but there is an untapped market in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and so on. The thing that’s put me off for now is providing support or even answering simple queries. My wife was (once) fluent in German and lived in Germany for a couple of years. The trouble is that her German is now rusty and neither of us speak anything else but English.

Does anyone have experience of providing support in this way? How do you cope? Is it a problem or are customers happy to switch to English?

by ML

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2008 10 24 MikeL Business Software Comments (1) Permalink

Speaking Times Table Tutor CD Review

Have you just been spending hours with your child to get her to learn her times tables? Most of the day can go by and don’t feel as if your child has learnt anything.

As with anything which is hard to do, you have you make it fun.

Check out the our ‘Speaking Times Tables Tutor CD’ its a program which allows your child to learn and be tested on their times table. You select which table you want to work on or choose random for a mixture of tables.

It make times table fun!

At the moment, its available on eBay!

2008 10 24 Dipsy New Software Releases Comments (0) Permalink