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Getting an 0845 number for our shop sites on the cheap?

While trying to find new services to accept our product feeds, by posting messages on help sites / forum, I found some great advice for e-commerce sites.

The top tip was to get an 800 number, this was the US, but I think an 0845 number as opposed to an 0800 number would be good enough. Having a phone number which isn’t a mobile number show customers they can contact you and gives people confidence in your site.

You can get 0845 number for free, from various places on the web.

Its still free if you have the number forwarded to your land line. However, for us, this isn’t a good option. Also, I’d like to setup two numbers, one for each shopping site.

After chatting to Blue about all this, he said I could get a skype account and an online number. After some searching I found it was possible to run two copies of skype at once. I could then get two usb skype phones. However, the online numbers which you can get for most city area codes in the UK, are £40 for the year.

Also theres the cost of the skype phones.

The other option is to forward the 0845 numbers to a mobile, theres a £9.99 setup cost and a £2.50 charge per month for this, per 0845 number on the best site I found. I could then use those free pay as you go sim cards I have and a couple of old mobiles I have. But I’m not sure about voicemail, I think pay as you go sims would have these.

Also, the 0845 site would charge me around 11.5p a minute for calls directed to the mobile.

I guess I wouldn’t get many calls and therefore my costs would be…

£18.98 setup
£5.00 a month

+ calls to mobile fee

So thats fixed costs of £60 a year + the £18.98 this year + calls.

Theres also other services you can have, like Dialled Number ID on DNI, which is where they pass on a caller id of the 0845 number, so you could use one phone / mobile.

I guess I could just put the mobile number on the web instead, but it doesn’t look very professional.

I’d be glad to hear your thoughts and ideally any ideas on a cheaper solution?

by JM

2009 10 31 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (2) Permalink

A true test of my google base / product search feed improvements

I’ve had google base feeds for over a year now, actually it may be longer.

I started out just creating a text file from a spreadsheet and uploading the file to my website. Then pointed google base at that file.

With our jewellery site, I went one step further and linked the shop data into the feed.

I always used the standard fields recommended and optional fields mentioned on the google base help center. Then I discovered you could add your own custom fields. Prior to that, foolishly, I thought the optional fields were custom fields.

So about a month ago I created some custom fields on the product table and added them to the google base feed. This was after we had moved to our new website.

So we didn’t have a good feed for that site until then.

Now with the maths site, I’ve always had the text file on the web and I get regular sales.

So today, I’ve linked up the feed with the database and created a mirror admin screen for that site  for myself.  I’ve spent time adding custom fields and strategicly assigning data based on sibling values.

So this should be a true test as to whether custom fields make any difference.

Having said this if they do make a difference, its not going to be massive and I’m at a loss what to do next to improve things further.

But it will be interesting to see what happens.

by JM

2009 10 29 Dipsy Google Product Search Comments (0) Permalink

New Software Package Release

I’m now one week into the new release of V2 of my main software package. So far I’ve had loads of downloads and no problems reported. I’ve also had some purchases from new users and some upgrades which give me confidence things are OK. I had good feedback during the beta but decided to resist the temptation to make more changes and simply went ahead and released.

The new package is 7Mb smaller to download since I decided to host the help file entirely online. All the package now contains in terms of help material are links to the online help file. I think I’m also going to try making a release without the .Net runtime. I should get the download to under 5Mb. I’ve tried this in the past. Sales did seem to drop slightly but I’m not sure this wasn’t due to the credit crunch. I’d like to give it a go again since it will reduce my hosting costs if nothing else.

I was hoping to get a bit of a breather after making the release but customers are now coming up with feature requests for the new invoice template editor. This is a good thing since they like the editor and see more potential. I could do with a bit of a break since the months running up to V2 have been busy to say the least. My Submitter package is also doing OK but that needs a push forwards. My main barrier to improving sales here is making management of directories easier and improving the speed with which I can add or update the list. I’ve started writing an improved website analyser program that should help in this area.

2009 10 29 MikeL New Software Releases Comments (1) Permalink

How to connect another PC to your HP Wireless print server?

After about an hour of trying, I’ve finally figured it out. I thought I’d put this post up to remind me in the future, it may also be useful to others in the future.

This relates to adding another printer to a HP 21011 Wireless G USB Print Server, but it may be similar for different print servers. In my case I’ve got an Epson Stylus R285, but this is irrelevant.

I did read the instructions but they didn’t help me, also it didn’t say what to do first, install your printer drivers or the printer server client software.

The first thing you need to do is to install the print server client software.

Then if its a new print server, setup your wireless settings and plug in your configuration cable.

This next step is what caused my problems, setting up the client pc, make sure you add the IP address of the printer to your firewall software.

Then install your printer software, when it asks you to plug in the USB cable or turn on your printer, select connect in your print server client software, then proceed with the printer driver installation.

And thats it.

by JM

2009 10 21 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (1) Permalink

Whats happening with my new program version now?

At the middle of last week I released (quietly) a new version of Kids Mask Factory I didn’t realise till the start of this week that I had a small bug (introduced at the eleventh hour) which came up saying that there were essential files missing. I quickly fixed this bug and since its been quiet.

With the last version I’d get at least a couple of bug reports each day and several uninstall questionnaire reports. During that bug period, I was getting some uninstall questionnaires back, thats how I found the bug, but I’ve only had a couple of questionnaires from the new release.

So there are a couple possibilities.

1) That theres another bug which only affects some people, which is stopping the questionnaires.

2) People are installing the program, liked it and haven’t uninstalled it.

This is new terriority for me.

by JM

2009 10 17 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (1) Permalink

How can a shop or product site become an authoritative site?

I’ve been trying to get my wife to help with linking building for our jewellery site, by showing her how to comment on blogs. However she rightly points out that this seems a bit like a scam. Also I’m sure we all agree that there isn’t a huge benefit from these type of links.

Today I’ve been looking on Amazon for books on link building, but haven’t found any, only general SEO books.

I’ve just been searching on the google webmaster help / blog and found something which puzzled me. It says not to build links, that natural links is what you need. That you don’t need lots of links and a handful of links can be better than lots of links.

However, it says that you need to have good content, that people in a sort of editorial capacity will add links to your site.

That your site needs to become an authoritative site.

So this begs the question how do you become an authoritative site ? and how does a shop or product site become one?

I like the idea of this, it just seems like an amazing idea.

I just wonder how a site which is aimed to sell something can become an authoritative site and be useful to too?

On a slightly relevant topic, I got an email from a store today following up a purchase, they were using a review site to do this, I thought this sounded like a good idea too.

by JM

2009 10 08 Dipsy Link Building Comments (3) Permalink

Why I’m going to stick

Over the last 24 hours I’ve been revisiting the idea of renaming and breathing new life into my ideaspad program. I had an idea that I could focus on a feature previously a secondary feature which wasn’t really a complementary feature.

I thought of some keywords which I thought described the program, however that was my opinion. I then thought I’d use those keywords as the product and domain name. But the name doesn’t read well.

I’ve just been reading some advice about this and I now realise that I could easily have chosen the wrong keywords again, if this is the case, I would be no traffic and even if I did probably no sales.

Therefore its a risky business using keywords in your product name.

Following the book I read at the weekend, I should really quit the project. However I have had some sales this year. This is from no work on the product at all. I do have some bug fixes which I could release and I could update my pad file, which could lead to handful of sales.

So I’m going to stick and if I get the chance to a quick update.

by JM

Tagged
2009 10 05 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (7) Permalink

Why I’m still not convinced its worth making an iPhone app, yet

Both Blue and Illusion have been talking about iPhone app development and saying I should give it a go. Today after watching Blues Hello World app, I figure that providing the app doesn’t get too complicated (which is the main idea behind cheap iPhone apps) and the fact theres a lot of code snippets of code on the net, that it shouldn’t be too difficult to develop an iPhone app.

So to develop a simple app which I could sell, could only take  a couple of weeks.

However, I don’t think theres many market niches left open. Also from past experience, I’m not skilled at coming up which great program ideas.

If I’m only going to develop a simple program, its a fact that someone will develop something better and the technology will change fairly soon.

Therefore if I’m luckly in a year I reckon I could expect to make a thousand pound or two at most.

This seems a lot of time and effort to make such little money, granted, what else would I do with my time, well I can develop my skills and get a good job and I can concentrate on my kids program which perhaps may only need a couple of months to reach completion.

If I start yet another project other goals and projects suffer.

by JM

2009 10 04 Dipsy Tech Talk Comments (10) Permalink

Second App

Okay, so I’m sitting here reviewing a milion and one apps and wondering where the gap in the market might be and it occurs to me there isn’t. I mean yeah, there is always something someone doesn’t have.  However if you make it, most likely that one person might be the only one who buys it.  Which is a bit of a waste if you ask me, now I thought it would be a good learning experience to make a clone of a popular tank game that circles the internet from time to time.  Where you set your angle, and power and try and kill the other player, after having a little look on the app store, lo and behold there is that game already and much better than I thought of making.  Even though it was just for a learning experience I find no joy in making something which someone else has already done, no matter how simple .. hence why I always skip the hello world tutorials if I can help it 😛

After thinking a bit more about this game and playing it, I thought of another idea I have for a game.  It’s not on the app store and the name is available as well (which is always a good idea..!!) there’s nothing worse than designing everything, thinking up a cool name for it, coding it and then submitting it to find out, oh hold on that name is in use.  Very annoying! 🙁

Now I just have to work out how to program it! oh the fun 🙂

By DN

2009 10 04 admin Tech Talk Comments (0) Permalink

My New App

I recently submitted my app to the apple store a few days, its a simple little thing for work out taxi fares.  However I thought it would be good to actually own an itouch so I can get an idea for how my apps will actually work.  I mean you have the iphone simulator, but after getting it yesterday I can tell you that it doesn’t really have the same inpact to actually holding it.

Now I am stuck with the idea, what do I make?  There are so many apps on the apple store, how do I make something which will be successful?

Any ideas? 🙂

By DN

2009 10 03 admin Tech Talk Comments (14) Permalink