I decided to start a new series of posts on this blog dedicated to the tools I use every day that transformed the way I work and made it possible for me to achieve better results and produce more work, while spending less time in front of my computer!

For some of work that I do, file comparison and folder comparison is absolutely essential. I use Beyond Compare every day. In fact, it’s probably the single software I use the most when working on any web design or web development task. I even often prefer it to the operating system default functions when copying files, creating backups, etc. I highly recommend giving it a try!

For the price you pay today for hard drives and digital storage equipment, you’re much better off purchasing additional drives than worrying about running out of space.

Another very common problem is when JavaScript files aren’t referenced properly – which creates a bunch of errors and functionality problems.

For example, some JavaScript files may be referenced in this way:

http://storeurl.com/chroot/home/accountname/storeurl.com/html/js/scriptaculous/slider.js

Instead of simply this:

http://storeurl.com/js/scriptaculous/slider.js

(Of course the folder structure will be different based on your particular server configuration.) This bug is caused by a feature in Magento 1.4 that merges all JavaScript files.

Follow these simple steps to fix the problem:

1. Go to System>Configuration and click on the “developer” tab all the way at the bottom of the left column.

2. Then under “JavaScript Settings” select “No” for “Merge JavaScript Files (beta)”.

Important! Follow These Steps If You Have Problems Accessing The Admin:

Once you followed the steps above, everything inside /var/sessions/ and /var/cache and (if applicable) /app/code/core/Zend/Cache/ must be deleted. Otherwise you get this error when you try to log into the admin:

Fatal error: Call to undefined method Mage_Admin_Model_Observer::actionPostDispatchAdmin() in /public_html/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/App.php on line 1207

I hope this helps!

In fact Magento 1.4 is different than the last previous stable version (1.3.2.4) but you should definitely be able to upgrade your installation, or install your custom template on a Magento 1.4 installation! Here are the most common issues and how to fix them!

Magento modern theme 1.4

This relates to the following issues:

• Can’t install Modern Theme through Magento Connect
  • Get error “magento-core/Interface_Frontend_Default_Modern requires package “magento-core/Mage_Core_Modules” (version >= 1.3.2.2, version <= 1.3.3, excluded versions: 1.3.3), installed version is 1.4.0.0
    Install Errors
    No valid packages found
    PEAR ERROR: install failed
• Can’t upgrade Modern Theme through Magento Connect
  • Get similar error as above
• etc

As of now, there is no good way to install or upgrade the Modern Theme via Magento Connect. BUT you should definitely be able to get it by installing a fresh Magento 1.4 installation.

Magento 1.4 comes by default with the default theme, the modern theme, and the iphone optimized theme. However, you’d have to install Magento manually and NOT use the downloader (as this will include the default theme only). Here is one way to install Magento 1.4 manually:

1. Download all the files on your computer and upload them on your server
2. Create a database and a database user and grant that user all permissions to the database. Make sure to write down your database name, database user name, and database user password.
3. Go to the URL that points to your server and follow the instructions to complete Magento installation

Can’t access admin, blank page, products won’t load, error, etc

Most issues will be resolved once you reindex Magento data and refresh all Magento cache. To reindex Magento data follow these quick steps:

1. Go to System>Index Management
2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
3. Under “Action” select “Reindex Data” and click submit

To refresh all Magento cache following these quick steps:

1. Go to System>Configuration and
2. Click on “select all” in the upper left corner
3. Under “action” click on “refresh” and click submit
4. Then click on these buttons:
   1. Flush Magento Cache
   2. Flush Cache Storage
   3. Fluch Catalog Images Cache
   4. Flush JavaScript/CSS Cache

Upgrading your existing theme (modern or else)

Obviously I cannot cover here all the possible problems and issues that may arise when upgrading your particular template to be compatible with Magento 1.4. However, I found that the most common issue is “Categories not working after upgrading to 1.4″. This relates to the error people get when clicking on some categories: “Error processing your request” followed by a number.

To fix that, you’ll need to do 2 things:

1. First, edit your toolbar.phtml file located under app/design/frontend/default/yourthemename/template/catalog/product/list. Take the updated toolbar.phtml from the new 1.4 default theme (located under app/design/frontend/base/default/template/catalog/product/list) and use it in your theme. Then edit that file to apply any styling you had in your original toolbar.phtml file. Another way of doing it is editing your toolbar.phml file to use the right class names and code (you can compare with the default one and take it from there).

2. Second, open catalog.xml located under app/design/frontend/default/yourthemename/layout/ and find this line:

<block type=”catalog/product_list_toolbar” name=”product_list_toolbar” template=”catalog/product/list/toolbar.phtml”>

And underneath insert this code:

<block type=”page/html_pager” name=”product_list_toolbar_pager”/>

And that should do it!

Create a New Store and Store View

After you’ve installed Magento, create a new Store and Store View. To do so navigate to System > Manage Stores:

1. Click Create Store in the upper right corner
2. Select the Website to which this Store will be associated
3. Select the Root Category which will be associated to this store. In your categories setup, you can create multiple Root Categories, each associated to different Stores. The sub-categories and products associated to those categories will only display in the Store to which the Root Category is associated. If you do not want to create different Root Categories to display in different Stores, you can select the same Root Category for all Stores.
4. Click Create Store View in the upper right corner.
5. Select the Store to which this Store View will be associated.
6. For a Store View to be visible on the front-end, it must be Enabled. You can remove it from the front-end without deleting it by selecting Disabled.

Upload Your Theme

Upload your theme files using any FTP program to the appropriate folders, following the folder structure in which the theme is provided. In most cases, you’ll upload the folders app/frontend/default/themename/ and skin/frontend/default/themename/.

Activate Your Theme

Access the Admin Panel and navigate to System > Configuration. Select your Store View from the Current Configuration Scope drop-down menu in the upper left corner. Click on “Design” under the “General” section of the left side navigation. Under the “Themes” section, uncheck all of the check boxes titled “Use website.” In each text field, enter the name of the folders containing the theme you wish to use.

Setup Your Homepage

From the top navigation, navigate to CMS > Manage Pages. Click on the “+ Add New Page” button. Enter your desired page title. For the home page, be sure to set your SEF URL Identifier as “home” and select your store view. Select “Custom Design” from the left side navigation and set your Layout and other information (this depends on the theme). Return to General Information and enter the content for your homepage in the text area labeled “Content”. Set the Status to “Enabled” and click on the “Save Page” button in the upper right corner to save and activate your homepage.

That’s it!

Congratulations! Just set up your categories and products.

Finding a good web host is no easy task! There are so many options out there that you could spend days, if not weeks, researching the industry, comparing web hosting companies, reading reviews, and trying out different hosting services.

Luckily for you we’ve worked with dozens of hosting companies over the years, and we have some good suggestions!

What Is Web Hosting?

In short, a web host is the remote computer that is setup as a server and is connected to the internet. Hosting companies provide servers that are setup to perform optimally for most websites and that are connected to the internet via a powerful network. Most web hosting companies also offer domain name registration services as part as their offering – a domain name is like a phone number that “points” to your specific server that hosts your website. When you type in your domain name in your web browser address bar, you are basically sending a request to your server, which loads your website in return!

There are 2 options available when it comes to choosing a good web hosting service: Using A “Fully Managed” Hosting Service or Getting Your Own Web Hosting Service.

Using A “Fully Managed” Hosting Service

For a no-hassle web hosting service, sign up for our fully managed hosting package! You’ll never have to worry about domain name registration, website performance, security, setup, emails, databases, outages, and all that stuff that is extremely time consuming!

When we say fully managed – we mean it! Contact us if you have any questions.

Getting Your Own Web Hosting Plan

We think the best overall web hosting company is site5! Their service is affordable, their servers perform really well, and their control panel is very intuitive and easy to use.

Sign up for a free trial, it takes less than 60 seconds.

Posterous is a dead simple way to blog. When you’re particularly swamped with work or other things, that doesn’t mean you should stop your company’s social networking efforts! All you have to do is email - check it out

Setting up Google Adwords Conversion Tracking on your Magento store is relatively easy – but it’s not a built-in Magento feature, so you’ll have to edit a template file. Here are the 4 simple steps  that need to be done:

1. Open this file:

/app/design/frontend/default/yourskinname/template/checkout/success.phtml

2. At the bottom of the file, insert this code:

<?php
$order_details = Mage::getModel(’sales/order’)->loadByIncrementId(Mage::getSingleton(’checkout/session’)->getLastRealOrderId());
$adwords_saleamt = $order_details->subtotal;
?>

3. Login to your Google Adwords account

Under the “Reporting’ tab, click on “Conversions” and follow the steps to get the code that you’ll also need to add to the success.phtml page. It will look something like this:

<!– Google Code for Sale Conversion Page –>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!–
var google_conversion_id = 0987654321;
var google_conversion_language = “en”;
var google_conversion_format = “3″;
var google_conversion_color = “ffffff”;
var google_conversion_label = “KFKFKFKFKFKF”;
var google_conversion_value = 0;
if (200) {
google_conversion_value = 200;
}
//–>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js”>
</script>
<noscript>
<div style=”display:inline;”>
<img height=”1″ width=”1″ style=”border-style:none;” alt=”" src=”https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/0987654321/?value=150&amp;label=KFKFKFKFKFKF&amp;guid=ON&amp;script=0″/>
</div>
</noscript>

4. Copy Google’s code

And paste it at the very bottom of the page (below the php code from step 2).

Alternatively, you can also install Luka Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Magento extension from MagentoConnect. But I haven’t tested that extension myself – and in general it’s better to not load up your Magento installation with too many modules and extensions. If you can keep it simple, it’s better!

Questions? Feel free to post them in the comments below!

Make it personal

Everybody hates the wishy-washy stuff. I receive tons of generic emails, partnership proposals, offers, etc that go directly to the trash. And that’s because these emails aren’t simple and personal. Here are a couple of ways to make the email personal:

• Introduce yourself casually – something like “Hi! My name is Mike and I run magentist’s affiliate program.” Make it simple and short – so that you can get to the point quickly. You can also use that introductory sentence to tell the reader what your email is about – in this case magentist’s affiliate program.
• Tell the reader how you got the email. “I think your website websiteurl-goes-here could be a great fit for the program” makes it clear that we are contacting the reader via his/her website or via the contact info published on the above mentioned website.
• In general a great rule of thumb is to write the email as if you were sending it to an acquaintance. That will help you keep it simple and phrase it in a way that is as straight forward and “normal” (i.e. no corporate language and at the same time not too promotional).

Emphasize what specific benefits the reader will get

Again, we want to stay away from generic stuff. As a reader, I want to know right away “what’s in this for me?”. It has to be clear with simple info I can digest quickly, and it has to be appealing.

• Answer the “what’s in it” question right away. In this case, I put “We have many affiliates who are generating very significant and steady income.” That way the reader understand exactly what benefits he can get.
• Give specific information about the benefits – but keep it simple. “It’s really simple.  Join today and earn 10% – 40% commission”.

Provide simple unambiguous call to action

We want readers to go ahead and sign up. This has to be clear. And since people are naturally afraid to commit to something, the reader needs to know exactly where the “join now” link will lead.

• Put the same call to action at least twice in the email (it can have different forms).
• Reiterate the clear benefits in the same sentence as the call to action is also a good idea. “Join today! Being a Magentist affiliate is absolutely free and can help you generate solid commissions with almost no effort.”

Here is the end result:

Hello,

My name is Kim and I run Magentist’s affiliate program. I think your website websiteurl-goes-here could be a great fit for the program. We have many affiliates who are generating very significant and steady income. Why not give it a try? Magentist’s affiliate program is a great and easy way to make money from your site.

It’s really simple.  Join today and earn 10% – 40% commission on all sales you help generate! The more referrals you bring, the higher commission rate you earn.  It’s that simple.

Join today! Being a Magentist affiliate is absolutely free and can help you generate solid commissions with almost no effort.

Cheers!

If you only want to display new products from a specific category – it’s easy. All you have to do is make sure that in your catalog, you’ve set products “as new” only to products that belong to that category.

If you want to display new products on the home page, but want them organized  by category – we have a very easy way to achieve this  very quickly! Simply add this code in your CMS page:

{{block type="catalog/product_list" category_id="2" name="home.catalog.product.new" alias="product_homepage" template="catalog/product/featured.phtml"}}

Where “feartured.phtml” is a copy of the default new.phtml that you can style and format anyway you’d like. In the case above, we’re displaying products from the category id number 2. Repeat the code above to display products from any other categories from your store.

Important note! Now the products that show up first in your category, will be displayed on the home page. To control which products show up first, simply go to Catalog -> Manage Categories and click on the category you’d like to edit. Then click on “Category Products” and set the position for your products. That’s it!

This great Magento template for digital products uses this very method to display new products by categories on the home page.

Questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below.

Every time you’re considering working with anyone on a project,

You’ll be able to find cheaper companies to work with. But you won’t be able to get the same value. Every dollar you invest here at Noam Design will yield an unbeatable value for your project.

You have a limited budget? Reduce the project’s scope. But don’t try to get everything done under your budget because in the end that’s the more costly road! Instead, reduce the project’s features and be more flexible about the creative process. Brainstorm with your project manager on what can be achieved within your budget. But don’t shop around for the team that’d give you everything on earth within the smallest budget.

Where you can save costs is being smart about using resources. That’s why we created Template Action – you can download a template and setup an award winning website at a ridiculous price. And you can get such a great value because we don’t have to deal with pre-sales discussions, back and forth emails and phone calls during the creative process, time spent in meetings, etc. We created great websites you can easily manage and edit – if you like one of them you can purchase it for less than what a single consultation would cost you. It’s that simple.

Start your designs with the content

Don’t design “boxes”, “areas”, or “structure” and then fill them out with the content you think will go there.

Instead, start by designing the main elements based on the content that you want to communicate on the page. That way you’ll be sure to include the content right away into your design strategy. Content is what matters most.

Start with the content and how you want to display it. That title, that image, this slogan and that short text. Here goes the navigation, there the main call to action. Here some additional content/options. How do I want to display these elements in order to make sure I will achieve my goals? The rest should follow.

Related posts:

• Web Design Is All About Content
• Attractive Content Rules Web Design

Debugging is a normal part of web design and development.

When you write a book or a paper – you don’t expect the publisher to publish your first submission, do you? Your copy will go through series of edits, corrections, error fixing, rephrasing, rearranging, proof reading, etc… Often this phase can take longer than the time it originally took you to write the paper or book itself! That’s the way it goes.

Now to understand the difference between printing a book and launching a website or web application, you have to understand that there are many more variables in the field of web design than there are in book publishing. You have to worry about cross browser compatibility, cross platform compatibility, differences between production environment and development environment, and much more! Do your users have JavaScript enabled on their browsers? What if they don’t? Do they have Flash – which version? Which internet browser are they using? On a Mac or a PC? What’s the browser version? What’s their screen resolution? What’s the browser window size? What if they use their Mobile device? Which one? You get the picture.

People plan.

When you realize that planning really is guessing, you start doing more and talking about doing less. You’ll start creating, achieving, launching, testing, trying – all but postponing. Realizing that you can’t plan too much is a huge milestone for any project. Your approach suddenly changes. You focus on reality and loose the illusion that you know what you’re doing.

Keep this well in mind when creating content for your website!

This will give you a lot of power over how your website will look. And that’s because web design really is all about content!

All Template Action or Website Temple websites come pre-loaded with placeholder content that is strategically designed to follow a logical structure to make content easily understandable and attractive enough to stand tall above the competition.

If you feel confident, you have the freedom to easily scrap the preloaded content and structure your content on your own. But if you want to quickly establish a cutting edge, high end web presence without the cost of hiring a web  design staff, simply swap out the preloaded text and images with your own, and you’re on your way!

Many don’t know that displaying new products

{{block type="catalog/product_new" name="home.catalog.product.new" alias="product_homepage" template="catalog/product/new.phtml"}}


Products marked as “new” in your catalog will show up wherever you put the code above. By the way this is NOT related to the date when your products were added to your store – only the products that you set as “new” in the catalog will show up. To mark a product as new, simply use Magento’s built in function under “Catalog” -> “Manage Products” -> “Your Product” -> “General” -> “Set Product as New from Date” and “Set Product as New to Date”.

I’ve seen countless “modules” and “extensions” that do just that, or a little more. But really it’s better to use Magento’s native function.

We think Magento is one of the best Ecommerce

Top 3 Magento Pros:

1. Magento is open source. Magento is built on the powerful Zend Framework and the platform uses open source technologies and programming languages. That means a lot of things but for the store owner that means the flexibility of modifying or expanding the platform any way you’d like – as long as you have a good Magento expert team to work with.

2. Magento has a large community of users, developers, and service providers worldwide. And that community is growing. The platform is evolving all the time and there are countless Magento Templates, extensions, modules, and widgets available out there, both commercial and free.

3. Magento is a feature rich Ecommerce platform that has built in pretty much all the features you’d expect from a top of the line Ecommerce website, including advanced promotion and marketing tools. Magento also comes with easy integration with great 3rd party services such as Google Analytics, Google Base, Google Checkout, Google Website Optimizer, a variety of payment processing services (including Paypal Express, Paypal Standard, and Paypal Website Payments Pro), and much more!

Top 3 Magento Cons:

1. Magento is a complex, intricate platform built on top of the Zend Framework. And it’s big! It is programmed based on the MVC approach, and follows best web programming practices. For these reasons and others, Magento is a system that is not easy to work with. What I mean by that is that if you want to customize Magento properly, any request will take a good developer much longer than if you were to work with most other open source platforms. That means that you’d have to have an appropriate budget if you are looking to work with Magento, or else you’ll end up with a job poorly done. And Magento is not forgiving! If you don’t do things right, you’ll end up with more trouble, headache, issues, and overall more time and money down the road!

2. Good Magento developers are rare! It is one thing to be able to play around Magento – it’s another to know the system well and be able to customize it and program on top of it. Good Magento developers are very rare, and it’s even more unlikely that you’ll find a team that includes good Magento developers, and good Magento designers! Remember that design, client side programming, and server side programming are 3 areas of the web design field that require a completely different set of skills. And it’s hard to find them all under one roof – especially when it comes to Magento.

3. Magento requires a very good hosting environment and store management. Many people complain about Magento’s speed performance – but that’s only because they aren’t working with the proper hosting environment and setup. Unlike simpler systems, such as Wordpress for example which will work great pretty much anywhere, Magento will perform very poorly if the website is not properly hosted and setup. What’s that mean? You’ll have to pay for a good server, and for a good team to setup your server and manage it.

Hope this was helpful! Any questions? Don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments below!

If you’re working on a web design & development project, or looking for a team to work with you, this is something that is absolutely crucial to understand.

Design

That means creating the visual representation for whatever information you want to communicate to your users. There are many ways to go about this – some designers use Photoshop or other software and create the entire representation before coding it into a web page. Some use good old pencil and paper and skip Photoshop, going directly into coding.

In all cases, designing for the web is fundamentally different than pure graphic design. When designing for the web, you have to design while combines skills from user interface design, marketing oriented design, design based on conversions knowledge and understanding, web programming constraints and possibilities, browser compatibility issues, screen resolution distribution, color management distribution, and much more! Of course, “normal” graphic design skills also play their part including branding, identity, color scheme, etc…

Client Side Programming

Client side programming technologies inlcude HTML, CSS, Flash, and JavaScript. Your internet browser will read the code in these technologies to display the web page, including interactivity effects, etc… Since different browsers interpret code differently, a web designer has to take all major browser into account when coding a web page. It’s often not as easy as it sounds!

Server Side Programming

That’s the programming involved to perform calculations and requests on the server. The most widely used open source server side technologies are PHP and MySQL (for database stuff). Many server side frameworks have been written by web developers – these frameworks include pre-written code (classes) so that when developing an application you can use these built-in classes instead of having to write everything from scratch every time.

In short

In most cases, when you enter a URL in your browser address bar, you are basically making a call to a server – that servers make whatever calculation is needed by the application and returns some values. Those values are rendered by the browser based on the visual representation that the HTML/CSS dictates.

When I started up Noam Design

Not having any investment put me in a very particular state of mind of constantly having to “prove” my ideas and concepts in the real world market – and having to turn a profit very quickly. When starting up new branches, developing new products, widening our range of services, reaching out to a new audience, etc, I was always putting my business to the cruel test of reality. My ideas had to work, or be quickly changed and adapted – but they had to make money. Having 3rd party funding allows you to postpone that test over and over, until several rounds of funding run out. Also, when you’re raising funds, you’re not working on developing your business. So you are less likely to develop a great, sustainable, and profitable business that’s enjoyable to work on!

Following the past few months of hard work and structural changes, we’ve hit one of the most exiting and promising growth periods in the (short) history of the company. We’ve launched 3 web startups, as well as a number of great websites and side projects, and we’re still taking on custom projects from clients in the New York area. Our services have changed and evolved dramatically – and we are working on reflecting that on our website. Now more than ever, the concept of growing a real, sustainable business is taking hold!

“” What’s that mean? A manager of one is someone who comes up with their own goals and executes them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do — set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc. — but they do it by themselves and for themselves.

These people free you from oversight. They set their own direction. When you leave them alone, they surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done. They don’t need a lot of handholding or supervision.

How can you spot these people? Look at their history. Have they been self-sufficient at previous jobs? Have they defined their own role before? Have they started their own site/company before? Or done their own thing in some other way? Find someone with initiative and a budding entrepreneurial spirit. And then nurture it.

You want someone who’s capable of building something from scratch and seeing it through. When you find these people, it frees up the rest of your team to work more and manage less.

Here is a link to the original post.

This was something I could never understand… until one day I realized that most of these CEOs aren’t actually working towards developing their business! Rather, they’re working towards raising the next round of fundings for their company. Here is a great related quote I stumbled upon recently: 

Related quote:

“Road shows to raise investment are grueling and utterly distracting from the main goal of succeeding in the marketplace… CEOs regularly claim that they are perpetually in fund raise mode which distracts them from the business at hand of building the value of the company.” Dermot Berkery

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made developing our company and growing the business is scaling up for the sake of scaling up. In the beginning of the year, we had a team of more than 15 people working on countless projects, both client projects and internal projects. There was a lot of activity, a lot of business, and in general a lot of things happening. It certainly meant bigger revenues, but definitely not bigger profits or better results. A lot of time, energy, and resources were wasted in management, administrative duties, meetings, supervision, client relations etc.

Over the course of the year, I gradually scaled the team down. I was getting very tired of managing the team and dealing with many clients – and felt frustrated that not enough work was actually getting done to grow the company and promote our own projects. It started very naturally last March when I had to let go of our Office Manager who wasn’t a good fit for us. Instead of actively looking for someone new (which is what I would always do), this time I asked myself “is this position really necessary for the company?” And I decided to see what would happen if we simply moved on without filling this position. And then when 2 employees left the company in August, here too I decided to see what would happen if I didn’t replace them. The results were impressive! It’s not only that we were able to continue just fine – we were actually doing much better! Higher ROI, wider range of services, better clients… in short more growth. Real company growth, not more people, more clients, or more revenues.

We now have a much smaller team - a team of talented individuals. And we achieve much better results! We produce higher quality, we innovate more, we’re more creative, and we pick our fights! (i.e. we choose our clients instead of taking on all comers.) Most importantly, I find working with a small team much more enjoyable. I spend more time working and less time managing, meeting, supervising, etc. If your team members are great, working is not only satisfying – it’s also very enjoyable.

Even if your company is huge, or you are working on a monster project – keep the teams small. Break your army into smaller, independent combatant units. 5 people or less is a good size for a team to be productive – especially if you’re in a creative industry.

You have 2 days left to win professional Magento goodies!! Outstanding premium Magento templates, themes, extensions, 50% discounts, and more!

All you have to do to win is tweet about the promotion! (Make sure to include @magentist in your tweet.)

More info at Magentist.com/giveaway.

This is great news for those looking for a new Magento template, but why would Magentist give away their products for free? The key is positive exposure. The contest requires participants to “tweet” about Magentist on their Twitter accounts, expanding Magentist’s consumer audience through the medium people trust most: their friends.

The majority of participants will win a prize; whether it be a free Magento template or extension, a discount coupon code for Magentist, or one of many other prizes; so new and faithful customers alike will be left with a positive consumer experience.

Free is a very enticing word, especially in today’s economy, so don’t be afraid to use it to your advantage! Throwing a bit of change into the crowd can get your company noticed, and in a very good way.

To find out more about Magentist’s special holiday giveaway, visit Magentist.com/giveaway

Here is a question that is often asked

Scrolls are great! Statistics show that users are much more likely to scroll then to click! On an Ecommerce website for example, it is better to use a longer checkout page (with a scroll), rather than a short checkout page with clicks from step to step. In fact, many users start scrolling right away when they land on a page, and eventually come back to the top later on.

But don’t cut off your designs! While scrolls are great, the main design elements on a page shouldn’t be cut off on most computer screens – users shouldn’t have to scroll down to reveal the parts of the main design element that are cut out at the bottom. But you can definitely have more content below that is accessible to the users once they start scrolling.

If you have examples of great websites designed to best utilize the native browser scroll bar, let me know in the comments below!

As I was getting ready to launch the campaign on Friday evening, I had a quick question to ask BSA. So I sent out a support request and I figured I’d hear back from someone on Monday. I was surprised when I received a friendly and personal response from Todd Garland, BSA Founder and CEO, just a few minutes after I submitted my support request.

Good customer service will go a long way, and I’ll be more than happy to give our business to BSA to run our banner ad campaigns targeting web design amateurs and professionals. As of now, you can check out our first Template Action banner on CSS Globe.

Delivering the bad news on Friday lets people have the weekend to digest it. And announcing the good news on Tuesday has a lasting effect throughout the week. Don’t deliver anything on Mondays though – it gets lost with all the other stuff people have to deal with at the beginning of the week.

A great application of this principle is knowing when to invoice your clients!

Invoice your clients on Fridays – this strategy has made our invoicing process much simpler! In the early days, we used to invoice our clients manually based on the progress of their project without any specific rule. One week I was particularly busy, and I kept postponing the annoying task of generating invoices and sending them out – until Friday evening arrived and I found myself staying late at night to sending out a bunch of invoices one by one. That’s how I realized the huge difference that you can make simply by choosing the best day to deliver the news!

Nobody likes to receive an invoice, regardless of the amount, or of the service or product that you are getting for that invoice. But when you receive your invoice on Friday, you just care less. It’s almost the weekend. And you have 2 full days to wind down and get used to the idea that you have an invoice to pay.

What it meant for us is a significant drop in unnecessary phone calls, emails, questions, etc. No more clients calling us to ask about their invoice, no more “aah ok, I just wanted to make sure…”, or “that makes sense, I just didn’t remember exactly…”. In short that meant less hassle for us and more time to focus on what we do – delivering the best web design solutions!

If you pay attention, you’ll realize that we’re not the only ones to have understood this concept – it seems to be widely used! If you can think of an example, please share it in the comments below! (Here’s a hint: it’s used by landlords and politicians.)

You can’t listen to your customers.

Customers will always ask for “more”. More features, more options, more mockups, more more more. Listening to these requests will not create satisfaction because more features means more complexity, more options means more clutter, and more mockups means more waste and confusion. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t keep the communication channels open between you and your customers. I mean to ignore these requests ‘as is’ and focus on understanding your customers needs and behavior in order to create a better product, a better design, and provide a better service. Your customers will thank you for it and you’ll foster satisfaction.

Customers will always ask for something based on what they already know, or have already experienced. Then how can you offer a unique product or service and differentiate your company in your market pool if you listen to your customers requests? You’re better off sticking to what you believe is the right way, and improving based on the conclusions you draw from your customers feedback. Focus your efforts on understanding what will make your customers happy. There’s a good chance that it won’t be something they already know – otherwise why would they use your product over the existing competition?

Do you know what is the best way to understand your customers? Be your own customer! Use your products on a daily basis – you’ll be surprised how quickly and accurately you can improve your products. You’ll know what is important and what is secondary. Oh and if your own product is of no use to you, well, you may as well move on to another venture! Soon some other company will emerge in your market, and develop a similar product because they need it for themselves. And that product will outclass yours.

For example, if you are designing a website and you are looking to improve the navigation - don’t look at it for hours and brainstorm, don’t listen to the users requests, don’t ask around to see what other people will suggest. Just use the site everyday. Read through the pages, try to find specific information, use the features of the site. In short be a customer not a web designer. Most likely you’ll be able to find the best possible solution to your problem much more quickly.

I’ve seen this happen over and over and it’s probably a direct consequence of not understanding that ideas are worthless (it’s the implementation that makes a difference).

Here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t worry too much about being first in your market:

1. Most likely, you’re not the first one who thought of your business concept. And it’s more than probable that someone out there has tried to implement it, or even has already implemented it. So why rush? If you’re concept is viable, and your execution is excellent – you have a good chance of success. Focus on what matters.

2. Being first can actually be a significant disadvantage. You may end up making all the inevitable pioneer’s mistakes, and paving the road for your competitors. In fact, if you look at most successful companies, you’ll realize that they were not the first in their market – rather they brought something new to an existing market, and performed better than the existing competition. They learned from the pioneers mistakes and problems, and were able to innovate in a targeted manner, producing a greater ROI.

3. What’s the point of being first if you can’t enjoy the road towards launching your project because you are too much in a rush, and too stressed out about missing “the opportunity” of being the first one? After all, the early stage of building a business is the best part!  Make sure to enjoy it.

Google wasn’t the first search engine, Facebook wasn’t the first social media platform (by the way Facebook overcame the competition by offering less features- not more), Basecamp wasn’t the first project management tool, and Noam Design wasn’t the first web design company!

If you have an interesting example of a great company that wasn’t first in its market, please share it in the comments below!

1. Ideas are worthless. When a client requests to sign an NDA right off the bat, that usually means they think a lot of their ideas in and of themselves. Generally speaking that means they have the wrong attitude towards developing a business.

2. Signing an NDA early on is a total waste of every one’s precious time. Your time is very valuable. You want to know whether or not this client/project is serious and a good fit for your company and the initial discovery phase is primordial. You want to stack the odds in your favor by always inspiring the best possible feelings towards your company, but at the same time you want to avoid wasting a significant amount of time in back-and-forth discussions and considerations. That means that you don’t want to be rude or appear in a rush, but you want to have the tools to judge if a project is attractive to your company or not as soon as possible. And if you decide that it’s not a good fit you want to move on and dedicate your time to projects that could be a good fit. Projects that will bring a higher ROI, move your company forward, and in general be more enjoyable.

3. Signing a legal document is not exactly the best way to get the sparks flying! When you sign an NDA with a client at an early stage, it makes your relationship with the client start with the wrong vibe. This may not seem significant, but it actually makes a huge difference. You don’t want to hit the sales road tripping.

When you do want to use an NDA is after you’ve reached a verbal agreement with the client about the general terms of the project such as time frame, budget, and project strategic goals – when both you and the client are pretty much certain you want to work with each other. In this case, you can use this free professional non-disclosure agreement template and move forward.

We were recently contacted by OSC through Noam Design’s sub-division and are exited to add the OneStepCheckout extension to the growing selection of Magento products we are offering on Magento Expert!

Here is what OneStepCheckout is about:

OneStepCheckout simplifies the checkout process of a Magento store.

Checking out is often the most complicated part of placing an order online, and many users end up abandoning their order. Some customers will be motivated enough to purchase regardless of how difficult it is – but others will be lost due to check-out complexity. OneStepCheckout greatly simplifies this process, leading to an immediate sales increase.

It’s easy! Log on to your affiliate panel and choose one of our banners to put on your site. You’ll be provided with the code to put on your site that will display the banner of your choosing and link visitors to Magento Expert. Your unique affiliate ID will be embedded in the code, so every time a visitor you refer makes a purchase on our site, you get the credit!

Join today! Being a Magento Expert affiliate is absolutely free and can help you generate solid commissions with almost no effort. Find out more on the affiliate program page or Join Now!

Every time I do my routine check on the traffic stats of our web design company’s website, I am amazed by the growing numbers of web designers, web developers, and web design companies who are consistently reading our blog and repeatedly visiting our website. So here is another post in our web design company resources series for all the web design professionals who are loyally following us! This time I am attaching a professional non-disclosure agreement template in a Microsoft Word format. Enjoy!

This non-disclosure agreement template is faithful to our philosophy when it comes to this type of document – it’s clear, concise, and simple. It’s written in plain English (as much as possible) instead of a complex legal jargon, and it will protect you and your clients.

Related Posts:

• Great Free Email Template To Save Time On Following Up With Clients
• Professional Web Design Proposal Template
• Web Design Company Contract Of Service
• Web Design Company Email Template

A couple of months ago

Web marketing requires ongoing effort. In particular, Search Engine Optimization requires ongoing efforts – that’s why we regularly improve our web presence… unless we’re too busy working on the next big thing!

Our website is not only about fancy design or flashy animations (even though we got plenty of these throughout the site!) – it’s about content, clarity, ease of use, branding, SEO, conversions, etc. Good web design is all about achieving your goals. For us, good web design is about making a huge amount of information easily accessible to our visitors – in particular information related to the web design projects we’ve worked on (hundreds of them!), including screenshots, descriptions, project cases, testimonials, etc. It’s also about showcasing our award winning websites and web applications, and providing an easy way to get in touch with us.

Over the past few months, our web design company has changed tremendously, and we are now heading in a very different directions, offering a variety of digital products services. Our new redesign will reflect that. Stay tuned - the new design is scheduled to launch early 2010. As always, we promise to blow you away with new and innovative design concepts!

Related post:

• Web design is a field that attracts many creative minds. But ideas represent only a fraction of all the factors that can make a business successful… Read More »

For Ecommerce websites one of main goals is conversion – i.e. how many visits are converting into sales. I don’t care if the website is horrible, old school,  confusing, outdated, or even if it has bugs – as long as it achieves the business goals! In this case, as long as the web design converts! Who cares if AJAX was used or if you have a Flash 3D innovative element that was nearly impossible to pull off if it has nothing to do with the website’s goals.

Look at Amazon for example – the site’s design is definitely not fancy. Even the checkout process is somewhat cumbersome. That sounds counter intuitive for such a large scale Ecommerce company who has extensive statistical data to help them figure out which practices convert best. Well that’s because Amazon has a business goal that is more important than conversions: increasing the dollar amount on every sale. Once you add a product to your cart, instead of being redirected to the cart and guided towards checkout, you are shown related products, or complementary products, and are drawn to spend more time on the website… and to shop more.

Many real life stores are designed in a way that puts the cashiers not easily accessible from the main shopping area of the store – the idea is that you spend more time in the store (on your way to the cashier) so that eventually you will buy more. Have you noticed how the most common items in a supermarket are always somewhat in the back of the store? When you go buy milk, you have to go through the entire store and back to the cashier, going through aisles and corners full of delicious looking stuff! That’s why you end up always buying more than just that bottle of milk you wanted to get. Not because you actually needed the additional items!

Remember that good design is about achieving your goals.

Yes, the web never stops… But good web design companies should have everything setup and planned in advance so that their teams can take some time off!

Promotions, call to actions, banners, auctions, etc should all be set to go and ready to kick in automatically when the time comes.

Everything is all set for all of our clients and for our own Ecommerce websites! On Thanksgiving, our web design company will be closed so that the team can enjoy a long Thanksgiving weekend! Yes – we will also be closed on Friday (11/27) because everyone here deserves it! Believe it.

Happy Thanksgiving!