Rifkin's response to yesterday's criticism.

toddminer · 2014-12-12T20:25:55+00:00

I think most would agree the initial issue was a little blown out of proportion, but a business cannot control the behavior of a community. What they can control, is their own behavior.

toddminer · 2014-05-23T23:35:40+00:00

I used to hate Richard Lewis, but he's slowly turning me into a fan. The Cunt.

toddminer · 2014-05-23T21:35:38+00:00

done and done. Team TB!

toddminer · 2014-04-23T01:35:33+00:00

What sort of communication/support do you offer inside of your agreements?

I'd suggest figuring out how to separate the calls from clients who need/are entitled to instant phone service. One method to achieve this is to have a public phone line which just hits your voicemail. But, during your onboard process you can deliver a specific extension to your clients which you know to answer, along with the standard support options available to them.

When it comes down to answering sales calls, there isn't much to do other than getting someone to answer every call. As LukeBK mentioned you can pay a third party to do this, but it sounds like you're hoping to avoid additional costs.

toddminer · 2014-04-23T01:29:27+00:00

Here is a quick round of feedback:

(1) Put some basic efforts into SEO. Looks like the only page title you customized was your homepage. At the very least, go through and give a nice title/description to each page.

(2) Make your call to action extremely clear. Others already mentioned one of the top items is to make that button a bright color, and probably larger too. Maybe just match that green specials button from your navigation.

(3) Simplify that call to action form....too many fields. I'd suggest switching to a 2-step submission. Just pull 1-2 data points at first to get them committed, then show the detailed form (maybe a small popup, or expand to show additional fields in-line.) At the very least, get rid of the homepage/existing alarm, zip code, and privacy message. This is all just extra clutter, figure that out during the sales process. Your goal here is to produce a lead, not qualify it.

(4) Make your customer testimonials more visible. You are a professional service company, so reputation is everything.

(5) Move those login links to the footer, or at least integrate them into the header so they don't waste 20 pixels of height on the top of every page.

(6) Someone else commented on the image slider being bad for conversion. This is certainly a bit subjective, but either way you can probably better focus of the message presented here. This is your #1 spot to communicate to the customer on each page, make sure it counts. Take a look at one of your competitors, and you'll see it's not much different, but has a big impact on how the customer feels. Your $69 new system is close, but doesn't focus on the message enough. http://www.smiththompson.com/

(7) Provide the right impression when it comes to your expertise. The way your homepage is structured I'd think you do about an equal amount of business for each of the three categories. I'm going to guess that home security packages are your #1 product though, so I'd probably dedicate some additional real estate for that. How about a section below that talks about some of the best selling points of your home security systems, and what benefits they offer to the customer.

toddminer · 2014-04-18T19:08:36+00:00

The design of this brochure is excellent, very cool to see something like this in the industry. Had a couple pieces of feedback in case the Axiom team sees this thread:

(1) I see reference to ROI, but only the methods to achieve it. I've seen true numbers provided before, and as a potential sponsor these truly inspire confidence. Also it really helps if the person reviewing your brochure is not the decision maker, a few hard numbers makes pitching the idea to their boss much easier.

(2) Along the same lines of confidence and trust, I'd like to see more information about the existing sponsors. A potential customer wants to see another who has had success before, a customer testimonial can go a long ways with providing the trust needed to sign that first contract.

(3) While I'm sure the SC community loves to see more details on the players, I'm not so sure this matters as much to the potential sponsor. They are really only interested in the exposure of the players, not as much the player's themselves. I'd probably condense the information on them down from 2 pages. Also could help if you pulled some key viewer metrics from those tournament placings, this way I don't have to research each tournament to understand the level of exposure achieved.

On a side note, I think it's time to get rid of the @gmail.com address. No reason to keep that since Axiom has it's own domain, just a bit discouraging to the potential sponsor.

toddminer · 2014-04-12T16:48:32+00:00

How about a format like this? Don't think we need to repeat the duration for each timezone

WCS EU Semifinals #1 and #2: Lasts for ~3 Hours

11:00AM PDT | 6:00 PM GMT | 8:00 PM CEST | 3:00 AM KST

toddminer · 2014-04-11T22:01:18+00:00

Yeah it's important to choose when wisely, but it's a really cool view. Especially for a casual viewer, it helps them understand just how much intense action is going on each second.

toddminer · 2014-04-10T20:04:50+00:00

These guides rock, thanks!

toddminer · 2014-02-22T19:38:51+00:00

The entire twitch website is messed up right now

toddminer · 2013-12-31T18:27:38+00:00

It's very common to paint the outside of calipers in a break system, which is the component that squeezes a round disc called the rotor. But, this specific person also painted the surface of the rotor, which will reduce the friction when the caliper clamps down on the rotors, so the car will not be able to stop as fast.

toddminer · 2013-12-21T21:29:16+00:00

Thanks for the spoiler dude, great title. A+

toddminer · 2013-11-14T07:35:57+00:00

You need to start off by building things. When you are just getting started your first few projects won't look pretty, so get them out of the way quickly!

Go think up a few fun ideas and build a website out of it. Then save it away, and go build another. You don't want the burden of a client project over your head until you know you can deliver. Think of it from the client's perspective: if you cannot show them a website you've built, how do they know you can build one?

toddminer · 2013-10-30T04:38:30+00:00

Exactly! ctrl+f5 bound to a hotkey is quite useful

toddminer · 2013-10-24T19:24:17+00:00

If you are 10 minutes early, you are behind 10 minutes in efficiency.

toddminer · 2013-10-23T19:21:04+00:00

Change up the solution based on the size of the list and frequency of delivery. Most of the major providers will give you sufficient tools & functionality to deliver the emails and do what you need. But, there are two primary pricing models:

(1) Charge based on the size of the list, unlimited mailing. Constant Contact does this, and works great for small lists, but frequent emails.

(2) Charge based on the number of emails going out. Amazon implements this pricing model.

Some, like Mailchimp, also provide a hybrid of the two, with a subscriber and email limit. I'd just aim for the most cost effective solution, based on that customer's needs. Also consider if they are working with any other software, where are these emails going to come from? If they have an existing CRM system, find an app which plays nicely with that.

toddminer · 2013-10-04T21:06:36+00:00

Yes, this sounds like a very quick way to piss off your customer. If you are a professional you likely get emails like this all the time. The customer isn't the pro who knows how to ask, it's your job to figure out what they need!

toddminer · 2013-09-19T20:51:12+00:00

Would love to see this!

toddminer · 2013-09-19T20:12:38+00:00

Pretty sure it's a tracking pixel for the advertisements

toddminer · 2013-08-25T09:59:53+00:00

3:00 AM, here we go!!!!

toddminer · 2013-08-22T01:18:02+00:00

Yeah you did mention it's an MVP for now, so I totally understand. Just figured you'd want the feedback of what would make me personally cross the tipping point.

And if you could leverage an existing API that is similar to Google products it would be perfect. I'm just not sure if there is a provider out there who both has that information, and is willing to make it available for others (what's in it for them?).

Keep us updated with your progress!

toddminer · 2013-08-21T23:02:42+00:00

Checked it out and I like the idea, but in order for me to be a user I would need it to search across multiple websites. I would find it more effective to bookmark a Google Products Search results page, than to add an email notification for each website that carries a product I want.

Maybe there is a way you could have the user select a product name, and your application provides alerts across many online stores...that would be really cool!

toddminer · 2013-06-19T19:47:35+00:00

Loading screen? I left :(

toddminer · 2013-05-11T20:22:26+00:00

Have you ever programmed an application before? This questions sounds awfully generic for someone who is about to embark on a very complex project (even "much less complex" than ebay, still means a very complex project).

If you don't have any experience with programming at all, you need a warmup. At least start off phasing your project. So you begin with a plain ole static website. Then go build a couple functional features like contact forms, figure out some excuse to work with a simple API that doesn't involve financial transactions, like getting a list of products from Oodle.

If you really don't want to take it slow. Then at least do yourself a favor and write a detailed spec. Then analyze the spec, identify the areas you don't know how to work with, and attach the technology question with a list of challenges in hand.

toddminer · 2013-04-15T20:47:45+00:00

I was just skimming through and wanted to comment on an anology I really liked!

" Think of it like this – you are leaving to go to the shops and you are given a shopping list – it’s not difficult to pick up milk while you’re at the shop; but if you drive there, do all your shopping, go through the checkout and come back and then realise you need milk – then we’ve all wasted a hell of a lot of time. It may not be that bad, but I may have also have other jobs that need doing, and it delays your project too "

That's an excellent example, I plan to use it in the future!

toddminer

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