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Name: Eric Leuenberger, Owner Company: Enhanced Concepts, Inc. In Bloglist, we ask ecommerce professionals to identify their favorite blogs. For this installment, we asked Eric Leuenberger, ecommerce conversion marketing expert and owner of Enhanced Concepts, Inc. Entrepreneurs-journey.com This blog provides some superior information on how to get the most out of monetizing your website. From informative tips on affiliate programs to traffic monetization strategies, this blog has it all. Copyblogger.com Great blog for keeping in tune with copy writing techniques that help you persuade visitors to act. Toprankblog.com This blog provides a range of useful resources that cover various search marketing techniques, including social media marketing, blog marketing and other online public relations ideas. Sethgodin.typepad.com These are some of the most enlightening marketing concepts you'll ever read. Seth Godin always has something to say that makes you step...

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is fraud prevention. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Chris Stump, Only Hammocks; Mike Feiman, PoolDawg; Dan Stewart, Xtreme Diesel Performance; Roman Kagan, Appliance Parts Pros; Cindy Barrileaux, Write Your Best; Claudette Cyr, Gear-Source; Mike Butler, Bloom Designs Nursery; Kristen Taylor, Juvie; Jeff Muchnik, RedBox Tools. The responses for three of the ten merchants follow below. The answers are shown to preserve anonymity. Pec: Has your ecommerce business been the victim of credit card fraud? FIELD TESTER 4: In over eight years in business we haven't had a single case of credit card fraud. While no company can claim to be 100 percent invincible, we try to utilize every option available to prevent fraudulent transactions. FIELD TESTER 5: No. FIELD...

While there may be plenty of business for everyone online, unless you’re a well known brand, if you’re not being found on the major search engines, you really don’t exist. If I asked if you had enough money to compete against WalMart, most of you would say “No Way!” But with PPC marketing you can actually complete against big business. Here’s how why.

PPC is a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing.

Unlike traditional advertising, ecommerce entrepreneurs can go head to head with the “big boys” using PPC marketing for a fraction of what it would cost through traditional marketing channels. Whether your unique selling proposition (USP) is customer service, a superior product, better warranty, better price, etc., leverage it, and sell it using PPC marketing. While you may not be able to bid on as many keywords as a Fortune 500 company, you can still compete on some of the keywords that will bring you qualified buyers, thus “stealing” customers away from the larger companies. You can do this because it’s significantly less expensive to launch an effective PPC campaign that it is to launch other types of advertising campaigns. In fact, for less than $50 on most PPC search engines, you can open an account, start bidding on keywords, and immediately start wooing customers away from your competitors. With PPC, you can level the competitive playing field, and is the perfect way for you to start reaching new customers. (more…)

In our last article we talked about lists going somewhat in-depth on their capabilities. We talked about creating them printing from them and even used a slicing technique to add and remove from our lists. In this article we will start off looking at more traditional ways to add and remove from a list and move on from there....
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There’s an old saying in the SEO world that “Content is King.” You may have heard or read something similar to this if you’ve been around some basic search engine optimization forums, blogs, or other sites. But how does this idea really apply to you?Well, there are actually several ways that we could approach this topic, but today I want to approach it from the standpoint of having unique content. In other words, you don’t want your site to say the exact same thing as everyone else.

Here’s a great example of this concept: every now and then I’ll have a student come into the program that says that they already have a website. I’ll usually take a look at their site and sometimes it just so happens that it is the exact same site that another student showed me a few weeks ago.

Well, what’s the problem with this? Is it their own site? Sort of, but not really. You see, there are programs out there that will either give you or sell you a site, but it is the exact same site as everyone else. This creates some problems when it comes to natural search engine rankings. (more…)

Below are the notes from the Graduate Coaching Session held March 17, 2008 by Michael Stone:

Advanced Blogging for Marketing

Why

• Get to the top of Google.

Content

• Provide advice rather than ads
• Product Reviews
  • Don’t do sales; provide advice
  • Product comparisons
  • Go for specifics, such as model numbers
  • “ad25/sr plus” (more…)

If you attended Future of Web Apps this year in Miami, or even listened to the audio, it’s apparent that version control is a crucial part of building web apps. As Cal Henderson put it, “If you listen to nothing else I say today, start using source control.” This might be obvious to developers, but many web designers still have not discovered the benefits of version control. Without version control, most web designers work in constant risk. Each time a new change is made, the previous code or files disappear forever. In this article I’m going to explain how to get started and why Subversion is going to change the way you work.

Subversion is an impressive version control system that has been widely adopted. You’ve probably heard of it. You might have even tried to use it without success. Most people know they need it, but can’t get past the complexities of getting started. At Wildbit, we realized these problems and created Beanstalk, a hosted Subversion system designed to make version control painless. In order to understand Subversion, let’s start with the benefits and how it works.

Fear commitment? Drop that ball and chain.

With Subversion, you don’t have to worry about overwriting files or losing code. Subversion will keep a constant history of revisions for every file in your project. Each time changes are made to your code or files, they are preserved forever. Subversion allows you to view the changes to specific code, review with your team, and even roll back changes to previous versions. Think of it as a never-ending “undo” for the life of your projects.

In addition to revision history, Subversion improves team collaboration. Many people can update the same files without the risk of overwriting each others work. Subversion also provides a constant backup of your files in a central location, where you can share changes and updates with clients or team members. Since it preserves the history of your files, you can instantly compare multiple revisions of HTML mockups.

How does it work?

Subversion works as a client/server tool, similar to the way most designers use FTP. A Subversion server stores all of your files in a repository and a Subversion client is used to download (update) and upload (commit) file changes to the server. In the past, the process of setting up a server, finding a good Subversion client, and learning the basics of Subversion was a painful process. These days there are many tools and services available that allow almost anyone to get started. Let’s jump in.

Setting up a Subversion server

The first step is to setup the server. This used to be the most difficult step, but there are now various web applications that simplify this process. Services such as Beanstalk, Versionshelf, CVSDude, and RoudHaus make it easy to create a repository, manage users, and view activity. These services have literally taken the process from hours to minutes.

After signing up for one of the services, you can setup a repository. A repository is like a project, which defines the location where your files are stored. Each repository has a URL that is used to interact with the client and the server. As part of setting up the repository, you can either import an archive of existing files or start from scratch. An example repository URL would look something like http://svn.account.beanstalkapp.com/reponame where reponame is the name of your repository.

Installing the client

The next step is to setup a Subversion client on your computer. I feel like this is the part where most people give up. There are many options and most are poorly documented or difficult to install. Fortunately, there are a few installable clients that can make this process much easier without having to bother with the command line.

If you are on Windows, I highly recommend TortoiseSVN. This Subversion client seamlessly integrates into the Windows Explorer, making it easy to interact with your Subversion repositories. With a right-click, you are provided with the most common Subversion commands. The installation process is really straight-forward.

On Mac, you have several options. The biggest issue with Subversion on Mac is that you need to install Subversion as well as the GUI. Fortunately, there is a package from Martin Ott that will install Subversion for you. You can grab the file (My Subversion-1.4.4 Package) from the link and install it. After the install, you can choose a Subversion GUI client. I recommend either svnX or Textmate’s Subversion bundle. Details about the use of each product can be found on the respective web sites.

Basic Subversion usage

With a Subversion server, repository and client we are ready to start using Subversion for a project. The best way to explain Subversion is through a normal day to day work cycle. In this example, I will use Beanstalk (server) and svnX (client) to cover the common commands and terms.

svn checkout

The first step is to checkout the files from your subversion server. A checkout is the first download of files from the Subversion server to your computer. In your Subversion client you will insert the repository URL along with your username/password and perform a checkout. This will “checkout” all files from the repository to a directory on your computer. The screen shot below shows that we checked out several files. As you can see, I am using Subversion to edit this article.

working copy

The working copy is the local copy of files on your computer from your repository, which is created after your first checkout. Subversion will automatically keep track of changes in your working copy as long as you edit within the initial checkout directories. For now, I will edit this page in Textmate.

svn commit

After editing the file, we can commit (upload) the changes to the Subversion server. svnX will automatically find all new or changed files when you are ready to commit. Make sure to write a detailed comment that explains the changes.

changeset

Once the files are committed, Subversion will create a changeset that records the changes from the commit. Each changeset is assigned a revision number and is frozen in history in your repository. The changeset and revision is displayed in Beanstalk and is visible to other members on your team. The screen below shows that I modified the file subversion-for-desgners.html at Revision 2.

diff

When viewing a changeset or file in Beanstalk, you can see a “diff” of the changes. A diff is simply the difference between one revision and another, which will display the lines of code that were changed, added, or removed. This makes debugging and reviewing changes very easy, since you can review specific differences in each file between revisions. I went ahead and edited this line so we can see the “diff” between revision 2 and 3.

svn update

If you are working in a team it is important to have the latest version of files. An update is the command used to grab the latest version of files from the Subversion server. You should run this often to minimize any conflicts with team members.

svn log

The Subversion server will keep a constant log of everyone’s activity across your repositories. Most hosted Subversion services offer a section where you can view recent revisions and changesets. This is ideal if you need a snap shot of recent updates in your projects. The log will display the latest commits from each person as well as a direct link to the changeset.

much more

There are many other terms and commands, but the above are the most important to get started. Once you start using Subversion on a daily basis, you will learn how to resolve conflicts, revert files to previous revisions, and create a smarter workflow for your process. The best in-depth resource for Subversion is the book Version Control with Subversion. Instead of starting at the top, I recommend starting at the chapter Basic Work Cycle. This will help you discover the key advantages of Subversion without reading the entire book.

Taking it further

I tried to keep this as simple as possible, but once you get started with Subversion there are many more tools and benefits. Hosted Subversion services have some great tools that allow you to automatically deploy files from Subversion to your servers, notify your team when new changes are committed, integrate with your favorite web apps and allow anonymous access for open source projects. After you decide to use Subversion, you will wonder how you ever got any work done without it.

If you have any questions, feel free to post comments and I will reply quickly. You can also email us at support@beanstalkapp.com if you need help along the way. Our goal is to open up the world of version control for designers, so we are here to help.

In this second part of a four-part series on Perl and the DBI you ll learn how to create a database and how to use a collection of very important commands. This article is excerpted from chapter 15 of the book em Beginning Perl em by James Lee Apress ISBN 159 59391X ....
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One of the most exciting trends on the Internet today is interconnectedness. Application programming interfaces (APIs) help make this possible. For example, if I have created a blog at WordPress, I can get a free key to use the API at Akismet, a comment-spam-prevention service. Additionally, if I have a Flickr account, I can get another free key to access its API to display my photos from Flickr on my new blog. By interfacing with other websites, in other words, my blog is now more functional than it used to be. So what are APIs, and why should I pay attention to them? The first question is much easier than the second, so let's start with it. When a website such as Flickr offers an API it provides a method for other applications, such as other websites, to access its content. In the same way a person can visit Flickr and be presented with web pages, an API provides a way for computers to visit Flickr and be presented with the requested content. Here's an example. Say a user...

In Field Test, Practical eCommerce gathered ten seasoned ecommerce merchants and asked each of them the same questions around a given topic. This month’s topic is fraud prevention. The participating ecommerce merchants are: Dave Norris, House of Antique Hardware; Justin Hertz, MuttMart; Chris Stump, Only Hammocks; Mike Feiman, PoolDawg; Dan Stewart, Xtreme Diesel Performance; Roman Kagan, Appliance Parts Pros; Cindy Barrileaux, Write Your Best; Claudette Cyr, Gear-Source; Mike Butler, Bloom Designs Nursery; Kristen Taylor, Juvie; Jeff Muchnik, RedBox Tools. The responses for three of the ten merchants follow below. The answers are shown to preserve anonymity. Pec: Has your ecommerce business been the victim of credit card fraud? FIELD TESTER 1: Attempted fraud, but nothing that ever actually went through. FIELD TESTER 2: Hundreds of fraud attempts, but I think we actually only got stung once for a small amount. FIELD TESTER 3: Yes, we typically see a handful of...