We're almost three months into 2008 and we've launched 3 new websites already with a fourth coming within the next week! The
dotServing | Creative team has been pretty busy releasing new sites! Check em out and let us know what you think!
dotServing | Creative event has a ticker to help you keep track of our new releases!
The local police force ended up visiting our client today after Monday's extremely close successful
scam attempt.
The policewomen advised our client to reply to his email saying something along the lines of, "your a scammer!". This is not good business sense as there is still a fraction of a percentage that this could be a legit sale. While the odds may be extremely bad, like one in a million, you never know when you'll be that one in a million.
Our client would have spent a half hour venting in the email, while the scammer would have spent 10 seconds reading it and then simply hitting the delete button. Which would be a complete waste of time for our client.
The last thing you want to do is come off appearing unprofessional, even though it is very suspicious scammer like activity. So a simple response like, "I am sorry sir/ma'am however at the current time we can only accept western union money transfer or money order".
This way, if you do happen to be one of the one in a million that have an actual potential client on the other end, you'll still appear professional and you won't waste your time venting to someone who won't spend 10 seconds reading your well written email.
Today on my way home from having lunch with local business wizard
Sebastian Manago I stopped into another client's shop to see how things were going for them.
The client was all excited that they had another major sale from their website. The sale was for $1300 worth of product, however the client had requested that she withdraw an extra $600 and send it to her shippers agent (TNS Express Courier) in Jefferson City, Missouri via Western Union Money Transfer.
Immediately alarm bells went off and we discussed the transaction. I informed our client that this had sounded like a scam and happens very frequently. Our client then immediately went and got her paperwork on the situation as she agreed it sounded like a scam from the start however she was more assured it wasn't a scam because the credit card transaction went through, however she did not have a name of the card holder.
The initial email was sent to some Wool Company in the Yukon however our client was Blind CC'ed on the email. Therefore the target was multiple business owners, however the default addressee in the email was not our client. The sender, John Spyke, was using a Free Yahoo Email Address.
The John Spyke sender had made mistakes which implied that he wasn't sure who he was sending the emails as. In some cases, he wrote his name as John and in other cases he wrote it as Mike.
The TNS Representative that was suppose to be contacted had a @Yahoo.com email address, which also sent up some red flags as most businesses don't use free email address providers. It doesn't say much about the business when they are using a free email address provider when they could own their own domain name (@theirbiz.com) for the cost of 3 coffee's a month.
After contacting TNS Express, they informed us that all their representatives use a @TNSGlobal email address and that they have no offices in Jefferson City!
Our client also had their own suspeciousons as the John Spyke would not give them his contact number or mailing address. Phone calls made to the store were listing a blocked number as a return phone number.
While many people would think that a instance like this would only cost our client $600, it actually goes a bit further then that.
- $600 sent to the scammer via Western Union
- $1300 in product sent to the scammer.
- $700 paid to the producer of the product.
- $35 Western Union Money transfer fees
- And lastly hours of headache
In the end, our client called Western Union and they were able to send the funds back to our customer. The visit to this client ended up saving her lots of headaches and a good sum of money.
Nigel Armstrong posted a
link to a
UPEI Blog regarding the future of our local newspaper, The Guardian.
Kate goes onto say that the The Guardian hasn't been tossed away yet because of the online world.
Nigel Armstrong said in his blog post that The Guardian will slowly become more of a multimedia company and not solely a print based news system. The Guardian's website already does a bit of multimedia however there is much lacking before they take the cake.
The Guardian needs a overhaul of their website, as it gives off the appearance that things are just being thrown all over the place and it makes a lot of it non-appealing, such as the web poll. A lesson to be learned from Halifax's
Chronicle Herald website. The Chronicle Herald keeps the reader interested with their layout and notice how they make their ads tie in with the site?
What I like about The Guardian's site is that it is semi-constantly updated with new news, if the event is big enough. While this is the new way of life for media, it takes a chunk out of their revenue as well as people don't need to purchase the Monday copy of the newspaper when they already know what happened on the weekend.
I know that I haven't purchased a copy of The Guardian for a long time, but have read it in local coffee shops or where ever it may be. But then again, I've probably only ever purchased a handful of copies in total.
What I would like to see is, The Guardian Video. Actual video competing with CBC News as it occurs, with perhaps a short advertisement at the first of the video. After all, they do need to make revenue/profit.
For all media, I think online video is the future. While The Guardian currently has a Video-On-Demand option, it makes it feel more like a Youtube then actual local content.
Watching a video on local news is much more appealing to me then reading the newspaper on my computer. Therefore, I can only hope that The Guardian will do more local video content.
I've been watching a couple new online websites developed by some other local Island companies. One of which has been online for 3 months now. I can never remember the exact URL of this particular site however often type it in at Google to search for it. Each time I type it in, I am astonished that it never shows up and must reference another site to find it.
When placing a new website online, it is extremely important that your website can be found by people searching for it online and not only by getting your domain name from your business card. Especially when people type in your exact domain name.
For example, tonight I was searching say sun dried tomatoes. If nothing else, I would expect sundriedtomatoes.com to come out, however the particular site I was looking for did not.
This is clearly a sign that someone did not complete the work of this particular site and is rather disappointing.
However, the idea behind it was not so smart either. The owner of the site was looking for a very low cost solution and now, no one can find their site. Whats the point of having a website no on can find? Especially when they type in your exact domain name!
There are multiple reasons why we build websites. My two favorite are the looks of amazement that our client gives us after we show them the finished product and the emails/conversations we have down the road.
On a recent (Friday Feb 1st to Sunday Feb 3rd) road trip to Halifax, NS a client was astonished with the return their website had brought them. Within a few days of launching their site, the website paid for itself! The site was an instant hit and now, every time I see this client, the owner is informing me of a new big multi-thousand dollar sale that they just received through their website! While some may not view this as much, for this particular client it was more then they expected. They used to receive 3-4 sales per year on their site before we built them their new website, now they are receiving more sales in a week then they had in a entire year! Due to the increased growth in web sales, they are going to be expanding their production to keep up!
After returning from Halifax, another local client ended up sending myself an email reporting their website had paid for itself as well! While their site was launched about two weeks ago, they were majorly excited with the increase in sales in their business.
While these messages from our clients are becoming more frequent, I always enjoy listening to the success that our
development team is bringing our clients.
Hearing about the major success of their site is the second best reason for developing websites! (Of course, the first is seeing the happiness we bring our clients after showing them their completed website for the first time.)
It is 1pm on a Wednesday afternoon. Currently the power is out all across our fair isle, Prince Edward Island (with the exception of Summerside as they have their own power grid). Although there is this power outage, all dotServing sites are still operational. dotServing is not being affected by the power outage.
It's business as normal. However for most other Island based companies, they're down. I'd hate to be a Island business with no power.
dotServing - not even the power can take us down!
Island Services Network is being purchased by
Eastlink Communications. As most are aware, ISN is a small ISP that offers two types of internet services.
The options available at ISN are either dialup (Yes, people still use Dialup) as well as High Speed Internet.
Since 2001, ISN has been reselling the Eastlink High Speed Internet services which Eastlink offers over a cable connection, much like cable TV.
Much like reseller hosting, the only difference in the service is who provides your technicial support & the billing. In ISN & Eastlink's case, they both use
Advantage Communications in one way or another.
Therefore, any ISN users migrating to Eastlink shouldn't really notice a difference in regardings to their internet connection, if anything it may speed up their services a bit and at a cheaper rate.
ISN founder, Kevin O'Brien, has stated that he believes users will still be able to use their @isn.net email addresses as well. Something which I would sure as heck hope that current ISN users will be able to do.
ISN uses Advantage Communications for their technicial support, whereas Eastlink uses Advantage for their billing support.
So does this change the playing field on PEI for ISP's? Not really. While ISN may have been one of the first ISP's on Prince Edward Island, they've always been going over another local ISP's loop.
For instance, at first ISN was using IslandTel as a backbone, therefore if IslandTel went down, sure enough so didn't ISN.
Then, ISN made the switch to Eastlink as a backbone provider. So, if Eastlink went down, sure enough ISN did too.
So in short, ISN customers is merely a glorified customer of a larger ISP such as Eastlink.
My own experience with ISN years ago was good. That was back in the dialup days when they offered their 33.6k dialup connection, while Sympatico was offering 56k/v.90.
The only thing I was unimpressed about with ISN was their co-location room when I inquired about housing a dotServing server within their room. The room was a mess with cables running every which way and was in no way up to dotServing standards, we require at least 2 continuous backbones.
And their lack of interest in bringing High speed internet to me years ago when living at my parents place.
Other then that, I haven't heard many complaints or many praises for the company so I would assume they were typically doing a good job.
When designing a website, you must always have user friendlyness in mind no matter what. Forcing the user to do things one way is not the best approach as everyone is different and people like to do things their own way.
A
great story on someone doing the right thing in Charlottetown, even after the grocery store employees blew him off.
