But I would like to suggest that I could use some unified communications in my life. Google is making a great effort to try to provide this, but what about variety?
Awaiting a unified communications solution for the masses…

Apple say “there’s an app for that” well I say, there is also a web app. What is great is that there are so many innovative applications out there on the internet that are truly unique and fantastic. And the more you look, the more you find.

If you don’t know what I am talking about… shame! Website developers are working hard to bring you beautiful, innovative and streamlined applications to your browser to make your life easier. If you have never seen a web app before, jump over the 37signals.com, the king daddy of the web app world.

Now, I believe that e-commerce is terribly complicated. More so than is necessary, and for those few of you that have experience with the aging oscommerce, you will agree. And oscommerce used to be the benchmark of e-commerce. But it hasn’t evolved AT ALL! So what is the benchmark now? Nothing!

The evolution of e-commerce from a shoppers point of view is the same, the evolution of e-commerce from a store owners point of view is the same. So why then has there been no real push to innovate this clearly booming industry, for the benefit of shoppers and store owners? Just because something is working now, doesn’t mean that it will forever.

Food for thought…

I wanted to focus on business oriented goals for a second. Each year we evaluate the position of the business and where it is going to go, the target market the we want to market ourselves to and the quality of our service and products. From that analysis we set some goals to achieve for the year, at this time of year we look at the goals we set during the year and see what was achieved and not achieved.

For example, one of the goals for this year was to update our website, we have not achieved that goal. However one of the major goals was to have a strategy, road map and infrastructure setup for Activcart for release next year. I am happy to say that we have achieved that goal, plus much more.

I would encourage you all to look at the goals you have set this year and see which ones you haven’t achieved and why. Growth requires a little forward and backward planning.

All the best for the holidays

RAVEN CULTURE

We have been using Facebook as a marketing tool for years, it is a very effective way to gather interest in your products or services. How successful this can be, however, is up to you.

When we first started building ActivCart 4 years ago, we know that we needed an effective marketing strategy that all eCommerce operators could benefit from. One of the first thoughts was to include Facebook integration with the system. This not only allowed us to seamlessly allow the system to post updates to Facebook on your behalf, but it could also leverage the power of social media marketing.

How it works is brilliantly simple. Once you have a base of fans on your business Facebook page, everything that they do on your page, or events, such as when they purchase something from your store, are placed in their news feed, which is publicly shown to all of their friends. What ActivCart does is leverage this power, by automatically including strong “calls to action” within these wall posts and event notifications, it tells your customers, and their friends that shopping online with you is the way to go.

If used correctly, Facebook can be used as a fantastic means to generate a ripple effect within the social media sites. All of which generate more traffic, more leads and ultimately, more conversions.

First of all some grammatical housekeeping. Is it e-commerce, eCommerce or e-business? Personally I prefer using e-commerce, my reasons for this are simple, the e is short for electronic. Where as eCommerce is like iPod, a meaningless letter at the start of a word with pointless capitalization.

Okay, for this article I am going to take two approaches, firstly, if you are starting an e-commerce store, secondly, if you already have one.

“I am just starting out in the ‘e’ world”

So you have your products, you have drafted your business plan and you are ready to get in the online world. The first thing you should know is the most e-commerce systems only allow you to administer your products and orders. Consider that you are starting an e business not just selling products online. Just being able to sell your products is not enough. Being an e-business it needs to enable you to do business. Without being able to conduct business in all areas of your website you are destined to fail.

A successful e-commerce store will have a system that enables you to market your site, view performance reports, and import and export your data in and out of the system. You need to be able to manage your online business from anywhere at any time. What you are looking for is a business management system, not a shopping cart.

Oh No! I have bought the wrong e-commerce system!

If this is you, I am truly sorry. You probably have a limiting system that is costing you business. It is important to identify if you are in this boat. One of the biggest problems is if you are established in an existing system you need to find out if you can export your data to import into a new system. If this is not possible you, unfortunately, will have to re-enter all of your products and customers into another system.

Another consideration will be to define what your needs are. If you are a retail store, then marketing is something that would be very important to you. A weekly or monthly specials newsletter to your clients is an invaluable tool for generating customer loyalty and returning sales. A good e-commerce system will enable you to market to your clients from within the e-commerce system. If you are not getting the results from your e-store that you want it may be time to cut losses and get a new system that can keep up with you and your business.

What to do now?

So basically, you need to sit down and write up a wish list of things that you need in your e-commerce system. Once you have identified what you need keep looking until you get the system that can handle all of your needs. If you are not able to find a system that does what you need you may need to consider a custom solution. These can be quite expensive, but the up side is you can get exactly what you need.

1. iPhone 4G/HD

Rumored to be released at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco this week. Some of the features include Front and rear camera, new operating system, faster better, all the things that we have been wanting in the iPhone.

2. HP Slate

This device is set to be a great competitor to the iPad.

This upcoming slate computer will feature full Windows 7, flash, SD Card reader, Camera, everything you have on your laptop. Which is more than you can say for the iPad.

3. Fuji Finepix Real 3D W1 Digital Camera

Take 3D pictures from your digital camera, sounds great, but you need a 3D display to view them. Has potential, it is something we will watch in the future and let you know. This one could go the way of the laser disc before it begins.

4. Acer Liquid

Not the best source of information but if it proves true it could be a great entry for Acer into the smartphone arena. Loaded with Android it will be more featured than the iPhone and HTC.

Anyway, that’s just a quick round up of some of the upcoming tech for the second half of 2010. Stay tuned for more.

Firstly, I imagine that you are a standard computer user, that is, you don’t do high powered gaming or graphics and don’t need the meanest machine around. So you want, email, internet and facebook. Standard stuff. Lets take a look at the contenders.

Apple MacBook Pro 13″

• 2.4GHz or 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache
• 1066MHz frontside bus
• 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 memory; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 8GB
• 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with support for millions of colours
• 250GB or 320GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive; optional 320GB or 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive, or 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB solid-state drive
• NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory

MSI CX620 15.6″

• Intel® Core™ i5 Processor
• Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
• Classic Cross-Hatch Design
• 15.6” 16:9 wide screen display
• LED power-saving backlight technology
• 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN with Bluetooth
• HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) Output
• 250GB/320GB/500GB SATA

Ok so obviously I am not comparing apples with apples (no pun intended). But I did want to make a point. I have had an MSI laptop and they are FANTASTICALLY good machines. A brand you will not think of, but up there with the Toshiba’s for quality. No, I wanted to bring your attention to the Apple MacBook Pro range. I know that I am comparing similar computers here, the main differences being the Apple has a smaller screen and older processor, but it does have 4 times the ram and and better graphics card, these are the twp things that are going to matter to you for what you are going to be using the machine for. Secondly to performance, is weight, 13″ Apple ~2kg, MSI ~2.5kg. Not much but you can hold 2kg in one hand easily, and for a while, 2.5kg is just more.

The other main point that you may not be aware of is the life of the machine itself. I have a 7 year old Apple PowerBook G4. I can tell you that even today, it not only still looks modern, but it can handle all of the latest software easily. And you can expect the same from the MacBook Pro, not from the MSI.

Now to cost. Apple retail the 13″ at $1499.00, the MSI at $1225.00 from ITSDirect. While the Apple is $300 more, you will be grateful that you paid extra in 6 years when it is good as new and the MSI is long in the bin.

There are many more benefits of owning a Mac over a PC, jump over here to find out more.

In conclusion, just a thought, if you think that Apples are two expensive, consider the long term costs of owning one. They break down less, no viruses and will last the test of time. AND, if in 6 years you want to sell it you will likely get over 1/3 of your money back, unlike any PC where it is immediately worthless. They can do everything you can do on your PC and they are easier to use, why not consider one?

So what do we look for in a strong well planned logo? I offer a few keywords.

1. Beauty
2. Simplicity
3. Relevancy
4. Symmetry
5. Simplicity
6. Simplicity
7. and Simplicity

Let’s take a closer look.

Beauty

“Well,” you may think, “I designed my own logo in paint in my spare time, and I am really proud of it!” You are WRONG! It’s awful! Sorry to say that, but if you are an auto electrician and you fancy your self a marketing and branding expert, sorry, your not. You need a real professional to help you, someone who lives and breaths branding and design. You need someone to analyze your business and come up with a beautiful logo that represents your businesses identity.

Simplicity

There is no sense in having a beautiful logo if no one can understand it. Too much motion can really detract from a good design, it should be instantly recognizable and easily identifiable. Note: second use of the word Identity.

Relevancy

Well, obviously, if you are an auto electrician named Jims Electrical, a dancing clown is not a relevant logo, not an appropriate mascot. A good example is for you to look at 10 telecommunications logos. I guarantee that a good selection will show a common theme of connection and unity.

Symmetry

This one is very important, people can see balance, and if a logo is off balance it is not appealing. To get a good balance, imagine you can balance the logo on the tip of your finger, if it looks too heavy on one side it will not be balanced and fall off. Symmetry is crucial in good design.

And lastly, SIMPLICITY! No need to cover old ground, but for the love of god, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Well that is a small taste of what you need to have a good logo. I really recommend spending the extra bucks and having a professional design your logo. And like a quality wine, you get what you pay for. If it’s too cheap, you are at the wrong place. Look for a designer that can give you a full BRANDING package, not just a logo designer, as you will just get something pretty, but not something that speaks well of YOUR business.

Firstly, I will not be describing what Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is. If you are interested jump over to our “Get Great Google Results in One Year“  page to read up.

SEO has been around for a few years now, longer than most sites have even lived on the internet, and all of them have some level of SEO applied to them. Most sites have their code tuned up at least once or twice a year. So what is going to happen when all of the sites on the internet are SEO-ed?

Imagine it, you are trying to optimize your site, a site that has been optimized many many times, and you can’t squeeze any more optimization-ness into it. So what do you do? You would have to invent some kind of SUPER-SEO to get a leg up on the regular SEO-ed sites on the internet, and only one site can be at the top of Google. So what that means is NONE of the sites on the internet are effectively SEO-ed and you start again from before SEO existed!

So you find yourself inventing a new industry, Super-SEO and you make a billion-trillion dollars. And eventually SUPER-SEO catches on that all sites eventually become SUPER-SEO-ed and then, AGAIN, none of the sites have any SEO. So you need to invent SUPER-SUPER-SEO… and it can go on again, and again, and again until the ends of time.

I have always believed that SEO is great for now, but it is an idea that just can’t last forever. It’s a flash in the pan, internet FAD and it can’t last. And the next internet billionaires who already know this are busy at work inventing the next big internet optimization or marketing fad, I call it SUPER-SEO!

So if you want to make a billion-zillion dollars get out your protractors and start thinking… SUPER-SEO!

Have a nice day!