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You are here: Home / Archives for 2014

Archives for 2014

Infusionsoft: Need a Forward To A Friend Link In Your Emails

September 18, 2014 by Michele Leave a Comment

Problem

An exasperated dumbfounded client contacted me today. He was frustrated by the fact that while Infusionsoft allows sharing of email content via their social sharing widget that includes Facebook, Twitter and Google+, they do not include a simple “forward to a friend.” The “forward to a friend” feature is included in many email services – ActiveCampaign, MailChimp and iContact to name a few.

Goal

Our goal is to have the “Forward to a friend” link blend with the other social icons as shown below:

Infusionsoft adding a forward to friend icon to email

How

With a little tinkering I came up with an approach that I think fits in nicely with the rest of the Infusionsoft email design elements. To accomplish the task insert an HTML Snippet into the email just above the Social Snippet as pictured below.

Infusionsoft inside the email editor

In the HTML Snippet copy and paste the HTML code below into your HTML Snippet:


<p style="text-align:center;wdth:100px;float:right;">
<a href="mailto:?subject=Check%20out%20~Company.Company~&body=Hi!%0DI%20was%20reading%20the%20~Company.Company~%20Newsletter%20and%20thought%20you'd%20like%20it.%20Check%20it%20out%20at%20-%0D%20~HostedEmail.Url~.">
<img src="https://db.tt/sIe7bF7e" border="0" align="center" alt="email icon" />
</a>
</p>

The above code will render the email image to the right of the social share icons as shown in the image at the top of this post.

When the contact clicks on the email icon, it will open their email client with a new email with –
Subject: Check out ~Company.Company~
Body: Hi!
I was reading the ~Company.Company~ Newsletter and thought you’d like it. Check it out at –
~HostedEmail.Url~.

~Company.Company~ will be replaced with your company’s name and ~HostedEmail.Url~ will be replaced with the link to your hosted email.

Notice in Line 3 of the code above, we are using our own image file that is stored on Dropbox. If you prefer to download the email image [ email icon ] or use one of your own, make sure that you change the URL https://db.tt/sIe7bF7e to the proper URL of your image file. To download ours right click on the email image above and select Save Image As to save the image to your hard drive.

I hope this is helpful to others using Infusionsoft who would like to include a simple “Forward to Friend” link in their email marketing.

Filed Under: Infusionsoft

Crafting a Return Policy

July 14, 2014 by Michele Leave a Comment

satisfaction guarantee return policyWhile the internet makes opening an online store easier than a bricks and mortar store, customers are not able to see, feel and hold virtual products the way they do items in a store on Main Street. Therefore, returns will be inevitable because for one reason or another one of your customers expected something different than what was explained in the description or provided in the product photos.

Make returns easy for your customer and your staff by documenting, very simply, under what conditions you will accept a return and what steps the customer must take to get their merchandise returned.

Easy To Find

First and foremost, your return policy must be easy to find. Don’t hide this important information in the footer. Provide a link to your return policy in each product detail page – displayed prominently near the call to action – “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button.

Make It Simple

Have you ever shopped at LL Bean? They will accept returns of any product they have ever sold you, no matter what condition or how old. If you’re not happy with your purchase from LL Bean, they will accept the return and either replace the item or refund your money. Their return policy is plain and simple. Of course, not every online store can provide that kind of policy but you can clearly list the steps (the fewer the better) the customer needs to take and conditions (also, the fewer the better) in which you will accept their product return.

When Zappos introduced their website and business, they knew they faced stiff competition from major department stores. They knew that customers liked and needed to try on many shoe styles and sizes before they made a purchase. Therefore, they needed to provide free shipping and free returns. Without that policy they didn’t stand a chance at success.

The folks at Sock Addict provide a simple return policy. If the product is in original packaging they will accept a return 180 days after purchase – during the first 60 days, you will get a 100% refund and during day 61 through day 180, you will get store credit.

But not all online stores can afford free shipping on returns like Zappos and you might be one of those businesses like Sock Addict that will accept a return but the customer must pay the shipping costs. If you, like the majority of online businesses, require your customers pay for the return shipping, make sure that stipulation is plainly stated in your return policy page.

Examples of Return Policies that work for the customer and business:

Zappos – https://www.zappos.com/shipping-and-returns

Abe’s Market – http://www.abesmarket.com/faq#topic=returns

Sock Addict – https://www.socksaddict.com/ReturnPolicy.aspx

Joby – My dealings with Joby’s customer support have been nothing but outstanding. Joby stands by their products and their shipping methods. https://joby.com/support#return_policy

Other Resources

Amazon’s Return Policy

BigCommerce.com :: How to Write a Profitable Returns Policy

Shopify: 9 Tips on Creating an Ecommerce Return Policy

Entrepreneur.com :: Don’t Make These Return Policy Mistakes

Filed Under: 1shoppingcart.com, eCommerce

What are your shipping fees?

July 10, 2014 by Michele Leave a Comment

Have you given the proper thought to calculate your shipping fees?

#484084489 / gettyimages.com

Too many online businesses lose money every time they ship an order to a customer. This is because shipping fees are an afterthought. Please don’t make the same mistake.

You have given careful consideration to the pricing of your products. Take the same time to carefully consider what is involved in the shipping of your products. Think about the time it takes to prepare the product for shipping, the packaging you will use to ship the product, the time to get the product to your shipping courier and of course, the actual cost your shipping courier charges you to ship your product.

Shipping Fee Calculation




Free Shipping or Free Shipping on Orders of Some Minimum Amount

Can you offer free shipping or discounted shipping once the total purchase reaches a minimum amount? With your shipping costs calculated, does it make sense to increase the price of your products to absorb some or all of those costs and allow you to offer free shipping. Remember – free shipping may be the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart.

Richard Lazazzera at Shopify has written a terrific article on the topic of shipping and fulfillment that I encourage you to read before publishing your shipping fees

 

Filed Under: 1shoppingcart.com, eCommerce

WordPress Media Shortcode Explained

May 2, 2014 by Michele Leave a Comment

Inserting images in your posts or pages is quite easy in WordPress using the Add Media button. This post is meant to explain how the WordPress media shortcode is populated with the information from your media library.

Take a look at the image below. The body of the post as shown in the Text Editor is on the left side and the image (attachment) details is on the right side. I color coded the media gallery fields with their corresponding placement in the media ( [caption ] ) shortcode.

Explanation of WordPress Media Shortcode
How to read a media shortcode in WordPress.
  1. Title (red) – used in the anchor tag (< a href=”…) and again later in the image tag (< img src=”…). The text you enter in the Title field is used to name the image file. Avoid using titles like image1 or photo2 instead follow Google’s SEO Best Practices and use more descriptive names as I did in this example – “Bee in Wisteria.”
  2. Caption (blue) – used as the actual caption of the image
  3. Alt text (yellow) – used as the alt attribute of the image tag. This text will appear if for some reason the image is unable to download to the visitor’s browser. Again, use brief but descriptive terms.
  4. Alignment (orange) – used in the caption tag ([ caption ] ) is used to designate how the image will be aligned on the page with regard to the text that surrounds it. In this particular case the image will appear to the right of any text on the page.
  5. Link To (green) – this option is used if and only if you want the image to be a hyperlink, i.e. your site visitor can click on the image to bring them elsewhere. If you do not want the image to be a hyperlink, select None from the drop down list box. Your link to options are as follows:
    • Media File – when the visitor clicks on a link to the Media File, the full size image will appear within the browser.
    • Attachment Page – when the visitor clicks on a link to the Attachment Page, the image will display similar to how a post would appear on the site with a title, image and description.
    • Custom URL – if you would like your image to link to another page on our site or anywhere else on the internet, select this option and enter the URL. Your site visitor will be brought to that page when they click on the image.
    • None – choose this option, if you would like to embed the image without a hyperlink.
  6. Size (purple/pink) – select the size of the image you would like embedded in the page.

The shortcode used in the illustration above would be rendered on the page as shown below. Notice the 200px x 300px image is aligned to the right of the text with a caption beneath. Click on the image to display the media file.

Example of Media Shortcode Rendered on a Post.
Example of Media Shortcode Rendered on a Post.

If you would like to see how the different linking methods work, please go to this media shortcode demonstration page.

I mentioned Google’s SEO best practices in this article. If you would like to read the entire document, you can find Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide Here.

Filed Under: Wordpress, Wordpress Explained

What the Heck is MsoNormalTable? And How Did it Get in my Post?

March 17, 2014 by Michele Leave a Comment

Have you ever created a post or page in WordPress and found the following weird code staring at you?

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml><br />
<w:WordDocument><br />
<w:View>Normal</w:View><br />
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom><br />
<w:PunctuationKerning/><br />
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/><br />
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid><br />
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent><br />
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText><br />
<w:Compatibility><br />
<w:BreakWrappedTables/><br />
<w:SnapToGridInCell/><br />
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/><br />
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/><br />
<w:DontGrowAutofit/><br />
</w:Compatibility><br />
<w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel><br />
</w:WordDocument><br />
</xml><![endif]--></p>
<p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml><br />
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"><br />
</w:LatentStyles><br />
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]></p>
<style>
 /* Style Definitions */</p>
</style>
<p><![endif]--></p>

Yeah? Chances are you copied the content straight from Word and pasted it right into the WordPress editor. To prevent this from happening in the future use the Paste From Word feature as pictured below.

PasteFromWord

Using the Paste From Word feature strips out the Word formatting commands from your WordPress page or post.

  1. Copy your content from Word
  2. Click on the Paste From Word icon
  3. Paste your content from Word into the provided space
  4. Click on the Insert button

In the event that you do not see the Paste From Word icon in your editor, click on the Show/Hide Kitchen Sink icon . This will reveal a second row of editing icons/features.

For more information about the Paste From Word feature in wordpress, please see the WordPress Support page.

Filed Under: How To, Wordpress

W3 Total Cache Garbled My Simple Social Icons

March 5, 2014 by Michele Leave a Comment

I put it off long enough. My site was in desperate need of optimization. I installed the popular W3 Total Cache plugin and then began the task of configuring it for my needs. I will not get into the specifics here – I will let the plugin’s developers and experts guide you on the configuration.

I won’t lie, it took some time to get the site configured with W3 Total Cache but when all was said and done, I was sad to see that while the pages loaded much quicker, the graphics of the Simple Social Icons plugin displayed garbled nonsense. You can see what I’m talking about below –

simple-social-icons-garble

I found others had similar problems but what resolved their problems had already been coded and accounted for by the developers of the W3 Total Cache plugin.

I tried a few things to no avail but because I minified the CSS of the site, I went to the Minify settings at – {website.com}/wp-admin/admin.php?page=w3tc_minify and scrolled down to the Advanced area and specifically the Never minify the following CSS files setting. In Never minify the following CSS files field I entered the path to the Simple Social Icons’ style sheet which in my case was => /wp-content/plugins/simple-social-icons/css/style.css

Once I made that change …

Viola! Problem solved.

Filed Under: How To, Wordpress

How To Present An Infusionsoft Product Bundle with Gravity Forms

February 25, 2014 by Michele Leave a Comment

Last month, Infusionsoft hosted a Mastermind call about building a dynamic checkout process which started me thinking about how to implement such a feature for a client. By the way, if you are an Infusionsoft user and you are not attending the weekly Mastermind calls, you are really missing out. I have been well impressed with the topics they cover.

In the Mastermind Demonstration, which you can view at the Mastermind Archive, Corey Harding of Infusionsoft builds a dynamic checkout process using an Infusionsoft web form and an Infusionsoft product bundle link.

What is the Infusionsoft Product Bundle Link?

Through a product bundle link, Infusionsoft provides a mechanism to add multiple products to the shopping cart in one click.

As Corey explains in the video, the bundle link has to be “built” using the product ids and quantities included in the bundle. One stipulation in building the link – a product id CANNOT have a quantity of zero (0). Therefore, he uses a JavaScript (provided on the MM archive page) to remove any products with a quantity of zero (0) from the query string which is submitted to the Infusionsoft bundle process. If you include a product id with a quantity of zero (0) in the query string, the bundle link will fail.

The Infusionsoft bundle link has the following form where the query string lists the productId and productQuantity of all the products you want to add to the shopping cart –

https://{ifsapp}.infusionsoft.com/app/manageCart/processBundle?productId=1&amp;productQuantity=1productId=2&amp;productQuantity=10&amp;productId=3&amp;productQuantity=9

Once I saw what Corey did, I was sorry I did not think of it myself. It works especially well with Gravity Forms for a product that includes many options. Let’s say for demonstration purposes, I am selling a plugin. Along with the plugin, I offer an eBook that explains some of the nuances of the plugin and how to make the most of your purchase. I also offer installation of the plugin and an annual premium support plan. If the customer purchases 2 years of support in advance, I offer a 50% discount.

Using Gravity Forms Instead of Infusionsoft Webform

You can view my demonstration form at https://www.equalserving.com/useful-tools/infusionsoft-product-bundle-test/

I used Gravity Forms’ Product Pricing Fields to configure the form. The top field is a Single Product field with the quantity disabled (because this is presumed to be a digital product – there is no need for quantity). The installation, ebook and support fields also use a Product Pricing Field with Radio Buttons field type.

I included a hidden field on the form that contains a promo code for the multi-year support discount. This hidden field is unnecessary as you can configure purchase discounts in Infusionsoft that do not require a promo code but I included it anyway for this example.

Lastly, I dragged in a Total Pricing Field so that the customer could see how much the purchase was going to be before adding it to their cart.

Once the customer clicks on the button labelled “Process My Product Bundle,” the form is configured to redirect to the Infusionsoft product bundle link. Gravity Forms allows the fields of the form to be redirected to another page by clicking on the Form Settings | Confirmations. Select the Confirmation Type – Redirect; enter the Redirect URL and click the Merge Fields button to include the fields necessary in the bundle link. Below is a snapshot of my completed Confirmations screen –

infusionsoft_bundle_gravity_forms

Below is the default Infusionsoft bundle link –

https://{ifsapp}.infusionsoft.com/app/manageCart/processBundle

Below is the Redirect Query String I entered for my particular form. This field is activated when you enable the “Pass Field Data Via Query String” checkbox –

productId=35&productQuantity=1{AddOn Installation:4:value}{Taking Awesome Plugin to the Next Level - eBook:7:value}{Support:6:value}

The above query string as written will append only the values of the fields onto URL Redirect. The evaluated “raw un-filtered” Redirect URL with query string will look as follows:

https://{ifsapp}.infusionsoft.com/app/manageCart/processBundle?productId=35&productQuantity=1001

If the above was submitted, 1001 units of product id 35 would be added to the shopping cart. This, of course, is not what we want.

We must add code to ensure that only products with a quantity of more than zero (0) are added to the query string and that the parameters are properly formatted. Therefore, we must modify the theme’s functions.php file to include the following:

add_filter("gform_merge_tag_filter", "gv_filter_all_fields", 10, 4);
function gv_filter_all_fields($value, $merge_tag, $options, $field){

    if($field["formId"] == "84") {
    	if ($merge_tag == 4 && $value != 0) {
    		// Installation
    		$retVal = "&productId=39&productQuantity=".$value;
    	}
    	if ($merge_tag == 7 && $value != 0) {
    		// eBook
    		$retVal = "&productId=37&productQuantity=".$value;
    	}
    	if ($merge_tag == 6 && $value != 0) {
    		// Support
    		$retVal = "&productId=41&productQuantity=".$value;
    	}
    	if ($merge_tag == 9) {
    		// promoCode
    		$retVal = "&promoCode=".$value;
    	}
    } else {
    	$retVal = $value;
    }
    return $retVal;
}

The above function is triggered with the gform_merge_tag_filter filter. Line 4 evaluates the form id. If formId equals 84 (our bundle form), the function then interrogates the merge_tag and the value parameters. Depending upon which merge tag is passed, the proper productId is returned along with the value of the form field (product quantity). So, the above “raw unfiltered” Redirect URL with query string becomes –

https://{ifsapp}.infusionsoft.com/app/manageCart/processBundle?productId=35&productQuantity=1&productId=41&productQuantity=1&promoCode=MULT
I

Conclusion

Like everything in life and especially online, there are many ways to accomplish any one task. Using an Infusionsoft webform to create a dynamic product bundle is possible and requires no additional tools. But if you are already using Gravity Forms, and want to create a more pleasant customer experience why not put the process together using Gravity Forms?

Filed Under: eCommerce, How To, Infusionsoft, Wordpress

Take Control of Your WordPress Backups

February 3, 2014 by Michele Leave a Comment

For many years I have used CRON and shell scripts to perform code and database backups for my own site and client sites. Of course, using a CRON job usually means that the client is unable to modify the backup or the backup schedule which is fine, really, especially since the script does not require much tinkering once the code is in place. Typically, the database backup is small enough to attach to an email and automatically send to the client each day. The WordPress core, theme and plugin files are normally too large to attach to an email and require that the client download the archived backups from their server using FTP.

This last FTP step was a little too complex for one of my recent clients and I was forced to look at a plugin to control the backup process. Because this client was making use of the Google products such as Google Drive, I wanted to make use of a plugin that would copy the backups to their Google Drive.

The first plugin I downloaded was Google Drive for WordPress. This plugin does exactly what is says it will do – back up your entire WordPress installation including your database to Google Drive. I found that while this plugin could be configured quite quickly, it was lacking some features that I expected:

  • All backups are copied to the root directory of your Google Drive account. I found this failure to be quite limiting. Who wants to have all your backups listed in the root directory of your Google Drive account. Especially, if you should be maintaining backups for multiple sites.
  • The email notifications are so terse that it requires close scrutiny to determine which site was backed up and whether it was successful. The subject line of the email reads only “Backup.”

The second plugin that I tested was the very popular Updraft – WordPress Backup and Restoration. With its solid features, I understand why over a half million people have downloaded it. You can back up your WordPress installation to among other repositories Amazon, Dropbox and Google Drive.

The Updraft plugin does what I expected from the first plugin I tested – it does allow you to backup your site to a folder within your Google Drive account. You can easily maintain separate folders for all the sites that you want to backup thereby keeping files out of your root drive. The notification email clearly displays the site that has been successfully backed up or not. By default the name of the website is included in the backup name making it very easy to find the backup within your Google Drive folder.

The backup is performed in separate steps to generate multiple files – database, themes, plugins, uploads and other files outside the WP core. The WP core files are not backed up.

Additionally, the Updraft plugin allows you to download the backup to your desktop from the Updraft admin panel right within WordPress. You can also restore the backup through the Updraft admin panel.

If you are running a multisite installation of WordPress, Updraft published a premium addon which allows the super admin to backup all the sites within the network. Otherwise, you must configure the Updraft plugin for each of your separate sites.

I was pleasantly surprised by the robust features of Updraft and will probably include the plugin in my future WordPress projects.

If you are not routinely backing up your site, I ask you to please take a look at this Updraft plugin and install it on your site before you regret your decision.

Filed Under: Wordpress

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