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Archives for 2008

Review of Detailed Image

January 14, 2008 by Neville

I don’t like many blogs but one of the few I regularly read is Adam McFarland’s. I particularly enjoy his blog because he’s about my age and does mainly web related businesses, so I can definitely relate.

Adam and 3 other guys (who also each own small businesses) formed a company called Pure Adapt in which they all pool their talents. Through a collaborative effort they’ve managed to take George’s online business Detailed Image to a whole new level and it’s now one of Pure Adapt’s most promising businesses. Detailed Image sells everything related to high-end auto detailing like car wax, paint buffers, leather cleaners etc. If it makes your car look good, DI probably has it.

I like Detailed Image as a business because it gets EXTREMELY high conversion rate of orders per customer. So if Detailed Image only gets less than 50 visits a day, they’ll still make 10 or more orders from that. One of my businesses HouseOfRave is the exact opposite. I get tons of traffic but low order rates. So I may get 2,000 visitors per day, but only 10 orders. They do this by staying very active in auto-detailing forums and adding lots of content to them. People are much more likely to buy stuff recommended by an active member of the forum.

This post was completely un-asked for by the guys who run it, but here is my review/impressions/suggestions for Detailed Image.com:

1.) Left Navigation.
It reminds me of one of those standard OScommerce menus. I’d suggest putting some bullet points to tidy it up:

Maybe even alphebetize it:


2.) Product Image Location.
No need to change this, but I was definitely confused when viewing products. I browsed through a couple of items and thought, “Why don’t they have product photos?”

They’ve integrated the product photos into the side bar which is made to look like a GPS navigation system on a dashboard, but when browsing the web your brain generally separates the information in the side navigation bars from the main content. Even now, I still look at the site and forget each product has a picture.

This isn’t really a problem, but a simple fix which could help a not-so-astute person like me is integrating the picture into the whitespace of the main content. This gives the effect of the product picture being a “part of” the main content instead of separated from it. Something like this:

Of course this particular example doesn’t fit into the whole “dashboard theme” very well.

3.) Shopping Cart Upgrade System.
Adam has been talking about how he’s completely revamped the shopping cart system for the site. It’s AWESOME! Instead of making someone go through the site and ADD small ancillary items to the cart individually, it automatically adds related items for you. This way when you UNCHECK items in your cart, you feel “Well, I will need one of those…” and keep it there. This equals larger orders.

Adam mentioned this feature has effectively DOUBLED the dollar amount of each order. Doubling income overnight? I’d say that’s one highly successful modification!

4.) More videos and before/after pictures.
I’ve seen some really nice before/after pictures George has posted in various forums. Some of them were so convincing they had me nearly buying $100+ worth of stuff from DI! However I can’t readily find any links to those highly convincing posts from the website. It would be nice if DI had a small section of before & after pictures of cars with different colors. I drive a black GS 300, and when I saw some before/after pictures of a black Infinity G35 during a detailing, I was VERY close to buying everything in the article. The key was seeing how good my color of paint could look when properly cleaned and polished.

The video of a buffer you guys recently posted is a great addition to the site. I never would dream of buying an expensive buffer had I not seen that video!

That’s all I’ve got for now, great job with the site guys. I can’t wait to see it grow in the coming years!

First Post & Goals

January 3, 2008 by Neville

First post of the year!

Let’s get started. For starters, I’m not going goal-less this year like I tried in 2007. That worked out OK, but setting clear goals is quite an important task. I was using some pretty flawed logic in that goal-less post.

Short Term Goals:

  • Join the Austin Rock Gym instead of a regular gym. Two years ago I went indoor rock climbing every other day for about 3 months and saw big changes in my all around strength. Rock climbing is more fun than a normal gym, uses more muscles and this gym is only 4 miles from where I live so I can bicycle there…which bring me to:
  • Buy a bike. I found a good trick to buying a cheap bike that will last. Go to Wal-Mart, buy one of those $100 bikes, then go to a bike shop and get a $30 tune-up. I didn’t believe it at first, but it literally changes the entire way the bike rides and feels. I used to have one, but I left it at my old apartment when I moved, and within two weeks it was gone.
  • Locate 3-D Printers around Austin. I’ve been interested in the newly emerging technology 3-D Printing (aka rapid prototyping) for a long time, and want to start getting involved with it in some form. I’ve already found a $49,000 3D printer I can use on the cheap. <-- Just the thought of that gets me excited!
  • Buy a big stopwatch. Shouldn’t be that hard :-) I’ve been timing myself when doing work, and it makes things so much more interesting! Suppose I have a bunch of orders to sift through on a Monday for HouseOfRave and Bodymonkey, I’ll keep a mark on time and see how fast I can knock them out of the way. It keeps me from goofing off during the task, makes me work faster because I’m “racing” against the clock and makes the work more interesting. If I set a goal of 20 minutes for myself and finish before that, it makes me feel like I’ve “won” something, sounds dorky, but it works! I tried doing this with an egg timer, only to find out that egg timers tick REALLY loudly. Plus they only measure elapsed time which doesn’t get you racing quite as fast.

Medium Term Goals:

  • Learn Joomla. Joomla is a dynamic content management system. In a nutshell, you can build dynamic web pages with it and there’s lots of benefits to using it. I usually download software, install it then play with it to learn it, however this time I’m viewing every Flash tutorial I can find about Joomla and learning it BEFORE I install it. I’ve alreay started all of this.
  • Learn AutoCAD. Once I have 3D printers to use, it means very little unless I can provide a .stl file for the printer to print. I want to learn the 3D drafting system AutoCAD (very commonly used in architecture & engineering) so I can create and manipulate 3D files. I’ve already got my hands on it and installed it on my desktop. In the future I’ll most likely send my AutoCAD work to a drafter, as this program takes talent to use very well, however it’s always good to know what you’re talking about when sending a project to an artist.

Year Long Goals & Wants:

  • I want to fly on a private jet. Cheapest rates I’ve seen are $1,100/hour for a 6-seater Learjet. Purpose of this goal? None really, I just think it’s a neat, rare experience.
  • Take a Zero-G Flight. For $3,675 you go on a Boeing 727 and do 14+ parabolic maneuvers which make you completely weightless for about a minute followed by 1.8g’s of gravity against you as you go up. How…..freakin…..awesome! This is really expensive and doesn’t include lodging or a flight to the take-off location, so it might have to wait till next year.
  • Go to Japan. I’ve been to Japan before…and seen THE AIRPORT. I’d like to take at least a week this year and properly visit. EVERYONE I know whose been loves it for the high intensity energy of the cities, the food, the culture and the absurdly dedicated work ethic (I could use some o’ that).
  • Re-Learn Spanish. All those years of formal training in Spanish through middle school, high school and college didn’t do it for me. It’s said that learning how to use between 100 and 200 essential words in any language is enough to be partially fluent, and this is what those “Learn Spanish” CD’s teach. I’ve already started doing these courses, and after only 10 lessons of the Pimsleur Spanish course I swear I could have decent conversations. However the Pimsleur course teaches formal Spanish which works well in Spain….but since I live in Texas, this doesn’t fly. Therefore this goal is to re-take a different Spanish course that offers a more Hispanic translation, I’ve been recommended to use the Rocket Spanish course.
  • Spread the word about Jelly. It’s a great way for independent workers to work together.
  • Practice speed-reading more. No need to explain the benefits of being able to read a page of a book in 60 seconds or much less. I used to be able to do this in high school when I’d read about 2 books a week…mainly just on the bus. Nowadays I practice this by going to the public library and reading every newspaper they have REALLY REALLY fast. At first you hardly pick up any information, but over time you start absorbing more and more by simply scanning through. Since about 50% of an article in any news story is generally fluff, being able to quickly spot and pick up vital information so quickly is pretty useful. This means I need to go to the library maybe twice a week and practice for 30 minutes at a time (the rest of the time I usually read all the new magazines).
  • Go to more city council meetings. I’ve randomly gone and sat in on city council meetings before, and sometimes they’re boring, sometimes they’re interesting. However you always learn about new city decisions much before they’re announced. It can’t hurt to attend more of these, you never know who you’ll meet or what information you’ll hear.
  • Increase eCommerce income by 100%. This means HouseOfRave.com and BodyMonkey.com should both double their income from the corresponding month last year. This will be accomplished through recently changes in both systems and email marketing, both of which have already started.

That’s all the publicly available goals I’ve got for now, I may add more later. Have a happy & prosperous 2008!
-Neville

Happy 2008!

January 1, 2008 by Neville

No matter how well you did in 2007, I hope your

Now, it’s time to celebrate!

Best wishes,
Neville

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