It seems a lot of people are having problems getting their one-click yahoo email working. So I am going to try and make the one click yahoo email login a little easier for everyone.

You will have to create a shortcut for your yahoo email. I don’t recommend using Internet Explorer, because it WILL change the link. So use Firefox, Opera, Safari or something else. Right click on the desktop of wherever, but you will have to manually create a shortcut. This method works GREAT for iPhones, Blackberrys and other internet enabled phones.

Create your internet shortcut:

https://login.yahoo.com/config/login?.src=ym&.intl=us&.bypass=&.partner=&login=USERID&passwd=PASSWORD

The USERID and PASSWORD will have to be your user id and password – really. Many times, you will be taken to a screen to enter your password the first time you click this shortcut. Click “log in as different user” and click the shortcut again. This will usually solve the password question and clear out the cookie from your previous session.

If your email isn’t a US yahoo.com email, you might have to change the login server to match the mail server as well as the intl= for example, if you’re using yahoo7 the Australia version, you’ll need to make a few changes to match your country.

https://login.yahoo.com/config/login?.tries=&.src=ym&.last=&promo=&.intl=au&.bypass=&.partner=&login=USERID&passwd=PASSWORD

This will work for Australia yahoo emails eg: username@yahoo.com.au  Change the au to whatever your country’s code is de, br, id, etc.. this WILL work for most countries, but a few countries will require your to change the login.yahoo.com as well. This seems to be dependent on if you are using the classic Yahoo mail version or the new mail version. Try different settings for yahoo services and such.

Advanced and optional settings:

https://login.yahoo.com/config/login?.src=ym&.intl=us&.bypass=&.partner=&login=USERID&passwd=PASSWORD

This will take you to yahoo mail. If you wanted to got to My Yahoo instead, use “my” in place of “ym” – there are a lot of others as well…

https://login.yahoo.com/config/login?.tries=&.src=ym&.last=&promo=&.intl=au&.bypass=&.partner=&login=USERID&passwd=PASSWORD

Sometimes you’re going to need these in the url and sometimes you won’t. If you’re having problems, removing or adding these setting sometimes helps get you into your account easier or faster. YMMV

And ALWAYS log out when you’re done. If you don’t, the next time you click on the link, you WILL be asked for the password. Logout when you’re done!

Reflective, glass and metal: $40 product image

Product photography is an area I’ve been working with for a while and have learned a lot about what and why to shoot an item, in a particular way, not only for aesthetic reasons, but also tested placement principles to increase conversions.

For good product images, you can expect to pay $15-20 per finished image. At this price, your pictures should be suitable for web and most print ad applications. However, this price is for items which are easy to photograph. Outdoor shoots are more expensive as are items which are difficult to photograph: glass, metals, transparent and reflective materials.

The DIY product photography for web copy is going to run about $3000 in initial cost (camera, lens, lighting, for a minimum setup and that’s assuming you already have the graphic computer and software. Then you have to take all the pictures, process and photoshop the product pictures and then your product images are ready for the web or print.

It’s often less expensive to hire a product photographer to take all your product images than to do everything yourself. Many product photographers will give you a daily rate, which runs around $1000 and will return you anywhere from 50 to 80 quality images, ready to use. Of course, finding and getting the products to the photographer can be task in and of itself. Thankfully, a lot of product photographers work via UPS or FedEx and return the items to you when the shoots are complete. Expect a turn around anywhere from 8 to 14 days, depending on the products, number of items,distance, etc. Be sure to use a bonded and insured photographer if shipping your items for photographing.

Where to find a product photographer? Well, they’re not easy to find, as it turns out. I’ve used a few photographers, mainly portrait, wedding and event photographers and I guess static objects just weren’t their medium. Product photography is meticulous and calculated where most photography captures the moment, product photographers create the moment. It takes a different kind of photographer to create a moment rather than capture one. With FedEx, you can use the same people Tiffany’s uses to shoot their million dollar jewelry, of course, they’re just a little higher than the $20 per image companies.

…if the product photographer has to iron clothes, they charge extra

A good example of a less expensive product photograph $10 image

There are product photographers who aren’t as expensive, but their work isn’t as striking as the more expensive photographer, but they turn out a very nice product at a very reasonable price, usually $10 – 14 per image (40 image minimum is standard). These images are not really suitable for gloss print publications, but they’re great for web, fliers, newsprint and television.

Keep in mind the garbage-in-garbage-out for product photography. If you send a pair of scuffed up shoes, your images won’t be as good. Photoshop and hiding flaws can only do so well in high resolution photographs.

For help finding a reputable drop-ship product photographer, check out.

Product Shooters
1019 3rd Ave South
Nashville, TN
615-259-9822

Mall of the Emirates

Generally used in shopping mall design, the Gruen transfer refers to the moment, when a shopper enters a mall and is purposely distracted by ‘scripted disorientation’.  The layout, the sites, the lighting, the music, even the plants are all designed to distract the shopper from their original intention. The effect of this distraction is a “slower walking pace and glazed eyes”(1).

While this is all fine and dandy for your brick and mortar stores, does the Gruen tranfer apply to online shopping and ecommerce? In a word – absolutely.

eCommerce is determined by the speed of byte or so we think. Most in ecommerce know, that the longer someone lingers, the less likely that person is to make a purchase. Right? Well, let’s say sometimes yes and sometimes no. It’s a little more complex than a fast loading page…

GoDaddy Gruen
If you have a domain hosted with GoDaddy or have registered a domain with Godaddy, you know, the checkout process is long. You’re going to be prompted with at least 4 pages of suggested additions, each more confusing to use and you’re more likely to add an item to your cart by mistake. Enough of those people proceed with checkout just so they don’t have to go back and figure out how to remove the item. I call it “the baby in the cart” technique, but I am sure there’s a better name. Regardless of nomenclature, it works and that’s the real bottom line. But beware, this method can really backfire in the wrong market. GoDaddy is the Park Place of domain registrars and they can do pretty much anything they want and get away with it.

Buffering… Loading… Please Wait?
An often under recognized function of ecommerce is patience. The patience of the shopper. Pages need to load, we know that, but what the shopper does while the page is loading is as important as the why they’re waiting. The Gruen transfer occurs on the macro and also a much more personal level with ecommerce. There’s nobody around to distract them, so you need to keep them occupied, even when they’re waiting for pages to load.

Wait for it…
The shoppers percieved time waiting for a page to load is greatly influenced by their level of participation. That participation is influence by even the simplest of methods: a “loading bar”. Two identical pages, with identical load times will be perceived as a different time, by simply adding a “loading message”. With a loading message, viewers were tuned into the loading message and their gaze (and mouse) was less likely to drift or exit.  By simply adding a loading message on checkout pages and pages that required filing, the viewer was willing to wait up to 60% longer, while their perceived wait time remained the same (2).  However, the loading message also played a role on the perceived wait time. “Loading” seemed to rank the highest in time vs. perceived time while “Please Wait” had the lowest perceived wait time. Maybe you shouldn’t tell the shopper their waiting: postponed, lagged, on-hold, delayed…. let them know something is happening and they’ll wait for it. Tell them to wait or just having a twirling cursor isn’t enough. You need to distract the shopper from realizing how long it takes and just showing the shopper something is happening has a higher conversion than no information.

You Might Also Like
Shoppers who bought widget A also bought widget B. The Gruen transfer is about culture and the culture of shopping applies to the online approach as well. New clothes, the latest styles, that must-have new device, they’re all driven by a desire to be in the herd and there’s nothing more compeling to an object as those desired by others. Enough consumers will react to this scripted distration to make it worth while. Offering suggested items in the cart that are relevant to the item they chose not only increases conversions, it also increases average checkout totals and that’s your bottom line.

Suggest to a friend, add to wishlist, add to registry, you might also like. they’re all intended to distract you to increase your time on site and increasing your cart total. And it works.

The bottom line, getting customers served quickly is important in ecommerce, but there are things an ecommerce sight can use to increase time on the site while making the shopper believe it was a fast experience. Those who do it well can expect an increase in traffic, conversions and profits.

1: Crawford M., (1992), The World in a Shopping Mall, in Sorkin M., (ed.), Variations on a Theme Park: the new American City and the end of Public Space, Hill & Wang, New York, (1992)

2: Nicholson P, (1998), Call to Non-Action; Buffer the Web, Dawhoo.com  (1998)

ASPDotNetStoreFront SWF Image Viewer Popup

SWF Image Viewer Demo (this is a live site, so if you order something, you will be charged!)

If you are using ASPDotNetStoreFront for your shopping cart, then you know how the popup image viewer looks and to me, it doesn’t look all that great. After working with ASPDNSF for some time, I am finally starting to ‘get it’ and I thought I would share some of my secrets for working with this shopping cart.

You’re going to need a little working knowledge of ASPDNSF to do this, so if you’re not comfortable doing this yourself, contact me and I can set this up for your site. The code provided below does work, but is not as complete as it could be… (I can’t give away all my secrets). If you need help setting this up and would like the complete package (including SWF viewer), I charge a flat rate of $250 to set this up and it comes with everything you’ll need, plus a few extra tweaks you’re not going to find in this guide.

First of all, you’re going to need a SWF for making a gallery page. I used Zoomify Design as it’s inexpensive, simple to use and works very well. Zoomify Design costs $29 and it’s worth every penny to me. I am going to assume you know how to use Zoomify and if you don’t, read the documentation. It’s pretty easy and once you get it set up, it’s easy to make the files for your call to a SWF popup image viewer.

Create a flash directory to store your files on your server. I created my flash folder inside the root of the website, but you can choose almost any location, as long as the folder is readable.

You’re going to need to have a custom product.xml package. You can just copy one of existing product.XML packages for your products. I used product.SimpleProduct.xml.config Be sure and give your XML a new name, I use product.Flash.xml.config

Edit the XML package and look for this line of code in your XML package. It will appear in several place and it’s best to edit them all.

<xsl:value-of select=”aspdnsf:LookupProductImage(ProductID, ImageFilenameOverride, SKU, ‘medium’, 0, $AltText)” disable-output-escaping=”yes” />

Comment out the code so it looks like:

<!–<xsl:value-of select=”aspdnsf:LookupProductImage(ProductID, ImageFilenameOverride, SKU, ‘medium’, 0, $AltText)” disable-output-escaping=”yes” />–>

It’s better to comment it out, in case you make a mistake, it will be easier to fix. Right below the code you just commented out, place this bit of code to call the SWF.

<a href=”flash/{ProductID}/viewer.htm” target=”_blank”><img src=”images/product/medium/{ProductID}.jpg” /><br /> <center>Multi Image Viewer</center></a>

The areas in red are the only changes you will need to make a change to the code to make it work. Change the href path to reflect the location of the folder and the name of the htm file that calls the swf within the product folder. The {ProductID} pulls the dynamic file name for each image so leave that in tact. This code can be modified to suit your needs. Now upload the product.XML file into your XML folder on your webserver.

Choose the item you want to use the SWF multi image viewer. Each product has a unique user ID number and that’s what you’re going to name the folder that contains the SWF viewer and image files. Process the images per the directions for Zoomify and upload the folder into the flash folder on the website. (eg: upload the folder 2345 to the /flash directory on your website.

Go to your edit product page and choose the XML package you created for the item and you’re done. Be sure and check out the new page to make sure it looks the way you want and everything is working. A few lines of code, a little preperation and you’ve turned your vanilla ASPDNSF image viewer into a powerful and dynamic image viewing system that’s going to increase sales and make your customers very happy.

Here is a working example on a live site.

If you would like to have me do this for you and give you the complete package, with everything ready to go, contact me and I will try and get back with you as soon as possible. Please leave a phone number and a good time to contact you.