Your number one job

Pop quiz time. You're a software developer. You probably have a job. What is your most important job as a developer?

Time's up! What did you say?

If you said "to get another, better job" you're right! If you didn't, well, let's talk about this a little bit.

Most people think their job search ends when they accept a new position. That's not at all true, though. After all, there are tons of things that can go wrong with the role you have (or just accepted): bankruptcy of the company, you hating the role you're in, discovering that the work isn't what you love, and more.

In fact, you should be looking for your next role from the day you start a new job until the day you leave!

Your skills as a developer mean that you are a valuable commodity. Even if your current company doesn't recognize your value, somebody in the market will.

Of course, all of us want to attain the best job, the one that we fall in love with and never want to leave. We want to be the "cream of the crop", at the top of our field. The competitiveness of the developer talent market goes into high gear for  the top 10% of the developer population. So how do you get into this group?

There are two routes you can take to move up into the top 10% of developers. The first is the experience route, which means working for years and years until you finally gain enough experience to reach the upper echelons of development skill.

The other route is the knowledge route, where you focus on gaining as much knowledge as possible so that when you are faced with hard challenges and difficult problems, you can step into the role and solve those problems with ease.

Security Matters

Recently, somebody asked me to take a look at a product they had, and give them some information on what I could do to improve it. Their product was a simple survey tool, focused on gathering data from users they invited or that had paid to use the tool. It seemed straightforward enough. Sure, I had a few concerns: the site had been outsourced, and this person wasn't a technical individual, but I figured I could take a look.

What I found was pretty shocking.

Passwords stored in plain text. No SSL encryption for logins or credit card data. A complete and total lack of any kind of password policy. And this was before I even got into the code.

Too often, it's easy to forget about security considerations when we're working on building something for a client. Security is one of those things that it seems people learn once and then assume they know, like riding a bicycle. But it's not. Security is an ongoing learning process.

When was the last time you stepped out and took a look at the OWASP Top Ten? It changes every year and is worth a look. How about examined security policies in your own app? Checked to make sure your password storage algorithms are up to par? Verified that you're using the latest and greatest version of PHP with all the security fixes? Updated that legacy site to use PDO instead of MySQL_*?

You might think security doesn't impact you, or that once you're done working for a client that the security of a particular application doesn't matter. It does! Clients can and will come after you for security vulnerabilities if they get hacked. And security vulnerabilities can be expensive: just one set of stolen credit cards can ruin a company's reputation and financial bottom line.

11 signs you have been hacked

In today's threatscape, antivirus software provides little piece of mind. In fact, antimalware scanners on the whole are horrifically inaccurate, especially with exploits less than 24 hours old. After all, malicious hackers and malware can change their tactics at will. Swap a few bytes around, and a previously recognized malware program becomes unrecognizable.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 1: Fake antivirus messages
In slight decline these days, fake antivirus warning messages are among the surest signs that your system has been compromised. What most people don't realize is that by the time they see the fake antivirus warning, the damage has been done. Clicking No or Cancel to stop the fake virus scan is too little, too late. The malicious software has already made use of unpatched software, often the Java Runtime Environment or an Adobe product, to completely exploit your system.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 2: Unwanted browser toolbars
This is probably the second most common sign of exploitation: Your browser has multiple new toolbars with names that seem to indicate the toolbar is supposed to help you. Unless you recognize the toolbar as coming from a very well-known vendor, it's time to dump the bogus toolbar.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 3: Redirected Internet searches
Many hackers make their living by redirecting your browser somewhere other than you want to go. The hacker gets paid by getting your clicks to appear on someone else's website, often those who don't know that the clicks to their site are from malicious redirection.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 4: Frequent random popups
This popular sign that you've been hacked is also one of the more annoying ones. When you're getting random browser pop-ups from websites that don't normally generate them, your system has been compromised. I'm constantly amazed about which websites, legitimate and otherwise, can bypass your browser's anti-pop-up mechanisms. It's like battling email spam, but worse.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 5: Your friends receive fake emails from your email account
This is the one scenario where you might be OK. It's fairly common for our email friends to receive malicious emails from us. A decade ago, when email attachment viruses were all the rage, it was very common for malware programs to survey your email address book and send malicious emails to everyone in it.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 6: Your online passwords suddenly change
If one or more of your online passwords suddenly change, you've more than likely been hacked -- or at least that online service has been hacked. In this particular scenario, usually what has happened is that the victim responded to an authentic-looking phish email that purportedly claimed to be from the service that ends up with the changed password. The bad guy collects the logon information, logs on, changes the password (and other information to complicate recovery), and uses the service to steal money from the victim or the victim's acquaintances (while pretending to be the victim).
Sure sign of system compromise No. 7: Unexpected software installs
Unwanted and unexpected software installs are a big sign that your computer system has likely been hacked.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 8: Your mouse moves between programs and makes correct selections
If your mouse pointer moves itself while making selections that work, you've definitely been hacked. Mouse pointers often move randomly, usually due to hardware problems. But if the movements involve making the correct choices to run particular programs, malicious humans are somewhere involved.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 9: Your antimalware software, Task Manager, or Registry Editor is disabled and can't be restarted
This is a huge sign of malicious compromise. If you notice that your antimalware software is disabled and you didn't do it, you're probably exploited -- especially if you try to start Task Manager or Registry Editor and they won't start, start and disappear, or start in a reduced state. This is very common for malware to do.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 10: Your bank account is missing money
I mean lots of money. Online bad guys don't usually steal a little money. They like to transfer everything or nearly everything, often to a foreign exchange or bank. Usually it begins by your computer being compromised or from you responding to a fake phish from your bank. In any case, the bad guys log on to your bank, change your contact information, and transfer large sums of money to themselves.
Sure sign of system compromise No. 11: You get calls from stores about nonpayment of shipped goods
In this case, hackers have compromised one of your accounts, made a purchase, and had it shipped to someplace other than your house. Oftentimes, the bad guys will order tons of merchandise at the same time, making each business entity think you have enough funds at the beginning, but as each transaction finally pushes through you end up with insufficient funds.
Source: www.infoworld.com/print/229782

The Type Hint Tight Couple

Anybody who does object oriented development quickly learns about type hinting - the process by which you can indicate to one object another object it should expect. Remember this example from the last post?

<?php
class MyClass() {
  public function __construct(MyObject $mobj) {
    $this->myObject = $mobj;
  }
}

But type hinting alone is not sufficient to loosely couple our objects. In fact, even though we are injecting our dependency in the initial example, we're type hinting on a concrete object, meaning that we are tied to that specific object for all future iterations. Sure, we can mock it for testing (which is an advantage), but we can't easily subclass it and use it elsewhere.

Fixing the Type Hint Tight Couple
It's easy to fix this particular tight coupling problem. To do so, we can draw back on our knowledge of SOLID principles, namely the Dependency Inversion Principle, which states:

Objects should rely upon abstractions, not concretions.

Fixing this tight couple requires only that we abstract the creation of the interface from the implementation of the object, and then type hint on it. For example:

<?php
interface MyObjectInterface {
  // some methods to define interface in here
}
class MyObject implements MyObjectInterface{
  // The implementation of the interface
}
class MyClass{
  public function __construct(MyObjectInterface $mobj){
    $this->myObject = $mobj;
  }
}

So, here instead of relying solely upon MyObject to type hint, we can now type hint on the interface, MyObjectInterface. This loosely couples our objects, because MyClass no longer cares about the implementation of MyObject; it only cares about knowing the right interface!

So, do all my objects need interfaces?
In short, no, they don't. The illustration I've provided is for objects that might have reuse potential later on, or are part of a library; when you're working with specific objects that are unlikely to change, there may not be a need for this level of decoupling.

Remember, the principles of object oriented design (like loose coupling) are about offering best case solutions, not final solutions or absolute hard-and-fast rules. It's up to you, the designer, to make good choices.

Tight coupling in OOP

What Is Tight Coupling?
It would help to define exactly what the problem is, in order to solve it.

Tight coupling, in object oriented application, is an abnormal dependency between two unrelated objects. This usually manifests itself in a few different ways; today we're going to talk about the first type: the object creation tight couple.

The Object Creation Tight Couple
Have you ever seen or written code like this?

<?php
class MyClass(){
  public function __construct(){
    $this->myObject = new MyObject();
  }
}

We've all probably observed this. Even if it's in another method besides the constructor, we've all seen code that creates other objects. The culprit here is the new keyword. This keyword creates an object, but the creation of an object tightly couples one object to another. It's impossible to easily swap one object for another.

Solving The Object Creation Tight Couple
There are a few easy ways to solve this particular type of problem. The first is with dependency injection. Dependency injection is the process of inserting an object at runtime, rather than creating it in an object, and looks like this:

<?php
class MyClass(){
  public function __construct(MyObject $mobj){
    $this->myObject = $mobj;
  }
}

With this approach, we are injecting the object, which makes it possible to swap the object out with a mock object for testing or another object to modify the application. But this isn't the only way we can solve this problem.

We can also use a factory to create the object we need at run time, but abstract the creation to another object or group of objects (like the Abstract Factory pattern). Using a factory looks like this:

<?php
class MyClass(){
  public function __construct(MyObjectFactory $mobj){
    $this->myObject = $mobj->getInstance();
  }
}

Now, the real power of this isn't shown in the constructor; it's shown when the getInstance() method is used in a method that requires it. But, you can easily see the power of the factory here to create an object on demand, yet still follow the best practices of dependency injection and testability.

5 Ecommerce Metrics You Should Be Tracking

When it comes to ecommerce analytics, business owners and marketing managers typically focus on metrics like conversion rates, number of transactions, and average order value.

These are valuable, and should be monitored. After all, measuring such outcomes is what directly impacts revenue and the bottom line.

Thanks to Google Analytics as well as Mixpanel, Flurry, Site Catalyst, and other analytics platforms, these ecommerce metrics are readily available to site owners.

While focusing on the outcomes is key, close attention to tracking user behavior and interaction with the site or mobile app will also yield significant incremental improvements. Here are five interactions you don’t see a lot of people measuring, when they really should be.

Product Categories
You can easily report on top products, what’s selling, and what’s not selling on your website. However, go beyond that and consider rolling up your reports to the product category level. Some categories can be driving more revenue than others..

Product Comparison
Many ecommerce sites allow shoppers to list products next to each other for ease of comparison — dimensions, features, pricing, and other features — and also for an opportunity to upsell the higher value products.

Live Chat Tracking
You have probably seen live chat features on sites more often than not. You come to a site to check out a service or a product and you’ll see an invitation — sometimes a pop-up — asking if you would like to chat with a customer support agent. I’ve seen ecommerce businesses where the average order value is 25 to 30 percent higher when a purchase included a live chat.

Shopping Cart Removes

While it’s common to measure “Add to Cart” clicks to track which products are added to the online shopping cart and track based on where that action occurred — whether they are on the product page, promo page, or a product modal — it’s also useful to also track cart removes, or the products that visitors added to cart and then later removed.

Know Your User Segments

Real gems are found in zooming in on a segment of users along with the purpose of their visits. If you are new to the concept of segmentation, write down the various types of customers that buy from you.

For example, you might be primarily a consumer product store, but also have a reseller or a distribution channel. These resellers are identified upon login and your system will present the pricing and discounts that are unique to them. When tracking transactions and revenue, it’s important to segment your reports by these user types. Otherwise a large order at a highly discounted price for one of your resellers will skew your revenue and conversion data.

Source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/4137-5-Ecommerce-Metrics-You-Should-Be-Tracking

Writing SOLID code

In computer programming, SOLID (Single responsibility, Open-closed, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation and Dependency inversion) is a mnemonic acronym introduced by Michael Feathers for the "first five principles" identified by Robert C. Martin in the early 2000s that stands for five basic principles of object-oriented programming and design. The principles when applied together intend to make it more likely that a programmer will create a system that is easy to maintain and extend over time. The principles of SOLID are guidelines that can be applied while working on software to remove code smells by causing the programmer to refactor the software's source code until it is both legible and extensible. It is typically used with test-driven development, and is part of an overall strategy of agile and adaptive programming.

S - SRP - Single Responsibility Principle - A Class should have only a single responsibility.
O - OCP - Open/Close Principle - Entities should be open for extension but closed for modification
L - LSP - Liskov Substitution Principle - objects in a program should be replaceable with instances of their subtypes without altering the correctness of that program
I - ISP - Interface Segregation Principle - many client-specific interfaces are better than one general-purpose interface
D - DIP - Dependency Inversion Principle - one should “Depend upon Abstractions. Do not depend upon concretions.

5 Keys for Multichannel Holiday Success

For the 2013 holiday shopping season, consumers will increasingly rely on marketplaces and comparison-shopping channels.  Amazon, Newegg, Ebay, Google Shopping — all have huge numbers of motivated shoppers.  Ecommerce merchants large and small can sell on these channels. But not all of them will do it profitably.

 1. Products. Identifying winning products is the first step. Research last year's best sellers, evaluate new products, and consider niche offerings and up-sells. 

2. Sourcing and inventory management.  Ensuring product availability is crucial. The necessity of placing orders early and check for add-on items.

3. Product content and feeds. Compelling images, descriptions, and videos are all important for selling products on marketplaces and comparison-shopping channels. Optimize your product content and data feeds.

4. Pricing. Understanding your margins is vital for profitable multichannel selling. Understand dynamic pricing and strategies for mass-market pricing.

5. Fulfillment. Selling on multiple channels can produce dramatic peaks in holiday sales volume, which can cause back-office catastrophes. Make sure your company is prepared.  

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/438169698

Writing Objects doesnt' make it OOP

Lots of developers understand that object oriented code offers advantages over procedural programming. And so, they begin working on creating objects in their own projects, and eventually feel pretty good about what they've done. After all, if they're using objects, their code must be object oriented, right?

Well, not exactly. They quickly find out just how limited their code is when they try to implement the concepts of object oriented programming, like reuse and extensibility. And they quickly find that their code is really procedural code wrapped up in classes, not the grand object oriented application they thought it was.

But how can you know ahead of time what kind of code you have? Is there a set of tools you can use to determine if your code is truly object oriented, or is it just procedural code wrapped in classes? Let's take a look at the hallmarks of truly object oriented code and find out.

Object oriented code splits responsibilities between classes.

The biggest indicator of truly object oriented code is whether or not it correctly splits responsibilities up between classes - a principle known as the single responsibility principle.

In object-wrapped procedural code (OWPC), many responsibilities will exist within the same objects. You'll have database connections being made, queries being run, data being evaluated, and even possibly display functions being performed. But truly object oriented code will break these behaviors apart into their component parts, focusing on each one individually.

Object oriented code is polymorphic.

So, I just used a big word: polymorphism. But even though the word seems scary, it's not: polymorphism is just a principle which means "one behaviour, many forms." For example, all SQL databases perform similar behaviors, but they have individual implementation details for connecting and passing messages around. A polymorphic database layer will implement a common behaviour for all the databases, and obscure the specific implementation details for each unique database type.

What this leads to is easy reuse of objects throughout your code. For example, you can switch easily from MySQL to SQLite if you have a true object oriented application that has a truly polymorphic database layer.

Object oriented applications apply dependency injection.

A truly object oriented application will correctly apply dependency injection. Often in OWPC applications, objects are instantiated directly, either inside classes or inside procedural files. But an application designed to be object oriented will utilize dependency injection as a means of allowing for inversion of control.

This is done in PHP usually in one of two ways: first, there can be a layer responsible for instantiating objects (usually a controller). Or, there can be a dependency injection container that holds (or creates) the objects needed in the application. Both approaches are reasonable, and both are widely used.

Object oriented design is challenging, but worthwhile.

The truth is that designing applications to be object oriented is challenging, frustrating, and extremely worthwhile. Conquering the challenges results in reusable, segmented, small bits of code that are easy to maintain, simple to understand and incredibly powerful when used correctly.

8 Ways to Save Sales from Negative Customer Reviews

1. Add link back to category that allows sort-by-customer-review.
2. Include star ratings on cross-sells.
3. Use Expert / Staff Reviews
4. Show money back guarantees right on product page when available.
5. Allow customers to ask and answer questions on your page.
6. Include manufacturer’s website URL and contact number on the product page.
7. Enable comments on customer reviews.
8. Know when to offer live chat.

Source: http://www.getelastic.com/thinking-positively-negative-reviews/

The Pros and Cons of One-Page Checkout

Shopping cart abandonment is an epidemic in online retailing, with some companies reporting that more than 60% of checkouts end without a conversion.

Preventing even a relatively small percentage of these abandoned carts would significantly improve revenues and profits.

While purchase price and shipping costs are the leading reported causes of shopping cart abandonment, ease of use is close behind.

Fighting Frustration

One increasingly popular method used to slash cart abandonment rates is to introduce single-page, Ajax-driven checkout forms that combine the convenience of a single page format with asynchronous form validation.

As we start this discussion of the pros and cons of single-page, Ajax checkouts, I need to describe why these two methods—one pagers and Ajax—are employed and what frustrating problems they seek to solve.

Single-Page Checkout is Faster, Easier to Understand

Single-page checkout is faster and easier so that more customers convert.

When you're trying to decide if your checkout process should be a single page or several pages, consider the analogy of a supermarket. When grocery shopping, consumers always gravitate toward the shortest checkout lanes or fastest cashiers. By definition, a single-page checkout is faster than a multi-page checkout if for no reason other than there are no additional pages to load.

Single-page checkout forms, particularly those that use JavaScript to march shoppers through the process, also provide better step-by-step visibility. Shoppers know what they must do and where they are in the process.

If you need more evidence, consider a simple A/B test conducted on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics online store earlier this year.

In the test, half of all potential customers were directed to a two-page checkout and half to a single-page checkout. Almost immediately, the single-page checkout proved to have a better conversion rate. In fact, the successful completion rate for the entire checkout process rose some 21.8% thanks to the single-page form.

Ajax Validates Forms Before Users Submit

If you have ever filled out a long online form, clicked submit, and then had the form erase everything they input and return a message like "address not valid," "passwords don't match," or "please answer question #2," you will understand the value of Ajax.

Ajax stands for asynchronous JavaScript and XML, and it is a web development technique that uses several client-side languages and server calls to make web pages more interactive or better performing.

Ajax's best trick, if you will, is getting data from the web server without reloading a page or doing server-like actions on the client side. In a non-Ajax web form or checkout, the user fills out the entire form and submits it. The form data is sent to the web server, and a server-side scripting language validates the form to make sure that it is filled out properly and completely. If there are errors in the fields, like a missing "@" in an email address or a missing postal code, the web server sends an error message to the browser, which reloads the page for the user to fill out again.

In non-Ajax checkout forms, if the shopper is lucky, the web server may return the field data along with the error message for the browser to render, so that not everything will have to be filled out again. But the process still takes time and can be frustrating, especially if the user doesn't completely understand what went wrong.

Ajax addresses this issue by validating the form while the shopper fills it out. Server calls—if needed—are made asynchronously without reloading the page or potentially erasing the form. Users get feedback as soon as a form field is complete (when the click into the next field), not once the form is submitted. In some cases, the JavaScript might be able to do the form validation without connecting to the server at all.

The PROS of Using a Single Page, Ajax Checkout Process

Having explained what both single page checkouts and Ajax forms seek to accomplish, it is time to address the advantages these techniques provide.

• More conversions As mentioned above, single-page checkouts may significantly improve sales conversions, boosting a merchant's bottom line.
• Better page performance While dozens of factors contribute to page load times, using a single, Ajax-powered checkout form should improve user experience. This is important since studies from Akamai, Shopzilla, Google, and Bing all suggest that consumers won't tolerate slow loading pages.
• Better customer satisfaction With better performance and no agitating form validation issues, customers should enjoy a better overall shopping experience.
• Advanced Interactivity Once a merchant has decided to add Ajax, it’s possible to make the page more interactive, which again, may improve customer experience.

The PROS to using an Ajax, one-page checkout process tend to focus on customers and profits. By contrast, the CONS tend to be development related.

The CONS of Using a Single-Page, Ajax Checkout Process

While there is generally no reason to use a multi-page checkout, there are things to consider when using Ajax.

• It won't work without JavaScript Ajax depends on JavaScript, if a user has JavaScript disabled, the page will revert to server-side validation.
• Some browser functions won't necessarily behave as expected—Because Ajax does not reload a page to update content the browser's back button will not bring the user back to an early step in the checkout as might be expected. There is a work around, but it requires more development time.
• Ajax requires more upfront investment Because Ajax will increase development time, merchants may have to pay a little more or use more development hours.

Ajax on the Scale

If you're trying to decide whether or not to employ Ajax in your company's checkout process, weigh the potential benefits in customer satisfaction and more sales with the additional development costs. Even after you make your choice, continue to test your checkout process, since even a minor improvement can mean more revenue for your business.

3 Tips for Managing Shopping Cart Abandonment

Recent studies indicate that 7 out of 10 online shopping carts are exited before a sale is completed. This abandonment rate seems to be rising, as online shoppers become more comfortable comparing prices and other product or service attributes.

SeeWhy, a website conversion service, reported that shopping cart abandonment rates rose from about 71 percent in mid-2010 to 75 percent by June 2011. These figures are much higher than the rates of about 46 percent that Forrester Research reported in early 2010.

In the past, each cart abandoned was seen as a sure sign that a sale had been lost, but this may not necessarily be the case.

“Shopping cart abandonment is an important part of the normal buying cycle for many customers and for many types of purchase,” wrote Charles Nicholls, founder and chief strategy officer for SeeWhy in a whitepaper on the topic. “This leads to the conclusion that abandonment, rather than being a rejection of the brand’s value proposition, can be a step in the decision process for some buyers and for the majority of purchases. This is visible in the way that some customers will come back multiple times as they consider the purchase, storing items in their shopping carts as ‘wish lists.’”

While it is important to remove barriers to completing the sale — these barriers are often things like price, shipping rates, user experience, trust, or even having to deal with a multi-page checkout — online retailers may also want to reinforce the buying decision, welcome returning customers back, and being patient about all of those abandoned carts.

1. Support the Buying Decision

Encourage the shopper to return and make a purchase with remarketing and emails.

If, as Nicholls suggests, shopping cart abandonment is part of a natural buying cycle as shoppers either take time to consider the purchase or compare prices, then marketers will want to assure shoppers that buying the product and buying it from the marketer's company is a good choice.

There are a few tactics that can help.

Remarketing seeks to show shoppers display advertising after they have left a site or shopping cart. Specifically, a shopper who abandoned a cart may start to see remarketing ads from the store on other sites. Google AdWords, for example, makes remarketing relatively easy. Marketers place a conversion code on key pages, prepare remarketing ads, and those ads are shown across the Google AdWords network, encouraging the shopper to come back.

SeeWhy found that this sort of remarketing boosted eventual conversions by 18 percent.

“This reinforces the need to follow up immediately on abandoned shopping carts since it’s clear that a customer’s interest in making a purchase goes cold fast,” Nicholls wrote.

It may also be a good idea to email cart-abandoning consumers shortly after they leave a site. As an example Bronto Software, an email-marketing platform, found that about 13 percent of leading brands emailed a shopper within three hours of a cart abandonment.

Collecting an email address early in the checkout process means that the retailer may email even an unregistered shopper, asking, as an example, if there was a technical issue.

2. Welcome Returning Shoppers

Show a returning shopper the cart or product front and center.

If a site recognizes that a particular shopper is visiting for a second time, it can be a good idea to show that shopper a larger than usual link to the cart or even place products from the cart directly on the landing page.

SeeWhy estimated that roughly 90 percent of online sales conversions come from shoppers already familiar with a site.

3. Be Patient

Keep abandoned shopping carts active for at least 60 days.

The longer a virtual shopping cart sits empty, the less likely a shopper is to return, reclaim it, and make a purchase. With this in mind, some sites have a tendency to clean up abandoned carts frequently. There's little reason to do this.

Virtual shopping carts do not typically consume much memory and, generally, have little impact on site performance. SeeWhy suggests keeping a cart active for at least 60 days, giving remarketing campaigns and email follow-ups time to work.

E-commerce cart abandonment and emails

An abandoned shopping cart is like a broken promise. For the merchant, there is a lost sale and unclaimed revenue. For the shopper, there is an unfulfilled need or want. Fortunately, a quick series of cart abandonment emails may renew that promise, helping both the customer and the retailer.

Roughly two out of every three (67.35 percent) ecommerce shopping carts are abandoned after consumers have selected items and placed those items in the cart, according to April 2013 data from the Baymard Institute, which averaged documented online shopping cart abandonment rates from 19 separate studies conducted in the last few years.

Shopping cart abandonment can happen for a number of reasons. Forrester Research, as an example, has consistently blamed shipping and handling costs. Imagine that a shopper finds the perfect $25 item, adds it to the cart, and learns that it will cost another $15 — more than half of the product’s price — just to ship. At other times, a shopper might have become distracted, or maybe the shopper just wanted to compare prices from other sites.

Automated, behavior-driven emails — often referred to as cart abandonment emails — have demonstrated an ability to reengage shoppers, save sales, and benefit both the shopper and the merchant. There are a number of ideas about what is the best way to use cart abandonment emails. What follows are thoughts about some of the key shopping cart abandonment best practices and how small or mid-sized merchants might apply them.

Collect Emails Early

For a shopping cart abandonment email series to be effective, you must have a valid email to send those messages to. If there's no email, there is no chance to reclaim the lost sale.

Make certain that one of the first, if not the first, questions that you ask a customer is for her email address. Also, you want to ensure that the email address is either automatically saved with the shopping cart or saved after the shopper submits the first step (often the contact information) in the checkout process. It is important to note that you will be creating a business relationship, if you will, with the customer. This will allow you to send transaction-related emails, like the cart abandonment emails, without sending spam.

Plan a Series of Emails

Many email experts recommend a series of shopping cart abandonment emails with about two or three emails sent at scheduled intervals.

The first email that you send might ask the shopper if he needs any help completing the transaction. Perhaps, there was a technical issue, or maybe he wasn’t certain about the proper size. As an example, Cooking.com’s shopping cart abandonment email says, “If you had trouble checking out or found something confusing, please contact our customer service department by email at support@cooking.com or by phone…”

The second email in the series might simply inform the shopper that you are “holding” her items. It might even make sense to add a deadline. Here are a couple of examples.

“We have saved your selected items, but remember many of our popular and limited-edition styles sell out quickly. Please place your order soon.”

“Have you met Dash the Dog? He keeps the Zappos.com site running smoothly so our customers can shop with ease! Dash has been looking after the items you left in your shopping cart. While Dash doesn't mind watching your order, he wants you to know that your items have been asking for you and would like for you to return.”

Finally, for a third email consider making a follow up offer. Often this offer could include a discount or even free shipping, such as, “We were just about to put away the items you had in your shopping cart, but we thought we’d give you another chance to claim them. We are even going to include free two-day shipping if you order in the next four hours.”

Send Emails Soon

While conversion rates from successful shopping cart abandonment emails vary greatly, sending the first email in the series within 60 minutes of the cart abandonment can dramatically boost the recovery rate.

SaleCycle, as an example, reported in 2012 that merchants who sent the first shopping cart abandonment email within 20 minutes of when the shopper left the cart would enjoy about a 5.2 percent conversion rate while retailers that waited 24 hours to send the first cart abandonment follow up experienced about a 2.6 percent conversion rate.

Measure, Compare, Adapt

It is vital that online retail marketers continue to monitor, measure, and adjust a shopping cart abandonment email series. For example, the above data about when to send the first email in a series might not apply to online retailers selling large or expensive items.

The best practice is to monitor the cart abandonment campaign. Make small, distinct adjustments and compare the results. Does changing the subject line impact conversions? Does including pictures of the items in the abandoned cart help?

Test each change for a statistically significant audience and compare the results.

How to choose KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a mode to measure and monitor the performance of an organization, business unit, department or specified activity. They are focused on activities that are critical to the success of the business. It is not to be confused with Key Result Indicators (KRIs), Result Indicators (RIs) and Performance Indicators (KIs), which serve slightly different purposes.

KPIs have to be chosen carefully in order to give valuable information. On one hand, the target has to be defined clearly to choose the correct measure. Once, this has been defined, the adequate KPIs have to be chosen. These should be defined in a way that is understandable, measurable and meaningful. So, there must be a strong link between the activity measured and the input factor observed. This depends very much on the department and the specific activity in question, because a KPI should tell the manager in the end, what actions need to take place.

To give an example: The number of parts rejected due to low quality would not serve to indicate performance in Marketing, but might be very valuable to quality control or supplier evaluation. They might give information whether new frame agreements with the suppliers give a positive impulse on the delivered quality or if more drastic actions have to be considered.

SMART objectives as known from project management also apply in this case. Ideally, KPIs should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.

These modes of performance measurement are often linked to performance improvement projects. Usually, the Web Controlling Objectives are not only to measure the performance of a certain activity to indicate the status-quo, but to measure actual improvement or effectiveness and efficiency over a period of time. The number of visitors of an online store could indicate the effectiveness of a Marketing activity, a mailing, for instance.

e-commerce KPI to Track ROI and Conversion Rates

There are 10 mandatory KPIs used to track performance, return on investment and conversion rates for ecommerce websites. Known as eCommerce KPI - these ratios and percentages are used in addition to traditional conversion rates and return on investment calculations. These KPI need to be trended over time ideally month after month, but can be as granular as weekly measurements. Once there is a year's worth of data, seasonal fluctuations will become apparent, as well as site performance measurement indicators. When analyzing performance and overall ecommerce health, these KPI need to be compared against the same time last year. This takes seasonality out of the equation and factors for sustainability.

1. AVERAGE ORDER VALUE (AOV) - total revenue divided by orders
2. BUYING SESSIONS - visitor sessions with a purchase divided by total sessions
3. NEW VS RETURNING VISITOR % - new visitors divided by all unique visitors
4. RATIO NEW to RETURNING VISITORS - new visitors divided by returning visitors
5. CUSTOMER RETENTION RATE - previous unique buyers divided by previous unique visitors
6. ORDER CONVERSION RATE - orders divided by visitors
7. BUYER CONVERSION RATE - buyers divided by visitors
8. SHOPPING CART ABANDONMENT RATE - percent of sessions where item was added to cart but the order was not completed
9. ORDERS PER SESSION - orders divided by sessions
10. ITEMS PER ORDER - items divided by orders

The ratios and measurements for these KPI vary from site to site, and are highly dependent on the industry and online business model. The ideal way to set these markers, is to either select a time range where the site was performing at optimal capacity, measure the ecommerce KPI and use the ratios as targets. A secondary option is to back into these ecommerce KPI ratios. This can be achieved by setting the ideal or needed web revenue, identify all the segments that make up traffic (such as direct load, search engines, email marketing, etc), identify the conversion rates for each traffic segment, project the volume of traffic it would take to generate the desired revenue based off of known conversion rates, and then work out each Targeted eCommerce KPI based on this ideal traffic projection. When making projections, it is better to sandbag results, rather than being overtly optimistic. Set realistic goals, that can then be matched under known conversion rates. Thus the focus shifts to increasing traffic for the known segments, while potentially adding new tactics to the online marketing mix.

Who are you?

who are you and how did you find my blog?
Are you from Germany, using Internet Explorer on Windows?  If so you make up the highest portion of my visitors.. thank you.
If not, thanks for visiting.. you are the minority, I need more people like you to visit to make you become the majority.

How to Sell Online if You Already Have a Physical Store

Small brick-and-mortar retailers can find new customers, experiment with new products, and generally grow their business when they start selling online. For established retailers, the first steps toward ecommerce often begin with product preparation, software selection and integration, and learning about online marketing and customer service.

Ecommerce is a fast expanding retail segment, growing 20 percent in the United States in the first quarter of 2013. Based on estimates from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the IBM Online Retail Index, total ecommerce sales excluding travel and automobiles may have been as much as $50 billion in the first quarter.

Find out more at http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/4065-How-to-Sell-Online-if-You-Already-Have-a-Physical-Store

7 essentials for defending against DDoS attacks

You don't have to be a bank to be worried about being hit by a Distributed-Denial-of-Service attack these days. With hackers who pull off these costly take downs getting stealthier and more vicious, security leaders across all industries need heed these tips to be prepared

Security execs have never been comfortable talking about these attacks because they don't want to draw more attention to their companies. They worry that offering even the basic details of their defensive strategy will inspire attackers to find the holes.

But many companies are finding themselves under attack for the first time, and their security chiefs need answers if they're going to fight back.

• Tight lips sink company defenses
• Be ready for real-time defense adjustments
• Don't rely only on perimeter defenses
• Fight application-layer attacks in-line
• Collaborate
• Have your playbook ready
• Watch out for secondary attacks
• Be worried, even if you're not a bank

Why not checkout http://www.csoonline.com/article/734936/7-essentials-for-defending-against-ddos-attacks for the full article.

"Honeywords" plan to snare theives

Cryptographic researchers Ari Juels and Ronald Rivest (the "R" in RSA) have come up with an interesting idea aimed at helping to detect attacks on web application databases. It is based on storing fake passwords as bait and sounding the alarm when an attempt is subsequently made to use one of these fake passwords.

The idea involves storing what they have dubbed "honeywords" for each user in the password database alongside their actual password. An attacker who gained access to the database would be unable to distinguish the honeywords, which would also be stored in the form of salted hashes, from the real password.

If attackers were then able to crack the stolen hashes, they might well use them to try to log into the associated web application. If such an attempt were made using one of the honeywords, the web application would know that the access was unauthorised – since the account's legitimate owner has no access to the honeywords, any honeyword used must have been misappropriated. In this case, the application can either block the account or trigger a silent alarm and redirect the attacker to a honeypot system, where they can safely get up to whatever mischief they wish.

Of course the idea only works as long as the server where the hashes are stored doesn't also store information on which of the hashes is the actual user password. The researchers therefore propose a separate, secure system that would be told which of the potential passwords was used during login attempts via an encrypted channel. This "honeychecker" wouldn't store any information on either passwords or honeywords, but would merely record for each user the position within the database at which the legitimate password is stored.

Source: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Honeywords-plan-to-snare-password-thieves-1858488.html

Setting up PHP DBUnit with a YAML Dataset

This proved quite an interesting job, and took a bit of time to get this down  to a tee.  I do have a working version of some database tests which I will post at a later day with a complete working PHPUnit example of using a YAML dataset for tests.

keep watching.

Ecommerce Search Marketing Evolves

A few years ago, small ecommerce business owners invested a good part of their marketing budgets on search engine optimization. Their goal was typically to obtain the highest possible search rankings, to capture as much organic traffic as possible. Many businesses used that as their core tactic for search engines. Organic traffic was considered free.

If they did a good job, they had a shot at the first page of Google's search results, where the majority of clicks occur. They could even break into the coveted top five positions, above the fold. A strategy might have been to drive 70 percent of search traffic from organic listings.

Organic Traffic Risky

But seasoned merchants know they can quickly be dumped off the first page of Google with an algorithm change. If you’ve ever changed platforms or the navigational structure of your store, it’s likely your rankings suffered. Things like personalized search results, local results, and suggested keywords have also altered the search landscape. Many merchants, therefore, invested more money in pay-per-click advertising to maintain their search traffic.

In the last 12 months, it’s become obvious to me that Google is mainly an advertising platform. You may as well just pay for Product Listing Ads or PPC ads if you want to be seen. If you are a local business, you may have potential leverage with the local listings, but that will require some other types of investment with Google social and local platforms.

'Running Shoes' Example

Google is focusing its user experience on companies that pay for ads for popular search terms, or are local. Consider, for example, the broad search term “running shoes.”

The screen shot above goes below the fold. We can see three PPC text ads that include premium features like phone numbers, store rankings on Google+, and sitelinks. We see eight Product Listing Ads. These are generally the highest converting links on a page for shoppers. We also see a map for five local running shoe stores along with links and reviews. We see only three organic search results, and one is a local business with a Google score of 27 out of 30.

Clearly, companies that have invested in ads or in Google local listings and Google+ have benefited. What about all other companies with great SEO? They are buried at the bottom of the page. Google has stacked the odds that you will click on the results at the top of the page and above the fold. That increases Google's revenue.

'Trout Flies' Example

Next, consider “trout flies,” a more niche search.

If your store sells fishing flies, you may be rewarded more for your SEO efforts. There are Product Listing Ads — PLAs — at the top right, but not as many as for "running shoes." There are PPC ads, but they are on the right side. We see five or six organic results above the fold. We also see image results, which could a good place to optimize. In short, if you were selling trout flies, you might consider a premium text ad targeting "trout flies."

'Cheap Polarized Sunglasses for Men' Example

Finally, consider the term “cheap polarized sunglasses for men."

As with the "trout flies" search, we see a few organic results below the PLAs. Notice the depth and quality of the single ad that is shown on the page. It is optimized for "polarized sunglasses for men," includes a 5 star ranking with 800+ reviews, and site links to the most popular related navigation paths. Most clicks for "cheap polarized sunglasses for men" likely go to that ad. The searchers likely do not read the organic results below the PLAs.

What Does It Mean?

If I were running an ecommerce business — I sold my online jewelry business last year, after owning it for ten years — I would invest in PLAs and PPC campaigns. I would closely watch my results and return on investment, especially on broad terms.

Segment and target your campaigns as much as possible to present results that are highly personalized to the search terms you have chosen. Target longtail keywords with rich ads that will dominate the page, as in the sunglasses example above. Invest in landing pages that are optimized for the search terms. Conduct A/B testing on different ads and landing pages.

Consumers are more comfortable clicking on ads now than in the past. Part of the reason is the ads are high quality and generally take shoppers to relevant products. Organic results are frequently not as concise and don’t necessarily take consumers to the optimal locations for shopping. The means more clicks on text and PLA ads. It may also mean more money for merchants, as the conversion rates are typically higher from those ads than organic clicks.

Don't Ignore SEO

Ecommerce merchants should not ignore SEO. But they should not count on organic search to deliver 70 percent of their traffic with a 3 or 4 percent conversion rate. Merchants should still provide good content for their products and site category pages because that‘s what shoppers want to see when they come to a site. It will increase the chances of closing the sale.

If you have solid organic search rankings for your products and see a high conversation rate from that traffic, stay the course. But plan for PPC ads. If Google makes changes that reduce your revenue, you can quickly step in with paid campaigns to offset the lost traffic.

You’ll still want backlinks from affiliates, blogs, and social media. But, don’t do it just for SEO. Leverage those links as referrals from multiple channels. Realize that the content you post on Facebook may influence a future purchase. Don’t just view it as a targeted link.

Conclusion

Diversify your store's traffic as much as possible. Invest in advertising, but measure the ROI. Make sure you think beyond the cost of a single acquisition and consider the lifetime value of a customer. If you sell cheap sunglasses, for example, ask if a sale is a one-time purchase or a potential repeat buyer. If it's one time, consider passing on the ads for that search term. But if you sell products like polarized sunglasses for men, the advertising investment to get to the top of the page may be worth it.

Source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/4012-Ecommerce-Search-Marketing-Evolves

Slow and steady wins the race

Are you looking to refactor your existing codebase and don't have a clue where to start?

Start with a block of code, a big function, a class, anything that you just look at and think WTF, where do I start!.

Make it simpler, better, more modular. Apply today's best practices to the code, even if you don't think it will make much of a difference.

Rename variables to be more meaningful, extract some of the methods or if statements into separate functions.

And do the same thing the next day. And the day after that.

Pretty soon, you'll begin to realize major rewards from minor efforts. And, you'll also reach a point where major structural changes will both be possible and reasonable - and, if you've done your job right, not all that hard.

Slow and steady wins the software race.

Just Enough Production Functionality

The premise of TDD is to write tests that satisfy that a piece of functionality is working as expected.
Be this a unit of code (unit test) or a higher level feature (acceptance test).

A test should be written to fail. (Red)
Simply enough code should be written to make this test pass (Green)
Code should then be tidied up and optimised (Refactor).

This is inline with the Kent Beck model of Red, Green, Refactor for Test Driven Development.

ATDD is also called Behavior Driven Development

ATDD or Acceptance Test Driven Development is often referred to as BDD or Behaviour Driven Development.

This is the practice of writing high level acceptance tests, understandable by business and customer level, in satisfying that a piece of work does what it is supposed too. Focusing on the behaviour of the system from the customer or users perspective, allows the project to progress from a functionality and behaviour perspective, so that once the system does what it's meant to do its complete.

Acceptance tests will usually be ran at the project level, where it is possible to get an overview of the state of a project by running these, and see what percentage pass, determines what percentage of the project is complete.  Inline with these, developers may use separate Unit Tests inline with each acceptance test focusing on the units of code that make up an acceptance milestone.

Developer TDD is often Simply..

Do you often wonder where to start with TDD?  Is it more hassle than its worth?  Well yes and no, and I guess its down to how passionate you are about your code.

Check out http://www.phpunit.de  the industry standard for writing Unit Tests on your PHP code.

7 Ways Mobile Commerce will change retail

As the online and offline worlds converge, mobile commerce has the potential to eclipse desktop-based ecommerce and, perhaps, even replace a significant portion of traditional retail shopping.

Mobile-driven online sales in the U.S. are expected to reach $2.12 billion in 2013 and explode to about $62.2 billion in the next three years, according to an eMarketer report. With such phenomenal growth, some change is bound to come.

There are at least seven ways that mobile commerce is likely to change retail shopping and marketing. Online and multi-channel retailers should start preparing for these changes now.

1. Website Design Adapts

Online sellers are already working to build responsive sites that change size and layout in response to the user’s device or device orientation. By next year, responsive design will become imperative. Merchants that have not optimized for smartphones and tablets could see an impact to the bottom line.

2. Marketplaces Become More Important

Regardless of what mobile providers like AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon would have you believe, mobile Internet connections can be disappointing. One possible side effect of relatively slow mobile connectivity is that mobile shoppers could be reluctant to open multiple browser windows as they search for products online.

As a result, mobile customers may be more likely to visit marketplaces like Amazon, Rakuten, or Newegg, where they can see products offered by several merchants and compare prices. What’s more, many of these services offer great apps that also makes shopper easier.

3. Shopping Becomes Ubiquitous

When a shopper is carrying a store in his pocket, he might just shop anywhere.

Mobile commerce will make shopping ubiquitous. A fellow riding the train home from work could be ordering jewelry for his wife or girlfriend. A 17-year-old girl at the beach might snap a photo of a friend’s swimsuit and use an app to find and order one just like it online. A sports fan sitting in a stadium might send a text to instantly order a new team jersey.

4. New Payment Services Will Emerge

Mobile commerce will accelerate the growth of new or improved payment solutions.

Manually typing a credit card number and a shipping address into a shopping cart form is, perhaps, the most painful part of shopping from a mobile device. This too will change.

Payment solutions like PayPal, Amazon Payments, or similar — and digital wallets like Google Wallet — will continue to grow and improve, offering mobile shoppers the option to pay with a single tap. Other new payment systems, including some from mobile service providers, will also emerge.

Once users become comfortable with these payment procedures, they will use them both online and at actual physical stores.

5. Mass Market Products Become Commodities

Mobile commerce makes pricing transparent. A shopper standing in Macy’s can compare the price of a blouse on any one of a dozen competitors’ websites, effectively transforming nearly every mass-marketed, mass-manufactured product into a commodity.

Brands will still do their best to enforce manufacturer-approved prices, but not many sellers will be getting a premium, which some boutique shops enjoyed before mobile’s advent.

6. Price Comparison Will Become Automated

Shoppers want to know that they are getting the best possible price before they make a purchase. Already there are dozens of mobile apps that help shoppers make price comparisons. Look for future applications to use information about a person’s tastes or buying habits to automate price comparison.

Shoppers will know which stores offer the best combination of price and shipping costs just by building a wishlist or snapping a photo of a product or barcode.

7. Product Reviews Will Become Centralized

After price comparisons, mobile shoppers are likely to look for user reviews before making a buying decision regardless of whether they are planning to order online or pick up an item from a brick-and-mortar store.

Look for review consolidators to emerge, offering shoppers the option to see product or vendor reviews from a number of sources through a single interface, probably an app.

Source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3965-7-Ways-Mobile-Commerce-Will-Change-Retail

21 e-commerce KPI's

Key performance indicators are becoming common in large corporations as a way to measure and monitor the success of key activities. But they can also play an important role in any sized ecommerce business.

A KPI — key performance indicator — is simply a measure of some process, event, or activity. An example is checkout abandonment, when shoppers exit before completing an order. This KPI should be monitored closely by all ecommerce businesses. If it is typically 10 percent and suddenly goes to 15 percent, that may be an indicator that something is broken on your website, like your SSL, your shipping estimator, or your credit card authorization. By monitoring that KPI daily, you will mitigate the risk of losing business if something breaks.

Establishing KPIs

KPIs differ among businesses. For example, large corporations monitor the time between orders and final payment, striving to reduce that cycle. For an ecommerce business, checkout abandonment is an important KPI and lowering that percentage generally leads to higher revenue.

For strategic and operational planning, KPIs are also used for SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound. As an example, you may want to set a goal to improve your checkout abandonment from 10 to 7 percent in six months. Or, you may want to set customer service goals to reduce the average number of open cases from 10 to 5 in three months.

All businesses should regularly monitor their revenue, cash position, receivables, payables, and basic accounting reports. If you have an inventory and higher-end accounting system, you can also monitor your cost-of-goods sold and gross-profit margins daily. Beyond that, you should monitor pay-per-click advertising performance, social media metrics, email marketing results, and marketplace sales (such as Amazon, eBay) to identify areas of improvement. Virtually any measurement can become a KPI as long as you have a means of capturing the data in a fast and consistent method.

21 KPIs for Ecommerce

Baseline KPIs should always be monitored, and acted on if they deviate from their normal range. KPIs used for goal setting may change, as may the target range of those KPIs.

In my experience, the important KPIs that ecommerce merchants should monitor are as follows.

1. Unique visitors
2. Total visits
3. Page views
4. New visitors
5. New customers
6. Total orders per day, week, month
7. Time on site per visit
8. Page views per visit
9. Checkout abandonment
10. Cart abandonment
11. Return rate
12. Gross margin
13. Customer service open cases
14. Pay-per-click cost per acquisition
15. Pay-per-click total conversions
16. Average order value
17. Facebook "talking about this" and new Likes
18. Twitter retweets and new followers
19. Amazon ratings, response and order turnaround time, and open cases
20. Email open, click, and conversion rates
21. Referral sources: percent from search, direct, email, pay-per-click, other
22. Your business may have many more than this if you outsource fulfillment, have a high percentage of call-in orders, and so forth.

What's a Normal KPI?

You may be wondering what the normal range is for these types of KPIs. In general, there is no answer, as every business is different. Develop your baseline over time and become aware of your typical operating ranges.

Once you have established your standard ranges, you can begin to use KPIs to set goals and measure improvement. More than likely you already do that with PPC advertising — with targets for click throughs, cost per acquisition, and cost per click. Perhaps you set targets regularly to improve those metrics. You can do the same thing with all the KPIs listed above.

Make Monitoring Easy

If you don’t have a dashboard that is capable of displaying most of your KPIs — this usually requires a higher-end, highly integrated system — then pull KPIs from all your various monitoring tools and dashboards into a spreadsheet on a weekly or monthly basis. This will provide you with a snapshot of your historical performance that identifies seasonal trends and necessary troubleshooting if KPIs deviate from their normal ranges.

Monitoring Peaks and Valleys

KPIs are also useful to check your normal cycles. In a simplified example, if you suddenly get a bump of new customers and don’t really understand why, you may want to look at your social media activity or referral KPIs to identify new traffic sources. Perhaps your “talking about you” KPI in Facebook is high because of a new product someone is talking up. Likewise, if your gross margins are suddenly much lower, it may be because your cost of goods sold has increased or because more customers are taking advantage of free shipping. In short, use your dashboards or any other tools you can to monitor your KPIs on a daily basis if possible.

Summary

Seasoned ecommerce managers can often predict revenue based on the number of visitors, checkout abandonment, cart abandonment, and other factors. More importantly, they can flag problems immediately.

Use your KPIs for setting SMART goals for your business improvement. KPIs can be identified for almost every operational area — from shipping to traffic to conversions. Work with your staff to identify areas for improvement, choose your baseline KPI, and set a target for improvement in a specific timeframe. Then you have a measurable goal.

Src: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3906-21-Key-Performance-Indicators-for-Ecommerce-Businesses

Function responses

There is a question going around about whether a PHP function should return a response. Is a function (or method), that does something and doesn't return anything any good? And I personally think - no its not good. A function should ALWAYS return something. Even if its true or false, $this or mysql_insert_id(). The main reason being that, if a function simply executes and does its thing, without returning anything, there is no way to verify if that function has executed successfully. If a PHP function call returns null once completed, but also returns null if there was an error of some sort, how does the developer know if it ran ok. Simply returning true, so you can verify if it ran as intended, or even throwing an exception is some form of return value, so if there is an issue this should be picked up by the developer and they can rely on their code working as intended.

1 Year Anniversary

Well it's been 1 year to the day since I launched this Blog and I've done better than I thought with posting some information people might find useful. Not the highest traffic site in the world yet, but hey, it's my own little space and if you're here - Thanks for visiting. Where's the Cake?

Web project specifications

Do web project specifications exist? And is it possible for a project to actually come in on budget, time and with all the promised features? Some camps argue that the Traditional Waterfall model just doesn't fit the bill, and Big Design Up Front (BDUF) cost too much.

Ten Tips for Constructing Agile Databases

Ten Tips for Constructing an Agile Database Development Environment that Works