Mercedes-Benz’s Mixed Tape
July 25th, 2008
Just like Michelin (yes, the famous tyre manufacturer) with its annual guide books ‘The Michelin Guide‘, Mercedes-Benz also has their tradition of presenting ten handpicked tracks by international newcomers as a free download compilation called Mixed Tape.
What is Mixed Tape to do with Automotive giant? Just like every successful online business has their story, I believe Mixed Tape is the story of offline business… :)
You may want to take a look at our related postsAmazing Karen
July 20th, 2008
Just received a quick email from Karen, inviting us to check out the pictures taken during her recent trip to Cameron Highland. Cosmic Favorite, I never get it right to be frank, but I can never forget those amazing pictures in it. Must ask Karen why use this name next time? :)
I love the way how Karen compose each picture. I been to some of the places visited by Karen, you will be surprised how great photographer see from different angles. I particularly like those Black and White pictures!
You may want to take a look at our related postsOld marketing manager
June 9th, 2008
You are in a book business for 30 years. Story of Amazon.com motivates you to extend your business online. You start to build a website and sell your books online. Your marketing manager busy adopting new marketing ideas including Blog, email newsletter, pay-per-click, etc.
But after a while, you start to think why the result was not as expected. Your cost acquiring new visitors is high, the Blog is not active, no one seems to use the tell-a-friend box in your website…
But, someone next door - without any experience in selling books, started an online book store. They have some funny story and people are spreading the news for them, their CEO can be reached anytime by an email, the way they reply the customer support email is fun.
Start an online business, never extend it from a conventional one!
You may want to take a look at our related postsReward or Penalty?
May 28th, 2008
Yahoo suspend your Yahoo Mail account if you don’t login for long. While, Gmail - reward you to stay longer and login more frequent by counting and increase your email storage while you are logging in!
Cat food is not for cat!
May 24th, 2008
“All Marketers are Liars” - Seth Godin speaks at Google. Seth’s interesting presentation will tell you why technology won’t help, and why my parents will not come back bothering me if I send them to Google than Yahoo! :)
You may want to take a look at our related postsBuilding a good system
May 19th, 2008
It would be the best if every party in the loop go beyond their own scope!
You may want to take a look at our related postsNoise is good!
April 30th, 2008
What is noise? When you have hundred of products but only one which is selling well, the rest are noise. When you want to indulge yourself to do something, any interruption is considering noise, as well!
Outsourcing seems to be one of the way to cut off noise. Sony or IKEA will not be of what they are today if they choose not to outsource. Raw materials, production and logistics are examples of noise.
Noise can be passing around. Consumers buy rice from supermarkets, supermakets from distributors, distributors tfrom rice mill owners, and farmers lastly. Each level trying to get rid of noise.
What is the effect of noise? Farmers spent most of their time working in the paddy field to produce rice. In this case, farmers are bearing the noise from consumers, under the hot sun. The digested noise are now turning into experience of how to grow paddy!
Skill is a result of noise!
You may want to take a look at our related postsWorking remotely
April 22nd, 2008
When you are in another country, and the hard drive of the file server in your company crashed. Working remotely comes to a real test, where:
1. Restoration must be done quickly! Getting ready with second hard drive, moving backup files into the new server, re-install the Linux platform…
2. Tools to get you connected to your office, both voice and video. We use Skype. Broadband connection, power supply, cup of coffee - Starbucks, if only you can be there in time!
3. A team of people back in the office to work as your hands. This also means the whole set of infra for both voice and video must also be steadily available back in your office. I am lucky to have both, infra and a very capable team!
You may want to take a look at our related postsPaypal Experience - Part I
April 15th, 2008
In order to pay via Paypal, buyers are required to sign-up for a Paypal account before they can submit the payment. In fact, the Paypal registration process is not as straight forward as it claims. Most of the time, seller will receive questions/complaints from buyer as following.
What is a Paypal Expended Number Program?
Why am I required to enter my bank details?
Why was I been charged for USD1? Is this a hidden charges from you?
First of all, it is absolutely Free for buyer to signup for Paypal account.
To prevent fraud cases, Paypal will require buyers to verify their account via the Expanded Use Program. To prove the ownership of the credit card/bank account, Paypal will charge/deposit a small amount of money to buyers’ credit card/bank that they’ve registered with Paypal. Buyers will have to check their credit card statement/bank statement to retrieve a secret code from that transaction and enter back to Paypal system for verification purpose.
As an Unverified member of PayPal, buyers’ payments are subject to a Sending Limit. By becoming Verified, buyers will be able to send unlimited funds with their PayPal account.
Paypal will refund money back to buyers’ account after they verifiy with Paypal.
You may want to take a look at our related postsWhat is good website?
April 9th, 2008
Driving Visitors
If a website is new, without much traffic and returning visitors - a ‘good’ website should be simple and take less time to develop. More time should be spent on the marketing, to drive more visitors to your website.
Increase Conversion
Once a website is getting enough traffic (in our terms, above 500 visitors a day), you should have enough feedback to build a website closer to what your visitors want. In this case, ‘good’ websites are those with initutive layout, content what your visitors like, etc! In one word, higher conversion rate!
You may want to take a look at our related postsClicks and Conversion
March 21st, 2008
It’s been said many times and I shall say this again:
Conversion rate is inversely related to the clicks required to get things done.
Though simplicity is not a necessity, it’s definitely a virtue when attention span is getting shorter every second.
Show your customers you are sincere in helping them out.
You may want to take a look at our related postsConneting LAN remotely with OpenVPN
March 19th, 2008
Finally, VPN for our office was in place. This means we are another step closer to working from office. VPN allows me to access to our LAN remotely!
We use OpenVPN. It comes with VPN server & client together. VPN server was installed in our Linux box inside LAN. Since most of the clients connecting to the VPN server are notebooks running Win XP, therefore will use Windows GUI version of OpenVPN.
If you are interested to setup one, you can refer to this HOWTO, which I feel it is most helpful! Few things, remember to allow port forwarding in your router, and also make sure no firewall blocking the client and server.
Including multiple machines on the server side
http://openvpn.net/archive/openvpn-users/2006-02/msg00252.html
