Category Archives: Technology

Stop Sending Files Through Email and Start Using Dropbox

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Here at WebSolvers, we love creating large graphics and long marketing presentations. Back in the dark ages, we would try to send these types of files through email to each other and to clients. These files would clog up our email applications and cause chaos throughout the office (okay, maybe not that bad).  We tried to use YouSendIt for large files but if our clients didn’t download the file within YouSendIt’s allotted time frame, the file would just disappear into thin air and we’d have to upload it again. Then along came Dropbox!

Dropbox allows you to store files and share them and you get up to 2GB for free. If you haven’t heard of Dropbox by now, we’re not sure where you’ve been, but you should start using it.

Dropbox Web App

Use Dropbox from your browser, desktop or smartphone

With a free Dropbox plan, you can store and share up to 2GB of images, videos and documents. As a company, we have a shared Dropbox account where we store our most-needed files, such as sales presentations and documents. From anywhere with an internet connection, we can download these files and view them on our smartphones or computers using Dropbox’s web app.

Dropbox also has a handy desktop app (Mac, Windows and Linux) that sets up a folder on your computer. Whenever you throw a file into that folder, it starts uploading to Dropbox. While the app is connected, if you put anything into Dropbox from another computer or mobile device, it will be downloaded into your computer’s folder automatically.

Shared Dropbox Folder

A shared Dropbox folder, used for collaboration.

If you’re using an iPhone, Dropbox removes the need to be by your home computer in order to sync files to your phone. For example, save an eBook (epub) to your Dropbox from your work computer, you can open the ebook in iBooks (or any epub reader) from the Dropbox app. You can save PDFs from Safari/Mail into Dropbox to keep them for later.

Aside from being able to share single files at a time from Dropbox, you can also share whole folders with via the web or privately with other Dropbox users. If you share a folder with another Dropbox user, both you and your friend can add and remove files from that folder, keeping a synced set of files on all of your devices. This makes Dropbox great for collaboration on multi-file projects.

So sign up for Dropbox and tell us what you think! We hope it helps your workflow as much as it has helped ours.

Notes on the Evernote Smart Notebook

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Matt and I use Evernote to take, organize and search for previously taken notes. Evernote keeps your notes in the cloud, so they’re available anywhere that you have access to the internet.

The Evernote Smart Notebook is a snazzy moleskine designed especially for Evernote, containing special paper to allow for the use of auto-cropping and Smart Sticker recognition within the Evernote iPhone app. Matt was kind enough to offer me a chance to use one of the new Evernote Smart Notebooks he bought for himself.

Evernote Smart Notebook with Smart Stickers

Evernote Smart Notebook with Smart Stickers

I left my Smart Notebook at home today, which is a bit of a drag because I had taken some notes on what I wanted to include in this review about the notebook itself. No worries! Because I used the notebook the way it was supposed to be used, I can look at my notes in Evernote for Mac.

So here’s how it works:

  1. Write until your heart is content in your Evernote Smart Notebook – draw pictures, make notes for work, scribble notes for home.
  2. If you want, throw some Smart Stickers on the page next to the corresponding notes. (I think these are the coolest part of the notebook.)
  3. Open your Evernote app and use the Page Camera feature to grab a snapshot of your pages.
  4. Evernote will digitize your notes, making them searchable, and will organize each page with a tag using the Smart Stickers.

The Smart Stickers are my favorite feature of the notebook. The notebook comes with four sheets of stickers that are preconfigured to become “Home, Work, Approved, Rejected, Action, Travel” tags in the app. Write a note and place a sticker on the page. When you use the Evernote Page Camera, your note will automatically be tagged with the corresponding sticker. If you don’t need your notes to be tagged with one of the pre-set tags, you can customize the stickers to use different tags. (More information on Smart Stickers)

Once you’ve uploaded your page image, Evernote will work in the background to recognize your handwritten notes. This is a great feature but even with my girly, fairly neat handwriting, it doesn’t recognize everything I’ve written.

Evernote makes your handwritten text searchable

Evernote makes your handwritten text searchable

The Smart Notebook is a great tool to add to your note-taking repertoire. Although I type quickly on a keyboard, I haven’t quite mastered the iPhone or iPad keyboard. During meetings with clients, I still like to handwrite notes and include simple wireframe sketches. I’ve never thought to grab a snapshot of my notes so once my notebook was full, it is quite a task to find a specific note again. With Evernote, you can write your client’s name at the top of a page (which makes it searchable) and all you have to do is search for their name to find that page of notes. It definitely beats paging through an entire 120-page notebook.

BONUS! The notebook also comes with three free months of Evernote Premium ($15 value) which means more bandwidth to upload all of your note pages and faster image recognition.

What is Responsive Web Design?

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When users started browsing web sites (originally designed for a standard computer monitor) on mobile phones and tablets, some funny things happened. In short, they didn’t work. Sites built using Flash animation became invisible and sites with larger images were hardly useful at all. And while some web sites could be “pinched” and zoomed, that approach can be less than ideal.

Web site owners quickly scrambled to create special mobile versions of their sites. Programming code could detect a user’s browser type and send them to the appropriate version of the site. And while that approach is a good one, it can leave web site owners with multiple versions of the site to maintain.

Enter the idea of responsive web design. Responsive web design is a method for building sites which makes the same site functional in a variety of screen sizes and browsers. The site automatically ‘responds’ to size of the browser by adjusting its size and attributes accordingly. And since all “versions” have the same baseline code, making content changes to one site automatically updates the information for desktop, mobile, and tablet users.

We can demonstrate the effect visually by dragging a Web browser window in different directions to see how the site responds. The screen shots below simulate the appearance of the WebSolvers web site in desktop (PC or Mac), tablet (iPad or Android tablet) and smartphone environments (iPhone or Android mobile phone), respectively:

The WebSolvers Web site shown in desktop mode.

The WebSolvers Web site shown in tablet mode.

The WebSolvers Web site shown in smartphone mode.

If you are interested in seeing more examples of responsive web design, take a look at the Media Queries web site, a collection of examples, including that of William & Mary as seen below:

William & Mary’s use of the responsive Web design technique.

Are QR Codes Right for Your Business?

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If you are a bit bewildered by QR codes, you are not alone.  QR (Quick Response) codes are becoming increasingly popular among marketers and can now be seen on billboards, print ads, and even t-shirts.   So what are they and how can they help you business?

QR Code for WebSolvers Home Page

QR Code for WebSolvers Home Page

QR codes are two-dimensional bar-codes that can be “scanned” by many mobile phones in order to enable a function within that particular phone.  For example, scanning a QR code on a print ad might take the user to a particular Web page within the advertiser’s site or bring up a specific YouTube video.  A QR code on a business card, on the other hand, might give the user the option to add that person’s contact information to the phone address book.  The options are fairly broad as you can see from this run-down of creative QR code uses from Fast Company Magazine.  To experiment with QR codes, simply download a QR code scanning app on your smartphone (search QR code in your phone’s app store).

Like any technology, however, QR codes can be overused by marketers.  Using a QR code just for the sake of projecting a tech-savvy image can backfire.  If you disappoint users with the output or functionality, it may backfire.  You certainly don’t want users questioning the point of the exercise.  That said, there are plenty of practical applications and circumstances when QR codes make sense, especially if you are looking to drive interaction.  A few examples are:

  • Including QR codes on walking tours to deliver more information or narration to users
  • Displaying QR codes on event announcements to enable users to quickly add them to their calendars
  • Using QR codes on product packaging to promote product applications or accessories
  • Featuring large QR codes on outdoor advertising so on-the-go users don’t have to type
  • Tying QR codes to games/mystery messages to engage users with a brand or idea

It’s still a bit unclear how fast the technology is catching on and how many users are actually using the scanning apps on a regular basis.  This infographic from JumpScan give us some insight, but it is probably safe to assume that the technology leans toward a tech-savvy audience.

The most important thing is to be creative.  And if you can’t think of interesting uses with the “wow” factor, it may be better to wait until inspirations strikes.

Chargify Product Review

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Chargify Bull

Chargify Logo

One of the highest aims for any sales-minded organization is to build a stream of recurring revenue.  Over time, traditional businesses like cable companies, self-storage facilities, and garbage haulers have prevailed by selling subscriptions to services.  Instead of selling singular products (think about a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman) where the transaction is typically “one and done,” companies with recurring business models (i.e. a subscription to the wine-of-the-month club) aim to generate streams of ongoing revenue through by earning perpetual service relationships.  While the transaction and selling costs may be similar in both cases, the recurring model is often superior in the end because it presents almost indefinite potential for ongoing revenue and relationship.

Fast forward to the digital age, and the same principle applies.  One could purchase a DVD on Amazon.com or choose to subscribe to Netflix.  Both have similar transaction and customer acquisition costs, but the Netflix model is perhaps more attractive to the merchant in that it presents an ongoing stream of revenue without the incremental selling costs with each ring of the cash register.

The Software as a Service (SaaS) / Web app marketplace presents much of the same promise to entrepreneurs.  While we all used to run to the local shopping mall to buy software, much of the software sold today is delivered as an online service–not in a shrink-wrapped box.  Good examples of this include Evernote and Basecamp, both wonderful products that live in the cloud and charge modest subscription fees.

Our product, MetricPulse, is built under this same premise: instead of writing and delivering code to solve a problem for one customer, why not develop a service capable of solving the same problem for many customers around the clock?  Our app provides a real-time dashboard of Internet marketing metrics to marketing folks and small business owners.

When we began planning for the creation of MetricPulse in 2010, we had many ideas about how to deliver a compelling product for our customers.  We had plenty of discussions about design, functionality, and delivery.  But the elephant in the room was the challenge of enabling and automated recurring billing process for thousands of users.

With recurring billing, there are all sorts of challenges.  The questions involved in thinking through the process are numerous.  How do we securely capture and store customer credit card information?  How do we offer free trials?  How do we handle expiring credit cards?  How do we disable functionality for customers when necessary? What happens when someone wants to change their subscription level and the math gets dicey?  In reality, that aspect of the functionality was an even larger challenge than the delivery of the product itself.

Then we found Chargify.  Chargify is a software application that manages the recurring billing process for merchants who want to provide a service or software application on a regular basis but not wish to code a recurring billing engine from scratch.  We built our software application to help marketers and small business owners keep an eye on their Internet marketing metrics and left the billing to Chargify.  We could focus on what we wanted our app to do while we let Chargify handle that “elephant in the room.”

Chargify has a host of features that make it useful.  For starters, Chargify operates quietly in the background through its API.  We were able to easily integrate their variables into our code and utilize the system according to our specific needs.  Second, Chargify integrates with a variety of payment gateways so we could tie in directly when it came to accepting the credit cards.  On that point, Chargify does not attempt to be anything it is not.  It is not a payment gateway and it does not store credit cards–your payment gateway does that.  Their Partner Ecosystem page reveals that they clearly know what their role is.   We were sold completely when we reviewed Chargify’s comprehensive list of features, including the incorporation of free trials and coupon codes.  As we reviewed the features, we discovered so many things that we hadn’t even thought about.  That was a good feeling.

Chargify sits behind our Pricing & Plans page and works seamlessly with our payment gateway.

We did find some other competing services that provide a similar service to Chargify.  There are a handful of them out there, but we opted for Chargify for a few specific reasons:

  • Dunning Capability – Chargify has some customizable logic that allows MetricPulse to automatically reach out to users when their credit card expires.
  • Personality – Chargify has a group of friendly, fun people who are constantly tweeting and emailing you when you need them.  They make it enjoyable to work with them.  Even though we have never met them, we feel like we know the whole team.  You can get the same feel from their About Us page.
  • Service - The team at Chargify is very customer-oriented.  They even let you use their system without paying (Developer mode) indefinitely why you are finishing your app.
  • Upgrade/Downgrade Proration – If a customer wants to switch plans mid-month, Chargify handles the math for you.
  • iPhone App – We can monitor our subscription progress through a mobile app, which Chargify provides for free.
  • They Saved Us Serious Development Dollars – Because we didn’t have to write the billing engine from scratch, we were able to save time, save money, and offer the product more economically to our customers.
  • SaaS Delivery – Since Chargify’s app is delivered as a service, we are able to focus on further developing our product knowing that changes in billing technology will be handled by Chargify.  That provides a great deal of peace of mind to us.
  • Integration with zferral – We had already decided to use zferral as the basis of our reseller program; Chargify’s tight integration with zferral makes both products even more attractive.

If it sounds like we are biased and that the Chargify team is our family, they sort of are.  They did a great job of helping us through our development hurdles and even reached out to see if they could help us grow.  The product is not perfect, we must say: we’d really like to see them expand the functionality of their iPhone app, which is fairly basic at this point.  Something tells us that they are probably working on it, though.

The bottom line is that you should definitely consider Chargify is you are pondering a Web app or subscription service.  Let them handle the billing while you deliver an excellent product.