www.lingscars.com is an annoying site, but it performs! Over 100,000 visitors a month, and does 3.5 million pounds of business per month.

Amazing what Promotion can do!

It seems she got a Chines missile truck, parked it next to a highway, and got a lot of people to notice here business that way. Huge branding, since the site is all about her. Very over the top. If your at work, turn down the volume. It has sound!

I liked her comment in Dragon's Den, where all she came with was perfect Chinglish. Reminders me of a friend, in a forum, who responded to a comment with "excuse my Chinglish".

How I use publicity stunts to promote my online car leasing business - Marketing Donut

Lings Cars and the art of persuading visitors to buy - eConsultancy

Youtube Video of Dragon's Den, Investors TV Program in the UK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1ktZRZ5ZM

Labels: childbook Web Site, chinglish

Why should Chinese Schools and Tutors have a Website?

Because people who are willing to pay you for Learning Chinese, are online. When they are talking to you over the phone, they may also be looking at your website.

What will a web presence do for you?

1. Increase credibility on your abilities
2. Give customers assurance, you are a real business
3. Give you the opportunity to show customer testimonials.
4. Allow you to have a video, with a simple Chinese lesson. Upload it to Youtube, create your own channel if you like, and link your page to it.
5. Showcase your Value Proposition? More on this in a later post. Basically it's why should people buy from you?

But, I am not a Technical Person? How do I...

Use WordPress, which is free, select a hosting plan which has a minimal cost, and add some content. There are over 60 million websites using WordPress. Do not do custom coding on each page, it's not a good use your time.

Why Not Just Facebook?

 A web presence gives a more professional , reputable impression. Facebook for business is a bit trickier.

Why Not Just LinkedIn?

 LinkedIn is basically an online resume. It is good, but it's not a focused, dedicated website. For your professional development, I do recommend LinkedIn. Here is my profile that is a hobby of mine:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rayritchey

You can create a company page on LinkedIn, but a dedicated website is superior. The company webpage on linkedin is limited.

How Do I Create Content?

Audio tape yourself, talking about what you do, get it transcribed and put on your site, and instant content! Sometimes it's easier to talk about your business, than it is to write about it.

Labels: Business of Teaching Chinese, childbook Web Site

My daughter asked me last night why are so many sites going dark? I then explained it was due to SOPA, and she asked me what SOPA was.

Basically its being backed by the Movie Studios as a way to protect their existing business. And the entertainment business has a history of fighting innovation and has done an A+ job of lobbying congress to help them out. An example of past hyperbole was video recorders are going to kill the movie industry. SOPA would make a lot of activity illegal in the US and allow the easy take downs of sites, possible for even only sharing links there goes twitter  if it passes).

The blog post, why the Movie Industry can't innovate is a must read!

References:
http://americancensorship.org/
The SOPA Blackout Created a Big Problem - The Atlantic
Why The Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the Result is SOPA

Labels: childbook Web Site

The shopping cart provider (I basically rent the shopping cart monthly) has recently had some down time recently due to a DDOS attack. This has meant down time 3 times in the past week. The DDOS attack was not against my site, but another Volusion site that affected all of their 10,000+ sites.

Having my site down is incredibly frustrating to me and not acceptable. I am hoping that the shopping cart provider, Volusion, fixes this ASAP and I am closely monitoring the situation. I am looking at other cart providers and may be changing carts if the situation is not improved very quickly.

Labels: childbook Web Site

The closest I can come to what a web site redesign entails, is remodeling your house. Your tearing your entire house apart, rebuilding it, while your still living in it. Remodeling is also pretty stressful if you have ever gone through it. It's a huge project that can consume your life. And you are doing a balancing act of being helpful, and getting in the way of the so called professionals.

The closest I came was when the second story of my parents house burned. We lived in the back in a trailer for a bit, the moved into the downstairs while the contractors rebuilt the upstairs. My parents and I (10 years old) did a lot of work removing wall paper con the first floor, that had been damaged by the water used to put out the fire (water damage was a major headache), correcting the sloppiness/uncaring of the contractors, and having them redo the work to do it right. It was very stressful for my parents, but the end result was pretty good. Even if we still kept on finding shortcuts the contractors had taken that were penny wise, and pound foolish and fixing them for years. Which is why I used the word so-called professionals, the contractors that were hired did a poor quality job that still leaves a bad taste with me 30+ years later.

The nice thing about doing it for a web site, like www.childbook.com is it goes a lot faster. And if your web site is set up correctly, when you make a change to a button on one page, every page that has that button is also changed. I am very lucky that I am working with a very talented web designer. The challenge is being helpful, and not getting in her way. Another challenge is I had made a lot of tweaks to my site to make it easier to use for customers. With this brand new redesign, all those minor changes are gone! It's a major task remembering what has been done and deciding if they should be put back in or not. For a minor change can have a major impact!

Probably what I really need is a brand manual, UVP, and tag line for my site! Just using some Marketing words there.

My goal with my web site is:

1. Easy to use for customers. No training should be necessary. Just intuitive.
2. Easy for customers to choose the right product.
3. Professional looking, and not the DIY look it had for many years.

Labels: childbook Web Site

It's been quite sometime that we wanted to hear about what YOU'd like to see in ChildBook. We'd like to make site changes about what you expect from us as your kids go about Learning Chinese.

So today, janan! We finally sent a little email asking a favor to please fill us in on what you want us to provide and sell.

We are really committed to changing things over here at ChildBook according to what you want. As marketers and sellers, there is the tendency to share the product's features and quite forgetting about your entire day-to-day experience with your children learning Chinese over the years.

So please do share how we can improve. We promise to make things better so more children will benefit from having the Chinese language advantage.

Please answer our few questions in the email we sent. Thank you thank you! Xie Xie!

Labels: childbook Web Site

I moved by ages to the top of ChildBook on the left navigation. Why, I thought it looked better.
I thought it was getting lost below the products navigation area.

As with all 5 minutes changes, it took a little longer to get everything how it was supposed to be :-)

Why does it seem most computer related projects due this to me?

Should I test it? Yes. Can I, unfortunately not due to system issues.

The problem when you are using somebody elses E-Commerce solution you lose flexibility, and in this case the ability to test is one of them. The positive of using a third party solution is updates, that you don't need to custom develop and pay for changes! Not to mention it's nice when you are not the only one finding bugs and then needing to pay to get the bugs fixed if you have a custom solution. At a company I worked for had developed internally a system that was world class, the challenge was when the main programmer left after the initial project was finished, getting changes done became almost impossible. So with the Y2K crises, the company went with an off the shelf solution. Not as good, but at least new versions did come out from time to time and interfacing was much easier with good documentation. Another issue with custom designs is documentation...

Labels: childbook Web Site

The IRS is going to have PayPal start reporting a 1099. In other words, the IRS is going to know how much money you have earned off eBay real soon. In the past, the IRS had no easy way of knowing which led to people selling online forgetting to include it in their taxes. Since my PayPal for my Learning Chinese Educational Products goes through my shopping cart, it's counted.

When my wife was selling on eBay girl's dresses a while ago, it was pretty hard to get the data needed for our taxes out of eBay and PayPal. If you do less than $10,000 gross or two hundred transactions you are exempt.

Labels: childbook Web Site

This happened to me Wednesday morning. I come in to my office, and no Internet. It cost me a good two hours of wasted time, and a bit of stress.

So I call up Verizon and have an hour long chat with them. I finally gave up. The landlord shows up and I get on the phone with Verizon since I have all the info. to get through their system, and I end up in some automated purgatory. No, it was worse that purgatory. I could not get out of it, repeatedly pressing 00000 or ###### or ****** did nothing! The system finally agreed I had a problem and I handed the phone to the landlord. I thought it might be counter productive for me to speak to Verizon at that time. Somehow the landlord got it working again, I am not sure how. We had changed out 3 hubs and I could get Internet access at the modem, but none after the hub.

And when a customer called and left a message about the status of their order. I could truthfully say it was shipped and I did take my laptop down to the modem to get some Internet access, so I could call back the customer. At least I did not get a phone order while it was out.

So I went home, printed out my orders, and came back. Luckily there was Internet access in the afternoon so I could print out my postage.

When your running an online business, and your information is all online, having your Internet out is pretty annoying.

Labels: childbook Web Site

It on the front page of ChildBook, where she is dressed up as a Chinese Princess. It's one of my favorite pictures. The problem is most people have no idea what it is. So I am thinking of changing it to something that shows more of an educational focus. Something like a small child reading a book, or parents reading to a child. I like the picture of my daughter a lot a (she is my daughter) and it's a super cool picture, but is it communicating my site is about Learning the Chinese Language and Culture?

When you dig deeper into my site and read the about us page I would answer yes, but when a person first comes to the site?

The Right Products Free Shipping Money Back Guarantee in the top graphic is also frustrating me. Again the question, when a person first comes to the site is it even seen? Or ignored. On the phone I get a lot of questions about the Guarantee and pleasant surprises it's 100%. How people look at a web site is interesting and what they notice (banner blindness).

KISS is a good design principle, and I am afraid my front page just has to much stuff!

Labels: childbook Web Site

A frustration of mine is ChildBook.com has so much neat stuff! But most people have no idea about it. Here is listing of some of some of the resources on my site:

From my free Chinese Coloring and Projects:

• 30 or so Chinese related Coloring Pictures including Free Chinese Children Coloring Characters - Printable , Free Chinese Children Coloring Graphics, Pictures Printable ,
• Chinese Children Projects and Chinese New Year Coloring Pictures - Zodiac, Calendar, Animals, and Horoscope The mouse is a favorite of mine!
• Chinese Children Projects
• Chinese New Year Greetings Coloring Pictures
• Chinese New Year Wall & Door Scroll Coloring Pictures
• Chinese Character Worksheet

To my Chinese Festivals Calendars & Info including:

• Events for Chinese New Year , Moon Festival , and Dragon Boat Festival Event Calendar and Information
• Background on the major festivals
• Lesson Plans for the major festivals

To my articles area that includes:

• Chinese School Finder for the US and Canada
• Chinese Culture- Teaching my daughter
• Learning Chinese Advice for Children
• Racism Against Chinese in the United States
• Why Learn Chinese?
• School Tips & Education Articles - Has 10 articles. My favorite article Chinese Students - What can be Learned from them for Getting Good Grades?
• Chinatowns of the United States
• Adoption Resources, Chinese

Not to mention my comparison charts to make choosing the right Learning Chinese product easier:

• Learn Mandarin Chinese Video's/DVD's for Kids/Children
• Learning Chinese Chinese Curriculum Books, CD, Workbooks, and Software
• Chinese Curriculum Books, CD, Workbooks, and Software
• Songs for Learning Chinese - CD/Tape With Book Sets

And 13 lesson plans... Chinese Lesson Plans

And this blog with over 300 posts about the Chinese Language and Culture

Labels: childbook Web Site

A good friend of mine sent me an E-Mail about her frustration with navigation on ChildBook. I have known her husband since middle school. He also taught me how to do the Rubix Cube, that has now come back into fashion and was President of a Rubix Cube club in High School (he had a solve time of under 30 seconds if I remember right).

Soon there will be some more changes on ChildBook.com on the layout making it easier to find the right items. Life is easier when you have fewer items, but with over 1000 items and a lot of categories, the navigation needs to be tweaked to make it as easy as possible for customers to quickly find the right products. I believe the changes I did in the books for Learning the Chinese Language and Culture are good, as well as the Learning Chinese & Culture DVD's. The Chinese Culture area needs help, since it's duplicated in sub-categories under DVD's and Books, and keeping everything synchronized manually is hit and miss.

Labels: childbook Web Site

To improve the ease of use of Childbook.com I have made a few changes, the major one was to make it easier for choosing Simplified, Traditional, and English Books | Chinese Children. I created a separate sub-category for each, and then lot's of sub, sub categories. I also moved added to the main menu Flash Cards | Chinese (I need to add the word Chinese) and separated them into Simplified and Traditional Characters. It's surprising that some of the products don't say what they are. I also moved Grades, Study Skills, and College Admission Books to the main menu.

Labels: childbook Web Site

You may have noticed that www.childbook.com is going through a redesign. New categories are being added, this blog was added, colors were changed, etc. It's all part of making the site as easy as possible to use and find the right item for you. With the large numbers of items I am stocking, it's getting harder and harder to find the right items.

Contacting me for recommendations is always a good solution :-) But when that happens it tells me the design needs to be improved. That reminds me, testimonials page needs to be revised. I have not updated it in a while and it mentions items I no longer carry (like Disney's Mulan's Video in Mandarin). Blame that on everyone going to DVD and how the movie studio's have regional encoding which only hurts those who don't have zoneless DVD players (basically the US).

Labels: childbook Web Site