Orlando Web Design

Generate a valid 12 digit UPC number with PHP

2011-10-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

As NEXTAG was complaining about random 8 digit product ID in the feed of one of our clients, we were urged by their feed debugger to use UPC-A code for that field.

As our clients products did not have UPC codes we put together this little function based on UPC-A description on wikipedia.

function UPC() {

$odd_sum = $even_sum = 0;

for ($i = 1; $i < 12; $i++) {
$digits[$i] = rand(0,9);
if($i % 2 == 0)
$even_sum += $digits[$i];
else
$odd_sum += $digits[$i];
}

$digits[$i] = 10 - ((3 * $odd_sum + $even_sum) % 10);

return implode('',$digits);
}

echo UPC();

Check this website to validate PHP generated UPC code

Zip files with PHP

2009-11-04T10:45:00.001-08:00

After researching few different classes written in PHP that zip files and not necessarily extract files from zip archives I've come across the one that was able to handle multiple client platforms like Win XP, Linux, and MAC OS. It is called plczip and it is found at pclzip website. Other classes that I've tried offered similar functionalities but proved difficult to work with in WIN XP native zip extractor. Zip file format has several bits(flags) that unreadable by that native XP extractor so with pclzip class those issues got resolved.
Here is the list of the other classes researched:

zip class from red monkey
hasin zip class
zip class by joshua townsend

OBJ Leads Seminar

2009-10-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

OBJ Lead Generation Seminar

ABOUT OBJ

• Part of the national network of papers and online portal
• UP 5% in circulation in 2007
• 99K weekly readers (paper comes out on Friday)
• Net worth 2M Annual income 233K read the paper 53 min a week, mostly C level people

Articles usually contain information about companies add new jobs and services and include company’s contact information
Different marketing ideas and strategies from local companies as they are implementing them currently to expand sales

Monthly reports on various trends and list of certain industry ranking

Occasional networking events, award ceremonies, and interactive ways of generation sales (calendar lists all these events)

On page 34 there is “BIZ digest” where you can send a press release about your company’s anniversary [FREE], if you’re promoting someone in company, if your opening new location, if you are partaking in a community effort, if you landed new big deal,
OBJ favors:
• breaking news with local businesses
• featured entrepreneurs
• learning from mistakes

Book of Lists is an annual publication containing list across variety of industries and trends

Send and receive emails on boost mobile

2009-05-20T08:00:00.002-07:00

If you are looking to send and receive email on you boost mobile and have not had much luck here is a possible workaround.
RECEIVING:
In your email client options (Gmail, Yahoo, POP, IMAP) set forwarding of emails to: yournumber@myboostmobile.com [use 10 digit number with area code]. Now email will come to your cell as text messages.
SENDING:
In each email that you receive as text message you will see highlighted text of senders email - to reply simply click on that text and your done.

SEO Seminar at SBDC on 05/20/2009

2009-05-20T08:00:00.001-07:00

SEO Seminar @ SBDC 05/20/2009

Organic Search Results

People are more likely to click on it because of its relevancy over paid results
You can only optimize for only one keyword phrase per page
More tedious
50% of users scan only top organic search results
72.3% of users feel that Google organic results are more relevant then the paid results
Conversion rates for organic results are 3 times higher then paid results

Site layout

Golden Triangle, F pattern
Easy navigation
Clutter free
Flash Compatibility – no search engine can completely index contents of its objects
Flash workaround - http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/

Keyword Research

Searched keywords could be derivatives of the actual terms used on you web page
Blogging – easy way to update your customers, it keeps robots coming back often, RSS feeds are important http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

Google PageRank

It is a scale on 1-10 on how important Google deems your site

Competitive Research

What elements competitors have in place that you don’t:
1. PR
2. Keywords
3. Elements

Easy Steps to help you rank

• Keyword research
• Put keywords in a title and on the page
• Add links to other pages on your site
• Submit your site to free local search directories like Yahoo and Google maps
• Get links back to your site from site with Google PageRank 3 or higher

Google Analytics

Visits
PageViews
Pages/Visits
Bounce Rates
Average time on site
New Visits

HTML Multiple Select and PHP

2008-07-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

Recently I've needed to create a from where certain product could belong to multiple categories and I wanted to find a best way to handle this process in limited space on the website. I was debating between multiple check boxes and a select box with "multiselect" option. Because of space and complexity of check boxes I went in direction of single multi-select dropdown. htm
Check the code below - ` was added to code to display code on blogger properly:

<`?php
foreach ($_POST['options'] as $option) {
//code to do something with each option like insert into DB
}
?>
<`html`>
<`body`>
<`form name="my_from" action="" method="post">
<`select name="options[]" multiselect> // NOTICE THAT WE ADDED [] TO INDICATE THAT THIS IS AN ARRAY!
<`option value="ABC">ABC
<`option value="123">123
<`option value="xyz">xyz
<`option value="987">987
<`/select>
<`input type="submit" name="submit_my_form" value="Submit" />
<`/form>
<`/body`>
<`/html`>

Web development cost in Orlando

2008-06-12T09:28:00.001-07:00

One of the first questions that anybody looking for web development services will ask is "How much will this cost?". There is a variety of answers one will get in response varying from $xxx.xx for Y number of pages, or $xxx.xx for entire project, to $xx per hour. There is huge number of web developers and firms available so pricing can vary just as much. Here are two figures below that illustrate what average salaries are for web developers in Orlando, FL market for companies that enterprises that have resources to hire full time web developers. Figures are provided by the www.salary.com highest rated online portal disseminating salary data.

IBR LLC Website Videos

2008-05-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

IBR has just added new service - website videos. One of the best ways to communicate with the visitor of your site and a potential customers is via video message. As most people learn and retain much more when concept is explained audio-visually rather then text - you may utilize website video to:

Set your website apart from the competition
Get better conversion rate and therefore more sales

There is wide variety of custom additions that are available with each video. We offer wide array of professional actors that present your products and services convincingly. Videos are produced within 2 week time frame after receiving you custom script. To learn more and to see LIVE DEMO of your own site visit Orlando website videos.

Orlando eCommerce - IBR is Google's #1

2008-05-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

Now, just little over a year after claiming #1 spot on Google for terms:

Orlando eCommerce
Orlando eCommerce Developer
Orlando eCommerce Development

IBR has maintained same ranking for this entire time and no other company in Central Florida market has been able to challenge its throne. IBR is able to accomplish this feat by having unique selling proposition "We sell peace of mind". In Orlando and its surrounding area market there is plenty of web design and development companies of all sizes that compete for eCommerce development dollars and IBR was able to position itself to thrive by focusing on customer's bottom line. If you visit our website at www.ibrsystems.com and you'll see that in our initial contact form we ask common sense questions that are somehow unorthodox in web development industry:

What is your SPECIFIC goal for your website (how much sales do you project to have)
Define you specific niche (entire worlds population is NOT your potential customer base)

Armed with answers to these questions we are able to help you refine your strategies and most importantly execute them to a tee. Our customers feel the comfort in knowing that they can meet us face to face and effectively convey their vision. On top of these thing they also have additional layer of in legal contractual agreement that spells out liabilities of both parties so there is no second guessing if they are going to be surprised buy additional overage charges or missed deadlines.

Our investment of resources that IBR possesses are always in direction of success of our clients rather then simply project completions. That is indicated by IBR constant pursuit of latest technologies and strategies that attract more qualified traffic and result in more sales. We try to set the websites of our client's apart from other players in their respective markets so that visitors convert - and convert in good numbers.

It is all of those things that have kept us in #1 position on Google and will keep us there for a long time. Some things like keywords and inbound links can be duplicated but the Peace of mind that we provide for our clients can not!

To learn more about IBR and what we can do for your Orlando eCommerce development visit us.

GoDaddy cURL HTTPS and nusoap.php problem

2008-04-04T06:21:00.000-07:00

I was working on client's site that needed to access data via web service from another site via nusoap.php library and simply could not get it to work. Same exact script that I've developed for one of my other clients that was being hosted with HostMySite worked perfectly!

So I stated to debug nusoap to see what part of it was causing this error - it turned to be stalling at cURL request. cURL worked fine when I would point it to unsecure http:// site, but as soon as https:// was thrown in the combination cURL failed. After playing around with and exasting my options with nusoap.php library I called GoDaddy support to shed some light on this. I learned that they use proxy for their cURL calls that are made to secure sites. The issue is actually described in their HELP section.

Needless to say I was mad that I've spent all that time debugging nusoap while solution was two lines of code long:

curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYTYPE, CURLPROXY_HTTP);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY,"http://proxy.shr.secureserver.net:3128");

Adding above two lines to your nusoap library at line 2400 in latest version 0.7.3 will do the trick. This is applicable to any script hosted on godaddy shared hosting needing to access HTTPS urls via cURL library. I found Mauricio Zuniga's Blog that talks about this same issue unfortunately only after wasted all that time.
After going through this ordeal, I again encountered problems with DOMDocument php modules on GoDaddy server so decided to move my clients site to www.hostmysite.com who offer THE BEST support and actually appreciate my business.

Redesigned IBR Website Lounched Today!

2007-11-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce the launching of IBR System’s new and improved website. Please go to www.ibrsystems.com where you will find a wealth of information geared at increasing your business’s bottom line.

Among our many business solutions, you will have access to:

You will note that this new and improved website was entirely created with DHTML compliance – no other website firm in Orlando uses an exclusively CSS-based design on their company website! We invite you to enter our Orlando Web Designer’s Challenge and help identify other Orlando-based web design firms that use a CSS-based design for their website.

We have also added a Blog [one you are reading now] where you will be able to find up-to-date information on the industry, tips, notes from locally offered seminars, and where you will be able to share your own web-development experiences.

Finally there is a section dedicated to community involvement on this new and improved website where you will be able to keep with IBR System’s contributions to the Orlando Community and its non-for-profit organizations.

Boys & Girls Club Dinner

2007-11-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

This past Tuesday (11/20/07) Boys and Girls club of Central Florida held its annual Thanksgiving dinner for more then 400 local children. As one of the volunteers IBR was happy to lend its hand in giving back to community. This years event attracted more then 40 volunteers - a testament to a great job that Pamela Sible , Sara Oliver and rest of the staff of BGCCF had done by spreading awareness of their organization in the community. We are happy to note that this years event was even better organized and planed then last years event. All kids were served in record time and thanks to generosity of sponsors which included Universal Studios and Orlando Magic among others kids got to play with Magic's mascot, Woody Woodpecker, Olive, Scuby Do, and few others! I am personally always impressed how well behaved those 400 + children were - where not enough credit can be given to teacher and staff doing marvelous jobs.

Boys and Girls club of Central Florida has clubs throughout Central Florida and is always looking for local businesses to get involved with children volunteering, mentoring, sponsoring events and spreading awareness. For more information please visit their website www.bgccf.org.

Check out few pictures from this event below:

Orlando Internet Marketing Seminar presented by IBU

2007-11-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

Internet Marketing

(Michael Teitelbaum – President of TruePresence)

Clients include AMF bowling, car parts manufacturer, also started an internet marketing contract with US Airways right after 9-11.

QUOTES:

“It is not all about visitor on your site but rather what they do afterwards. “

“0.33% is industry average for conversion rates for banner ads.”

FIND.GET.KEEP.

Find people looking for your products or services.

Get the people to become customers.

Keep them as a customer – via recurring email messages.

Web users >> site visitors >> loyal customers

FIND CUSTOMERS

How to find customers:

Search engine marketplace: Google 49.2% Yahoo: 23.8% MSN: 9.6%

Types of search results:

Paid	Natural
unlimited keywords	limited keywords
immediate results that are easy to track	results take 3-6 months
position determined by your bid price and click through rate	position determined by the algorithms
geo targeting eliminates need for geographic descriptors	geographic descriptor often required

Getting started with paid search:

Þ determine business objective

Þ identify search terms

Þ write effective copy

Þ identify or build landing pages

Determine your business objective

Acquire online customers

Generate Leads (Acquire offline customer)

Define ultimate business goals:

Coast per Acquisition

Cost of lead

Cost per customer lifetime (how much they spend over period)

Identify Key Search terms:

Products and services

Brand names

Competitors

All possible variations

Write effective copy

Include search term in the title

Give people compelling reason to click (discounts and special offers, FREE shipping…)

Landing pages

Landing page is a specific page where visitor lands after clicking on search engine

Give them what they want on landing page – specifics related to search term

Keep the copy simple and direct

Forms should be simple

External links should open in new window – once they leave landing page they can always came back to that window

Measure results:

Conversion counts

Impressions

Clicks

Click per click

Conversions

Cost per conversion

Revenue generated

Return on investment

Actively manage campaign

Analyze each search term

Adjust CPC based on performance

Edit copy

Key to search marketing success

Search term expertise in your clients industries

Orlando SEO – WHAT MAKES IT WORK

Content is the king – strategic copywriting using specific keywords

Pay attention to details

Site structure

Meta tags

Internal links

Link popularity

Local search listing

50% of local searches are conducted with intent to purchase

55% of the time they are searching for brands, specific product models

Control the accuracy of the “Who” information

Business name

Address

Telephone

Add relevant “What” information

Products

Services

Brands

Hours of operation

Website

Online display advertising (Banners)

Online media

Understand target audience

Research and negotiate with relevant websites

Effective Banner

Consistent brand message

Strong offer

Clear call-to-action

Landing Page

Relevant to web advertising

Desired prominently displayed

Maximize # of clicks to conversion

Targeting Options:

Contextual

Behavioral

User/demographic interests

Pricing options

Cost per thousand

Cost per click

Cost per acquisition

Ad Types

Text Ads

Static image

Animated gif images

Flash

Rich media

Video

Measuring and Optimizing Performance

Analyze performance for each add and placement

Adjust campaign based on performance

GETTING CUSTOMERS

What creates effective site

Presents a positive and professional images

Useful and informative

Allows user to interact and transact

Ingredients and effective site

Focus

Identify your audience BEFORE deciding what site would be like

Purpose

How can you solve your target audience needs

Make it easy to get to specific areas

Make it easy for them to interact

Design

Transform site into a powerful customer experience

Copy

Romance the reader with powerful message

Connect with them emotionally and rationally

Compel them to take the action

Coding

Display properly in all different browsers

Loads quickly

Search engine friendly

Functionality

CMS – allows site owner to update content on their own

eCommerce – make it easy for visitors to make a purchase

Forms – get visitor data

What makes for a good Content Management System - CMS?

Easy to use for everyday user

Web based

Design freedom

Search engine friendly

TrueBlue CMS – is their own (TruePresence) CMS

Orlando Web development – establish a process

Have good hosting

Site analytics

KEEP CUSTOMERS

Email returns %57.25 for every dollar spent

Emails drove $7.7 billion in consumer sales and $8.8 billion in B2B in 2005

Email advantage

Personalized

Targeted

Measurable

Inexpensive

What is in it for subscriber?

New product notification

New service notifications

Company news and events

Relevant industry news

Promotional offers

Money saving coupons

Email best practices

Obtain permission

Make it easy to unsubscribe

Set content and frequency expectations

Avoids words and phrases associated with spam

RESOURCES:

Orlando Web site design - IBR LLC

Insight Business Update

TruePresence

SBDC Orlando: e-Business for Small Business

2007-11-08T13:05:00.000-08:00

Jeff Bosworth – moderator

Moved to Florida in 1994 and started working with ISP IAG (later known as MPInet). Also worked as sales agent for Clear Channel. Started his own company Sales Growth Group SGG.

One word that Jeff wants to know only one word out of today’s session it is RELEVANCE.

ECommerce is not simply shopping cart online – it takes more then that.

What would your priorities be?

OBJECTIVE – know precisely what it is before hand -WRITE IT DOWN

Jeff will try to provides us with tools, training, and advice

Tools:

Þ Who is lookup (who owns it, who is administrative contact, is auto renew enabled)

Þ Freedom Voice will give you 800 # for about $10/month which you can forward to any other #

Training:

Þ Unique Selling Proposition – USP

Þ Website should be part of the marketing mix

Þ Conversion

Þ Clearly define your demographic

Þ Perception – it is realty

Þ Be comprehensive is your sales presentation

Þ CAPTURE & HOLD ATTENTION

Selling:

Þ Prospecting (getting people to your site) know where your potential customers are

Þ Qualification

Þ Presentation (F strategy – look at the top, left side, middle) [it takes 5-8 presentations to get someone to buy]

Þ Close - CALL TO ACTION

Þ Service – stay in touch

QUOTES:

“If company tells me we would like to involve our IT guy in web development money – I run away from it.”

“Your website needs great calls to action, graphics, color scheme, navigation.”

HOSTING:

Þ Get the hosting that has the best statistics package

Þ Who is lookup – fasterwhois.com make sure you own your domain

Þ FTP – file transfer protocol is how you can get to all your web files

Þ ICANN – list of domain registrars (www.ican.org/registrars/accredited-list.html)

Þ Shared vs. co-location & dedicated – it is all about traffic that your web site is getting: if your site gets thousands of daily unique visitors that you can consider dedicated server or co-location

Þ Test your own site regularly, see if the forms are working properly

Þ Domain name – get something shot and relevant to your business with .COM ending

Þ Email – DO NOT USE EMAILS FROM YAHOO, MSN, AOL AS BUSINESS EMAIL

WEBSITE ESSENTIALS:

Þ Site architecture – draw your site on a piece of paper the way you would like it (check out few of your competitors and note what you like to emulate). Note down color scheme – specify colors.

Þ Navigation scheme – be creative and descriptive with menu options .:. CTA (calls to action), KISS (keep it simple stupid), WIIFT (what is in for them)

Þ HTML = static page (you need to know HTML language to change/update it) – it does not change often

Þ Dynamic content – content changed dynamically via backend without the need for any HTML knowledge

Þ Develop a site for all browsers

Þ Comprehensive and RELEVANT content – spell check it…

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A GREAT WEBSITE CHECKLIST:

Þ Is your objective met right on the first page with a CALL TO ACTION

GETTING TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE:

Þ Traditional advertising – TV, radio, billboard

Þ Non traditional – SEO, email blasts, link exchange, CPC, PPC

SHOPPING CART:

Þ Ask for examples from your web developer and see if you like what they’ve done before

Þ Make it easy to buy – show SSL certificate company

Þ Merchant gateway – Authorize.NET…. ask for previous integration examples, test with your credit card

Þ MOST IMPORTANT: USER EXPERIENCE (WHOULD YOU SHOP AT YOUR OWN SITE?)

WEBSITE DEVELOPERS AND PROGRAMERS:

Þ Ask for references and call those

Þ Make sure to have access to your website (FTP, control panel)

Þ Feel comfortable with your development firm

WHAT PRODUCTS & SERVICES ARE LOOKING FOR:

Þ Path of least and absolute resistance (POLAAR)

Þ Build customer database (it is cheaper to sell to existing customers then try to acquire new ones)

Þ It takes between 5-8 attempts to get someone to buy

RESOURCES:

Orlando Web Design & Development - IBR LLC

SBDC Orlando