Archive for January, 2010

6 Features Your E-Commerce System Should Have

January 29th, 2010 by Kristopher
Shopping Cart

Here at ShuttleBox, we consider E-commerce to be a part of our bread and butter. As self labeled experts in the field, it pains us to see poorly implemented, hard to use e-commerce sites that are sorely lacking in needed features to help direct customers and increase sales.

That’s why we’ve composed a list of six features that we think every e-commerce application should have. These features exist to enhance your sales, market your products, increase customer satisfaction and ease of use of the web site. Some of them are so simple and basic, we’re amazed that some sites don’t have them… but we won’t be naming names.
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Does Your Website Look Dead?

January 26th, 2010 by Kristopher

If a visitor to your website today also visited 3, 6 or 12 months ago, would he see the exact same, unchanged website? Or would he have a plethora of new information available to him? Will the visitor, customer or potential customer think you went out of business if your website hasn’t changed since 1997?

There is much value to gain from a frequently updated web presence. It provides the ability to engage your customers and prospects and gives your company a sense of activity and stability. It can also be a valuable marketing and sales tool to keep your website updated with your latest and greatest services and products.

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Social Media with Real Business Consequences: Foursquare

January 23rd, 2010 by Kieran

There has been a lot of talk of social media for a while now, as the web has moved from a one-to-many model, in which those who know how to develop sites or can afford to have them made for them broadcast their message to the world, to a many-to-many model, in which anyone can start up a blog or post anything they desire to services such as Twitter or Facebook.  Literally hundreds of social media sites have spawned up around the web giving the world a voice, but the consequence is that it can be hard to find social media applications that are genuinely original and bringing something new to the table.

One application, however, has brought many different aspects of social media together into one new, creative, original, and fun application – one that businesses, I believe, should be quick to embrace: Foursquare.  Foursquare is doing for social media what the Wii did for video games; it is getting people up, moving around, and interacting with the medium in a new and creative way.  If you’ve not heard of Foursquare before, or can’t understand how it can help your business, read on.

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Plumber with a Leaky Sink

January 17th, 2010 by Kieran
The New ShuttleBox Site

While we’ve been off developing wicked sites for other folks, we’ve neglected our own. We’ve been meaning to redo it, but finding the time has been tricky. Well, that time has come.

We’re thrilled to have released a new version of our site out into the wild. We’ve improved not just the look, but the content as well, which we feel more accurately reflects the services we offer. It is amazing how many different ways “custom web development” can be defined, so we hope that the new pages will assist folks in determining if we can be of use to them. We’re thrilled with how things turned out, but we’re curious. What do you think?

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Picking the Right Development Shop

January 17th, 2010 by Kristopher

The success of your project or website depends heavily on the quality of the company you hire to develop it. A common misconception is that with quality comes high price, but this isn’t always the case. The success depends entirely on whether the development company knows what their doing or not. There are just as many small, lower priced shops out there as large, over priced and over hyped shops.

We’ve put together a list of questions and concepts you can bring up with prospective companies to determine if they’re worth your money.

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Think all web hosting is the same? Part II: 8 Tips for Finding a Good Provider

January 12th, 2010 by Kieran

Having been developing web sites and web-based applications for over 15 years now (wow, I feel old!), I’ve had the pleasure of working with many different hosting providers.  There are a plethora of options available, leaving one to ponder the pros and cons of each.  To those just starting a site and new to the hosting world, either personally or professionally, the task of picking out a hosting provider can be daunting.  Outside of the topic of programming, the number one question I’m asked by clients is, “can you recommend a good hosting provider?”
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Think all web hosting is the same? Part I: Shared, Virtual, Dedicated, or Colocated

January 9th, 2010 by Kieran

Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all hosting.  If you have not looked for a hosting provider in a while, or if you’re just looking for the first time, you’ll find that there are a lot of service options available.   Some providers offer shared hosting, others virtual private servers, dedicated servers, or colocation services.  Some offer all the options.  What are the differences and how are you meant to know what you need?  Once you understand the differences, along with the pros and cons of each, the decision as to which service to use should be pretty easy.  What’s more, in Part II we’ll give you guidelines that will help you find a good provider that won’t leave you with a slow or downed site.  Shall we get started?
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