Today we have another post from the programming blah-g.  I am excited though.  Rumor has it that the comments are being turned on for our blog.  I just hope there’s some sort of captcha (and not one of those stupid ones where real people can’t read the letters) to keep out the bots.  I’d love to hear from my fellow ColdFusion programmers, or even just the outside world in general.  Then again, my posts going back sometimes even feel incoherent to me, so, I’m not sure I should be excited.  The only thing I don’t want to hear about is how much better other programming languages are. Blah blah blah.  Yeah, I know, your light-saber is bigger than mine.    Go ask Yoda if size matters.  But anyway, on to the blog.

Yesterday I was working with PayPal and Google Checkout.  Now I haven’t gone in to the whole cart and payment gateway system, but I did set up a sandbox for each of them to play in, and added some ‘pay now’/'buy now’ forms/buttons to the system I’m working on.  What I was trying to accomplish was an easy way to grab a payment without having to construct a whole huge system behind it.  So within an hour, I had both sandboxes set up (for those of you who don’t know, the sandbox is basically a safe place to test out your program, in this case the payment gateway, so we can make payments without using real credit cards etc) and I had the buttons on a standard form with the purchase prices thrown in dynamically.  I really have to say that for ease of use, those two systems really have something going.  You don’t have to create this huge system to talk back and forth to the server under secure sockets if you don’t want.  If you just want a simple way for your users to purchase a few items, this is the way to go.  Most ecommerce packages come with several gateway connections already, so if you’re looking for a full out shopping cart, I wouldn’t go the individual form route, especially since you’ve already got the code to do the processing.  It would be a pain to create more than a handful of ‘buy now’ buttons one by one, nor is it best if you want to keep track of who’s purchasing what and whether or not it’s paid (unless you go manual), but it works for something simple and quick, where you’re going to be manually adding in the payments made.

So, that was my task yesterday.  Don’t get me wrong, we’ve implemented more than our share of ColdFusion and php based ecommerce sites, with varying payment gateways, but normally our clients are not looking for a PayPal solution, nor have they probably even heard of Google Checkout, so this was a fun change of pace.  I enjoy having a testbed to play with, where I can see payments actually being processed on the back end, rather than having very little feedback because your test request doesn’t actually go in to the system, it just validates and moves on.

They say bad habits die hard. It should also be said that good habits are a laborious birth. At DDA, doing the right thing is NOT a matter of unlearning bad habits, but rather the articulated and dedicated practice of doing the right thing.

Most advertising agencies are born of deception and subterfuge. Example after example abounds of new agencies being formed by one or two account representatives who steal a few clients and set up a business of their own. The ease of doing this is enhanced by the fact that almost by definition, advertising agencies often don’t really do the marketing or advertising design and production themselves. Outside design and production houses, like DDA, serve the advertising agency industry by providing in-depth graphic design, photography, video production, 2D and 3D animation, programming, search marketing, copywriting, website design, ecommerce and other services. DDA provides them all.

Guaranteed, immediate clients and a readily available source of design and production make for an easy advertising agency business start-up. What is difficult is servicing the clients well over the long term and sustaining growth. What is wrong is the perpetuation of all of the bad habits the founders of the breakaway agency learned at their former place of employment and integrated into their new work process and client relationship procedures.

In this way bad habits not only die hard, they are perpetuated and spawned. Some of the bad habits may have actually been more benign at the original advertising agency due to the large size, or specific nature of the clients and industries they serve. When transferred to a smaller, less capable environment, they can mutate and become malignant.

Here’s the irony; the backgrounds of the founders at DDA are an organic mix of corporate marketing, B2B and B2C advertising, retail store and manufacturing ownership and general business management and consulting. NO advertising agency experience, no breakaway business start-up, no mutated process and poor client relationship habits.

After fourteen years of steady and sustained growth, innovation, and pioneering processes and procedures, DDA has all but reinvented the advertising agency. After fourteen years we are still fresh, eager, energized, and creating new habits daily by always striving to do the right thing.

A few years back there was a very successful turnaround CEO that had some awful sounding nickname like the meat cleaver or hatchet man or butcher.

As evidenced by his awful sounding nickname, his MO was to takeover or be installed at the head of a troubled company and to slash payroll and every corporate budget across-the-board in order to restore solvency and make the company a viable platform from which it could grow. When asked directly about his budget slash-and-burn methodology he said that there was one exception to his across-the-board approach. While slashing payroll and every other corporate budget he would also always double the marketing budget.

Ironic isn’t it that many less savvy corporate managers and leaders choose to slash marketing budgets during a slowdown or recession.

Metaphorically, sales are the lifeblood of every business. After a heart attack, keeping the blood flowing is the first and sometimes only goal of the attending EMS worker or clinician. It is an admittedly gruesome analogy, but slashing the marketing budget during a downturn is like fixing a heart attack by slashing the throat.

Let DDA help you increase your sales,  restore vitality to your organization, and regain full health with results-oriented advertising and marketing across a wide range of media. From website design and development, with or without ecommerce capability, to graphic design, photography, illustration, logo development, branding, 2D and 3D animation, video, CD-ROMs, DVDs, custom programming. professional search engine marketing, content development and copy writing, DDA does it all in-house, under one roof, and with an experienced and dedicated staff of degreed professionals whose only goal is to build sales, impact bottom lines and build long-term relationships with our clients.

This past weekend, I went wine tasting with my husband. As novices, we don’t necessarily swirl the wine in the glass just so or perform all the well-known techniques just right, but we enjoy experiencing the different tastes and smells each bottle has to offer. Under the wine umbrella, there are different variations, including but not limited to merlot, chardonnay, blush, pinot grigio, and riesling, and within each type there are those that are dry or more acidic, those that are sweet or tart, and those that are aged six months to six years and so on. The flavors of each can run the gamut from fruity with specific floral aromas to spiced with a carmel or butterscotch aftertaste.

At the end of the trip, my husband and I were able to agree on a bottle to take home that suited our tastes best. I couldn’t help but think that this process could be applied to that of website design, brochure design, video production, trade show graphics, and more in the field of advertising. While other advertising agencies often utilize a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to design and development, Dynamic Digital Advertising (DDA) takes on every project as a unique venture that needs customization based on the business, organization, and target audience.

Just like in wine tasting, in website design, there are many different types of websites - ecommerce,  Flash, database, corporate, medical, etc. - and within a certain type, the possibilities (like the flavors) are virtually endless. But unlike the vineyards, we (at DDA) make sure our clients end up with a final product that is exclusive to their company and tailor fit to their distinctive needs. With our team of professionals, we don’t just choose from an extensive list of existing materials, we create it from scratch.

We have some clients who have a very limited understanding of what a website with an ecommerce component does. They think that a well-designed site with relevant content, and search engine optimization services will soon turn them into millionaires. This mentality is what we refer to as the ”if you build it, they will come” syndrome.

These clients totally miss the way Google works. True, DDA designed the site well; true, it has relevant content; true, our search engine marketing specialists do a good job of optimizing the site,  but how does it compare to the competition? If company X has 100 great pages, and the competition includes sites with a 2,000 great pages (all things being equal), the heftier sites win out when a customer Googles. 

DDA absolutely can accomplish first-page rankings on major search engines, but website development must be based on our keyword research, competitive intelligence, content planning, and optimization. We understand what needs to be done, and when given the resources, anything is possible. Clients need to fully understand the process and realities.

What many clients fail to realize is their placement in the spectrum of their particular product. If  company X sells a product that competes with similar product in the big box stores, guess where the customer ends up buying. There are some caveats to this simplified statement, the most important being selling to the local customers, but using the website as a sales tool and catalog not for actual online sales.

Concentrating on a specific trading area is a very wise strategy for many businesses. The really savvy clients get this, and work accordingly. Paying attention to their site daily, keeping it up to date, coming to us for changes and maintenance on a regular basis. Just like everything alive — a website needs to be nourished or it will wither.