Come on. We’ve all been tempted to review our own products – very positively of course! Surely everyone does it? Rememer a few years ago when Amazon had a glitch on their site revealing reviewers real names and there were numerous glowing reviews written by the authors? Hardly surprising.
However, the FTC seems to be cracking down on this.
This article on the risks of user generated reviews talks about such problems:
Between November 2008 and May 2009, Reverb staff posted reviews about clients’ games in a manner that, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), gave the impression the comments “were written by disinterested customers.† Reverb failed to disclose that it was hired to promote the games and often received a percentage of sales.
So be careful about reviewing your own products!
FYI, I screen all the reviews on this site for reviews written by someone at the company. I won’t disclose the methods I use as that would help the culprits circumvent them, but let’s just say I have blocked more than one review left by the company which makes the software. Maybe I should just report them to the FTC instead….
Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 30th, 2010 | Author: Mark | No Comments
I don’t like doing this, but sometimes it has to be done.
This site used to be hosted with Webhost4life. In their “platform migration” they messed up this site so badly it took me hours and hours to get them to fix it. Apologies to those who experienced all the downtime inflicted by them.
They have done exactly the same with another site I look after. Isolated incident? Hardly.
I could post literally dozens more links. Just avoid Webhost4life like the plague. I’m glad to see the back of them.
Categories: General | Date: Aug 19th, 2010 | Author: Mark | No Comments
I get asked a lot about shopping carts – no surprise there. One thing I get asked time to time, which I’ve never had a great answer for, is what happens if you have a shop selling just a few items. A normal shopping cart is no good for someone with 5 items, it’s over kill. Lots of people are in that position – wanting to sell a few books, a few CDs, a few home made crafts, whatever.
I did see an interesting solution today. I don’t know if it’s perfect, but it’s a good start. It’s a WordPress template that has a built in shopping cart – look for the “eStore” template on that site. So no promises but if you need a solution like that, worth considering, especially for $39.
Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 9th, 2010 | Author: Mark | 1 Comment
The ever insightful Dominique found an interesting experience that Google is testing with their shopping results. This is pretty powerful stuff, and seems to eliminate much of the value we all try to add to our sites, and get it all down to model and price. I wonder if this is a good thing, or if Google are actually doing users a disservice?
Screenshots of the experience below (I recommend you use the “View Fullscreen” in the menu button).
Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 7th, 2010 | Author: Mark | No Comments
As you probably know, WordPress is almost certainly the world’s most popular blogging platform. This blog is WordPress. It’s also a pretty good CMS. There’s lots of time when people have a blog and want to sell perhaps just a few items. WordPress can help!
I came across this site with a great collection of WordPress ecommerce resources. Some of the better ones include:
Categories: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 6th, 2010 | Author: Mark | No Comments