Vol XI No. 23 - Suntower Systems

Happy Holidays!

Our best to you and yours. For us, this is the most special time of the year and we hope it turns out to be so for you as well.

Address Change!

Just a reminder. As we’ve been saying, effective December 1, 2009 please address all mail to us at:

Suntower Systems

PO Box 1643 Mukilteo, WA 98275

Through the magic of VOIP, the phone and fax numbers remain, respectively, (206)878-0578 and (206)428-6035.

Ollie X Discussion: Search Indexing!

As you know, we’re working on Alpha Testing Ollie 10. You can read Maireàd’s various comments over at the newly opened blog. We’ve talked a lot in previous issues about making Ollie easier to use and one of the ways we’re doing so is by making it easier to find things, using our new Indexing Service.

If your other web sites are of any size you probably have a Search feature for content. Even if you don’t you probably use Google or Bing every day to type in what you want to search for and let the ghost in the machine figure out what you want. Ollie is now a bit like that.

Every page now features a simple Search Box which intelligently displays a list matches for your clients. If the ‘hits’ are products to be ordered or released, they can simply click on those search results to either add the item to an existing order or start a new one. (There is even a Quick Check Out button so that they can order single items with just a single click.)

Several great things about the Search Box:

1. It’s an interface that your clients already know and love. If they’ve used Google, they know what to do!

2. It’s always the same no matter what screen the user is currently in.

3. Like Google or Bing, the Search Box doesn’t require the users to know what they’re searching for or how to go about getting it. They just type whatever they’re looking for, such as ‘Business’ ‘Card’ ‘New York’ or ‘Mortgage’ ‘Brochure’ and Ollie figures it out for them.

4. The information can be not only products, but also any other marketing or support literature you wish to provide. For example, if a customer searches for ‘checks’ they might also find information on what security options you offer; educating them and giving you an opportunity to sell value added services.

More Weight Bring Information To The Top

To work optimally, a Search function requires some control. And Ollie gives it to you in terms of what can be searched and how it is weighted. For example, you probably will want search results from your list of products to always appear at the top. And you may also want to exclude certain documents from searches. But you can also tell Ollie that certain types of information are more important than others when it comes to searching, so that these always appear at the top of any search results. This process is known as ‘weighting’ and all search engines do it automatically. In Ollie, you have influence over how pages are weighted.

You can assign a weight from 0-100 for each product. One hundred forces a hit to appear at the top of the list. Zero, excludes the product from a search (handy for items that are too generic to be of value.) You can also apply the same weighting factor to supplemental pages. You’ll also be glad to know that you can tag groups of products or supplemental documents and assign a weighting factor in one go.

Generally speaking, you’ll leave all products and pages at 50 and let Ollie figure things out, tweaking the odd page or product up or down as need be.

Summary

Ollie X improves the user experience dramatically with the new Search Box which lets users find what they need in a manner that nearly all users will recognise at once. They can instantly add products to their orders or find supplemental information without having to know where to go for it. Behind this interface is a powerful search engine over which you control which items are displayed most prominently to help your customers get what they need even faster and drive even more sales.

Til Next Time!

New Site Progress Update!

The new web site has been up a few weeks now. We’ve definitely been eating our own dog food as the expression goes. The last walk of shame was in the delivery of the Thanksgiving issue of this newsletter, which didn’t actually ‘ship’ until most of you were already in traffic trying to get home for the holidays! We were so confident that the e-mailing facility in Ollie X was working well. Apparently, not well enough to handle close to 10,000 e-mails in one go! (Actually, the issue was that the web server got overloaded and Ollie X did a poor job of recognising this fact and throttling back until the web server could catch up–it just kept trying to send ’em out regardless of the smoke and flames emanating from the poor server box!) In any case, we apologise most profusely.

We’re still struggling to get the content all updated and Maireád is flailing away madly checking on the code that Ollie auto-generates to make sure everything is not only consistent between pages, but also accurately reflects what the rest of us are inputting into Ollie.

Less Garbage… More Creativity

As we’ve been saying, the fact that Ollie X is effectively a content management system, makes identifying bad information much, much easier. A consistent look is a god-send for creating a site where correctness is of paramount importance.

That said, one thing we’ve started to notice is that too much consistency is, well, a bit boring. If every page looks too much like the others, the eye loses interest. So one of the finishing touches we’re looking at is a way to allow you to add little touches to specific pages that you want to highlight. We’re not exactly sure of the final spec on this yet, but some ideas have come to mind such as:

Allowing you to add bits of text or pictures in specific places for a particular product detail. That way, when a user looks at that product it stands out a bit from the others.
Creating style sheet options for particular pages, which could, again be a particular product, or an announcement which you want to look a bit different from everything else.

We hope to have some specific examples (and piccies) of each of these ideas in our next issue.

Til Next Time!

Ciaran’s Corner: The Cloud Approaches

We are now in-house testing Microsoft’s Azure, yet another attempt by a big company to move applications and data off your desktop, out of your office and into ‘the cloud’ (aka the Internet). You will often heard this sort of thing referred to as ‘Software As A Service’ or SAAS.

We understand the allure of SAAS. Who wouldn’t want to pay a ‘utility’ for a product that ‘just works’ and requires far less on-premises hardware, IT support, software installation, upgrades, who needs any of that crap, right?

Microsoft’s implementation will be quite compelling. For a low monthly fee (or even free), you’ll be able to get not only applications (like SAFE) over the internet, but databases too! For example, they are willing to provide a free SQL Server Database service for small users. So if your data needs aren’t too great, you may be able to get your next SQL Server upgrade for free and never pay a SQL Server upgrade fee again. You would still have SAFE loaded in your office, but the data would reside somewhere in the cloud. We absolutely love that because so many new features in SAFE depend on your keeping your current SQL Server installation current. If we take the SQL Server upgrade hassle out of the equation, we can instantly improve your SAFE experience. Fabulous!

Now why do I sound less than chuffed? Well, with all due respect, we are still not quite convinced. We look at Azure as being a bit like the Video On Demand service we get here in Seattle. It’s great. When it works.

So why am I bothering to mention something that still is not ready for prime time? Because we’re getting closer. A lot closer. For example, we’re now using Vonage for phone service. When we moved our admin office last month, we shifted six voice and two fax lines in about five minutes, without having to have any service calls. We haven’t had a single interruption of service. And if you can make telephony reliable over the internet? An SAAS version of SAFE must be possible.

And Now The Rant

The challenge to overcome is with your ISP. Microsoft can do it’s part and we can do our part and the telco can do their part with the fibre optic cable, but at the end of the day, the weakest link is typically at your ISP’s office. There still are far too places that offer guarantee of service. We see customers in even the largest cities, like New York City and Phoenix which have absolutely horrid internet service. And many of you tolerate it. As if the internet were still some new gizmo.

One thing I’ve learned this holiday season is that no one tolerates crappy internet service anymore. Even grandma is shopping on-line and she doesn’t give a hoot about whether or not Amazon’s servers are over-loaded. People now want and expect to dial-tone style reliability with their broadband connection. But too many of you still treat your web sites and internet connections as an afterthought. Or are willing to tolerate frequent outages and slowdowns from your ISP because ‘that’s just the way it is’.

As a New Year’s Resolution, I want you to start treating your ISP with the same attitude you would for water, sewer electric and phone. You simply do not tolerate anything less than complete reliability from your utility providers. I want you to promise to grouse mightily whenever there is any internet burp. I want you to demand immediate billing credits for any outage or slowdown. I want you to let them know that you are aware at just how profitable these guys are and that you are tired of anything less than 100% uptime, simply because they aren’t regulated as they ought to be. If you can do that? By this time next year, we can seriously be talking about moving SAFE into the cloud and reducing your costs dramatically. A truly reliable internet makes so much more possible for all of us.

Cheers,

Ciaràn Marron

Technical Support Manager

cm@suntowersystems.com