Peter Mac And Associates

Hey Gerry, Where’s the ‘Add to Cart’ button?

I had the pleasure to work on a project for Sausage Software in Melbourne back in 1999. It was called Business In A Box and was designed to enable local retailers put their business online i.e. introduce a catalogue of products with options to the internet. There was no programming involved on the part of the retailer. Unfortunately it was a product way ahead of its time.

I can’t remember the numbers exactly but I think 150 units were sold throughout Australia in spite of a fairly heavy marketing push. I remember thinking at the time “bricks and mortar…bricks and mortar”. Australian shoppers at the time may have been slow to take up online shopping, but the retailers were even slower to spot the trend. I hear the resounding Australian chorus “She’ll be right mate!” on the part of the retailers who didn’t have to think too hard to turn a buck the way they’ve been turning a buck for the last 50 years. The cash registers may have changed, the shelf stock systems may have changed but essentially they’re still selling stuff the way their grandparents sold stuff.

Now, we look at the furore over the last year or so and see the retailers (vocally headed up by Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman fame) complaining that the market is being skewed by foreign internet retailers selling their wares without charging GST (that’s VAT to some). Fair enough, I feel your pain, my bottom line has been cut by more than 10% for the last ten years by the exporting of IT related work to cheaper economies. Sorry that you feel like the rug’s been pulled from under you. Hang on, I’ll help you out. I’m going to log into your web-site and I’ll order a big 27inch screen. I’ll also pay the GST on my purchase so you don’t feel ripped off.

Hey Gerry, Where’s the ‘Add to Cart’ button?

That’s right there isn’t one. No, you cannot order any product from the Harvey Norman chain through their website (except from their photo center wooohoo!). Is this a retailer run by luddites? Is it run by cost conscious accountants who can’t see an increased bottom line by enabling online sales? Is there a team of people running Gerry’s IT services who are resting on their laurels or haven’t been able to impress on him the importance of installing these new fangled interweb concepts.

As of July 2011 (yep, that’s just this year) there’s a whole media buzz about dear Gerry dipping his toes in the online sales market. He’s not selling the FMCG stuff that his chain is famous for. He’s selling 48bars of soap at a time through another chain with another name (and I’m not going to promote the name here). In the meantime, a visit to the Harvey Norman website shows a total lack of online enablement. I guess I shouldn’t complain, it gives me something to do some price comparisons with and then place my order with Dick Smith’s (and get it delivered to my door).

So, what’s happening in other online businesses? 

You can buy a holiday online and you can book a flight online (note the international nature of these businesses). If Borders had the foresight, they could now be rivalling Amazon.com. Have you tried booking a movie ticket online lately..or tried to find out what’s  running in Gold Class next month? It’s a horrific experience.

Apart from a few exceptions, I have the feeling that Australian retailers are letting the side down by either adopting the ‘wait and see’ approach to their eCommerce presence or doing the absolute minimum to keep up with their competition. Why is there no ingenuity? If there is some good stuff happening I’m all ears and willing to include references to this blog. In the mean time Mr Harvey, my unsolicited advice is pull your finger out and get with the 21st century.

Programmers – Duty Of Care

I was recently asked by a prospective client to have a look at adding a shopping cart to his new website. It turns out he’d spent 18 months and many thousands of dollars getting the site built by a web design company. The relationship had broken down with them wanting more money than initially agreed to deliver the shopping cart.

I agreed to have a look at the project and was not forceful enough by allowing him to send an email to all and sundry welcoming me to the team.

I got access to the existing code-base over a weekend and spent a full weekend trying to get the site set up in my environment (a typical LAMP config). I threw my hands in the air on the Sunday evening and decided to wait till a programmer who had put in some quick fixes over the last few weeks came around to show me how to set up the website. I’ve been around the traps for some time now and setting up/administering linux, apache, php and mysql are second nature to me. Why should this site be any different?

Holy heavens above and all the saints preserve us if this wasn’t the site from hell. There were over 1900 files in the site (remember, the shopping cart wasn’t included yet..or sort of). There wasn’t a line of commentary apart from the standard headers the previous developers had copied and pasted from third party systems. In their wisdom, the developers had decided to use the .htaccess file not for it’s intended purpose (security and file access control) but as the core of their navigation system. In spite being built using a combination of PHP 4 and PHP 5, there wasn’t one occurrence of a 'Class' anywhere to be seen. When I turned on my E_ALL error constraint, I got more errors and warnings than actual web page when browsing the site, There was no revision control history so no idea of who’d done what or why?

I am usually very slow to criticise other programmer’s work. I realise I wasn’t there when the client asked for new requirements to be added on a Friday afternoon and expected them to work on the Monday morning. I wasn’t around when the lead programmer left for a bigger and better challenge, leaving the junior programmer holding the fort. That’s why I usually stay quiet when looking at other’s work.

This piece of work on the other hand really took the biscuit. The amount of code that went into producing the amount of output that was a handful of pages was staggering. I firmly believe the entire site could have been built (including a shopping cart) for less than $20K and should have taken 2 months to complete. The cowboys who built what I saw were screwing the site owner for every penny he had and measuring their delivery by the unnecessary lines of code they were producing.

In this instance I had to walk away from the project. I realised I would be the ‘goto’ man for all the sites many woes and with pending holidays would be unable to commit to deadlines as required by the client.

Unfortunately this sort of web development effort has left a bad taste in the mouth of the site owner as he now views all web/software developers with the same contempt and distrust. So thanks to the cowboys they have now driven an even bigger wedge between the world of software and it’s lifeblood – the customer.

As programmers, practicing our craft is a skill that’s fine-tuned over time, but the technology doesn’t stand still. It’s a programmer’s responsibility to ensure we keep up to date with new features, techniques and practices. Failure to do so results in mediocre code and a guarantee you’re not going to last the test of time as your skills age while the world moves ahead.

If you’re a software/web services buyer, please ensure you check the credentials of the people you are dealing with. Pick up the phone to other customers. It’s your money, you should be confident and comfortable handing over your cash knowing you’re getting a reliable and competent level of service.

If you’re a software or web developer, please be open to your clients. It doesn’t always work out well, but if you have a couple of successful projects under your belt, you should be able to use them (and the customer) as a reference. Expectation management is a key component of this business and it is especially true when you’re dealing with clients who are not tech savvy. It is your duty of care to educate, illuminate and leave a good IT experience in your client’s mind for all our sakes.

Getting rid of Flash

The first model of the Volkswagen Beetle ran off the production line in 1938. The name ‘Volkswagen’ means ‘People’s Car’. The Beetle was just that. It served families of all sizes very well. Given the genius of the engine in the back and the boot in the front meant you could fit two small kids in the boot and the family dog on the parcel tray. The practical, functional nature of the Beetle meant it would go on to remain in production into the 21st century. Hurray I say for simplicity in invention.

Fast forward to the age of the Internet. In the mid 90′s people started using the web to display information about their companies. There was an ‘About Us’ page, a ‘Contact Us’ page, the usual smattering of services and product pages and a general acceptance that the website was like a corporate brochure i.e. static and something you left on the reception desk if people wanted a read while they waited.

Then the graphic designers had an idea! “What if we could make it move?” “way cool dude! We can have a moving site introduction where people visit the site they’re told to wait while the intro uploads. Then when it does there’ll be sound and moving pictures and maybe even like a cartoon. That’s like so totally awesome dude. Let’s do it!”

And thus in a very non Ferdinand Porsche moment, Flash was invented. Unfortunately, it’s a technology that didn’t live up to it’s name (flash in a pan…gone in a flash, quick as a flash etc.)

Granted, Internet speeds have come a long way since the mid 90′s. I’ve got more bytes available for me to download every month than I know what do do with. And they’re fast too. But…when I visit a website I want information. I want to know what time the trains leaving Sandringham station leave at. I don’t want a 30 second corporate bullshit advert about how you’re improving the train networks. If I need that information, I’ll click on a link that says “How we’re improving the network”.

What happened web design in the 90′s and into the naughties is that graphic designers who were used to designing for the print medium got on the band wagon, got their Macs and their Dreamweavers and started pumping out websites because clients looked on websites as extensions of their brochure ware. It was a snug fit. It’s interesting to see the number of sites that still use the MM roll-over tags from the clunky output that was MacroMedia’s flaghsip web tool. What they didn’t realise is by looking under the hood of the sites they built, how much clunky kludge was embedded in web pages that didn’t need it.

Moving pictures – OK, if you really have to. But don’t embed important links such as ‘click here for our product catalog’ in them. I run a browser that deliberately blocks moving images and I’m not going to see or use the link you’ve embedded in your flash movie.

Recently Apple CEO and proprietary software evangelist Steve Jobs gave a rant about how bad Flash is. All credibility to his argument was lost where he pointed to the proprietary nature of Adobe’s Flash technology. The words stones and glass-houses come to mind. Reading through his arguments, in between the lines I get the distinct feeling that Jobs would like Astronauts some day to look out the window and see a planet in the shape of an apple (with a bite taken out of it).

I like technology, I like inventions, but only if they’re for the betterment of technology and only if they’re available to all. Flash isn’t – So next time you’re looking to get a website built, or you’re working on one for a customer. Tell em to ease off on the flash…Pleeease!!

Creating Your Website – FAQ

Q. How much will my website cost me?

A. Depends on the size and complexity of the site.

Q. If all i want is a few web pages that tell the world about my buiness.

A. We can design a look and feel, get a few web pages up and host them for about $4,000

Q. But what about getting the site listed in search engines? Will people find me using google?

A. We’ll put in the smarts behind your pages to give them a good chance of being listed. It’s called SEO. The rest is up to you.

Q. What do you mean “the rest is up to me”?

A. Once you have a working web-site, keeping its’ content fresh and relevant and ensuring it gets high search engine rankings is an on-going job.

Q. Can I update my site with new content or do I have to pay you for any changes?

A. We will use a CMS to build your site, you can add new articles and pages if you need. You can call us if it all gets too much like hard work.

Q. How long will this take?

A. For a simple website where you can provide the textual content, it can take 2-3 weeks. For an online store with order forms and product cataloges considerably longer.