Danielle Guerin

Posts Tagged ‘shopping cart’

This is a lesson of perseverance or complete insanity. You decide…

The small business owner wants a shopping cart. This small business owner is used to doing things herself and decides, because colleagues are raving about the service, to purchase the trendy Professional shopping cart at 99 / month. Within the first 5 minutes from having this new shopping cart service does the professional realize that her purchase is not bilingual…  Yikes! This purchase, even with all the bells and whistles is completely useless since 98 % of clients are French.

She quickly calls the billing service and asks for an immediate refund (she hears a giggle when she gives the reason for cancelling) and then decides to install another service, free with her webhosting package. She thinks she’s so smart for saving a bundle of money.

First hurdle, she must install the French Language pack. After a few hours of poking around, she figures it out and the cart is bilingual.

Second hurdle, the permissions are not all set and she can’t edit the define pages which are a quick way to edit text on the site. This time, she sends a cry for help to her technician who happens to be her <a href=”http://mediumcube.com/billing/order/?v=1&amp;aid=vadg” target=”_blank”>hosting provider.</a> He comes to the rescue and fixes one language and gives some instruction on how it is done because she asked. The lady thinks she’ll be smart and save time by changing permissions to the whole directory.

Third hurdle, ah! she messed up completely and now can’t even access the admin part of the site… another email is sent to the technician.

This story ends with the lady giving her technician all the directories where she needs permission and leaves the rest to chance.

<strong>The result </strong>: a so-so shopping cart “in construction” and over 10 hours spent on trial and errors.

I’m sure you figured out by now that<strong> I am the small business owner</strong> who spent so many hours trying to figure everything out by myself. It’s the best way for me to learn. I could’ve continued trying to solve the permission mess but I preferred calling for help.I know I should have done it sooner.

<strong>The lesson : </strong>Some of my clients call me “Miss Techno” because I love trying new software and tech solutions. I’m ok with the time I spent on it because in the end, it will save my clients a lot of time. I do all the testing before suggesting a solution.

How much is your time worth? Do you REALLY want to do it all yourself? This lesson is not only about shopping carts. I’ve seen too many small business owners try to save money by doing their websites, PowerPoint Presentations or desktop publishing by themselves without any knowledge (and it shows in the results) and then calling on us VAs to fix them.

<strong>What’s ahead: </strong>I will work on the content and the technical side of my shopping cart in collaboration with my technician and my graphic designers. I will concentrate on developping the products and leave the rest to my experts!

The diagnostic is up to you: perseverance or insanity?