Using The Machine

Can your customers give you a thumbs up ?

2008-06-21T15:12:59Z

... or a thumbs down ? Does your Web Site let your customers rate and provide comments for your individual products ?

One of the key capabilities of the Internet is the ability to interact with your current, past and future customers. This post is going to cover how you can "Use The Machine" to add customer ratings or voting to your existing web site or blog. This will allow your customers to very easily provide feedback for a specific product or service.

There is a great service called JS-Kit.com that provides not only ratings but also other functionality like user reviews, comments and polls. They make it easy for anyone to add various user participation abilities on their web site.

So before we get into the details let me quickly say, that it can often create anxiety for small (and large) business owners to expose their products/services to ratings and comments from customers. Everyone is afraid of the disgruntled customers and the bad ratings/reviews. However, the Internet has proven that the value to the business owner is in the transparency, that is being open with their perspective customers about the good and bad. Often the bad provides you an opportunity to not only improve your product or service but also allows you to address the concern in a manner that shows you care about your customers and their feedback. This in the end is invaluable and will help you win over new customers.

OK, on to Using The Machine...

On JS-Kit.com simply copy and past the line of HTML code that is provided for the

<div class="js-kit-rating" starColor="Green" title="" permalink=""></div>
<script src="http://js-kit.com/ratings.js"></script>

That's it your done.. ;) well specifically for the ratings your done.. you need to modify the above HTML code some based on certain situations or if you want to customize how the ratings show up in your site. There is a list of all the potential customizations on the JS-Kit.com on the Customizing Page. That page shows you how to change the color, display the ratings in different ways and even handle problems like attaching the same rating to a product that might show up in multiple pages on your web site.

I'm going to change my star color to Green.

So here is my rating control for the post, please leave me a rating just click on the stars.

Please rate this Post:

Social Networking - Reader Question

2008-06-20T12:02:43Z

Thanks goes out to Sue from Pinwheel Performance for this question. Remember, I love questions and no matter how basic or complex you think it is please feel free to "Ask a Question" and I will do my best to help you out.

Question Summary: What are some low cost Social Networking solutions that include document sharing capabilities (uploading/downloading) that are good for various types of Organizations (Profit/Non-Profit)?

As with most things there are a multitude of choices. This is even more the case for Social Networking because it is fairly new and there are a wide variety of young companies competing to capture some of the emerging marketplace.

First, what is a Social Networking Solution ? Put simply think of this as software for online communities or software that allows communities or social networks to collaborate and share information.

Social Networking services/software usually have some basic functionality like ability to display/capture information about yourself (that is user profiles), message boards/discussion groups and file sharing capabilities. Some of the more recent functionality has been integrating blogging, micro-blogging and multi-media capabilities like video sharing. Social Networking is a hot area right now but long term it is really about the social networking features which will inherently be put into all types of software not just dedicated "Social Networking" software.

So how can Social Networks be used in your business ? There are many ways Social Networking software and Social Networks can be beneficial. First, let's make the distinction between participating in an existing social networking service and providing a social networking service to your customers. I will save participating in existing social networking services like LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook for another post. The latter, providing a social networking service can be a good way to give your customers a medium to show their passion for your product and/or services and interact with other customers. It is especially beneficial if your product is creative in any way, then a social network would give your customers a ways to share their creativity and ideas with others. This can build brand loyalty but also is a great way for your "fans" to sell/market your product to perspective customers. Another great benefit is now you have a community of customers that you can interact with, that is find out what they want, need or don't like about your products and/or services. Extremely insightful and valuable information can be discovered this way for your next product or version of a product.

So what are some ways you can "Use the Machine" to provide social networking experience to your customers or clients? Let's review some distinct options, remember these are by no means extensive but are either services I have used or experienced.

Ning - Ning is a very popular service that let's anyone create a public or private social networking site for free. At first, it might seem like Ning is too "Consumer-ish" that is not very professional oriented but if you look at some of the sample sites you might be surprised as to the variety and potential of the platform. Ning has a rich set of functionality, sites can be public or private and can be branded to match your organizations existing web site. Ning doesn't have built-in rich file sharing, files can be shared via forum posts but this probably is sub-optimal for many organizations that are document intensive. There are third party add-ons to Ning that provide file sharing capability, however, they potentially have additional fees associated with them. I would encourage folks to visit the ning.com and look at the many public sites and how they are being used.

Popular Ning Sites

CollectiveX - CollectiveX Groupsites is less consumer oriented and more focused on providing features for companies and membership organizations. They pretty much have all the same features and more (depending on the pricing plan you buy). Most importantly they do have dedicated file share/hosting capabilities as a core feature. Some other interesting features are Email Alerts, so you can get notified with a summary of changes say on a message forum vs. having to visit the site directly. I would suspect that most folks could use the a la carte pricing option or the $400 "Premium Bundle" a year plan.

KickApps - KickApps basically provides social networking capabilities, that is they provide a way to integrate social networking capabilities into your existing web site. This is a different model but can be useful, especially if you already have a web site and want to have the social networking features integrated into the rest of your site instead of having a dedicated/community site. KickApps does require you to have some minor technical knowledge for the basic integration and more so if you customize it further. However, KickApps has been very successful appealing to large companies that already have established web sites.

Google Groups - That's right Google... why not it's free is fairly customizable and provides all of the basic functionality. Yahoo has a similar offering. These sites are fairly basic but could be a good way to test out whether you really need an online community/social network.

At the request of the question submitter my OSS pick:

Drupal - The open-source content management system would easily qualify as the best way to host your own social networking site. Drupal has a huge community of developers who have created all sorts of capabilities which easily allow Drupal to qualify as "social networking" software. I wouldn't normally include software that you are required to host yourself so did want to mention the hosted "Drupal" service at bryght. Also check out acquia which provides a commercially supported Drupal based products.

Unique Online Video for your Product or Service

2008-06-07T17:46:34Z

Here is the second post focusing on alternative ways to display content on your web site. In the first post we looked at how to use a slide presentation within your web site. This time we will look at how using a video can set you apart from your competitors and at the same time provide a more vibrant presentation to your perspective customers.

So UsingTheMachine is all about how to leverage the power of the Internet. So do not expect this post to be be how to create a traditional movie using Microsoft Movie Maker or any of the other Movie Making software that is available these days. Instead, we are going to utilize one of the hottest Internet services around and use it with a business slant.

The service is called "Animoto" and basically it is a movie creation service that uses pictures you upload and a music selection (or one you upload) to automatically create a movie with your pictures to the music. Thus, if you select faster or slower music the picture animations will be faster or slower. Animoto is free to create short videos and longer ones can be created for only $3. All you have to do is upload all the pictures you want in the video and then using the images interface shown above simply drag and drop the order of your pictures. For business use you will probably want to intermix words as well as images. To do this you will have to make your words images.. this is as simple as taking a screen shot of the words and saving them as .JPG images. Finally, make sure you "spotlight" certain images. This is suppose to tell Animoto to emphasize those images.

Once you complete the three simple steps the service takes a couple minutes to produce the video. Once it is complete you can view it immediately, email it to friends or embed it in a blog or web site. There is also a quick way to post the video to YouTube which is useful if your hosting your other videos there.

Check out the end result - this took me literally 20 minutes or so to cut out all the images upload and remix a couple times until I got a video I liked.

Online presentation for your Product or Service

2008-05-26T18:05:33Z

Every business faces the challenge of describing their products or service offerings to potential customers. There are many ways to do this and primarily for businesses that are online their web sites contain the product(s) they are selling or describes the services that can be offered. All businesses these days no matter how small or the industry should have a web site with product and service information.

However, in this series of two posts I want to help you explore some alternative ways to display that content on your web site that will set you apart from your competitors and at the same time provide a more vibrant presentation to your perspective customers.

So lets learn how to "Use the Machine" to first make a compelling flash style presentation for a service company. In the follow-up post, I will cover creating an online video for the same company. Both of these examples are not meant to replace the content on your web site but instead supplement.

In the first example, let's create a online presentation describing and showcasing the services offered from a fictional landscaping company. Lets call our landscaping company "Paradise Landscaping". Most landscaping companies have a basic web site that describes their services, provides a portfolio of pictures and maybe some customer testimonials.

So we are going to create a presentation, in a tool called sliderocket. I am not going to go into detail as to how to use the tool. It is similar to many other presentation tools like Microsoft PowerPoint. The key thing to understand is what is possible with such a tool. For example, animation and pictures.. also sound (music) although my example below has no sound but there is no reason why it couldn't.

There are several of these type of presentation tools on the Internet most of them allow for you to Import Microsoft PowerPoint files and they each have various degrees of flexibility when it comes to the animations, transitions and audio support. So I would recommend trying them out the next time you have a compelling story to tell or need additional media like audio or animation to help sell your product.

Below is a list of similar services and a brief description.

sliderocket - currently in "preview" but I believe they are handing out accounts so try signing up, free for now.

ZOHOShow - another of the excellent ZOHO tools that are free. Also has import capabilities.

Google Docs - Google Docs has a "presentation" document, this tool is a little more limited than the the other presentation tools but still is an excellent choice especially if your a Google fan, it is also free.

slideshare - site primarily used to upload existing PowerPoint presentations so you can share on a web site, also free.

Easy map and directions

2008-01-23T18:57:12Z

Here's a quick tip...Do your customers need to find you ? Well if they do and you do not have an embedded Google Map on your web site it is quick and easy to add one.

Simply go to Google Maps and search for you business and then click the Link to this page link in the top right hand corner of the map. Basically, what you see is what you will get when you embed the map. You can always also customize and preview the map before you embed it to ensure it looks exactly as you expect.

Here is a screen cast of the entire process for the embedded map below to a restaurant in my home town.

Notice the Directions as well as the Web Site reference.
View Larger Map

Simple online store - Reader question

2008-01-17T04:01:36Z

UsingTheMachine is all about helping you leverage the Internet for business success. I recently received some reader feedback with a request asking for some advice on a "Simple Online Store" with a "Flash Intro". First, I would simply lose the "flash intro" part of that question. Flash intros have been proven not to add to the success of the store and many advance users will find them annoying roadblock to bypass prior to getting to the store.

Remember, I love questions and no matter how basic or complex you think it is please feel free to "Ask a Question" and I will do my best to help you out.

Getting an online or e-commerce site/store for your small business is not hard.. but it can seem complicated... why? because there are just so many options. If your not familiar with e-commerce then the task can seem daunting. So what I want to do is run though some options for online stores and more specifically what you should look out for when trying to find that initial e-commerce solution to start selling over the Internet.

So first thing to consider of course is what your selling.. as potentially your options will be different. For example, if you want to sell hundreds of products for example a discount retailer then potentially you will have more work in managing all those products and need more advance catalog features to help you out.

So given the question was about a "Simple" solution, I am not going to worry about what provides the most advanced features (discounting, coupon codes, inventory, shipping prices, tax etc.), instead I am going to focus on simplicity first. (by the way starting simple and cheap is a good way to start off regardless of what you sell.. first make sure you can sell whatever you are selling before you invest in a large amount of e-commerce capabilities.)

So here are some options from the millions on the Internet:

(Disclaimer:I do NOT run a high volume stores on each one of these services and only have real experience with a couple of them. What they have in common is they are hosted that is you don't have to install software to use them and they are more focused on the novice, non-technical e.g. they are for business people not web developers. I would study each one further and try out some if possible to see which meets your unique business needs the best.)

Simple Store Options: (simple to more advance)

CartFly - CartFly is essentially free, the charge a transaction fee only on all sales (3%).. the unique thing about CartFly is essentially your store/cart is a Widget. This means that not only can you put it on a Web Site you can also put it on a Blog or Social Networking site like facebook or myspace. Key limitation is obviously your store can only look and act within the constraints of the Widget. On the CartFly there are many other stores listed that you can look at so it is easy to see what is possible.
blinkcart - is as simple as CartFly but is not a "Widget" but the only thing you have to do is create the appropriate link to the blinkcart service for each of your products. I can see blinkcart being more appropriate for stores with less products and more content about each product. Think of a product that needs a whole web page of content or even a whole web site, maybe more pictures or even video. This would be easier to do in a blog or your web site than a product catalog. Then you can simply add a link (add to cart) to your cart for purchase. blinkcart has a monthly fee with a limit on products, it starts off at $12 month - 30 products up to $59 - 170 products.
Shopify - Shopify is more advance than simple cart services. It is a full function e-commerce store with some advance features like inventory levels and on higher end plans discount codes and more. The unique thing about Shopify is it is easily modified to provide a unique experience, they also have a diverse set of pre-built "styles". Shopify is great if your business has a brand image to uphold.. so things like high-end or niche boutiques or specialty shops. If you want a modern hip experience first Shopify can give you this starting off at $24 per month and going all the way up to $300 per month.
ProStores - ProStores is an eBay company, so they obviously have some expertise. This is service moves up a notch and can include more advance features like merchandising, discounting, email marketing etc. They do have lots of pre-built designs and there is always the possibly to pay extra to get a custom design (or you can do it yourself if you have web design skills). There is a low cost option $6.95 per month plus a 1.5% transaction fee. However, the basic service starts off at $30 per month up to $250 per month all have a .5% transaction fee.
GoodBusiness - GoodBusiness by GoodBarry is more like what the big boys use.. not because it is an amazing e-commerce store it is similar to functionality to all the others what sets it apart are the features around the store. Specifically a full set of tools for analytics, integrated customer database, email marketing, lead management, cross sell, up sell, inventory control, multi-currency, gift vouchers, affiliate programs and much more. This is what is unique instead of having multiple tools you get everything in one.. and this type of solution is great if you are serious about building a full time e-commerce business as you truly need all those pieces and more. GoodBusiness starts off at $39 to $120 per month.

Spit Shine your Web Site

2008-01-09T10:12:26Z

First post of 2008, wishing everyone a happy new year..

To start off the year I wanted to talk about how you can "Spit shine your web site" with stock images like the one at the top of this post.

One of the easiest way to spruce up any site is through the use of stock photos, graphics and animations. If you ever wondered how many corporate sites have such beautiful pictures of people or other graphics on their site it is because they leverage a huge library of stock images. Stock images usually only have a one time fee associated with them and are often considered royalty-free. However, whenever you use a stock image that your purchase make sure you understand the exact type of license and the appropriate uses for the image as it can vary depending on the service and even the actual image.

There are several companies that offer stock photography and images on the Internet. I often use iStockPhoto which works on a credit system where one credit is equivalent to approximately $1.30. However, pricing can vary for each specific image, often the image price is determine by the photographer or the artist so it can vary but often the price for photos also depends on the resolution. The larger the resolution the more expensive the image usually. This does not pose a problem for web sites as usually the lowest resolution is more than adequate. For example, the image at the top of this post only cost 1 credit so I paid $1.30 for it essentially. This means that the most you probably will ever need to spend is $20-$40 to get a rich set of professional quality images for any standard "Small Business" web site.

If your a service organization get photos of individuals in your industry, like landscaping professionals or constructions workers. Restaurants can get great shots of fresh ingredients or other food items. Another great idea is to use seasonal images, especially if you have an online store that is visited more during the holidays.. add some snowflakes and other winter images to look just like the big boys.

Here are some stock photo sites:

iStockPhoto - Recommended
BigStockPhoto - Also has good deals and leverages a credit system
Photos.com - Uses a subscription model, if your small this is probably overkill but if you need many hundreds of images for some reason this might be a better choice.
Corbis.com - Once the gold standard of stock image providers.. probably still is actually and prices reflect this.

Remember, Using the Machine is the great equalizer the small can now be big!

Good Widgets are Great for Business

2007-10-24T12:04:35Z

Have you ever heard about a "Widget"? Well let's talk about what this thing called a "Widget" actually is and what it can do for your business web site. If you want to know details and the history of web widgets I would recommend referring to the Wikipedia entry for a Web Widget. I am going to focus on how a business can use Widgets and specifically the widgets from "Good Widgets".

A Widget has either functionality or content that might be useful to someone who has a web site. However, the most important thing to understand about Widgets is that all it takes is a copy/paste and you can start using them. Did that catch your attention?? It should of because that is what makes a "Widget" special, it is the ease at which anyone can use a Widget that are really what make Widget's valuable. This is great for business owners as they can add great capabilities to their web sites very quickly for what usually is a very low price.

Good Widgets produces a line of photo display widgets, everyone of their Widgets allows the display of images or photos on a web site in various ways. If your a business how are the images displayed on your web site today ? Do you show a few or many ? How easy is it for your customers to view them ? These are the type of questions that you should be considering when thinking about how a photo display Widget can be used on your site. They can very useful to companies in the landscaping business, pool construction or any type of service business where a portfolio of past jobs is displayed. I often think businesses that sell products often over look showing many images, how often have you seen a store on the Internet only show one image per product. If you sell products a Widget is a great way to display multiple images for a product, showing different angles or views or the product in use in multiple ways. Regardless, of the type of business your in it would be useful endeavor to look at Widgets as a way to easily and quickly improve your business web site.

Good Widgets is different, why you ask... because unlike so many other Widget companies they are purely focused on providing Widgets that blend into your site.

About our Widgets
We believe a good widget should not stick out like a sore thumb, but instead integrate seamlessly in your web page or blog. That is why we give you maximum control over your widgets appearance. By using smooth animations and clean design elements, our widgets are built with one goal in mind...to enhance your photos.

This is not to say Good Widgets is the only company that produces great Widgets, there are literally tens of thousands of Widgets on the Internet and many great developers and companies that produce them. Over time we will look at how to leverage other Widgets on your business web site.

So let's take a deeper look at the Widget portfolio from Good Widgets. Basically, the primary difference with all the Widgets is how you want your images displayed. They are all $2.99 from a price perspective... I would simply recommend going and looking at each one individually so you get a good idea as to how each one displays images and the animation used in changing the pictures. Most of the Widgets also have various configuration settings to change things like size and colors for borders and backgrounds. These settings are useful as they give more flexibility to match your colors and size constraints on your web site.

So let's Use The Machine and run through an example, I am going to purchase the Lightbox Widget and configure it. The Widget is configured in three easy steps. First, you need to "Import Photos" for the widget, this is done by connecting to existing Internet photo storage services. There are several to choose from including Flickr, Webshots, 23, photobucket and ImageShack. If you don't use any of these services currently, don't worry about which one you choose they all usually have some free version and are easy to switch between. In a future post we will cover why you would choose one over another. In the meantime, I would recommend learning about each by going to them and reading about their various features and pricing. In the example, I am using flickr which is a more common image hosting service.

The second step, is where you "Configure" the widget including the size and setting colors for borders and backgrounds. The last step is the "Share" step this is where you get the embed code for your widget that you can copy and paste into your web site.

Done, that was quick and easy. My Widget is below showing some recent vacation pictures from DC and San Antonio. There is no reason why these images couldn't be pictures of homes, landscaping, menu items or even multiple views of a product. Think about how you can use Widgets to provide a better experience to perspective customers visiting your business web site.

Note: Good Widgets does have a call out to blog owners to help them generate publicity about their Widgets and are offering two pro widgets in return for a blog post review of their Widgets ($6.00 value). I wanted to mention this just to be transparent, although I already had planned to write about them and have been using their Widget's on my personal family web sites for well over a year or so.

Automated Customer Testimonials (part 2)

2007-10-23T12:08:20Z

This the second post in a two part series, in the first post we covered creating a customer feedback form and putting it on your web site. This post will focus on creating a view to help manage the information collected from the feedback form and another view for displaying the good comments as customer testimonials on your web site. At the end of the post, there will be a video example that displays the whole process end to end. Let's start Using The Machine...

Sign-in to Zoho Creator, if you are not already and click on the <Edit> button next to your "Customer Feedback" application.

Before we focus on the new items lets make a quick change to a form field that was created in the first post. Here is a video of the change, but essentially I forgot to let you know to default the "Type Field" to the value of "New". This is important so that customer feedback when submitted has the type set to "New" by default.

Now with that out of the way, we need to add a new view to our application. So on the <Views> tab click on the "[+]New View" link. Give the view a name like "New Customer Feedback" and make sure to check the "Edit" and "Bulk Edit" in the "Allow others to:"

View a video example of the creation of the new View.

Now click on the Set Criteria link as shown on the image below.

This is where we will configure the View to only show newly submitted feedback. Change the selection from "All Records" to "Restricted Records". Now for the Criteria select the column "type" from the drop down and set it equals to "New".

Now our new "New Customer Feedback" view will only actually show "new" customer feedback. You can now test the view by clicking the [Access this application > ] button and clicking on the "New Customer Feedback" view.

If you have no records, showing up in the new view it is probably due to not having any feedback with their types set to New. This could be because I had forgot mention to you to default the type field to the value of new. If you look at the other view just the plain old "Customer feedback View" there should be submitted feedback you can edit these to have type of New. You an also easily submit some new feedback by clicking on the "Customer Feedback" form or you can also do it from where you embedded the form on your web site. Just make sure that first your information has the type of "New" and then the "New Customer Feedback" view is displaying as expected.

Now let's create our final view, the "Customer Testimonials View" that will be used to show good feedback on your web site. Once we get this view created we will come back and discuss the entire process and how both views will be utilized.

OK, so let's create the new view, just as last time click the [<Edit this application] once in edit mode once on the <Views> tab click on the "[+]New View" link. Give the view a name like "Customer Testimonials" no need to check anything in the "allow others to:" section as shown below:

Now we need to configure the view, this view will have more settings compared to the previous one. First, on the left side of the screen click on the " > Set Display Type" . Next, click the summary button and change the 2 records per row to 1. Next, click on the " > Column Properties" here we can remove columns that don't make sense to show on the view. In our case I am going to remove all of the columns except for Name, Feedback and Location. You can also rename the columns here so let's change Name to "Customer" and "Feedback" to blank. Now press the [Done] button and you will be taken back to the preview page. On this page we can drag and drop the order of the columns, let's re-order the columns to Customer, Location and then the Feedback "which is the blank column".

View a Video example of the Customer Testimonial View being configured.

Now that the view's columns are created, we need to worry about the information and for the customer testimonials view that means only showing feedback that has been marked appropriately. Click on the " > Set Criteria" link and click on the restricted records and add the column "Show on Web Site" equals "true".

Next go to the " > Set Filters" link and remove the default filter on the "type" column by un-checking the box. The view now has everything setup and is ready for testing.

To test the view, first get out of edit mode by clicking the [Access this application >]button. Now you will have to first mark a record as "Show on Web Site" so click on the "New Customer Feedback" view. Edit a record and change the type to "Good" and select "show on Web site" to test the view.

View the video example testing the new view.

Now as we did with the Customer Feedback form, click the [< edit this application] button and change the share properties of the customer testimonials view and change the view to be public.

View the quick video example of the View being set to Public

Finally we have to get the view on the web site so click on the [Access this application >] and then click on the "Customer Testimonials" view on the left side of the screen. Next click on the "More Actions" and select "Embed in your Website". The "embed 'Customer Testimonials' view in your web site" dialog will appear, first thing is to click the "Click Here" link in order to access the view without login, the dialog box should turn a green color. Next, click the "Get JavaScript Snippet" link to change the embed code to the JavaScript version. The JavaScript snippet is usually easier to integrate into a web site also make sure to modify the colors to match your web site. You can now copy and paste the code into your web site where you would like the Customer Testimonials to be displayed.

View the video example showing the embed steps.

That completes all of the steps, now let's talk about how to use everything all together.. there are a couple of things to do to make it easier. First, let's update the forms notification email to include a link to the "New Customer Feedback" view this way when your receive an email notification with new feedback you can simply click the link to to mark it as "good or bad" and decide to show it on your web site or not. The first thing to do is to get the "Permalink" link for the view, this can be found in the "More Actions" menu. Copy this link and then click on the Customer Feedback form and select the [< Edit this application], now in the forms "More Actions" menu click the "set email notification" link to bring up the notification window. Now paste the link in the message area.

View the video example showing the form notification update.

So to close the post, I want to show how everything works end to end in a video. The below video shows a user submitting feedback, the notification email, I will then process the feedback e.g. mark it as "good" and check "show on web site" and then it will appear on my customer testimonials site. This is all quick and easy.

View the final Video showing Automated Customer Testimonials end to end.

That is it for Automated Customer Testimonials, there are many variations and I encourage you to play around to find the best solution for your unique case. Here are some quick ideas, to simplify only have the "Show On Website" check box and not the "type" field. The "type" field (Good, Bad, New) allows you to track the number of good and bad feedback over time, obviously you might want to have other types to categories for feedback as well. Finally, you might also want to only display portions of a customer's feedback, simply have another field setup so you can copy and paste the pieces that need to be displayed, this require more then checking a box but gives you finer control over the testimonial displayed without changing the original feedback.

As you can see there are many ways to do things, hopefully this post was educational enough to get you started. As always, feel free to ask any questions if you run into any problems, meanwhile, have fun Using The Machine.

Automated Customer Testimonials (part 1)

2007-10-17T00:39:59Z

So we have all seen the web sites with customer testimonials they are a great form of marketing and are very popular for many service based businesses and restaurants. This two part series is about Using The Machine to create a easy application to help you collect, manage customer feedback and display customer testimonials on your web site. This way all you have to do is read the collected feedback and flip a switch for it to be displayed on your web site. No need to copy and paste the text or edit any html/web pages on your web site every time a new testimonial needs to be added. Plus you will have all the feedback stored in one place for easy access in the future.

This post will cover creating the web form and displaying it on your web site to collect customer feedback. The second post of the series will focus on managing the information submitted from the form and displaying the customer testimonials.

First, a little information on Web based forms, there are literally hundreds of services that offer some level of form functionality. Often your web site hosting company or web site software will have a feature to create a web form. However, these forms traditionally work by emailing the information collected to an email address you specify when the form was created.

Most Web Based Forms:
Web Form --> Information Collected --> Information Emailed

We on the other hand need something that will allow us to collect the data, determine if it is good or bad so we can choose the appropriate feedback to display on the web site then based on this determination display it in the "Customer Testimonials" section of your Web site.

What we Need Automated Customer Testimonials:
Web Form --> Information Collected --> Information Management --> Information Display

There are several services that could be used to accomplish our task. However, as I want to provide detailed instructions this post will only provide them for a specific service. The service we are going to use is called Zoho Creator which is an online database creation tool which will allow us to collect, store and display the information.

Step: 1 - Creating the Web Form

So enough with the explanations, lets get down to Using The Machine. First, you need to go and sign up with the service.

Go to the site: creator.zoho.com

Click on the Sign Up link on the right hand side of the screen. After submitting the form you will see the screen below.

Now lets create a new application and build a web form to allow customers to submit their testimonials on your web site.

Click on the Create New Application button or the <creating your application> link and give the application a name like "Customer Feedback". You also need to create a name for the form this can also be "Customer Feedback" or any other name of your choosing.

> View a Video example that shows the Application being created.

Now that the application and form have been created the next step is to begin creating fields that will be on the form. This will be both fields that we use for customers to submit their testimonials as well as some "hidden" fields in order for us to organize the feedback information once it is submitted.

So using the interface drag and drop the following fields types and Name appropriately:

Field Type:	Field Name:	Notes:
Single Line	Name	Required
Single Line	Location	Optional
Email	Email	Optional
Multi Line	Feedback	Required
Dropdown	Type: New, Good, Bad	Hidden
Decision Check	Show on Web Site	Hidden

> View a Video example that shows the fields being added to the form.

Fields like location can either be a single line of text or if your business has specific locations you can create this field as a dropdown with all your specific locations listed.

The next step is to setup some properties for the form, on the <More Actions> menu select <Form Properties>. You can now name the form and also put in a success message which will be displayed after a customer submits feedback. As for the verification code. don't worry about enabling or checking this for now, these verification codes are common with web forms so programs won't automatically submit your form. For most businesses this is not needed and will only make it one step harder for your customers to submit feedback. You can always turn it on later if you do notice SPAM or automatic submissions.

Now go back to the <More Actions> menu and select <Set Email Notification>

Here you can setup an email address to receive a notification when a customer submits feedback with your form. Now that the feedback form has been created the next step is to put the newly created form on your web site.

Step: 2 - Putting the Form on your Web Site

On the top right hand side of your screen should be the <Access this application> button, click it and you will then see your form which was just created. Now access the <More Actions> menu above the form and select <Embed in your Website>.

Make sure you click the <Click Here> link to access the form without login. The dialog box should be green otherwise your form will not be displayed. Next click on the <Customize Look> section, here you can change the labels on your buttons on the form if you wish.

The "Next URL:" field, this is the URL that your user will be redirected to after they submit the form. However, the "Next URL:" field is not required and simply leaving it blank will keep the user on the same page and upon submission your "Success Message" field will be displayed. If you do use the "Next URL:" make sure it is a valid URL for example to your sites home page or some other common page within your web site.

Now copy and paste the code into your web site, in the video example below I am using a blog but any web page will suffice. Just make sure you paste the code where you want your form to be displayed.

> View a Video example that shows the embedding process.

That is end of all of the steps, make sure everything works by testing the form. The key thing here is to log out of Zoho completely and then go where you posted your form and validate that it comes up and it doesn't show a login page. If you are having trouble go back into Zoho to the <Share> tab and make sure your form is set to Public.

Note: Make sure the form only is set to public and not the entire application as shown in this video example.

So that is the end of Part 1 of Automated Customer Testimonials series, I hope that was fairly straight forward ... If you are having issues feel free to submit a question and I will help you out as soon as possible.

The next post will cover managing the data collected from the feedback form and then using a Zoho view to display the "good" comments on your web site.