simon koldyk http://simonkoldyk.com web entrepreneur - vancouver blogger Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:19:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 SimonKoldykhttp://feedburner.google.com TrAvid http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SimonKoldyk/~3/Th1KUOJoAto/ http://simonkoldyk.com/travid/#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:19:19 +0000 Simon Koldyk http://simonkoldyk.com/?p=46 TrAvid a combination of Avid Traveler is a new site trying to make planing your next trip a little easier. Jerry Tian the founder of TrAvid told me that sites like TripAdvisor work when you know where your going and planning to stay, if you don’t TrAvid is here to help you. Using other users pictures, comments, votes, videos and stories the site guides you though finding a place to go.

The site is still in private beta so the amount of user content is very limited, although the tagging and other features make the site look really exciting to see what happens with a little bit more content.

If you need an invite just leave a comment on this post with your email.

]]> http://simonkoldyk.com/travid/feed/ 0 http://simonkoldyk.com/travid/ My First Cheque http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SimonKoldyk/~3/66KQbO0seHw/ http://simonkoldyk.com/my-first-cheque/#comments Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:09:44 +0000 Simon Koldyk http://simonkoldyk.com/?p=42 CAD was a little better, so it was just over $10K.]]> Everybody else seems to like posting cheques so I wanted to do it as well.  Its a few years old now; but, it was my first move from doing this for fun to that I can make money doing this as well.  And that was when the US > CAD was a little better, so it was just over $10K.

]]> http://simonkoldyk.com/my-first-cheque/feed/ 1 http://simonkoldyk.com/my-first-cheque/ Visit to BootupLabs http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SimonKoldyk/~3/Pr2kjZ7qN-c/ http://simonkoldyk.com/visit-to-bootuplabs/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:19:51 +0000 Simon Koldyk http://simonkoldyk.com/?p=37 So I went and stopped by Bootup Labs yesterday on my way to VEF.  They have some really nice offices (a few blurry iPhone pictures are at the bottom), they have 4 companies + Bootup Labs in there.  It was great to talk to some of the people there and find out some interesting tidbits on some things going on.  If your nearby and have some time, definitely go and check it out.

So I then went to VEF to listen to a talk by Haig Farris (one of the founders of Ventures West) and it was amazing.  Farris talked a lot on the investor side, although their was many things that I saw to make my own presentation to investors better.

VEF also does these 100 second lightning pitches (elevator pitches), I barely understood any of them.  One person had a slide with like 20 different boxes in it that was super hard to follow.  I’m sure in the presenters mind everything made sense, in the crowd nobody got it.  Taught me some lessons though, 1. Always practice on a few people before hand that no nothing of your project and 2. Keep it simple; make sure what you are doing is laid out clearly before going anywhere else.

]]> http://simonkoldyk.com/visit-to-bootuplabs/feed/ 1 http://simonkoldyk.com/visit-to-bootuplabs/ Building an E-Commerce Site http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SimonKoldyk/~3/7h0kM4alhbs/ http://simonkoldyk.com/building-an-e-commerce-site/#comments Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:23:02 +0000 Simon Koldyk http://simonkoldyk.com/?p=35 More and more brick and mortar stores have started up E-Commerce sites due to:

  • Internet sales are less costly to fulfill
  • Internet sales free up labour resources
  • You can process Internet sales efficiently at your convenience

Recently Livingspace a local furniture store launched their Ecommerce site.

They did a very good job on it, a few positivies

  • the navigation is well laid out and easy to read
  • Search bar easily accessible on the top right
  • URL’s have been made user and search engine friendly.
  • Offer Free Shipping, people will be much more willing to buy if they think they are getting a deal.

A few things I would change/add

  • There are no meta tags for the pages so you haven’t given the search engines and descriptions of the pages or keywords to work with.  They are not necessary but doing so you can rank higher for the given keywords so why give away that traffic, is that now what this is all about?
  • They run a blog on a different domain; but, have not announced it there yet.  Google and the other search engines love links especially from other domains, so give it to them!

See the store at shop.livingspace.com

This was just a basic overview and there are many blogs that focus on Ecommerce, my favorite would be Get Elastic from Vancouver based Ecommerce software provider elasticpath.

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