Internet Marketing & Web Development

Authorize.net is Down

Adrian Singer — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:17:04 GMT

Authorize.net, the largest payment gateway in the US, lost power to their Seattle data center early this morning.

SJC data center cannot handle the load and as a result, all payments are declining

Twitter is full with users reporting Authorize.net outages:

Expected resolution time is 2 hours.

If you're using the SPI shopping cart and have defined more than a single payment gateway, the system will automatically divert charges to your secondary payment gateway.

Otherwise, if you only have Authorize.net, contact your SPI account manager and we'll instruct you how to easily resubmit all declines once Authorize.net is back online.

-

This outage is the third major outage this week and once again goes to show the importance of multihomed hosting.

Rackspace is down... Multihomed hosting rulez

Adrian Singer — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:55:38 GMT

Rackspace, one of the largest tier-1 hosting providers, is down today, affecting tens of thousands of websites, including some celebrity sites like Justin Timberlake and many others...

Here at SPI, we believe in multi-homed hosting.

Our client sites are hosted with Rackspace, NTT Verio, Softlayer and iWeb... all at the same time.

They're all great hosting providers, but as our friends at Pingdom frequently report, if things can go wrong they will.

Replicating our client sites across multiple data-centers with multiple non-related hosting providers, is the only way to deliver true 100% uptime across the board.

If your site needs to be up and running at all times, contact us today. We'd love to help.

Basic Web 2.0 Website Template

Dawn Rossi — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:04:28 GMT

10 years ago, a typical website included about 6 pages, with a home, about us, contact, privacy policy, terms & conditions and FAQ page.

While these are still Must have pages, nowadays, every decent website is expected to feature a blog / forum, photos, videos, social network links and do a better job of "telling the company's story", showing the people behind the site.

I was looking for a simple "push-button" solution to create a skeleton of such a site, but couldn't find one.

SPI does offer thousands of pre-made website templates, as well as custom website development, but I wanted a simple fully-functional template to help new clients get a quick-start with their websites.

Since I couldn't find any existing solution, I went ahead and created one, that covers it all:

* a complete website with a clean "Web 2.0" look&feel,
* Wordpress blog,
* vBulletin Forum,
* Social-network links,
* Navigation menu and
* Contact form

You can use my template to get this setup live, in 30 minutes or less.

Step 1: Register your profile on the social networks

Signup for Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, TwitThis and FeedBurner.

Record your username (you'll need it later)

Step 2: Create Logo, Banner & Avatar

You're going to need a unique logo design and nice banner for your new website. Use these image specs and file names -

Top logo logo.png Dimensions: 240x88
Footer logo logo-footer.png Dimensions: 170x66
Post avatar post-avatar.png Dimensions: 24x51
Menu avatar menu-avatar.png Dimensions: 19x23
Top banner top-banner.png Dimensions: 728x90

Step 3: Install Website template

Download the web 2.0 website template

Extract it to your main website folder

The template includes easy to modify top.php, bottom.php and sidebar.php files, that control the header, menu system, footer and sidebar links. These three files are included on all pages.

Note: You can get the latest version of WordPress here. To keep this process streamlined, I've included WordPress as part of the zip file.

Step 4: Install Wordpress

WordPress is located under the /blog folder

Open the /blog/wp-config.php file and update it with your database settings (You'll have to change DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_HOST)

If you installed the latest version of WordPress (as opposed to use the version included in the zip file), you'll have to make these additional changes:

(a) Install WordPress by pointing your browser to http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php and follow the on screen instructions

(b) Update blog/wp-content/themes/default/header.php to:

require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/top.php");

require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/sidebar.php");
require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/bottom.php");

(d) Update blog/wp-content/themes/default/sidebar.php to:

return;

(e) Update blog/wp-content/themes/default/index.php to:

<?php
get_header(); ?>

<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn" role="main">

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php
the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> </small>

<div class="entry">
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry �'); ?>
</div>

<p class="postmetadata">

<ul class="foot">
<li class="alpha"><?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?> <?php
comments_popup_link('No Comments �',
'1 Comment. Join the discussion �', '% Comments �'); ?> </li>
<li class="beta">
<ul class="liaison">
<li class="rss"><a href="<?=$RSSURL?>">RSS</a></li>
<li class="twitter"><script type="text/javascript" src="/js/twitthis.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">document.write('<a href="javascript:;" onclick="TwitThis.pop();">TwitThis</a>');</script></li>
<li class="email"><a href="/contact">Email</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

</p>
</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

<div class="navigation">
<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link('� Older Entries') ?></div>
<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link('Newer Entries �') ?></div>
</div>

<?php else : ?>

<h2 class="center">Not Found</h2>
<p class="center">Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.</p>
<?php get_search_form(); ?>

<?php endif; ?>

</div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Step 5: Install vBulletin

Purchase a license to vBulletin ($180) and download it from http://members.vbulletin.com

Extract vbulletin to a /forum folder on your server, then follow these steps:

(a) Rename includes/config.php.new to includes/config.php and update 'dbname', 'servername', 'username', 'password' with your database details.

(b) Open www.YOURDOMAIN.com/forum/install/install.php in your browser and follow the on-screen instructions (you'll need your vBulletin customer number to continue)

(c) Update the fetch_gzipped_text() function under forum/includes/functions.php to:

function fetch_gzipped_text($text, $level = 1)
{
return $text;
}

(d) Open forum/global.php and locate this section in the file:

eval('$headinclude = "' . fetch_template('headinclude') . '";');
eval('$header = "' . fetch_template('header') . '";');
eval('$footer = "' . fetch_template('footer') . '";');

Replace these 3 lines with this section:

@ob_start();
require("../top.php");
$buf = @ob_get_contents();
@ob_end_clean();
eval('$header = "$buf";');
@ob_start();
require("../sidebar.php");
$buf = @ob_get_contents();
@ob_end_clean();
@ob_start();
require("../bottom.php");
$buf .= @ob_get_contents();
@ob_end_clean();
eval('$footer = "$buf";');
eval('$headinclude = "";');

Step 6: Update images

Update the images in the /images folder with the ones you created in step 2

Step 7: Update company name, links

Update config.php with your company name, tagline, keywords and social network usernames.

It's important to set all the usernames as these will get populated on all of your pages. If you don't want to use a specific network, make sure you update bottom.php and top.php

-

In the future, I will update this template to include a built-in image gallery, the SPI FAQ service, the SPI Helpdesk service, Customer back-office and a video links manager.

How to Add a New Order under a Customer

Adrian Singer — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:11:48 GMT

In a previous post, I explained How to Edit Order details, updating the shipping-address, price, credit-card or product for an existing order.

Today, I'd like to cover How to Add a new Order under an existing customer

This is helpful when you're looking to -

* Process orders offline
OR
* Credit a customer with a "Free order"

-

Step 1: Access Customer Manager

Login to your SPI account account and click on the Customer Manager. Search for the customer, for whom you'd like to add the new order.

If the customer doesn't exist yet, use "Add Customer" to add a new customer record.

Step 2: Click on New Order

Scroll down and click on the 'New Order' button.

Step 3: Edit Order Details

Select the product, store and shipping information (if applicable)

Turn-on the 'Free Order' checkbox to designate this order as a free one, for which the customer will never be charged.

Note: Orders added using this interface do NOT credit affiliates any commissions.

Step 4: (Optional) Charge customer

If you'd like to immediately charge the customer for this new order, complete adding the new order, then click on the order ID to enter the 'Edit Order details' screen.

Follow steps 4 and 5 here, to process the charge.

Note: If the new order caused the customer to have an outstanding balance and you don't process the charge yourself, the charge will be processed daily when the recurring-payments script runs.

Detecting the UTF-8 Signature in text files

Mike Peters — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:38:54 GMT

One common trap a lot of new developers fall into is editing php source files with an editor that saves text-files as Unicode.

Notepad for example, will automatically save a text-file as Unicode as soon as it detects the first character in the file that is a Unicode character.

Other editors can be configured to either save files as Unicode or plain Ascii text.

What's wrong with Unicode PHP source files?

A unicode text file will load up normally in your text editor, but there are 3 hidden characters added at the top of the file, to indicate this is a Unicode file.

These characters are: xEF xBB xBF

The big problem here is that php doesn't recognize these characters and will simply display them on the screen. Because these characters are the very first thing displayed on the screen, unless you have output-buffering turned on, your Unicode source file will be unable to store any session variables.

Example

Consider this innocent PHP script, that displays a message if this is a user's first visit to the site -

session_start();
if (!isset($_SESSION['beenhere']))
{
echo "Welcome! This is your first visit to the site";
}
$_SESSION['beenhere'] = "true";

Saving this PHP script in an editor that saves text-files as Unicode, will result in something that looks like this -

^xEF^xBB^xBF
session_start();
if (!isset($_SESSION['beenhere']))
{
echo "Welcome! This is your first visit to the site";
}
$_SESSION['beenhere'] = "true";

The end-user will see 3 strange looking characters at the top of the page, but more importantly since these characters are output before the call to session_start(), session_start will fail and no session variables will ever be stored.

If you're using session variables widely, this simple thing can completely break the functionality of your pages.

How to detect UTF-8 Signatures in source files

To detect the UTF-8 signature, save this bash script as 'checkutf.sh':

for i in `find ./ -type f -name '*.php'`; do hexdump -C $i | head -n1 | grep -i 'ef bb bf' && echo $i; done

Be sure to chmod 755 checkutf.sh

Then you can run checkutf.sh from any folder where you'd like to verify no files have the UTF-8 signature. This bash script will recursively check all files under the current directory and all subdirectories, displaying all instances where files contain the UTF-8 signature at the top of the file.

Why was the payment declined?

Adrian Singer — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:23:39 GMT

Driving traffic is key, but how do you reduce payment decline rates?

SoftwareProjects Shopping Cart now offers 5 reports to help you trouble-shoot the reasons for declined payments early on, so that you can resolve any issues right away.

1. Payment Decline-rate Trends

Decline rates typically hover around 10%, however they do vary by industry. Monitor your decline-rate trend regularly.

2. Declines by Credit-card Type

A simple misconfiguration with your merchant account provider, can easily cause all American Express or Discover payments to get rejected.

3. Declines by Error Code

Are you getting too many AVS (Address Verification Service) declines? It may be time to review your AVS settings

4. Declines by Country

Helpful in detecting fraud attempts.

5. Declines by Affiliate

Find the affiliates that are generating the highest percentage of declines.

-

In addition to these reports, you can always view and download a complete list of all payment declines under 'Order Manager' - 'Register'

How to create a new user + Password in FreeBSD / RedHat

Dawn Rossi — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:06:10 GMT

To create a new user programatically, create the user directory and assign password, use this syntax:

/usr/bin/ssh root@REMOTEHOSTNAME echo "PASSWORD" | /usr/sbin/pw useradd USERNAME -d 'PATH' -s /sbin/ftponly -w yes -c comment -h 0

REMOTEHOSTNAME - The remote machine you're creating this user under
PASSWORD - Password to assign to the new user account
USERNAME - User name to login with
PATH - New user directory
/sbin/ftponly - Replace with the full path of the new user shell

PHP session.save_handler and Database sessions debunked

Mike Peters — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:20:36 GMT

PHP sessions are a great way to store user-specific information, throughout a given period of time while the user is interacting with your website.

Common examples where sessions come in handy:

1. User logs in to your website and you use sessions to store the user-id, user-email, user-name, while the user is logged-in, so that those can be clearly displayed on all pages and used to validate the user is still logged-in.

2. User begins a checkout process. On step 1 the user provides their name and emailaddress. On step 2 they provides payment information. On step 3, all information is retrieved from session variables and the order is processed.

3. Referring affiliate ID is stored in a session, so that once an order is processed, the referring affiliate can be credited a referral commission.

3 methods to handle sessions in PHP:

PHP offers three methods to handle sessions. You can control which method is used by either updating your php.ini session.save_handler, or by calling session_set_save_handler

== Method 1: Files

This is the default storage method for PHP, where session variables are serialized and written to a session file. (typically under your /tmp folder)

While this approach is fast, it doesn't work when you have more than a single web server.

If a user starts their session on webserver1 and then ends up landing on webserver2, the session information will not be found (it is stored as a local file on webserver1).

If you do choose to use file-based session handling, be sure to monitor your tmp folder regularly for any unusual session files build-up

Issue this command to count how many session files you have at any present moment:

ls -la /tmp/ | grep sess_ | wc -l

== Method 2: mm

The memory management storage method allows session variables to be stored in Apache's runtime memory. Using memory has the advantage of better performance than files on disk. However, if many sessions must be supported, and each session uses a large volume of data, the memory used by the Apache process may be high. To use memory to store session variables, Apache must be configured and compiled to use an installed memory management module (--with-mm).

We don't recommend using this approach.

== Method 3: user

The user-defined method allows an application to save session variables to systems other than file or memory, such as to a table in a database. By defining several handler prototypes, PHP allows the developer to define the behavior of the low-level session management. A full explanation is given in the next section.

This is the recommended approach to handle high-volume multi-server architecture.

One big caveat with 'user' type sessions, which is very poorly documented, is that once you setup your session.save_handler=user in php.ini, PHP expects you call session_set_save_handler before any call to session_start(). If you fail to do so, PHP will issue a fatal error and script execution stops.

Database Sessions with Memcached:

Working with high-load, high-redundancy, multi-server server architectures, the approach that works best is using a combination of database-sessions with memcached.

Session information is stored in a database (so that it is visible to all webservers) as well as in distributed Memcached servers.

When session information is needed, PHP will first look-up the session in Memcached. If not found, PHP will then access the database to retrieve the session and immediately store it in Memcached for future access.

Read this article for a complete step-by-step tutorial on implementing database sessions with memcached for PHP.

Import tips about forcing 'user' session handler:

In order to implement database sessions with memcached, we need to tell PHP we'd like to use our own 'user' session save_handler.

To do that, we have to call session_set_save_handler and pass callback information for the custom session-handling functions.

The manual also advises setting php.ini session.save_handler=user, so that no sessions are ever stored as files.

The issue is that if you set php.ini session.save_handler=user and forget including a call to session_set_save_handler before calling session_start(), PHP will issue a fatal error and script execution stops.

This may not be an issue for most of you as long as you control all php scripts on your server and have no client virtual-hosts that are outside your control.

In our case, we often provide clients with a tiny utility script to include, that utilizes sessions. We want to force this script to use database-level sessions when running on one of our servers, but allow easy porting of the script to other offsite servers that may use file-based sessions.

To implement this, we keep session.save_handler=files in php.ini and include this line at the top of our script:

// Include our database+Memcached session handler (if found)
if (file_exists("/home/admin/htdocs/dbsession.php"))
{
require_once("/home/admin/htdocs/dbsession.php");
}
// End include

If our dbsession.php is found, it is included and calls session_set_save_handler to turn on the smart database+memcached session handling.

Otherwise (running on an offsite machine), the server reverts to the default file-based session handling.

How to create a ShareASale Deep Link

Adrian Singer — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:49:35 GMT

ShareASale (SAS) Affiliate Network, lets you redirect the end-user to any page on the merchant domain.

Unfortunately there is no built-in user-interface, but it's pretty easy to set it up.

Login to SAS, click 'Get Links' and get the link for the merchant you're looking to promote.

The link is going to start with http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm

All you have to do is add ?urllink=MYURL at the end of the link, replacing MYURL with the destination link.

No need to include http:// in the destination link and make sure you urlencode it.

Sample valid SAS link, with custom url redirect:

Quote:

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1&....com/page.html

How to create a Commission Junction Deep Link

Adrian Singer — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:23:20 GMT

The Commission Junction (CJ) Affiliate Network, makes it easy to create product deep-links, allowing you to link to an individual page within a merchant's domain.

When logged in to your CJ account, click on 'Get Links', 'By Relationship', then select the advertiser from the link and click on 'Get HTML'

In the screen that opens up, by default CJ populates the Destination URL with the one provided by the advertiser. You can change that to any URL you want (as long as it's on the advertiser's domain)

If you're building the link programatically, you can use this format:

Quote:

http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-PID-AID?sid=&url=MYURL

Replace PID with the publisher ID (usually starts with 2)
Replace AID with the ad ID (usually starts with 1, a longer number)
Replace MYURL with the URL you want to redirect the end-user to (be sure to URLEncode it)

How to setup Order Confirmation emails

Mike Peters — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:17:47 GMT

Order confirmation emails are delivered to your customers upon a successful order.

You can configure SPI Shopping Cart to send customers a single consolidated receipt with a breakdown of all products they've ordered, or you can send one order-confirmation email per every product ordered.

Catalog-style stores (such as Amazon.com) typically use a single consolidated email receipt, while Infomarketing sales-letter type sites typically use one order-confirmation email per every product ordered.

Option 1: Setting up one Order Confirmation per each Product Ordered

Login to your SPI account, click on System Branding - Emails - Orders, and create a New message.

A good template you can use is:

Quote:

Hi {%firstname%},

Thank you for placing an order with us today! We're thrilled to have you as a new customer and look forward to building a relationship with you for years to come.

Your order is on its way! You can expect delivery within 2 to 3 business days.

Please don't hesitate contacting us with any questions or comments.

We're always here to help

Best Regards,
COMPANYNAME
COMPANYWEBSITE

Once you have your message, use the Product Manager - Select product - Process flow, to associate Order Confirmation messages with individual products, so that every product generates a matching Order Confirmation email, providing customers with details on how they can access their product (if electronic) or when to expect it (if physical product).

Option 2: Single Order receipt with a breakdown of all products ordered

Order receipts are emails that include a summary of all products ordered. The predefined order receipt email ("NewCustomerOrder") follows this format:

Quote:

Thank you for placing an order with today! We have received your order, and it is currently being processed.

What happens next? You should receive another email as soon as we finish processing your order.

Your order information appears below:

{%shoppingcart%}

Important:

Please keep this email as a record of your purchase.
Your Order ID is {%order_id%}.
If you have any questions about your order, please reply to this email or contact us via phone at

Thanks again for shopping with us.

Notice the {%shoppingcart%} dynamic tag. This is replaced in run-time, with a breakdown of all products ordered.

Order receipts are defined on a per-store level. Whenever a customer places an order, the store-specific receipt email is used.

To modify, login to your SPI account, click on Product Manager - Stores - select a store and update the Order Confirmation select box:

Your Commitment to Reducing Chargebacks (Free Template)

Adrian Singer — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:41:14 GMT

About two years ago Mike posted a collection of tips to help eliminate chargebacks.

Every single one of those tips still holds true today, just as much as they did back then.

If you're accepting credit cads online, your merchant provider may ask you to provide a 'Chargeback Protection plan' or in lamen terms - explain what you are going to do to help reduce your chargeback rates.

Once you apply Mike's recommendations (or use SPI shopping cart + Call center), you can use the following template:

--[ CUT HERE ]--

To whom it may concern,

Re: Chargeback Protection Plan

[Company name] is committed to providing our customers with excellent value for the orders they place with us.

We understand that at times customers may experience a case of buyer-remorse or decide to cancel their orders. If and when that happens, we make it very easy for customers to contact our company to cancel the order and promptly receive a full refund.

1. As soon as an order is placed on our website, customers receive an order confirmation email, detailing delivery times, tracking number and our customer support phone number.

2. [Company name] website features a Contact-us page that provides customers with an online contact form as well as a toll-free phone number for our 24x7 customer support staff.

3. Our main business phone number (the one that shows up on customer's credit card statement) clearly states our business name and allows customers to route the call to the support staff.

4. Within 15 days from placing an order on our website, customers receive a follow-up email to verify the order was received and customers are happy with our product.

5. All orders come with a no questions asked 30 days money back guarantee [Update with your refund policy]. This refund policy is clearly stated on our website and we stand behind it at all times.

Sincerely,
[Your name]
[Company name]

How to give a Great PowerPoint Presentation

Mike Peters — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:04:54 GMT

As I was getting ready to do my presentation about Affiliate Outsourcing at Affilicon, I went online to look for resources about effective presentations.

While I have been giving presentations for over 10 years now, I'm always looking for more ways to engage my audience and get better at pitching to a huge crowd.

Some of my favorite presenters are:

* Gary Vaynerchuck - very animated, charismatic, loud, engaging
You will never fall-asleep in a GV presentation, no matter what the topic is

* Steve Jobs - master marketer
You'll want to buy his stuff half way through the presentation

* David Heinemeier - Brilliant bootstrapping entrepreneur
You're going to want to study and practice his business models

(Watch these three presentations to get inspired)

A few great resources about creating an effective PowerPoint:

* Matthew Dyer 8 tips about PowerPoint Presenting

* Guy Kawasaki 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

* 70+ Powerpoint and Presentation resources and great examples

-

My top tips:

Be Passionate about what you're talking about

Passion is everything. You have to be excited about what you're talking about. Really excited. Be animated. Wow your audience.

Know what you're pitching

No matter what you're talking about, you are always SELLING something. Know what it is and structure your presentation accordingly.

10 words max

No more than 10 words per slide

No animations, no backgrounds, no bullet points

Keep it simple

Give away true value

Leave your audience with new insights, motivation, new ideas and specific calls to action

How to Export Orders

Dawn Rossi — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:54:13 GMT

Step 1:

Login to your SPI account and click on the Order Manager

Step 2:

Select the Date Range, Referring Affiliate, Products and Order Status to filter by.

You can choose to download All Orders, Canceled Orders, Abandoned Orders or Test orders.

Step 3:

Select which fields to include in the report (you can also set the order of fields), report format and title

Saving this report as a template will allow you to schedule it to run automatically once a day, once a month etc.

You can also specify an email-address where this report will be emailed to upon completion.

-

That's it! Your report will be generated and show up under the Reports screen as soon as it's ready for you to download

Faster Email response times

Kate Richards — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:49:55 GMT

SoftwareProjects is growing rapidly and as any company experiencing rapid growth, we are going through some "growing pains".

One area we know we have to improve upon, is email response times.

Instant response times used to be one of our key differentiators and we're committed to bringing that back.

In favor of complete transparency, attached is the full copy of an email that was sent today to the dev team:

Subject: New system to monitor & enforce Communication response times

Hi,

We've had a few complaints lately from clients about the time it takes us to -
* Reply to project questions
* Reply to general emails
* Set project deadlines

This new problem needs to be addressed immediately.

The SPI offering has always been positioned as "the Ritz Carlton of Software Development" and it is important we stay true to this core value.

As we continue our massive recruitment efforts, adding new engineers and account managers, opening shops in more locations and bringing in droves of new clients, it is becoming more and more challenging to monitor and maintain our target threshold of how quickly we want to respond to emails, how quickly we want project deadlines to be set etc.

With everyone working on multiple things at the same time, simply asking people to "try and reply to emails and set deadlines as soon as you can", no longer cuts it. It's human nature to intuitively respond to "the easy emails" first and forget about other things, until we are reminded about them by frustrated clients.

Our clients love us and know how much we care about their business. SPI's contribution in helping our clients generate hundreds of millions of dollars is unparalleled in our industry. But not responding to emails as quickly as humanly possible, violates the trust clients place with us.

We need a fully automated system, that will enforce the target SLAs and help all of us meeting and exceeding our customer's expectations. Such a system has been in development for the last few months and will be introduced over the next coming days.

This is a "Carrot & Stick" system, whereby people are compensated for replying to emails within 30 minutes or less, setting a deadline within 6 hours from the time a project is approved etc., and penalized when emails sit around for days without being responded to.

While it is going to take a few days getting used to the new system, I am confident everyone understands the incentive we all share in coming up with a systematic methodology that will help us continue to WOW our clients.

A happy client refers 1 friend to SPI.
An unhappy client tells 5 friends to look elsewhere.

Thank you everyone for your hard work so far. I'm very excited about the big changes ahead as we embark on the second half of 2009.