My name is George Olah and I am an entrepreneur and web developer. My favorite web domains are web development, online gaming, gamification and social shopping. If you need any work done in these fields please contact me!3 months ago
Create a social shopping experience
As we move deeper in the age of social networks, a new shopping experience takes shape: social shopping. Shopping with your friends has always been a fun way to engage in actions with them and do things together, but can this experience be moved online ? Can you enjoy online shopping, from the front of your pc as much as real-life shopping where you see your friends face, expression, smile? While this is a matter that we can not prove yet (maybe until we will have virtual reality or shopping inside applications such as Second Life or IMVU), we can definitly create a fun and helpful experience for customers. It has been shown several times that people tend to ask questions about products in social networks (such as Facebook or Twitter) before they buy and they base their decisions on their friends opinions.
In this article I will talk about ways in which we can use social elements inside the shops we create. I will cover aspects such as why are these elements important and about a mindset that we need to have when we introduce them: where can we use Facebook comments to increase sales, what should we let visitors tweet about, etc. The article will not include how-to aspects because the Internet is already full of these and a simple search on Google can reveal them.
So what is social shopping? Social shopping is a new method that uses the power of social networks to aid the customers with the ability to communicate online with their friends about the products they want to buy. To understand why this is important, let’s see some statistics:
- 32% of consumers think better of a brand or product that has been recommended1
- 46% of online shoppers are undecided what they want to purchase online1
- 90% of consumers online trust recommendations from people they know; 70% trust opinions of unknown users2
- When asked what sources “influence your decision to use or not use a particular company, brand or product” 71% claim reviews from family members or friends exert a “great deal” or “fair amount” of influence.3
- 83% of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place.4
- 81% of respondents said they`d received advice from friends and followers relating to a product purchase through a social site; 74% of those who received such advice found it to be influential in their decision.5
- Facebook and Twitter users spend 1.5x more online than the average shopper6
- About 29% of respondents aged 18-34 said they have discovered a product or service through a social network.7
1 http://www.immediatefuture.co.uk Accessed at Oct 17, 2010
2 http://econsultancy.com Accessed at Oct 17, 2010
3 Harris Interactive, June 2010
4 http://www.managesmarter.com Accessed at Oct 17, 2010
5 http://www.clickz.com Accessed at Oct 17, 2010
6 http://www.briansolis.com Accessed at Oct 17, 2010
7 http://www.atg.com Accessed at Jan 21, 2011
Using social elements in the right place can help us convert visitors into customers. Let’s see some examples.
Facebook and social shopping
Facebook is one of the best tools for social shopping. You can use the Like button to gain fidelity from users and later inform them about discounts or offers, post to their wall, invite their friends to join shopping and get discounts together. All of these are simple to implement and Facebook Developers section covers them in detail.
You can also implement the shops you create directly in Facebook using Canvas. This way you will pass over the border between shops and the social network as you will allow users to shop directly from their favorite website. This has several benefits: it can be very user friendly as people will shop without leaving Facebook and it can gain trust from users because they already trust Facebook. This trust can be extended to some degree if you use Facebook Credits (however you need to play carefully with this, as Facebook takes a commission that not many of your clients will want to lose).
However you decide to implement these features, it is very important to keep in mind that you need to not be overwhelming and to plan very carefully every element. For example, it is good to have the Like button customized for each product and placed near the “Add to cart” button as this is a call to action that your client will want to do. Also, it would be a good idea to place a post to News Feed box under these where you will let the user ask his friends what they think about this product. We will probably show you how to implement this in a future article.
API Graph can help you learn more about customers without asking them to complete forms. The information you learn about them can be used later in newsletters or in personalizing their experience trough the shop. For example, if you learn that your customer is a woman of 36 years old you can recommend specific products for her which would be different from those shown to a man that is 57 years old.
A very important aspect that you should consider is letting users signup and login with Facebook. This would be a 2 click-steps, instead of completing a very long form. You can take the other information you need, such as shipping address or phone number in the Checkout step, when the user buys first.
All of these are cool, but the most important aspect of social shopping is perhaps the communication that increases sales and converts friends of customers into customers. Communication leads to trust, and opinions about products from real people and especially people that we know in real life increase conversions. This is why Comments provided by Facebook should have a central role in your ecommerce application.
Facebook Comments
Have you ever based your purchase on the reviews a product had? How important it is to know who wrote that review, if it is fake or real? Using Facebook Comments can help us in several ways:
- Facebook Comments show who wrote that review – you can see a few words about that person directly in the comments box or you can click on their picture and view their profile.
- Facebook orders comments by order of relevance for you. Comments are ordered to show users the most relevant comments from friends, friends of friends, and the most liked or active discussion threads, while comments marked as spam are hidden from view.
- You can reduce SPAM because writing comments/reviews is not public. Users need to signup to Facebook or to a 3rd party client such as Yahoo, AOL or Hotmail in order to write.
- You can administrate all of your comments directly from Facebook
- Facebook includes a basic grammar filter that:
- Fix common grammar mistakes (e.g. convert ‘dont’ to ‘don’t’)
- Facebook Comments are viral – every message users post is also shown in their News Feed – you can reach their friends and then their friends friends creating a viral loop that brings new customers for your clients.
-
-
- Trims extra whitespace
- Auto cases words (e.g. capitalize the first word of a sentence)
- Expands slang words (e.g. plz becomes please)
- Adds a space after punctuation (e.g. Hi,Cat would become Hi, Cat)
-
Maybe you are wondering why, as a developer, should you care about the number of customers your clients have or gets thanks to you? The answer is simple: because there are a lot of developers that do exactly what you do so you need to differentiate, to stay above. These social elements can help you achieve exactly that goal.
It is very easy to integrate Facebook Comments. While you can find the complete documentation athttp://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/ , i’d like to state that all you have to do is add a code that can be generated on that page:
<div></div><script src=”http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#appId=APP_ID&xfbml=1″></script><fb:comments href=”example.com” num_posts=”2″ width=”500″></fb:comments>
You will probably want to change:
a) appID to an application ID that you have registered on http://www.facebook.com/developers/createapp.php
b) href – to your page URL. This will be used in News Feed
c) num_posts – number of comments that will be shown
d) width – the width of the comments box
You can also use a programming language to dynamically change the href portion for every page.
Social shopping outside Facebook
Social shopping is not just for Facebook. Any social tool, such as Twitter or MySpace can be used to create something unique. However, you should keep in mind that all of these have something specific. Twitter is not a social network in the real sense of the word, but a news network. It is great thus to use it to inform people. Give valuable information to customers that they will want to share with their friends. Place Tweet buttons in your products page, in your wishlists (“I like these products from SHOPNAME: product1, product2, product3.”) and anywhere you can give users something valuable to share.
Create a points system based on actions users do in shops (reviews, adding products to wishlist, sharing with friends) and reward them with gifts or discounts.
It is also great to use tools others have created and decrease the time you spend coding your own. Addthis.com provides a wide list of networks where you can share information, while OpenInviter provides a huge lists of networks where you can send invitations to friends. Online shopping tools such as ShopSocial.ly or Squeeqly.com can add a plus of professionalism to the shops you create. ShopSocial.ly let’s your users discuss about products they like, while Squeeqly rewards customer with discounts for sharing their purchases on social networks.
In this article we have discussed about social shopping features that you can add to your shops and create unique ecommerce websites. In future articles we will discuss about the ways we can code these features in our applications.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Contributors.ro
Part of the Hotnews.ro/Euractiv.ro brands, Contributors is a free community of authors that want to share their experience and knowledge to readers and other collaborators.
Website: www.contributors.ro
Popularity: 23% [?]
Brands Addict
BrandsAddict.ro is a fashion ecommerce websites where you can buy brand products with huge discounts, even up to 60-70% to products.
Website: www.brandsaddict.ro
Popularity: 18% [?]
Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei
The Casidro projects consists of a database of over 2000 libraries from Romania. The module created for Bibnat.ro consists of an administration panel where they can manage all the libraries and where they can import new libraries from Excel files. In the frontend we have created a map with regions which brings you to lists of libraries from the corresponding regions when you click on them. There are also features such as search, edit, add and delete libraries.
Website: http://www.bibnat.ro/
Popularity: 24% [?]
UniversalWar.org
Website: www.universalwar.org
Universal War is a science fiction browser game created between 2000 – 2004. The player becomes a commander of a planet and he needs to develop this planet to success by diplomacy, economy, politics, military actions and technological research.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Nuntideflori.ro
Nuntideflori.ro is a romanian wedding portal and social network for brides and grooms. It is one of the biggest portals of its kind from Romania, as complexity.
Website: www.nuntideflori.ro
Popularity: 17% [?]
IRC is like wine: older it get’s, better it is!
We live an era of social networks, where we can find friends with whom we haven’t talked in ages. A lot of startups rise to make our social experience better, whether it is for shopping, games or anything else. But …old things don’t lose their power. IRC is better than ever this days.
I never thought I would do this again, but I began to use mIRC once more 
. It’s true, not for meeting strangers and engaging in social conversations with them on anything or nothing, but for a certain purpose. Trough my friends at www.bbgamezone.net (a forum for browser games creators) I have found that Freenode is a place where I can meet a lot of cool people that are doing exactly what I am and that I can help with advice or that can help me.
A light lit in my mind after I started using it again. Social networks are cool, facebook and twitter are cool, but once in a while we need a social network where we can be ourself besides a courtain of anonymity. Sometimes, anonymity can open you up to meet new people in greater dephs than a website where people can see who you are. Many times the safety that anonymity creates can help us go beyond simple chatting. I begin to understand now why the Universal War crew was the most united team I had in 10 years of creating online projects. IRC was one of the many reasons.
If you wish to chat with me, you can find me on irc.freenode.net under the nickname Renex. I love to stay on these channels:
#startups
#bbg
#codeigniter
#gamedev
#html5
#jquery
#memcached
#mysql
#twitterapi
Except #startups, all of the above are development channels.
Click on the image to see what chat is about
Popularity: 23% [?]
“If you have a dream, fight for it” – interview with @alexisbonte
In early 2009 I had the opportunity to interview some online game creators for BBGUniverse, one of my personal projects . One of the most interesting interviews was with Alexis Bonte, especially for his final message to game creators:
If you have a dream, fight for it in order to make it real. Maybe you don’t have the money, the time or the people of a big game developing studio, but the Internet is full of possibilities.
Now, social networks bring us a new world to explore. All you have to do is work and don’t give up.
While this fits perfectly for game creators, the sphere can be enlarged to all entrepreneurs. As this was one of the most important interviews I had done, I will reproduce it below because it was a part of my personal development.
Interview with Alexis Bonte
“eRepublik is about changing the course of history in a huge virtual society. As a citizen in this New World of 63,500 you have the power to make a difference and fulfill your economic, political or military goals like never possible before.” This is what states on the game page. Erepublik became gold this autumn and it has over 60.000 thousands players after less than 2 years since it is online. We had the priviledge of an interview withAlexis Bonte , co-founder of Erepublik.
Q: Please introduce yourself. How did eRepublik change your life?
A: I began my professional career in the pharmaceutical industry with CPH Pharma. In Internet, I was part of the team that built lastminute.com, and I become Managing Director for the group in Italy.
After the sale of lastminute.com I became a business angel for different projects. Currently, I am the CEO of eRepublik.com, a company which I founded with George Lemnaru, and I am a board member at: SEII, CPH Pharma, Farmacia y Salud, Fitnesskit.com, Trilulilu.ro (where I am also the non-executive chairman), Tevin.ro as well as at Centrofarm.ro and GeneralCom both publicly listed at the Bucharest Stock Exchange. eRepublik changed my life in that Ihave very little time for other stuff but it is worth it.
Q: How would you describe the game?
A: eRepublik, is a mirror version of the real world where users follow their political, economic or military aspirations to change the course of history. In eRepublik citizens can live out their dreams, interact with friends and meet new ones as they navigate their new world.
Q: There are hundreds of browser games created by people from the entire world. Is eRepublik special? Why?
A: eRepublik is special because there is no artificial intelligence. Everything is based on human interaction.
eRepublik is built around the concept of a daily social experience and has an advantage over other strategy games, because it demands a very small fraction of users’ free time (about 15 minutes), while providing them a much deeper experience for that time than anything available at the moment.
Q: Who had the idea to create the game and how did the story of eRepublik begin?
A: The game was born, based on an idea from co Founder George Lemnaru, after a long conversation we had when we met in Bucharest about a year and a half ago. George’s idea was to develop and economic strategy game but we ended by adding tons of things!
I ended up buying shares in Tevin Solutions, the company George founded, and we created eRepublik Labs in order to develop the game.
Q: Creating a browser game requires a lot of involvement and there are good and bad things that happen.Could you describe a positive and then a negative experience you had in the game?
A: When you are not a big company, a big developer, is not easy to find the means to set a project in motion. You have to get money, people… But if you fight for it, there is always a way out, an option.
In the case of eRepublik, the initial investment for production of the beta version of eRepublik was €200,000. During 2008 an additional total of €550,000 was invested for the development of Version 1 by the French venture capital firm AGF Private Equity, as well as by several Business Angels with broad Internet experience.
Q: eRepublik is a game based on community. In several interviews you have declared that the community is the one that develops the game all the time. What relationship do you have with your players?
A: eRepublik has been developed by a team of 25 people in Spain and Romania. During its beta phase, we received a lot help from volunteers and received input from many active citizens who have provided their comments and ideas. For me, this feedback is essential because they, the citizens, are the ones who really know the game. For example, now that we have launched V1 (the public version), we have counted on the help of our community to find and solve bugs, add features, improve things that they didn’t like. Thus enhancing the players’ experience.
Q: What do you like the most of this relationship? Could you list some positive and some negative things from the experience with your players?
A: For example, the fact that users create the majority of the content also makes the world inside the game grow rapidly. There are thousands of companies employing real people and thousand of independent newspapers.
We have carried out meetings in Spain and in Romania with users, and it is very rewarding in terms of the feedback received from users regarding the different aspects of the game. You can exchange ideas, opinions… and it is very positive.
I can mention one thing which is not really bad but that shows the high level of implication our citizens have with the game. They are so involved that if they do not like something new they will chase you all around with messages and emails in order to prove their point!!!
Q: What means eRepublik now? (if you could tell some things from the present of the game)
A: Today, eRepublik has over 60.000 citizens all over the world. This means over 60,000 real people who enter the game at least once a day for an average of 15 minutes.
Q: Did the financial crisis affect eRepublik? Does it happen inside the world you have created?
A: The economy of eRepublik was affected during the transition to the V1. The creation of raw materials and their industries required some adaptation and created some level of confusion at the beginning, but players were up to the task and they overcame all the troubles. That and wars have reactivated eRepublik’s economy a great deal
Talking about real life, it is obvious that if people have no money, they can’t buy eRepublik gold, for example. But we have not noticed any ill effects of the crisis in eRepublik this is probably due to the fact that you don’t have to buy gold to do well and if you do it is quite a small spend.
Q: What plans do you have for the future of the game? (It would be interesting if you could provide a spotlight on the future development).
A: Now, we have finished the launch of the V1, so we have to improve things. We will continue developing new features and possibilities.
Q:You have over 60,000 players and you are still in beta. How much did you invest in the game and what advertising methods do you use? Do you have any sponsors?
A: Actually, we are not in beta, we launched the public version, or V1, of eRepublik back in October. And we don’t have any sponsor. Over 95% of the eRepublik world has been created by its citizens; its social based game play allows it to spread virally in terms of content and users, with almost no distribution and development costs. Our citizens are our best sponsors.
Q: Do you run any other project? If yes, Could you tell us a few words about them?
A: eRepublik is my only executive role I’m either an investor or board member in other projects. The main internet one would be trilulilu.ro the leading video, audio and images streaming community in Romania.
Q: Please speak to your players and possible future players. What would you like to tell them?
A: I would like to say that eRepublik is more than a multiplayer online game. eRepublik is a mirror of the real world: in the game, citizens can live out their dreams, interact with friends and meet new ones as they navigate their new world. We want to revolutionize the way strategy games are created, distributed and played by leveraging the power of communities and the Internet.
eRepublik is perfect for strategy games fans, videogame players, bloggers, members of online social networks and various online gaming communities, and also for Ex-videogame players who want something new, for people who have the money but do not have the time to play the online games currently available.
Q: Do you have any message for developers that would like to create browser games?
A: My message is: if you have a dream, fight for it in order to make it real. Maybe you don’t have the money, the time or the people of a big game developing studio, but the Internet is full of possibilities.
Now, social networks bring us a new world to explore. All you have to do is work and don’t give up.
Q: Would you like to add anything else?
A: Thanks for your interest in eRepublik
THe original article can be found on http://bbguniverse.com/2009/01/12/67/ .
Popularity: 31% [?]
Cum a aparut ziua barbatului?
The following post is in romanian, because on 5th May we celebrate Men Day.
Campania “Ziua Bărbatului” a fost promovată pe toate mediile, de la tv la radio, presă, panotaj stradal, online, SMS, media neconvenţională, materiale promoţionale în locaţii HORECA şi în magazine, şi a beneficiat de o puternică susţinere prin mijloace specifice de PR.
Agentia de PR: THE PRACTICE
Numele campaniei: Ziua Bărbatului
Numele initiatorului proiectului: InBev România, cu brandul Bergenbier
Perioada de desfasurare: martie – mai 2007
Premise:
Pornind de la identitatea puternic masculină a Bergenbier, s-a stabilit obiectivul creării unei legături şi mai strânse cu consumatorii, care să marcheze pentru totdeauna teritoriul masculin şi complicitar al berii Bergenbier. Acest lucru a fost realizat printr-un concept puternic, inovator dar care a reuşit, în acelaşi timp, să păstreze ideea complicităţii între bărbaţi, care a consacrat acest brand.
Potrivit reprezentanţilor egenţiei, conceptul Zilei Bărbatului a venit în mod natural şi s-a potrivit ca o mănuşă pentru Bergenbier, iar de aici până la fapte nu a mai fost decât un pas. Campania şi-a propus să legitimeze existenţa unei zile dedicate Bărbatului, aşa cum 1 sau 8 Martie sunt zile ale femeii. Bergenbier a fost, mai întâi, mesagerul bărbaţilor, invocând într-o cheie amuzantă motivele care cer existenţa unei astfel de zile. Într-o a doua fază, s-a transformat în “vocea” care a proclamat Ziua Bărbatului pe 5 mai, iar în cea de a treia fază a devenit organizatorul celei mai mari petreceri cu ocazia acestei sărbători.
Campania de PR a avut rolul de a potenţa rezultatele promovării Zilei Bărbatului, dar şi toate acţiunile întreprinse de Bergenbier din cadrul acestei campanii. Pe de altă parte, pornind de la specificul activităţilor de relaţii publice, campania de PR a atins publicuri-ţintă pe care componenta de advertising nu le putea acoperi cu mesaje personalizate – mass media şi liderii de opinie.
Continuarea articolului pe http://www.iaa.ro/Articole/Studii-de-caz/Ziua-barbatului-sau-succesul-unei-campanii-integrate/1468.html
Popularity: 27% [?]
A few articles that I have wrote
Tuesday I received an email from a person called David who I didn’t know or met before. He read one of my articles from E-commerce Developer and had a question. As you can see nothing unusual ’till here. But this simple fact generated a lot of joy for me. Finally, after 10 years of learning, I found out that I could help a stranger without doing anything at that moment with the power of the internet. Wow!
So I decided I’ll share some of the articles that I wrote here on the blog. Maybe someone will find them useful. If you have any questions or comments regarding the articles ask them in the comments system below.
Here comes the list:
1) Try Codeigniter for Your Next Ecommerce Build – January 05, 2010
2) Tutorial: How to create a Signup system with CodeIgniter – January 12, 2010
3) Examples of Automated Image Manipulation in PHP – January 19, 2010
4) SEO Friendly URL’s in CodeIgniter – February 02, 2010
5) Four Useful Add-ons for CodeIgniter – February 16, 2010
6) Try Benefit of Putting AJAX and CodeIgniter PHP Together – April 09, 2010
7) Using Google Charts to Create Custom Graphs March 10, 2011
Tomorrow I have a special surprise for you: An interview with Alexis Bonte!
Popularity: 26% [?]
