Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
I’m working on an ecommerce project at work and it’s been a long time since I posted to this site, so I thought I’d share something that I learned today.
We’ve all seen those 3 digit security numbers on the back of credit cards, but what exactly are they called? Are they called CCV, CVV, CVC, or CVVC? Well according to sir Wikipedia, the overarching term is actually CSC, or Card Security Code, which encompasses all the different flavors that are out there. CVC1 or CVV1 is actually encoded on the magnetic strip. CVC2 or CVV2 is the 3 digit code on the back of the card in the signature panel. This code is often asked for by merchants for “card not present” transactions over the internet, by mail, fax or phone. Still confused? Check the Wikipedia link above for all the boring details.
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
Not that this is or ever will be a problem on this site, but for sites which yield hundreds of comments on each post, the idea of introducing “milemarker” author comments would save a lot of time for readers interested in participating in the conversation.
In the same way a TV show can catch you up on the story with a 30 second recap, we can give people the important pieces of the conversation so that they can join in without having to read everything, thus bringing the conversation into context.
Jason Santa Maria on Cultivating Conversations
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
I had the chance to use the all new Campaign Monitor tool at work last week for a client project and I’ll have to say that I’m very impressed! Two of the features brought over from their previous MailBuild product, rebranding and client templates, are probably the most valuable additions.
Customize & Resell
Campaign Monitor now allows you to resell the service to clients and offer them a custom re-branded experience. You can pick from preset color themes, change the site name, add a logo, even setup custom login urls on the client’s own domain.
View Screencast
Let Your Clients Send
This is my favorite feature since it helps me out dramatically with allowing clients to setup and send their own email campaigns. Simply take your existing email template, add the necessary content tags and viola, a template with specific editable regions your clients can use; and they’ll never need to see a bit of markup! The online editor is fairly straightforward and responsive. You can even drag and drop regions around the page.
View Screencast
There are more new features, but I won’t go over them in detail here. Just to name a few: campaign markup rates for individual clients, automatic generation of table of contents lists and text based emails, and a newly reorganized account screen showing clients and a dashboard area containing recent drafts, reports and tests.
The only difficulty I had in setting up my first template with the new system is that it limits the item tags that you can use within repeaters: only one title, one description, and one image per item. The only way around that is to not use repeaters, then you can have as many editable areas per item as you want.
Also be sure to check out their 8 reasons why designers dig us writeup.