The personality of the Scion is different than the Mini so it makes sense to flow with it rather than ignore it. At the time we did the Mini, not a lot of companies were using it, especially as a “responder vehicle.”

The Scion has been around a while and the street racer guys have a particular way of using graphics and the custom decals.

The language on the scion comes out of Scion car culture, specifically the language they use to describe the names of companies or products that each Scion owner decides to use. The geeks are different so let’s celebrate it.

I made up the phrases to try and blend geek and scion culture. The graphics are intended to be made out of reflective material.

Mobility Systematics:
The Scion systematically transports people, parts and computers around town.
Repair Disorder: When something is in a disordered state you fix it.
k eeg on front of car: gee k in the mirror of the car in front. It’s too normal to not have the space, makes you wonder a bit.
k eeg powered: Geek Powered, same idea.
2.0: A pun on race car numbers and web 2.0. Also, this car is version 2.0 for the geek carfleet

Small changes can significantly increase sales

I have very fond memories of a stay at the Ebisu Westin in Tokyo.  It was a brisk December night when I arrived from Narita airport.  The doorman greeted me with me with a polite bow and an open door.  The lobby was clean, inviting and well-decorated.  The bellman relieved me of my baggage while the front desk staff welcomed me with warmth and sincerity.   Everything was ready.  Just a quick signature and I was in my room with a terrific view of Tokyo’s citylights.  I felt like a king, gliding from the hotel taxi to the comfort on my room.  Quick, painless and professional.

That’s exactly how your company’s e-commerce site should be:  effortless, enjoyable, simple, and tasteful.

If you think about it, internet shoppers don’t have much patience.  They don’t want to see your fancy flash splash page, they don’t want to hear why you cannot ship to their destinations, and they don’t want to read paragraph after paragraph of mindless text.  Think lazy.  They don’t want to have to work hard for anything online.

Here’s what you need to know about e-commerce:

• Skip the fluff. Your home page must go straight to the sale.  Don’t waste time with flashy intros, sexy graphics, spooling videos, etc.  Start selling within the first micro second.  Disarm the shopper. Make them feel at-ease.  Take a look at Zappos.com (www.zappos.com):  Free shipping & Free 365 Day returns.  When I see that prominently displayed, I think, “Great!  I’m ready to shop!”

• Let them search. Internet shoppers are mission-oriented.  Chances are they didn’t just stumble across your site while browsing Congressional testimony online.  They are searching for something and thank goodness they are on your home page.  Make it easy for them to stay there.  Add a search function to your site and place it at the top above the fold so it’s easy to find and easy to use.  iStockphoto does it well: www.istockphoto.com

• Browsing is welcomed. Many ecommerce sites require shoppers to first register for an account before they can add items to their shopping carts.  That’s backwards.  There should be no barriers to shopping.  Let the shoppers shop.  Account registration can be done later at the point of purchase.  By letting the shoppers add items to their carts right away and by simplifying the account registration process, you will reduce cart abandonment and boost sales. See www.amazon.com as an example of how to do it right.

• Give them control. Online shoppers want to be the boss.  They want to control how many items are displayed on a page, they want easy access to the contents of their carts at any time, they want to be able to freely edit their carts while shopping, and they want quick answers to their questions. NetGrocer does a good job with a persistent cart on the right side of each page: www.netgrocer.com

• Breadcrumbs help. Breadcrumb navigation is a user interface term that comes from the Hasel and Gretel fairy tale. Online shoppers like to know here they are.  Use headlines, subheadings and breadcrumbs to make your site more useful.  Navigation must be easy and intuitive.  Remember, online shoppers want to buy.  Help them get what they want as quickly as possible.  Good example of breadcrumb navigation: www.newegg.com.

• Cross-sell. Your ecommerce site should be your best salesperson.  Always up, always ready, always asking for the sale.  No esteem issues, no sick days, no complaints.  Engineer your site to unobtrusively offer related items the shopper may be interested in purchasing.  I like the way all the big book sites do this.  Go to www.barnesandnoble.com, search on a book, and notice the section ‘Customers who bought this also bought…’  The Gap (www.gap.com) also does a good job by suggesting clothes and styles that may go well with what’s in your cart. Brilliant.

• Wish-lists are good. You want repeat business.  Maybe someone will buy something today, and come back later for more.  Or maybe the person shopping is not the one who will ultimately make the purchase. Wish-lists are especially relevant during gift giving seasons like Christmas and Valentine’s Day.  As you can imagine, Victoria’s Secret is big on wish-lists: www.victoriassecret.com

• Reminders are cool. If your product or service is event related, like a birthday or anniversary, you can leverage reminders to encourage your clients to send gifts.  And if you can integrate those reminders with addresses that account holders keep on file, then it’s very easy for repeat shoppers to buy from your site.  Look to American Greetings for inspiration: www.americangreetings.com

• Underscore security. Online shoppers can be distrustful – especially if you’re company’s name is not readily recognizable.  Wal-Mart, Sears, and Target have no problem here. They are globally recognized brands.  But for the rest of us, we have to give the online visitors confidence they are buying from a secure site and their personal information is safe.  Make sure your SSL certificate is updated so the lock icon appears on the secure pages.  And use trusted badges of security like Hacker Safe and Verisign to help mitigate shoppers’ fears.  To see what I mean, go to QVC’s site and scroll to the bottom:  www.iqvc.com

• Facilitate contact. One of the leading causes of cart abandonment is no one to contact.  You’ve probably been in that situation, where you’re shopping online and ready to submit your payment info but you have just one quick question…Make it easy for your customers to get answers to their questions every step of the way.  I like the way Lands End’s site is not bashful about their phone number and links to customer service: www.landsend.com.  They us chat technology very effectively, too.  See bottom left.

If you want to improve the performance of your ecommerce site, spend an hour or two poking around the sites of the brands you know well.  Be sure to examine the ones in your industry.  Note what works and what doesn’t.  Emulate the best practices.  Small changes to your ecommerce site can impact sales dramatically.

It’s that time of the year again when we stop and remind ourselves what we are grateful for:  living in paradise, having a loving family, owning the greatest pet ever.

As a SuperGeek,  I am also grateful for tech tools that make my life easier and more fun:

iPhone
I am grateful for my iPhone.  Its maps lead me out of the most obscure places,  its chess application exercises my brain while I am waiting for my son at the pediatrician’s office,  it advises me what to eat and it delivers New York Times articles before the carrier does.

On a recent trip to Uruguay, I could call my brother who lives in Philly and my staff in Honolulu for free, using iPhone Skype app!

Google
If you read this column regularly, you know I am a big fan of Google.  Google embodies all the things I like: simplicity, power, results.  If your small child asks:  Why are leaves green?, Uncle Google instantly delivers scientifically correct answers and illustrations.

If you use Google docs instead of Microsoft Office, you can access your files from anywhere in the world and collaborate with your family or co-workers on the same projects.

If you need to convert a currency, watch a funny video of a baby dancing to Beyonce’s latest hit, keep track of the volatile stock market, shop for board shorts (See Google Products), consolidate your 5 email accounts, or create a simple website (Google Sites), you can do it well and for free.

Netbook
As a person who is always on a road, always working, and always wanting to stay plugged in, I really appreciate my little Fujitsu netbook and carry it all over the world.  Yes, at 7 years old, it is a grandma of current netbooks, but it allows me to work go online in some third world countries without having to hop on public computers , which are unsafe.

Online shopping
I don’t shop very much and I abhor shopping crowds in general.  However, sometimes I must buy an airplane ticket to New Mexico to visit my mom, buy a bluetooth device for my iPhone, and buy supplies for my martial arts business. Again, I travel a lot and always need to reserve hotels, cars, buy airplane tickets and tickets to events.  If it weren’t for kayak.com, hotels.com, TripAdvisor, Priceline.com, I would spend countless hours on the phone and driving around before each trip.

Thanks to Amazon + Kindle, I don’t need to go to a book store anymore. Retailmenot.com and Fatwallet.com have the best deals and online coupons.

Twitter
Since I am always busy and on the run, yet still curious about the world, Twitter is perfect for me.  I follow the major news organizations and people I find fascinating .  Twitter can provide news from around the world and close to home in convenient snippets. Yes, I still prefer a fresh newspaper on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  However, during the work week, I don’t have this kind of time.  Twitter allows me to stay current with minimum time investment.  Naturally, I use Twitter it via my iPhone.

8 tips to save your company both time and money

Your company’s computer network is like a racecar.  If the engine is well-tuned, the car will run fast.  If it’s poorly maintained, you may not even cross the finish line.

The key is a good return on your IT dollars.  Ultimately, you want your network to be transparent to your team.  The network, in other words, should facilitate your employees’ work – not impede it.

Here’s what you can do to get more horsepower from what you’ve got:

Nuke it. Spyware, viruses and all that other stuff that’s accumulated over the years (months?) will bog down your computers.  The good news is you don’t have the replace the old computers.  Many times just reinstalling the operating system will restore the computer to the speediness of a new one.  Nuking your PC will also remove any bugs on the hard drive. Note: Backup your data before reinstalling (reformatting) your machine.

Score it. Have a computer expert give your network a report card.  We offer this service for free.  We evaluate everything from network efficiency to data security.  By having this kind of comprehensive assessment done, you get a good snapshot of the overall health of your systems and as a result can make smarter decisions about upgrades.

Boost it. Networks are often buggy and sluggish because they were setup improperly.  For example, if data is being accessed inefficiently, everyone on the network will feel the impact.  Have your IT guru take a look at your infrastructure.  Ask her, “How would you setup this network if it were yours?”  You may gain some invaluable insight into how do things better.  Also, if your internet connections is slow as molasses, ask your high speed internet provider to bump up the bandwidth.  The next level up may offer terrific bang for the buck.

Break it. One of the services we provide is called ‘ping testing.’  Just like yor test your fire alarm system from time to time to ensure it’s working well, companies should test their network security to ensure the job is getting done. One story I love to tell is about a bank here in Honolulu.  They hired us to test their security measures.  We breached their network by sprinkling a few USB drives outside their door the following morning before work.  The first employee to arrive that morning did what most people would do:  He picked up the drive, walked over to his computer, and plugged it in.  Curiosity killed the cat.  We were inside their network within 15 minutes!  The message here is:  Train your employees. Turn them into a kind of neighborhood watch.  Unacceptable computer behavior can have some pretty significant fallout.

Dump it. Most companies do NOT have a computer-use policy.  Moreover, no planning is given to how resources should be allocated.  When you create a garden, you plant carrots here and cabbage there.  That’s good planning.  For networks, you should decide who can install what.  Don’t let your garden become a mishmash of stuff installed on whim. Unnecessary software on your computers can lead to hiccups, holdups, data loss and security breaches.

Secure it. Did you know you can block access to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and all those other distracting sites?  You can even decide who has the rights to install new software on a computer.  You may have adopted strong security measures and done a great job of tuning up your systems, but all it takes is one reckless person to ruin it all.  Educate your team on what’s acceptable behavior, establish policies and procedures, and use software to keep everything pointed in the right direction.

Map it. You can log into your bank accounts and see exactly how much money you have on hand.  In the same way, you should be able to look at a sheet of paper and see what systems you have in the office.  The network map should include a detailed list of hardware and software, a schematic diagram of the layout, and the critical passwords.  Keep this info confidential and store it in a fire retardant safe.  It will become very handy when tech needs to swoop in and fix a mission critical issue.  An updated network map means less downtime for you and your employees.

Outsource it. I am like you.  If something can be done in-house, I prefer to do it in-house.  At some point, the proper care and feeding of your computers requires a professional.  It’s true a good part of this care can be done by a tech-savvy employee on your team.  However, there are number of items that require real experience.  Outsource the more sophisticated stuff to qualified persons.  You want to be sure it gets done right the first time.

Ten insider secrets to making real money

We can all use a few extra bucks.  But picking up a second (or third!) job just isn’t feasible with the kids’ afterschool activities and the long, rush-hour commutes.

Solution:  Find a product or a service you like and sell it globally.  It’s not as tough as you might think.  Here’s what you do:

Determine what you want to sell.  It’s best if it’s unique and easy to ship.

Go to GoDaddy.com and register your domain name. Choose something catchy, easy to spell, and easy to remember.  Get the .com version. Don’t worry about all the other .net, .org, etc.  Register the name for 5 years or more.  Search engines think 1 year domain registrants are spammers, so those domains aren’t ranked as high. GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com/) offers the best rates for domain registration.

Go to HostGator.com and purchase hosting services. HostGator (http://www.hostgator.com/) is good and cheap.  They also let you have deep technical control over your hosting – more than GoDaddy.  Buy the ‘Hatchling’ host package.  PS.  You can click on the Host Gator banner ad to the right of this post and receive a discount on hosting.  Have HostGator help you setup WordPress.  They will know what to do.

Choose a WordPress theme. WordPress (http://wordpress.org/) was originally designed for blogging.  It’s open source and free.  Over the last few years, though, WordPress has morphed into a very powerful content management system for websites.  In other words, using WordPress, you can update and edit your site just like you were using Microsoft Word.  No need to know any techy stuff.  WordPress also offers a bunch of powerful tools for search engine optimization.  Go here for free WordPress themes: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

Add pictures, video and text to your new site. Keep the site simple and intuitive.  Emulate the successful businesses like Amazon, Google, Target for ideas per layout and color schemes but focus like a laser on what your are selling. Remember, internet users want more meat, less bun.  Keep the text to a minimum.  Navigation or ‘flow’ through your site should be so natural even a caveman can do it.

Use PayPal for processing payments. PayPal gets the job done.  You don’t need a credit check and you don’t have to pay a ton of upfront fees.  Thirty minutes of setup gets you a robust merchant processing system which also support subscriptions, i.e. you can automatically charge clients monthly for ‘membership’ to your new service.

Install Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google.  Signup for it here: www.google.com/analytics/ It takes all of 5 minutes to get started.  You will need your FTP login and password to insert the code into your web site.  Once you’ve done that, though, you will have real-time data on critical metrics like:  who is visiting your site, where are they coming from, what are they looking at, how long are they on the site, and how many people leave your site without clicking on anything.  This kind of info is gold.  It will help you determine whether your marketing efforts are paying off and whether your site is facilitating real sales.

Get feedback. It’s amazing how often we think we’re communicating well but upon confirmation we discover we’re doing a good job.  Your website must convey the benefits of your products and services.  It must encourage and ultimately convince the potential client to buy.  Show your site to 5 different people.  Let them give you some feedback on their impressions of your site.  Don’t be combative or make excuses for anything.  Just shut and listen to what they have to say.  Listen to one thing and try to understand 10 things. You’re the boss.  You will decide what needs to be done after collecting sufficient input.  Five good people (potential buyers) should be enough to get most of what you need.  Strangers are fine.

Modify your design. A simple design change can dramatically boost conversion rates.  Conversion rate is how well you convert a potential client into an actual customer.  So, if 10 people visit your site but only 1 person buys, then you have a 10% conversion rate.  Higher the rate, the better.  Don’t neglect upsells.  An upsell is someone initially wants a coach seat but you sell him/her a business class seat instead.  And don’t forget to cross-sell.  A cross-sell is when someone wants a belt and you ultimately sell that person a belt, a pair of shoes and a suit!  Finally, repeat business is smart business.  It’s infinitely more efficient to generate repeat sales (multiple sales to the same customer) than to find many customers for one sale.  In any case, fine-tune your site’s layout so it’s very efficient in selling.  Think high conversion rates, fat gross profit margins, and repeat (subscription-based is best) sales.

Use Google AdWords. Many businesses fail simply because they are unwilling to spend money to make money.  Consider for a moment how successful companies like Apple and Lexus are and how easily we recognize their brands.  Yet, both companies continue to advertise aggressively to people like you and me.  Your business is no different.  You have to pay to play.  Skip the yellow pages and stay away from the gimmicky stuff online where someone will try to sign you up for a year of online advertising.  Instead, go straight to Google AdWords:  http://adwords.google.com/ You can create an account it minutes.  Google AdWords lets you create online ads.  You decide everything, including how much to spend per click through, how much to spend per month, where you want the ads to run, etc.  You have total control.  You can even start an ad today and pause it tomorrow.  But what makes Google AdWords really powerful are the qualified leads.  Only people who are interested in your product or service will click on the ad.  That means your ad will send you people who are genuinely interested in what you’re selling.  I would rather have 10 qualified leads than 1000 unqualified ones.  Get going with Google AdWords asap.  Experiment with different ads to see what works.

People often come to me wanting some kind of magic bullet to kick start their online business.  The good news is you can enjoy good success selling online.  The nor so good news is it requires effort.

Thomas Edison once said something like:  Opportunity often comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.

The same is true with your website.  Invest the time and effort into your site and it will pay off.  Let me know if I can help with anything.

Click here if you need help.

James Kerr is Chief Geek of SuperGeeks.  He can be reached at http://supergeeks.net/ and (808) 531-GEEK.  Twitter: SuperGeeks