Cafe Radioactive

Tue, 21 Jan 2003 23:22:55 GMT

Jim - here's a long msg; go get yourself a cup of coffee first. "--6 A-level topics 1-10 should have B-level topics under each. ...I'll send an updated version of the outline structure, but it will be close to the version I attached to the previous note" I know it's tough to read my mind, but I haven't been able to let go of this vision - that we've talked about - re how the site should be set up and presented. Keeping in the mind my/our desire to present a site with high value & useful info content, allow me to reiterate to clarify, and convince you and me that this makes sense. The navbar really points to major topics of discussion, not products. The only product-related links on the navbar are the Store link, and the Bikes link. A-level topics are the unexpanded topics listed in the navbar. B-level topics exist to provide better granularity to the material presented, and to jump to headers on alpha-content pages. The first B-level topic jumps to a section header of the same name at the top of an alpha-content page, lower B-level topics jump to section headers of the same name, but lower in a page. Alpha-content pages present general and specific discussion on the various topics. Scattered within may be links to other alpha=content pages, links to beta-content pages, which contain more specific, less general info, that pop up in their own window, (ie not take the visitor away from the alpha-content page). There will be links to specific products, which will take them to the Miva product page. The most difficult and time consuming alpha content pages (for me) are those relating to topic 1 & 2 (probs, solutions). I'm about 2/3 done with a first draft topic 1, which I've been working on in my spare time. Here's an organzational question: Does it make more sense to first jump to the Miva product order location, with a link for more detailed info, such as a blown-up thumbnail and writeup, or to first jump to a product spec page, from which you can select or jump to a button? I've seen both, and could go either way. I think Miva tends more towards the first method. Do you know of, or use a web conceptual design tool? I'm using excel to generate a tabular hierarchy because I think that's a tool we both have. "--13 The list of Miva departments needs to be changed to reflect the products we will offer. I'll send you an updated list. When might I expect that list?" See the attached file, which provides a near-final list of Miva topics, products to be oferred, and some links to ref materials. -- There's been several reasons for the delay. When I first put together a potential product list over 18 mos ago, it included, and was limited to things I had access to, and was influenced by my perception of what would sell. As I've progressed and the store has matured, my access has improved, as have the products that can be offered. Adn my perception of what sells has changed with experience. Most recently, I've been looking at the items and margins that can be acheived, with an interest in promoting high margin items over low ones. For example, the NXT line of helmets looks to be really popular. I've sold three in three days. The cheapest ones sell for $135, while my cost is about $85. In other words, it provides a $50 gross profit!! That's a remarkable margin. KBC helmets - absolutely outstanding quality IMHO - run a close second, but cost more. Items in the middle are the jackets, gloves, and boots. All these offer attractive margins - 20-30% - but are more expensive, and run a higher risk of introducing returns, which will quickly chew up profits. Lower down, most of the Kuryakyn crusier accessories provide lower margins, and are heavily discounted on the web, although the liklikhood of returns is less. Chatterbox and Autocomm are attractive, but are electronic, so introduce a dis-incentive to buy, as you can't return them. We can sell Autocomm via phone and mail, but not web. Some items, like Widder, provide an almost break even gross profit, with a net loss. Tires and helmets are widely available on the net at incredible discounts. I bought a pair of tires at a retail price lower than my best wholesale price. So I don't want to sell tires. While helmets are available elsewhere on the web, I'd like to try a limited offering of the KBC, HJC and NXT helments to see what we get. Since I'm going to stock them, we've got nothing to lose. Some mfgs - like J&M - are a-holes, but you don't know until you go swimming with them. There's a surprizing bunch of jerks out there making money; I keep thinking that nice guys like us should be able to do as well or better. The lower-priced things, like Throttle rocker and Bike Log, are almost not worth the trouble to handle them, unless you charge a high S&H charge, as the packaging and postage are more than the product. The reason for the delay on things like these helmets, jackets, boots etc is because they are simple to enumerate, each varying only by model, size and color. It won't be a big job to load the product db with these items. The things needed are appropriate catalog part numbers (that correllate back to my product database. I've been trying unsuccessfully to get support from my retail sw vendor about how to complete the config for a second sales dept and associated product part numbers.) and prices. Thus my concern for the multi-parms in Miva. Now that we know that works, I just have to get catalog numbers and pricing, which I'm working on now. Items like RAM, Kuryakyn, and PIAA offer a much greater domain of choices due to their mix and match approach to parts. Unless the customer knows how to mix up the parts into a solution, it's a difficult job. That's why Cycle Gadgets has put the Ram parts into kits with specific applications. Very clever and sensible. We really need to do something similar, as I dont' see many people making sense of all the individual parts specs. Thus my emphasis on these two mfgs farther back. Another reason for delay, is that in spite of the lousy economy, my Dec 02 store sales exceeded Dec 01 sales, and Jan 03 have already exceeded Jan 02!! I'm still not making any $, but if this trend keeps up, that's very good news, especially as the weather and economy warm up. Unfortunately, based on history, I'd expected this period to be slower, and that I'd have more idle time. Gary

Tue, 21 Jan 2003 21:09:39 GMT

Gary's email and my reply January 15th - In a message dated 1/15/03 8:24:26 AM, garyr1@inetcom.com writes: --1. For the top line of the home page of the current site, put the words "This site is currently undergoing some changes, and will be updated around Feb 1, 2003. Please check back then." DONE. --2. Your new navbar/outline mechanism is desirable because it's easier to change and manage, yes? This is desirable because we don't have a complete, master design for the entire site from which to work. I'm assuming it's relatvely easy to make incremental changes as we go along, if they don't require major structural changes to the entire site, yes? Yes, it is easier to design and maintain with this mechanism. --3. Does you new navbar allow the nav choices to jump to locations within an html page, or only to a page? You've put urls under various navbar choices; are you using these just to test the navbar? You could jump to locations within a navigation page, but it is not necessary to do that. The content that is there is just filler for testing purposes, because I don't have any actual content yet. Yes, the URLs are there just to test the navbar, I can make them look like linked words. --4. The top four lines of your outline included "outline, collapse all, expand all, how this works"; can you remove this? Yes, I can remove this. --5. Previously I sent the menu list below (this one with a couple of mods): 0. Home 1. Comfort and Protection Problems 2. Solutions - Rider 3. Solutions - Bike 4. Safety 5. Security 6. Electronics 7. Luggage & Covers 8. Trips, Travel & Books 9. Tools & Supplies 10. Bikes, Sidecars & Trailers 11. Resources & Links 12. i-Bike Store 13. About Let's call the items above A-level topics. Topics 1-10 should be expandable to subtopics (B-level topics), whereas 0, 12 & 13 should be links to content pages. Considering your answer to question 3 above was that visible urls weren't required, does the new navbar support using primary menu elements to function as links to pages? If so, please modify the new navbar to reflect the top-level organization and order above. Make items 0,12 & 13 link to those three target pages. Lets call these main target pages alpha-content pages. --6 A-level topics 1-10 should have B-level topics under each. I don't want to keep recursing into a complicated menu structure, so B-level topics should be links to alpha-content pages also. I'll send an updated version of the outline structure, but it will be close to the version I attached to the previous note. --7 C-level topics, similar to Comfort Problems/Termperature/Hypothermia in your current new version, should be eliminated from the navbar. C-level topics will be section headings on alpha-content pages. They can be enumerated at the top, and act as jump-links to the topic further down the content page. Please create prototype alpha-content pages for every B-level topic in the navbar. --8 Every alpha-content page should have a common look, and shared footer with site-common elements, such as Guarantee,Privacy, Security, Copyright as found on the current home page. Does your toolset allow you to easily manage global changes to a common element, such as this footer. E.g. what if we need to make changes to the footer in the future; can you easliy make global changes? If so, please include a common footer prototype on every alpha-content page. OK --9 As a general rule, I don't want the site visitor to be taken off our site to view content on another site. In other words, I don't want to populate our pages with extra-site urls. The general exception to this is the Resource section that will list various links to off-site content. OK --10 The i-bike logo on the header should be a link to the home page. OK --11 The home page should be updated. I'd like to add a cruiser to the nice sport/sport touring/touring graphic you've got. The Yamaha Warrior woudl be good. We need to anticipate a layout that has room for New Things and Cool Things. OK on the Warrior, and I'll have to think about how to handle New Things and Cool Things. Right off the bat, I think it should be an A level topic. --12 The entry page to the Miva site has a menu bar that includes "select store"; I don't what our visitor to be able to select the store, and this needs to be eliminated. I think there is a way to do this by replacing the Miva-supplied graphic with our own. See what you can do about this. I can change that, and link right into the i-bike store section. --13 The list of Miva departments needs to be changed to reflect the products we will offer. I'll send you an updated list. When might I expect that list? That is what I have been waiting 6 months for. I've got over 4,000 files that I could put on the site, but until we know how much room the store content is going to take up, I'm reluctant to put much there. Jim

Tue, 21 Jan 2003 20:03:37 GMT

Worked on ManufacturersList Outline Gary sent this email on the 19th. My goal for the next couple of days is to finalize the info for a complete listing of helmets, jackets, boots, gloves and pants. I've been thinking about your comment about the way ebay does it, and evaluating other sites. The majority seem to be set up as deep discount, bulk merchandize sites, where the consumer already knows what they want, and only have to find it in the listing. Few, if any actually help the consumer make a choice, or help them navigate the myriad of product choices and combinations. I think that's where we can offer a valuable service. And hopefully, they will buy from us, rather than jumping to the discount sites. But the design and organization of this info is the hard part. There needs to be product evaluation and selection content that is (optionally) presented to the buyer before they get to the catalog pages. This is the purpose of the alpha-content pages I've discussed before. This is where we put How To info, selection and sizing charts, etc. Once they've figured out what they want to buy, they can navigate to the Miva page. Once there, they can still click on a Details button to get a popup with the official product specs, but I find this factory stuff to be pretty non-useful, just filled with market-speak, jargon and trademarked words, and lacking much real or useful explanation. gary

Thu, 16 Jan 2003 17:30:14 GMT

Introduction to Physics was posted yesterday. The outlines are here... http://radio.weblogs.com/0100251/outlines/OutlineOfPhysics.html and the content is here... http://radio.weblogs.com/0100251/gems/PhysicsDirectory/

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 16:46:09 GMT

I figured out Directory oulining in Radio. I was leaving out the important stuff at the beginning of the Radio Story- %radio.macros.directoryFrame ("http://www.myserver.com/gems/myFirstDirectory.opml")%> From the instructions listed here - http://radio.outliners.com/directoryOutliner Speaking of outlining, Apple Computer's Keynote is an XML outliner. How about saving an outline in Radio Userland's folder? Nobody is talking about that yet.

Sat, 04 Jan 2003 02:09:40 GMT

Bob, Click this URL to get into my outlnes - http://radio.weblogs.com/0100251/outlines/navigation/NSF.html for a demo of the NSF outline that you gave to me.

Thu, 02 Jan 2003 23:34:52 GMT

The SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) and STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) programs, two competitively awarded, three-phase Federal Government programs, are designed to stimulate technological innovation and provide opportunities for small business. These dynamic teamings of the private and public sectors include joint venture opportunities for small businesses and the nation's premier nonprofit research institutions. Five Federal agencies reserve a portion of their Research and Development funds to be awarded via the STTR program to small business/nonprofit research institution partnerships. For more information about the STTR program, visit http://www.sba.gov/sbir/indexsbir-sttr.html. The SBIR program solicitations are issued by ten Federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. For more information about the SBIR program, visit http://www.sba.gov/sbir/indexsbir-sttr.html. In addition, Federal agencies maintain department-specific SBIR and STTR programs Web pages.

Thu, 02 Jan 2003 23:22:44 GMT

NSF SBIR grant info http://www.zyn.com/sbir/

Tue, 31 Dec 2002 19:58:04 GMT

Problem fixed. Now what caused the radio.root file to go bad?

Mon, 30 Dec 2002 18:59:32 GMT

Had a radio system hiccup last night. The server said out of memory. I stopped and then restarted the server this morning and it seems to be fixed. This post should let me know if everything is working. Replaced radio.root with older version to see if this fixes it.