Cutting Appointment No Shows

Here is a snippet of an article I wrote on Appointment Reminder about cutting and reducing customer no shows.

One of the most frustrating things for any business owner is when a customer simply does not show up. When this happens, not only has the time now gone to waste, but you are not making the money that you thought you would. While there isn't really anything you can do to prevent customers from no-showing entirely, there are some steps that you can take that should reduce the amount.

You can read the full article by following the link below.

7 Ways To Reduce  Customer No Shows

Outlook SMS Appointment Reminders

Recently I had been approached by a couple of financial planning advisors in Australia looking for a way to send their clients text appointment reminders directly from Outlook.

If you're in the financial planning game then each appointment matters, can lead to a decent sale and you don't want to loose that opportunity to close a deal.

Appointment Reminder has this ability and it works really well, sending SMS reminders. Each reminder does an extra 30 seconds or so per appointment but it has been a good ROI for these clients.

Steps:

1. Goto http://appointmentreminder.com.au and signup for a FREE trial.
   
   
2. You'll need to download the correct version depending on which version of Outlook you using.  The software supports Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016.
   
3. Once installed go into you calendar and right mouse click on any event in the calendar.  You will see a new option called "create appointment reminder"
   
   
   
   
4.  When you click on create appointment reminder you will need to enter the details of the client so they get the SMS reminder.
   
   
   



Reminder Details Screen



5.  Click save and you're done.

Pretty cool aye? There are also options for changing the wording of the SMS message so it's tailored to your business, ability to send them 24 hours before, 48 hours before or whatever suits your business the best.

If you're wanting to reduce your no show rate or want to add another level of communication with your clients check out Appointment Reminder for sending sms/text reminders.

Text Appointment Reminders

Text Appointment Reminders: The Benefits

Reminding clients of when their appointments is important. While it may seem easy enough, there are many businesses out there who fail to provide reminders – doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, plumbers, lawyers, and even tax consultants. If you have a business where appointments are scheduled, text appointment reminders are a must. This will make it easier for you to manage your appointment, provide reminders, and more. There are some amazing benefits to this service and it is easier to implement than you might think.

Read More: Text Appointment Reminders

SMS Appointment Reminder Templates

I've been helping out a number of businesses to get started with sending SMS appointment reminders.

They have seen a decent decrease in the number of no show's, added better communication to their clients and overall has meant their business is seen in a more positive light.

We generally have been advising clients to send reminders 24 hours before the appointment and ALWAYS asking them to reply if they need to confirm or decline their appointment.

Asking clients to reply  has resulted in about 80% reply rate, which is really great.  By asking clients to confirm really really has reduced the no show rate.

Clients feel more committed to the appointment if they have replied with a yes and less likley to not show, or at least get in contact to re-arrange the appointment time.

Here are some good appointment reminder templates you can use to get started.

Umbraco + Windows Live Writer

Distraction free writing is pretty important when putting together blog posts and I find live writer a pretty good tool to achieve this, means you don’t have your web browser open and aren’t inclined to jump around to other tabs.  You could use another text edit but with being able to publish directly from live writer to Umbraco is pretty neat, also with the ability to upload images it's my number 1 choice for writing blog posts with Umbraco.

Please head over to MatthewSkilton.Me to follow my step by step tutorial on how to setup windows live writer with Umbraco.

Facebook removing default landing page

Wow... Last month we finally got around to creating a default landing page for our facebook fan page (OHbaby Fan Page) then just 1 month later we've been upgraded to a "timeline" layout and lost the ability to show gated like content.

At first this was quite frustrating because we had great success with the default landing page, the old default landing page would ask people to like our fan page and if so they could then enter a draw to win an ipod tocuh in exchange for joining our website. This resulted in lots of new fans to our facebook page and new members to our website.

The solution to the problem was to create a promotional post (and link it to our facebook tab page) on our timeline and then "pin to top" in the post settings.  This results in the post staying at the top of timeline and any new visitors will see this post.  This does mean the new user will have to make an extra click, however we have found that if the post has the right message then the click through ratio will be quite high anyway.

Good Luck :)

Pay With A Tweet

Yesterday after watching a video on SEOMoz I noticed them talking about way to get more back links.  They were talking about "paying with a tweet" a method in which you give something away but only if the user links to your site via a Facebook Post of Twitter Post. This sounded pretty intriguing to me so I quickly Googled pay with a tweet and found the website paywithatweet.com.  Went through the process of creating a button which was pretty simple and at the end gave me some iframe code which I could place on my website.

ohbaby.co.nz is a popular New Zealand Baby Magazine which has articles that are only available to members who subscribe to the print magazine.  We decided to add a pay with a tweet to some of these articles in an attempt to get some more back links from social media.

You can see an example by going to Natural Labour Preparation.  If you're a "max" member you'll be shown the full story otherwise you will need to subscribe or pay with a tweet.  Quite impressed how easy it was to setup, however one issue discovered is that after paying with the tweet the full article is displayed in the pop up window, not ideal because there are no scroll bars, you could paste the address to another window but for the average Internet junkie this might be too hard especially with the address bar greyed out. 
Also it would be really cool if the paywithatweet.com website had an api so we could generate the code on the fly and apply the methodology to all our "max" articles so we could have a special weekend where all articles were free with a tweet or facebook post.  I presume an api is in the making.
Pay with a tweet a service that I presume might become quite popular.

Anyone else using it? Thoughts/Comments?

Using the Umbraco Object in a Umbraco 5 Template

If you want to use the Umbraco object in Templates then you need to add @inherits RenderViewPage to the top of your template (View).  Its best to do this on a Master Template so you only need to add it once. 


If you don't do this you will get an error like CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Field' does not exist in the namespace 'Umbraco' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

Umbraco 5 Hanging on Install IIS7

First chance today to look at Umbraco 5. Unfortunately I haven't looked at many of the previous versions of Umbraco 5 so was really keen to get into it and start a new project so I could all the new cool features.

Unfortunately I got stopped at the first step, created a new database, created a new site IIS 7 and browsed to the new site. The install just hang with the wait cursor just going round and round. After going insane for a few hours I discovered the fix was disbale Link Scanner in AVG. You can disable this by opening the AVG user interface goto tools > advanced settings > link scanned then unticking the 3 options. Hope this gets you on your way. Hoping to bring you lots more Umbraco 5 blog posts in the weeks and months to come.

My First Facebook Application

Recently I have been exploring the Facebook Graph and API and was asked to create a Week By Week Pregnancy application for OHbaby!.

It basically does the following
- You enter your babies date of birth (Due date calculator) found here.
- OHbaby! sends you a week by week account of what your baby is up to.

We are using Quartz.net to schedule the job which seems to be working pretty well so far (When we get 1000's of user we'll see how it goes)

So far I am pretty happy with how its going. Posting messages to Facebook seem to be working pretty well thanks to the Facebook C# SDK.

Check out the application at http://apps.facebook.com/pregnancyweekbyweek/ to see the flow.

Jquery Validate Form Submit Before Opening Popup Window

Sometimes you want to open a form submit in a new window.  Think facebook extended permissions popup window.  To achieve this you would do something like the following.

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function () {
               if ($('#myform').valid()) {
                window.open('', 'formpopup', 'width=800,height=600,resizeable,scrollbars');
                this.target = 'formpopup';
             });
    });
</script>

However you wouldn’t want to open the popup window unless the form being submitted in valid.

If you are using jquery.validate then its pretty easy to update the above javascript to this:

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function () {
        $('#myform').submit(function () {
            if ($('#myform').valid()) {
                window.open('', 'formpopup', 'width=800,height=600,resizeable,scrollbars');
                this.target = 'formpopup';
            }
        });
    });
</script>

 

Hope this helps someone.

Go All Blacks | OHbaby! New Zealand

Here is a Mosaic I put together for OHbaby! in support of the Allblacks in the upcoming Rugby World Cup 2011.

Go All Blacks | OHbaby! New Zealand

Only allow approved members to Login + Umbraco

This is how I go about not allowing Umbraco members to login whn they haven't been approved.

In my MemberType I have a True/False datatype called Active.

On my MemberLogin user control page my asp.net member login control looks like

<asp:Login ID="lgMember" OnLoggingIn="Login1_LoggedIn" CssClass="login" VisibleWhenLoggedIn="false" DestinationPageUrl="/Members.aspx"
 LabelStyle-VerticalAlign="middle" LabelStyle-CssClass="LoginLabel"  TextBoxStyle-Width="100px" UserNameLabelText="Login"
PasswordLabelText="Password" TitleText="" DisplayRememberMe="false" runat="server" />

In the codebehind my Login1_LoggedIn event looks like.

protected void Login1_LoggedIn(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //get member
            Member m = Member.GetMemberByName(((Login)sender).UserName.ToString(), false).First();

            if (m.getProperty("Active").Value.ToString() != "1")
            {
                FormsAuthentication.SignOut();
                HttpContext.Current.Response.Redirect(umbraco.library.NiceUrl(1091));
            }
                       
        }

This will redirect the user to a page explaining their membership hasn't been enabled yet.

nopCommerce and Umbraco

I have two major passions when it comes to .net open source projects and they are Umbraco and nopCommerce.  What I am planning on doing is building a nopCommerce package for Umbraco.  There are plenty of good commerce packages already for Umbraco and I have nothing against these packages I just love nopCommerce and would like to be able to use it within the Umbraco framework.  I don’t think is going to be a quick task and will probably need to be spanned over many months.  I’m going to try and blog what I do so other .Net applications might be able to use some of the challenges I encounter and how they might go about resolving them.   Please check back here regularly to check on my progress.  Will also try and get a package up into codeplex.  Wish me luck!

Free nopcommerce installation

Are you looking for someone to install nopCommerce for you? If you need nopcommerce hosting and join Softsys Hosting then please flick me an email and I'll install if free for you. Softsyshosting is a fantasic hosting company and is a perfect fit for nopCommerce.

skiltz.FontPickerDataType

Umbraco Hosting

Almost every other day I get asked where should I host my Umbraco Site? Or I've just joined XXX hosting company and Umbraco doesn't work.

There are loads of guides and tutorials on the net about how to get Umbraco working on your host, normally these guides have common traits such as make sure you have the correct permissions set and check the hosting runs their websites in Full Trust.

If you want to skip all that hassle then I highly recommend softsyshosting I currently host over 10 Umbraco sites with them and their support system has always been awesome (along with their prices).

In New Zealand (where I am from) I highly recommend Net24 (for speed and reliability), I also run a few Umbraco sites here and again there service and systems are pretty good (as long as you don't need weekend support). Net24 runs Plesk so you'll need to search Google for "Plesk and Umbraco installation" and you shouldn't have any issues.

skiltz.nzPost

Attached is example of what is to come when the nzpost api is realeased for calculating freight costs.

This is a c# .NET solution so you will need to have visual studio 2008 to run it.

Download from http://agentx.info/skiltz.nzpost.zip

Any questions let me know.

c# Example using the nzpost api

     skiltz.nzpost.Package Package = new skiltz.nzpost.Package();
                Package.height = 3;
                Package.length = 3;
                Package.thickness = 3;
                Package.weight = 3;
                Package.Qty = 1;

                //Crete new request to NZPOST RateFinder url
                skiltz.nzpost.Request Request = new skiltz.nzpost.Request("Wellington", "Auckland");

                //Add our shipment package to the request. 
                //Can add as many as you like.
                Request.PackageCollection.Add(Package);

                //Get the response from NZPost
                skiltz.nzpost.Response Response = new skiltz.nzpost.Response();
                Response = Request.GetRate();

                //TO:DO Error Handling.

                //we could loop through each package and spit out whatever we want
                foreach (skiltz.nzpost.Product p in Response.PackageCollection)
                {
                    decimal cost = default(decimal);
                    cost = p.Cost;
                }

                gv1.DataSource = Response.PackageCollection;
                gv1.DataBind();

Result:





vb.net Example

        'Create new package for shipment
        Dim Package As New skiltz.nzpost.Package()
        Package.height = txtHeight.Text
        Package.length = txtLength.Text
        Package.thickness = txtThickness.Text
        Package.weight = txtWeight.Text
        Package.Qty = 1 



        'Crete new request to NZPOST RateFinder url
        Dim Request As New skiltz.nzpost.Request(txtSrc.Text, txtDestination.Text)



        'Add our shipment package to the request. 
        'Can add as many as you like.
        Request.PackageCollection.Add(Package)



        'Get the response from NZPost
        Dim Response As New skiltz.nzpost.Response()
        Response = Request.GetRate()



        'TO:DO Error Handling.



        'we could loop through each package and spit out whatever we want
        For Each p As skiltz.nzpost.Product In Response.PackageCollection
            Dim cost As Decimal
            cost = p.Cost
        Next

If you're looking to implement the nzpost api into your application today and need a developer to make it work please send me an email.

skiltz.DateTimePicker

This projects wraps Martin Milesich's (http://milesich.com/timepicker/) date time picker an extention to jquery ui components into an Umbraco Datatype.

Both of these controls are licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses.

Installing this package will Install the following items:

- Files insalled/umbraco_client/skiltz.DateTimePicker directory
- .dll file installed to your bin directory called skiltz.DateTimePicker.
- Two datatypes called skiltz.DatePicker and skiltz.DateTimePicker

The datatype has 6 properties which can be set.

showTime | true/false
constrainInput | true/false allow user to input text into textbox
stepMinutes | int 1 to 60
stepHours | int 1 to 24
time24h | true/false
dateFormat | dd/mm/yy (javascript format)

Furthur information about these properties should be looked up at Martin's blog as mentioed above.

-Known bugs:
Having two of these datatypes on one page with showTime property set to true caused the time dialog box not to show. This is because the script tags are being rendered to the Master page multiple times.

Any questions feel free to ask.

Download from: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/skiltzdatetimepicker

Import data into nopCommerce

skiltz.nopImport
Current Version - Alpha 0.1 *****NOT for Production Systems******

What does skiltz.nopImport do?
skiltz.nopImport will import data from a data source into the nopCommerce database.

What assumptions are made?- Each product has 1 product variant and zero attributes.
- Only products with SKU's that don't exist in nopCommerce will be imported.
- That you have a ProductTypeID that = 1
- That you have a TemplateID that = 4
- That your product images are stored in the database(nop Default) not on the file system.
- That you can remotely connect to your nopCommerce database.
- That your product images are on the file system.
- .net 3.5 framework is installed on PC

What data sources can I Import from?
Currently you can import from Excel or Microsoft Sql Server.

Where can I get help?
Please post all bugs on the nopCommerce forums or email mskilton@gmail.com

Install guide.

Where can I download the installation from?
It can be downloaded from http://skiltzonnet.blogspot.com


Double click on the install file and follow the prompts.


To open the program go to "Program Files"/skiltz/skiltz.nopimport

Steps to complete a import.
Step 1:
Right Mouse Click on NopSqlConnection and click "Update Connection String"
• Type in your server name i.e /home/sqlexpress
• Choose if using Windows Authentication or username and password
• Type in your database name
• Click test connection
• If successful then click ok

Step 2:
Right Mouse Click on Database (under External Data Sources) and click "Add Connection"
• Click "change" on right and choose your data source type (Excel or Sql Server)
• Type in your server name i.e /home/sqlexpress
• Choose if using Windows Authentication or username and password
• Type in your database name
• Click test connection
• If successful then click ok
• Type name of connection
• Click Save

Step 3:
Right mouse click on the connection you made and click "Database Mapping"
• Choose the table you want to import from
• Choose the column that contains your SKU code.
• Match your columns with the columns in nop using the dropdown boxes.
• click save to save you database mapping.

Step 4:
Right mouse click on the connection you made and click "Analyze data" this should some details about the file you are importing and information about nopCommerce.

Step 5:
Right mouse click on the connection you made and click "Import New Products". This should import products. Go to your website and see if it worked.


File can be downloaded from
http://www.agentx.info/setup.msi