Stinky Ink News

Actinic Plugins to help you have a life

I have been using Actinic since 2002, and gone through several painful learning curves, but have always looked to improve my website, my customers experience of the site and of course my wealth creation opportunities. Recently we are using V8, and have come up with several ideas that we consider improve life for us and are also positively impacting our customer conversion rates.

The bottom line is that I sell ink for a living!. I don’t sell software, but feel that if I were in a different situation i.e. didn’t have the level of software expertise in house that I am fortunate to have today then I would want to be able to implement improvements to my business and site so I am giving the code away to anyone who wants to have a go at implementing it. All I ask in return is a link from your site back to ours – and I’ll even provide the linking code for you.

Implementing Google E-Commerce in Analytics

We use Google Analytics and think that it is a really powerful piece of software. I used to use Clicktracks and remember spending significant amounts of money on buying it, but Analytics nowadays has taken over. If you use it now and haven’t implemented the e-commerce facility then you are missing out big time!. This implementation that Rob Williams has written for us took him some time to get right, but the information that I have now available to me is mind blowing, once you have used it you will wonder how you ever managed without it. Remember this code is free to download, but please give us a link back.

Actinic Checkout Speedup

As a user of Actinic since V5.0 one thing that has remained constant in an ever improving world is the checkout process. As I use Secure Hosting as my PSP my customer has to click ‘NEXT’ five times before I can take their money off them.

If you look at optimising your website for your customers (rather than Google), one of the key issues is to make your checkout easy for your customer to use. An easy checkout is a good checkout and if you can get it down to 1 page it is perfect!. Key issues at this point are:

1. Eliminate unnecessary steps and only ask for information that is completely necessary in completing the transaction.
2. Let the visitor know that you value their privacy and you have a secure site.
3. Don’t keep the visitor in the dark about anything – clearly let them know about shipping costs, returns and tax
4. Remind them what they are buying!

We spent the best part of two weeks developing this code which reduces the Actinic (V8) checkout process from 5 to 2 pages. With the information gathered from our Google Analytics we have seen an increase in order conversions of 24% and a significant reduction in trolley abondonment. Developing this code has cost us money in terms of time spent, but it will give us a return quite quickly. All I am asking for is a donation or link back. If you use one of our links then the code is FOC, if you decide that you can’t link back a donation of £34.99 would be gratefully received?.

As a user of Actinic since V5.0 one thing that has remained constant in an ever improving world is the checkout process. As I use Secure Hosting as my PSP, My customer has to click ‘NEXT’ five times before I can take their money off them.

If you look at optimising your website for your customers (rather than Google), one of the key issues is to make your checkout easy for your customer to use. An easy checkout is a good checkout and if you can get it down to 1 page it is perfect!. Key issues at this point are:

1. Eliminate unnecessary steps and only ask for information that is completely necessary in completing the transaction.
2. Let the visitor know that you value their privacy and you have a secure site.
3. Don’t keep the visitor in the dark about anything – clearly let them know about shipping costs, returns and tax
4. Remind them what they are buying!

We spent the best part of two weeks developing this code which reduces the Actinic (V8) checkout process from 5 to 2 pages. With the information gathered from our Google Analytics we have seen an increase in order conversions of 24% and a significant reduction in trolley abandonment.

This addon also fixes an annoying bug where if a user presses ‘enter’ on the checkout form they are sent back to the first page of the checkout.

Developing this code has cost us money in terms of time spent, but it will give us a return quite quickly.
I am willing to give you this code for nothing – but (there is always a but!) I want a decent link back from your site to me, there – not too painful was it. If you feel you are unable to link to us then please donate £34.99 to keep us in tea and biccies?.
To make it easy I have listed five different links here and would ask you to look at your nearest printer and choose the relevant code for that manufacturer, if your printer is not listed, use the last one:

Got a HP Printer? Copy and insert on your page:

<a href=”http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk/acatalog/hp__Hewlett_Packard__inkjet_cartridges.html”>
HP Inkjet Cartridges
</a>

Got an Epson Printer? Copy and insert on your page:

<a href=”http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk/acatalog/Epson_Inkjet_Cartridges.html”>
Epson Ink Cartridges
</a>

Got a Canon Printer? Copy and insert on your page:

<a href=”http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk/acatalog/Canon_Printers_Inkjet_Cartridges.html”>
Canon Ink Cartridges
</a>

Got a Lexmark Printer? Copy and insert on your page:

<a href=”http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk/acatalog/Lexmark_Inkjet_Supplies.html”>
Lexmark Ink
</a>

Not Sure? Copy and insert on your page:

<a href=”http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk”>
Printer Ink
</a>

To help with the continued development of actinic plugins or if you can’t link to our site you can donate using paypal:

On to the code…

Do not use this code if you have more than one psp (i.e. paypal and protx).

You will need to download the following files: (right click save target as)

• jQuery-1.2.2.pack.js
• checkout_speedup.js

Place both of these files into your current site directory!

If you’ve changed

Add the following lines to the <head> section of your page layout.

Make sure you place this above the existing actinic javascript files.

Test It, Test It, Test It, Test It, Test It

After importing a snapshot i noticed i could no longer preview the pages i was creating in actinic v8.5.2. I eventually found that the problem was caused by the javascript that was loading in the head section of the page.

You can turn the javascript off in preview mode by wrapping it in the following block:

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsPreviewMode%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20false" >
  <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.form.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="actiniccore.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="actinicextras.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="application.js"></script>
</actinic:block>

We have developed this code over a period of a couple of weeks, and are donating it free to any Actinic users who would like to enable Google E-Commerce tracking within Analytics.
Once this code is enabled the information that you can mine from Analytics is absolutely top notch.

I am willing to give you this code for nothing – but (there is always a but!) I want a decent link back from your site to me, there – not too painful was it?.
To make it easy I have listed five different links here and would ask you to look at your nearest printer and choose the relevant code for that manufacturer, if your printer is not listed, use the last one:

Got a HP Printer? Copy and insert on your page:

Got an Epson Printer? Copy and insert on your page:

Got a Canon Printer? Copy and insert on your page:

Got a Lexmark Printer? Copy and insert on your page:

Not Sure? Copy and insert on your page:

On to the code…

This guide assumes you have already installed analytics on the rest of your site. If not, the article How do I add tracking code to my website? should help you out.

Enable e-commerce tracking

Install the scripts

Create a new file called roi.js and place the following code into it, make sure you adjust all the items in the OPTIONS section to match your own site.

Download jQuery from http://code.google.com/p/jqueryjs/downloads/detail?name=jquery-1.2.1.min.js rename it to jquery.js

Place roi.js and jquery.js into your actinic ’site’ directory.

Set Actinic Page Type to ‘Receipt’

Place the following changes into the section of ‘Receipt Page Layout’

Wrap Actinic Variables with span tags.

The roi script needs a way of referencing each of the Actinic variables, we can do this by wrapping each of them with a span tag and giving them a class. This could easily work with another shopping cart system as long you have a way of accessing the receipt templates.

.receipt_order_id in ‘Receipt Order Number’ layout

.receipt_total in ‘Total Row’ layout

.receipt_tax in ‘Tax 1 Row’ layout

.receipt_shipping in ‘Shipping Charge Row’ layout

.receipt_town & .receipt_county in ‘Receipt Invoice Address Details’ layout

.receipt_line, .receipt_price in ‘Product Line Row’ layout

The .receipt_line class has to be added so the roi script can loop through each product row.

.receipt_reference, .receipt_name, .receipt_quantity in ‘Cart Product Details’ layout

.receipt_category & .receipt_country_code

If you have a way of setting .receipt_category & .receipt_country_code values they will be automatically used instead of the default variables set in the roi script.

All Done!

Update your site and wait 24 hours for Google to start showing your stats.