October Newsletter

CD Whyte Ridge Pharmacy is an independently-owned Specialty Compounding Pharmacy based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The owner is Dennis Wong, the Head Consulting Pharmacist, and he has been serving the public since he graduated from the University Of Manitoba Faculty Of Pharmacy in 1990. In 2004 Dennis received the Bonnie Schultz Memorial Award for Practice Excellence in Patient Care awarded by the Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association. At CD Whyte Ridge Dennis has carefully assembled a staff of pharmacists who practice a whole-body approach to treatment for their clients.

For more information on this extremely successful pharmacy please check out the CD Whyte Ridge Pharmacy site at cdwhyteridgerx.com

M9 and CD Whyte Ridge Pharmacy

The M9 Web Design Corporation designed and built this site from the ground up and set speed records throughout. The project began on June 8, 2007 and the site was launched on August 7, 2007 and involved website hosting, a statistics and tracking system, a built-in e-mail newsletter, a very elegant custom design with content management all combined with extensive content generation.

CD Whyte Ridge is a rapidly-expanding business and we at M9 Web Design are proud to support it every way we can!

Almost every day someone asks me, "So what makes the M9 Corporation different from other tech companies?" The answer to that question has several elements but the main one is that M9 always focuses on delivering personal services to our clients while building long-term relationships. Those ideas are the cornerstones of our customer policies and are based upon tried-and true business practices that have stood the test of time.

Our dedication to personalized treatment shows up in everything we do. Consider the following:

• When you call M9 you talk directly to me, Roger Symtak, the president. You go right to the top, no secretaries and no middlemen.
• We are available on demand and will go the extra mile for you. Our staff works here in the office, so if there's a problem anywhere along the line we can fix it immediately.
• We do it all; design, programming, content and hosting. That means we can provide much more cohesive and coherent services for you.

Do our ideas and practices work? Well, longevity might be an indicator of success and M9 has been around longer than most tech companies in Winnipeg; since 2001 in fact. That's a long life span and I truly believe it's because of our policies.

The Start

M9 listens - we start every single project by talking with the customer extensively to find out about their business. We listen to what you want and what you need. Then we do research about your industry in order to gain a greater understanding of the specifics because every company is different. M9 has a wide variety of clients and what works for one might not work for another, that's common sense. What works for a pharmacy probably won't work for a machine shop and what works for a finance company probably won't work for a clothing store. So we learn about our clients and then prepare the project to match their individual needs.

The Long Term

We at M9 Web Design are also interested in working with the business owner over the long term and in order to do that we need to be direct and honest and informed. We want to be working with the company on the first day and two years down the line and then twenty years after that. We always have our eyes on long-term relationships. Does our strategy work? Consider this; M9 still provides services for more than 90% of all the clients who have ever hired us. And that's pretty good.

So give me a call at 474-1122 or email me and let's start building a long-term relationship.

In September of 2007 the results of a survey by Harris Interactive in the United States were released that underscore the importance of having a smoothly functioning e-commerce system. According to the Harris survey 87% of the surveyed online consumers reported some kind of problem in their e-commerce shopping experiences. In addition 42% of those online consumers went on to abandon their purchasing efforts and most of them went on to other internet merchants offering the same services or products.

The Scope of the Issue

The potential for internet sales is astronomical;

• In 2004 worldwide sales using Visa credit cards on the internet totaled more than $150 billion dollars (USD).
• In 2004 worldwide sales over the internet topped $6.8 trillion dollars (USD).
• Canadian internet sales alone topped $160 billion (USD) in 2004.
• By 2010, Forrester Research estimates that the total US sales via ecommerce will be in excess of $329 billion (USD).

Those are the figures that every business owner should have firmly in mind as they consider the issue of ecommerce and customer loyalty. So customer loyalty has a value and should be pursued.

Customer Loyalty

Here at M9 Web Design we understand the importance of developing customer loyalty and the difficulties in maintaining that loyalty. Customer retention is a difficult subject to broach to many business people, they are so busy expanding their business that they lose track of keeping their original customers. This despite the advice of Fred Reichheld, a leading authority on business loyalty, who states that;

"A 5% in customer retention yields a 75% increase in customer net present value." _{Source: www.loyaltyrules.com}

And that translates into a huge potential profit to the business.

Remember also that, if other businesses lose their clients, what's to stop your business from picking them up?

Solutions

So how can a business earn and keep the loyalty of their online customers? It's actually not hard; there are only a few rules to remember, rules that are basic to any business enterprise.

• Provide good service. Treat every customer who contacts you through your website the same as you'd treat someone who walked in off the street. These days more and more people are web-shopping instead of shopping in person.
• Provide personal attention whenever possible. Since there is no opportunity for the customer and the business owner to meet directly anything that can be done should be done to strengthen the ties between the two.
• Listen to your customers. Pay attention to what they say and act on it.
• Make sure your e-commerce system is working.

There are other tactics as well and if you'd like us to help just give M9 Web Design Corporation a call. We are not only knowledgeable about E-Commerce but we are capable of building the perfect system for you!

Let's say you're writing for your own website and want to make sure that you can attract those lovely little search engines that make your site more popular. And you also want to make sure that your customers and potential clients read what you've sent.

So how do you do that? Actually it's not hard and I can give you three techniques to make it even easier.

First; make sure your title is short and sweet and represents the article properly. See above Rich Website Content which is what the article is about. I always think of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs meets the Shropshire Slasher who then tells him that his profession is Shropshire Slasher.

So this article, titled Rich Website Content, is about Rich Website Content.

Second; whenever you write think about what your reader wants to read first, never about what you want to write. Before you write anything think about the adage "cui bono", Latin for "Who Benefits." Your audience wants to read things that they are interested in, not necessarily in reading things you want to tell them.

Third; (and last) position yourself as an expert because you want to be seen as a knowledgeable source for your reader. This can be done in some cases simply by giving a brief biography to show your reader that you know what you are talking about.

For example; my name is Michael Van Rooy and I am a published author with one novel in the stores and one currently in the hands of my publisher (that one should be out next year). I have written and edited over 500 articles for different publications over the 26 years I have been writing and have received various awards and grants. I am currently working on three novels (along with editing the last one); a hard-boiled crime novel, a children's picture book about hamsters and a humorous novel set in the Canadian justice system. I have graduated university and am passionately committed to writing.

So please give us a call at M9 Web Design and we'll see what we can do for you.

RegEx or Regular Expressions are an indispensable programming functionality which uses a variety of control characters for string pattern matching. In other words, it is apparent gibberish that does some pretty cool stuff.

I like examples, so here's one, let us say I want someone to give me an email address, but I want to make sure that the email address they gave me was legitimate.

Here is an email address expressed through a regular expression:

/[^@]@[A-z0-9][A-z0-9-]{2,255}.[A-z0-9.-]*/

This will match:
george@domain.org
Prime.minister@canada.gc.ca

But won't match:
george@domain
misspeller!typo,com

Why is this important?

Simple, it is important because it stops malicious people from sending inaccurate or harmful data. One of the biggest issues in internet security is "string cleaning" or the lack thereof which allows for url or CGI injection, but that's a whole other article.