How to buy a product online with a quick research only?

I talk in this video about how to buy a product (the solution being to have a quick look on the biggest sellers online, and get quick product information from there). I previously wrote on the subject in Romanian: Cum găsești rapid ce produs să cumperi, din mai multe opțiuni?: Olivian Breda. Links I mention in the video: Aparate foto D-SLR ieftine Pret Custom price – eMAG.ro Aparate foto D-SLR – eMAG.ro Aparate Foto DSLR (Reflex) – F64.ro Amazon.com: 4 Stars & Up – Digital SLR Cameras / Digital Cameras: Electronics

The faults of spirituality-seeking

I put people into boxes. A quote from Rand Fishkin („Stereotyping becomes mathematically more dangerous the more people you meet.” » Oliii.com – by Olivian Breda):

„Stereotyping becomes mathematically more dangerous the more people you meet.”

See some articles on the boxes I put on people:

It actually all started with Orthodoxy:

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I know people who are interested into the spiritual things. From Yoga to shamanism, from various religions to angel philosophies, from Eastern spirituality to Western one. OK, so what’s the fault of spirituality?

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How to translate an event in English into Romanian?

Let’s say you’re an event organizer. Your conference is in English, but half of the participants know English (and Romanian), and the other half know only Romanian. How to translate? The first thing to think about is reducing your audience. I had a teacher of Economics in school who said that if you pay someone a good wage, you get a risk – he might be a good or bad employee. Pay that person a poor wage, and you get a guarantee – that’s surely a poor employee, since no qualified person will stay and work for you for a poor salary. It’s the same logic with this audience – don’t translate the event, and some people who don’t know English, might leave, annoyed. But do translate simultaneously into Romanian and you get a certain fact – lots of people will be annoyed by the long waits – the speaker says something, the translator translates this into Romanian, the speaker says something else, the translator translates and so on. See this video – or this one. Yes, most Romanians don’t know Greek, but, still, it’s a very poor choice to translate sentence by sentence. The first thing to do is consider not offering any translation at all. It is annoying for both the speaker (you tend to forget what you are saying, and it’s much more difficult to focus in those conditions) and the audience. Another option is having a screen, and writing the translation. You could use two translators at the same time – one …

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Follow-up: lansare de carte și lectură publică Grigore T. Popa – „Jurnalul unui savant român în America” (2014.06.20, La Vulturi)

Follow-up: lansare de carte și lectură publică Grigore T. Popa - "Jurnalul unui savant român în America" (2014.06.20, La Vulturi)

Vineri, 20 iunie, începând cu ora 19:00, cafeneaua culturală „La Vulturi” și Editura Filos au organizat o seară de carte, pe Vulturilor nr. 8: lansare de carte și lectură publică Grigore T. Popa – „Jurnalul unui savant român în America”.

„Riscați și jertfiți, căci viața calcă pe riscuri și progresul se întemeiază pe jertfe.” (Grigore T. Popa)

A prezentat și a citit din volum Dr. Richard Constantinescu – editor, inițiator și coordonator al seriei de autor „Grigore T. Popa”.

Mai jos, înregistrarea video + audio a evenimentului și fotografii.

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UX tip: Old products – show the evolution of price

Let’s say you have an e-commerce web site. For various reasons, you still keep an old product on your web site, not forgetting to mention that the product is no longer available and can’t be ordered anymore. One of the biggest frustration I have in visiting such product pages is the lack of any information regarding the price. So, if I’m looking for a computer case which is no longer sold, I can’t have any comparison point to what the price would be nowadays. My suggestion for web site owners would be to display the historical evolution of price. The web site camelcamelcamel.com does it well: , but they don’t rank as high as a big e-commerce store, even for products which are out-of-stock. There are lots of reasons for which you might not want to display historical price evolution on a product you currently sell. There are little reasons for not providing this information for an out-out-stock product, still displayed on your web site. Extra tip: transform old product pages into something worthwhile for affiliate marketing. Think about this – you can have a very valuable page put in place for old products. It’s true that you will not be able to sell many things, but, still, you can convert visitors to newer products. So, if you have a detailed description of a subwoofer which is not longer available, you can try and persuade visitors to buy newer products.

How to make the internal search results on an e-commerce web site, functionality-wise? How to display the page of products results on an online store?

Let’s say you have a custom CMS for your online store. You ask this and that, and then comes the time when you need to add a search box. You use basic usability rules (place it at the top, big search box, big button, colorful button, simple text button – „search”), you might even add advanced things, such as auto-complete or advanced criteria for search. But what should you focus on on the results page? How should you make, functionality-wise, the search results page for an e-commerce?

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Follow-up: Claudiu Bălan – „Mii de tineri își păstrează astăzi fecioria până la căsătorie” (2014.06.16, Parohia „Sf. Cuv. Antonie cel Mare”, Titan) – seară duhovnicească

Follow-up:  Claudiu Bălan – "Mii de tineri își păstrează astăzi fecioria până la căsătorie" (2014.06.16, Parohia "Sf. Cuv. Antonie cel Mare", Titan) – seară duhovnicească

Luni – 16.06.2014, în parohia „Sf. Cuv. Antonie cel Mare” din cartierul bucurestean Titan, str. Jean Steriadi nr. 19/A, sector 3, București, a avut loc seara duhovnicească cu domnul Claudiu Bălan – Președintele Asociației „Ortodoxia Tinerilor” din București, care a vorbit despre faptul că „Mii de tineri își păstrează astăzi fecioria până la căsătorie„.

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Mai jos, foto + video de la eveniment.

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How to contradict someone, when you do in customer support?

At times, conflict arises in customer support. A says a thing, B says the opposite to that affirmation:

  • Client, person A: You should take the first road left on the street.
  • Customer care representative, person B: No one takes that road! (notice the exclamation point)

If you’re person A, and a customer care representative (B) gave you that answer, it’s very hard to continue from here. You have just taken all the possible liberties of person A to continue. Even if you are right, even if really no one takes it on that road, you should avoid communicating like person B. What are some alternatives to this scenario?At times, conflict arises in customer support. A says a thing, B says the opposite to that affirmation:

  • Client, person A: You should take the first road left on the street.
  • Customer care representative, person B: No one takes that road! (notice the exclamation point)

If you’re person A, and a customer care representative (B) gave you that answer, it’s very hard to continue from here. You have just taken all the possible liberties of person A to continue. Even if you are right, even if really no one takes it on that road, you should avoid communicating like person B. What are some alternatives to this scenario?

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Follow-up: Conferință și lansare de carte: „Istoria arogantei”, de Luigi Zoja (Spiru Haret, Sala Studio, 2014.06.12)

Follow-up: Conferință și lansare de carte: "Istoria arogantei", de Luigi Zoja (Spiru Haret, Sala Studio, 2014.06.12)

Joi 12 iunie, de la orele 19.00, la Sala Studio a Universităţii Spiru Haret a avut loc lansarea unui volum ce cartografiază dezvoltarea civilizaţiei europene: „Istoria aroganței„, de Luigi Zoja. Lansarea pe piaţă a cărţii a beneficiat de prezenţa la Bucureşti a autorului, care a susţinut conferinţa publică intitulată „Mitul creşterii nelimitate. O psihologie a aroganţei şi pedepsei.

Tematica acestei conferinţe se regăseşte pe larg în cartea „Istoria aroganţei. Psihologia şi limitele dezvoltării”, publicată de editura Herald, în colecţia JUNGIANA. Evenimentul are ca public țintă specialiştii din domeniul psihologiei, psihoterapiei, psihanalizei şi antropologiei, dar şi publicul larg interesat de marile teme psihologice şi economice ale epocii noastre!

Au participat:

Joi 12 iunie, de la orele 19.00, la Sala Studio a Universităţii Spiru Haret a avut loc lansarea unui volum ce cartografiază dezvoltarea civilizaţiei europene: „Istoria aroganței”, de Luigi Zoja. Lansarea pe piaţă a cărţii a beneficiat de prezenţa la Bucureşti a autorului, care a susţinut conferinţa publică intitulată „Mitul creşterii nelimitate. O psihologie a aroganţei şi pedepsei.”

Tematica acestei conferinţe se regăseşte pe larg în cartea „Istoria aroganţei. Psihologia şi limitele dezvoltării”, publicată de editura Herald, în colecţia JUNGIANA. Evenimentul are ca public țintă specialiştii din domeniul psihologiei, psihoterapiei, psihanalizei şi antropologiei, dar şi publicul larg interesat de marile teme psihologice şi economice ale epocii noastre!

Au participat:

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Mai jos, înregistrarea video + audio + fotografii de la eveniment.

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How to back-up HTML files visited web pages on your computer? (2014.06.15)

In the video, I present you how to back-up web pages on your computer as HTML files. I show you how to bulk organize lots of files, how to work with HTML files, why should you compress them, give alternatives (saving as screenshots). The end result is a list of folders organized by date (the folder names are similar to 2014.06.14 Saved file #1, 2014.06.15 Saved file #2 and so on).