Small Change = Big Returns

Sometimes, it’s the little things that produce big changes. Case in point, after using the same image in the 100% Reader Supported area of the blog’s sidebar since 2010, I put together something new. The change was nothing more than a convenient excuse to try a new Photoshop template I had wanted to play with but the returns have been marvelous!

Coffee TipSince swapping out the image, the number of coffee tips has increased tenfold. On one hand, it’s nice to know my coffee habit isn’t going to suffer anytime soon but the sincere boost is evidence that readers value the blog enough to leave a tip.

More Than Just Skin Deep

Another related item here is a change in the way the site handles processing the coffee tip payments. Previously, I used some PayPal generated button functionality that worked fine but was never anything spectacular. It was always a bit clunky and I wanted to see about improving the shopping cart process.

As a result, I installed the very same e-commerce engine included in the recent round of 2.0 upgrades my team designed for The Venture Platform. One particular tweak to the standard functionality was providing the ability to modify a traditional fixed price product entry to accept user defined prices. The result is a wonderfully straightforward and efficient donation tool for our nonprofit users and in Adaptistration’s case, a digital tip jar 🙂

You can experience it first hand at the coffee tip page.

It works equally well on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices and the end result is a much more fluid checkout process for the user that also makes it much easier for me to send a personal thank you note (which I do for each and every tip!).

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

Related Posts

  • Thanks to a steady stream of growth over the past year among my Venture Platform users, I recently completed a server upgrade. As a…

    Adaptistration People 031
  • I’m en route to Chattanooga today to attend a concert on Thursday, 3/2/2017 of my wife, violinist Holly Mulcahy, performing Jim Stephenson’s Tributes violin…

    Adaptistration People 152a
  • Stop fretting over the election and instead, redirect just a bit of that energy to making sure you don't miss out. Adaptistration Jobs Featured…

Leave a Comment