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!

Since 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!).