Site Showcase - Every Ounce Counts
Every Ounce Counts is Australia’s fresh, new on-line voucher website. It’s the free and simple way to start saving. With hundreds of offers available, start making your dollar go further today!
And to make life even easier, in an Australian first you can either print out vouchers or download them from your mobile phone. Currently, we’re focused on saving money for Queensland shoppers but have big plans.
First off I think the site looks fantastic. Who did you get to design it?
Thanks Eric. I had some work done in the initial stages by one of your members (Mike-N-Tosh), but the majority of the back-end modifications and front-end design was completed by Niche Studios here in Brisbane, Australia.
What made you decide to start a voucher website?
Back in January I was working as a construction supervisor on a railway project in Northern Queensland when the world economic crisis finally caught up to us. The government funding for the project was cut off and we were all made redundant overnight. Upon coming home and trying to figure out what to do for a living (options were very limited due to economy), things were getting thin in the back pocket.
The main factors that led to the initial concept:
It took me over 2 hours to find a decent voucher for cheap movie tickets and and a 2-for-1 dinner deal. (Happy wife = Happy life) We received over 200 pages of colored print junk-mail in the letter box in a single week. I researched printed advertising and “Shop-a-Docket” and found them to cost thousands for a single geographical area. I interviewed business owners in my local neighborhood and found that none can afford to even contemplate a “marketing budget”.
It looks like you put a lot of time in the site. What has been the biggest hurdle?
As I am sure is the case with most start-ups, the biggest hurdle is generally funding. Once the concept became more than scribble on hundreds of sheets of butchers paper, I knew that I needed an investor to really make a decent go of it. Luckily for me, there are still people out there willing to back a new venture even in uncertain times. (I think the product itself is more relevant at the moment than ever.)
Regarding the site development, I have had a relatively good run. Because we wanted to separate consumers and businesses, a lot of our focus was on developing the dual user group functionality. They both access the site the same way however ultimately have a completely different experience internally.
Some major features we have implemented are:
- Nationwide Listings - (show in searches regardless of geo)
- Dynamic suburb listing postcode and suburb
- Dynamically print favorites list
- Improved statistics tracking for advertisers
- Count results in category listings
- Banner advertising in categories
And of course, we are developing our mobile site templates at the moment which are due in time for our November launch!
What’s with the UPC code in the lower right?
That QR code is there simply to raise curiosity 
It scans to www.everyouncecounts.com.au - We have been playing with QR codes to see how best to utilize them to enhance the mobile users experience.
What made you decide to go with 68 Classifieds?
To be completely honest, my original intention was to create the voucher site with the smallest budget possible. Your product also seemed to have the most features, and add-ons. You had the best reviews on the forums with regards to customer service, and - to be honest my programming skills are very limited.
Are you happy about that decision?
I think overall, it has saved me a lot of money. Having the developer version as a core product to give to my designers would have saved them countless hours of work. And let’s face it every ounce counts!
Thanks 68 Classifieds, Mike-N-Tosh, and the team at Niche Studios
v4.1.6 Is Now Released
V4.1.6 is now released and is available from our customers section. This is a bug fix release and fixes most of the bugs reported.
Changes:
This is just a bug fix release. You can see a list of changed files in the Change Log
Notes:
If you find any bugs please post them to our bug tracker here:
68 Classifieds Issue Tracker
The download is available in our customers area:
68 Classifieds Customers Area
Included in the download is a change log between the last release and this one. You can also view this in our documentation.
List of Great Resources for 68 Classifieds
Here is a list of 19 great resources for working with 68 Classifieds:
Design
1. 68 Classifieds Basic Structure for Design Part 1
2. 68 Classifieds Basic Structure for Design Part 2
3. Smarty Templates and You
4. Template design tutorial!
5. 68 Classifieds – The Power of Includes
6. 68 Classifieds Auto Loaded Search Fields
7. Featured listings by category
Tutorials
8. How I Reduced Most of My Abandoned Listings
9. Add an RSS Feed to the Seller Store
10. Using the RSS Feed
11. RSS Management with FeedBurner
12. 68 Classifieds and Google Apps
13. Classifieds and Spammers
14. Understanding Images
15. Custom Administration Folder
Development
16. Import Listings into 68 Classifieds
17. Building a news module – 68 Classifieds
18. 68 Classifieds and Smarty Caching
19. Stepping into Smarty - Conditionals
If you find any that are missing and you have found useful please post in the comments and I will add it to the list.
End of Summer Blowout!
Have you been sweating the purchase of 68 Classifieds Developer edition? Well, check out these cool deals!
We are proud to announce an end of summer sale. Now until September 1st 2009 we are discounting the 68 Classifieds Developer Edition and Developer Upgrades.
This sale has now ended!
v4.1.5 Is Now Released
V4.1.5 is now released and is available from our customers section. This is a bug fix release and fixes all bugs reported to date. You can view the full list of bugs fixed here.
Changes:
This is just a bug fix release. You can see a list of changed files in the Change Log
Notes:
If you find any bugs please post them to our bug tracker here:
68 Classifieds Issue Tracker
The download is available in our customers area:
68 Classifieds Customers Area
Included in the download is a change log between the last release and this one. You can also view this in our documentation.
Site Showcase Megavoce.it
Megavoce.it is an Italian multi-city classified site; for this reason it was necessary for us to have a module for the activities management.
The people of Megavoce.it worked really hard and so long in order to obtain what they had clear from the beginning, and they can’t say they have finished yet; there are still some adjustments they planning to do.
Some of the features we have added are:
- Video tutorial for the various steps required to insert a listing (the list of the video can be found at this page http://www.megavoce.it/pages.php?pg=video-tutorial )
- Rotation tips in the home page (Do you know that?) which suggest to the users what can be done in the site. Every advise is linked to an answer in our FAQ section.
- A pop-up which makes more viewable that there are new private messages.
- Lots of changes to the template, to get the graphic we wanted.
- We made more clear the part of the “contact the author of the listing”
- All the categories and the sub-categories in home page are shown, in order to give a more rapid access for the users.
These are just some of the numerous features we created for the software; others are in progress and they’re waiting to see the light. We are very proud of what we have achieved, and 68 classified was the right choice to realize our site.
1. What made you decide to start a classifieds website?
In a moment of financial crisis, when every job is at risk, we had the idea of a classifieds website;
we wanted to create our OWN job, being “the bosses of ourselves”; working on something we like is the best way to create omethin valiable and offer, at the same time, an accurate service to our users.
2. When building your site what was the biggest hurdle?
The hardest part of the work was create a multi city filter; we took a template from templatecodes.com (we really thank David and John!) but it wasn’t exactly how we wanted it. But, after three weeks of debugging, we manage to obtain the result we wanted.
3. What was the easiest?
The easiest task was to translate the software in Italian; it took time, but it wasn’t so hard.
4. If you had to rebuild it again would you do anything differently?
I’d make the site as it looks now, but I would add some features, such as “add a listing to this category” while you are in a specific category and a disclaimer before getting in the adult’s category
5. The site looks successful. Are there any tips you can give people just starting out in the classifieds industry?
The key is to create something people need, something personal, not to be a simple drop in the sea. For example, we add video tutorials, manage the colors of the pages etc…
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