A few people have asked me in the past as to where I get my business cards printed, the answer is simple, moo.com. They allow you to upload multiple reverse side images, to which I generally include our URL, and then on the front, you can chose a static image and your text details. Below is a copy of the backgrounds I’ve used for my cards, all following the black dog idea.
Business Card Backgrounds
Using Business Cards
As the backgrounds are all different, you do get a few interesting looks handing out business cards. Some people think you are giving their colleague a different / special / secret card, compared with the one they are getting. To be honest I am not a big fan of handing out business cards (and these ones will probably last a year), but in certain circles it looks bad if someone gives you their card and you can’t offer one in return. At the very least the business cards are good for entering competitions in trade shows and at hotels 
For anyone settings themselves up in business and starting out, a few euros and an hour invested in some cards should help.
Right now they have an offer, which only runs until tonight, where you can get 200 cards for about €50, see here. Or to test is about €15 for 50. They have an email list too which regularly sends out offers.
One final moo tip : unless your company is a really focused on the environment, avoid the eco paper cards. The finish isn’t as polished on they as it is for the matt (no recycled card) business cards.
btw. I will be the first to admit that my cards aren’t as cool as these cards, being an ex-electronic engineer I find them really intriguing.
Delivery !
And five days after I’ve ordered they’ve popped up on my door.
Presentation
The packaging
The Moo Cards
Google’s Local Business Center (now called Google Places) hasn’t been without it’s problems in the past, but today I did come across an interesting tactic that can probably help you get listed in multiple places in the local business results. Now I don’t condone this tactic, but perhaps by highlighting it Google will get that little bit smarter and they in turn will update things.
This morning I was looking for a T-shirt printer in Munich, and I typed in the following search query [tshirt druck] on google.de , and after position 3, I see the google places map.
Casually checking out C & D, I didn’t notice that they had the same phone number. But both results brought me to the same same website. On closer inspection we see that munich-t-shirt.com 301 redirects to stadtkopierer.de, but none the less google places lists them both.
btw. stadtkopierer I am also surprised you have 20 reviews, when your competitors have 0, but maybe that’s a topic for another day.
Steps to create a multiple listing
Things that will probably need to be unique :
- website URL
- email address
- business title
Things that probably don’t need to be unique :
I did notice that the two websites have different WHOIS & DNS settings, but I’m guessing that this also isn’t so necessary.
Adding your business on Google Places
To add your business to google places, simply log in to your google account and visit http://www.google.com/local/add/, here you will be guided through the process. My only tip here would be to include as much information as possible.
I’m not going to go too in-depth as to why being listed on Google places is absolutely important. But if you are selling a product and have a physical presence in a town or city, then having a listing will deliver you a great leads of customers who want your product in a specific area. (examples : wedding planner {city name}, dentist near {postcode} , gardner {town} , etc, etc.) You know that people searching for these types of things are more prepared to buy, than someone looking for general information. Test it yourself, google [tv shop] & [tv shop dublin], and see how Google treats the different visitors.
Now I’m off to do a little further testing
Recently I was posed with a question using one of my favourite CMS’s, namely CMSMS. As will all apps that require email addresses, making sure it’s a valid email address is not as easy you would think. Coupled with the possibility of underscores, dashes, plus signs, etc, it can be a nightmare.
The FrontEndUser Module is a great addition, where it allows you to have a login for your site, and display certain parts of templates whether a user is logged in or not. Sadly their email validation is slightly flawed, as it didn’t like email addresses with dashes in the username part.
I came across a great post titled “Comparing E-mail Address Validating Regular Expressions” , which show various examples of what regular expressions will match and check for valid email addresses.
FrontEndUser Fix
To fix the FrontEndUser module to allow dashes (some of you call them hyphens) you can take the following steps
- go to /modules/FrontEndUsers/FrontEndUsers.api.php
- find the function IsValidEmailAddress around line 965
- comment out :
if( !eregi("^[_a-z0-9-\.-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-\.-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,4})$", $email ) )
$reg ='/^([\w\!\#$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+\.)*[\w\!\#$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+@((((([a-z0-9]{1}[a-z0-9\-]{0,62}[a-z0-9]{1})|[a-z])\.)+[a-z]{2,6})|(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}(\:\d{1,5})?)$/i';
if( preg_match($reg, $email ) )
