The New LetterRep.com Client(customer)-side & The New LetterRep.com Writers-side

Hello Everyone,

Changed formats to fit everything on a shorter page.

Thank you for your patience.

In order for you to make the most of the new Writers-side of LetterRep.com, we should probably start from the client-side homepage.

I'll post screenshots of note here, but please consider opening the link below in another tab or browser window to look around while you read this post. The development server URL for the new LetterRep.com Homepage is: http://site5803-2.websiteforge.com/index.php/home

Since most of you have been around a while and have a good idea of how LetterRep.com works, I'm just going to jump in as that's the easiest way to explain things. Please keep in mind that things are different...better...but, different, in lots of important ways. If something fails to make sense though, please make a comment below and I'll re-edit the post.

Here's a pic of the new LetterRep.com Client-side Homepage:

I know. It's ugly. I hate the look, too, but it's the backend we're fixing now.

Take the opportunity to click through the links on your browser.

The left menu stays the same until the customer creates an account and logs in. While they are logged out, or not registered, the only items customers see in the left menu are those you see here.

(**NOTE: At the moment, chat might appear on other pages listed in the left menu. It won't appear on them for long. Chat cannot stay connected when a customer clicks on a link. When a customer does, the chat link gets broken. Upon reloading the next page, chat must reconnect. At this stage in Web development, there is no way to ensure the customer is reconnected with the particular writer with whom they were chatting before. For this reason, we may likely have to keep chat ONLY on the homepage...for now.**)

Regardless of where chat appears, however, those interacting with the customer, the writers, you,









will have only one chance to chat with the customers and recommend a letter or service for them. Once they leave the homepage, they leave your chat. By clicking a link - OR CLICKING A LINK YOU SEND TO THEM - they are gone. They will have to return to the homepage to chat again and will likely be met by a different writer in a new chat session. That means, you must make very sure the link you send them is to a letter that will suit their needs or they may not buy it and you will lose the sale.

And, now you're probably wondering, "Why would I want to send a customer a link?"

Because while chatting with a customer, if you copy&paste a link and send it to them, if the customer goes on to purchase the letter for which you send the link, you get credited for the sale. If you send the customer a link to one of your own letters and the customer goes on to buy that product, you get credited a different fee again. Pricing depends on the product sold.

How does this happen?

Ok...at this point, definitely take the time to go through the client(customer)-side. There are very few pages on that side of the new LetterRep.com site, but some very important ones cannot be reached directly from the left menu.

On the List Custom Letters and List All Our Letters pages, you will see links entitled More About This Letter and Visit the Writer. These pages belong to you - you will want to start updating your More About This Letter pages for each of your letters as soon as possible. (More on that in a different post).

Here's an example of the More About This Letter page.


This page shows the title of the letter, your writer name (linked to your 'Visit the Writer' page) and the 'Writer's Summary or Excerpt above the purchase links.'

The 'Writer's Summary or Excerpt' is the only info the customer gets to decide if your letter is for them. What appears in this excerpt if far too little for a sale.

The three purchase options are:

Buy This Letter - $14.99
Buy this letter and have the writer further compose it - $29.99
Hire this writer to compose a fully custom-written letter - $29.99

(Prices are subject to change. Writer fees will not, for the moment.)

The More About This Letter page is a very important page.

Links to the More About This Letter page are the links you will be 'pushing' in chat for to customers to click. If the customer clicks any of the purchase option buttons, you earn the associated fees.

If the customer does not feel the letter meets their needs, they can continue to search on their own or return to the homepage (via links not seen here yet) to chat again with a writer...a LetterRep.

More ways to 'dress up' this page will be coming as we move along.

Next is the Visit the Writer page. Here's an example:


This page has a lot of potential for the future. In time, you will be able to post your credentials, testimonials, press, education, pic, etc.

In the meantime, it is a really nice place to put all the letters that belong to you alone.


There are some other equally important but more standard pages here, the About Us, Contact Us, Terms, Password Recovery and then there are the pages specific to registered customers to help them keep track of their requests and letters. For the most part, however, what you've seen here are the basic pages you as a writer need to know.

So...setting up the scenario...a customer comes to the new LetterRep.com site and hits the new client-side homepage:


Here they arrive and it is at this time that you become aware of them on your Writer-side chat app.








Writer's Chat Console

The Writer-side chat console must be downloaded and installed. I know it's a hassle downloading apps and installing them on your machine. This one's little.

Here's the link to download the chat console: http://www.embeddedchat.com/download.php

After you download and install it, console will probably look something like this:


There's all kinds of cool data there about the last visitor.

This configuration is the default and may give you more info than you need.

Until we generate the username and password, you won't be able to get too far.


Like I, you may get tired quickly of swapping between the chat console and the writer-side homepage of LetterRep.com. Fortunately, LetterRep.com was built with those nice margins on left and right of the page. So, after playing with the windows in my chat console a little, I was able to narrow my browser page and setup my chat page for quick use. Take a look...

To the right, the LetterRep page you see in the browser is the writer-side homepage.

While chatting with a customer in the chat console to the lower right, writers can enter search terms into LetterRep's search box on the browser for letters that may suit the customer's need to post in chat.


Searching here produces a page like this below:

(Ignore the chat appearing in the browser.)
The search results show a link below each letter title, like the one highlighted in blue.

The highlighted blue line is one I 'double-clicked' to copy&paste into the chat window(lower right).



The top right window lists the customers and from where they are visiting(none in this screenshot).

After the writers, you, copy&paste a link such as the one above into the chat box on the lower right and send, here is what the customer sees in their chat:

Even though all the writer text appears blue, the link works and nothing else.

**Note: See the last line? 'Buy'

I did that on purpose to remind you that once the customer clicks that link...you've lost them. (I fully understand at this point if you want to exchange your contact info. While this practice has been discouraged in the past to keep writers from using LetterRep.com to get leads and take them off-site, with the new LetterRep.com writers will only be allowed to post letters in response to requests. No longer will LetterRep.com accept requests 'Not From Visitor Request' as on the existing site.)

That's about it and I'm really tired.

Comment and let me know what needs fixing.

Rob