Currently, we have been rather busy on our new computer vision system. What it does is take your footage from security cameras and our point-of-sale system and does automatic analysing in shops both in the shop itself and at the point of sale. This gives you among other things, the percentage of pedestrian traffic entering your store, which is probably a necessity if you wish to test a discount voucher system. It also gives you demographics information such as sex, age and even behaviour.

We are currently working on adding A/B testing for retail displays, path tracking through premises and customer/product interaction monitoring.

We are starting on theft analysis module, but the full version of this will not be available in the immediate future as it is proving to be the most challenging functionality we are facing. It will be a separate module. One of the problems here, for example, is imagine how difficult it is to detect stolen items. We need first to set up a video history as we are not looking for the presence of an object but looking for its absence.

In view of the direct integration into the point-of-sale system, I see this product as deeply applicable to the pharmacy and newsagency shops.

If you are interested please let me know.

This offer was made by Mark Fletcher in this blog site and also in his own website on Discount Vouchers stated.

I published what I published on the newsagency blog as a newsagent to share the results I am seeing. I did so in the knowledge that you claim to have the vouchers too.

Pick your most successful Lucky Charm store running your points based program and lets compare publicly.

Well, I did not have to pick a Lucky Charm shop as Lucky Charm are very proud of their VIP system. Both Lucky Charm head office and one of their members Cris jumped in quoting figures.

So I then requested that Mark as he agreed to share his data. The offer to share data was suddenly rejected. I was stunned. My first thought was if it is as good as you say, "Why not release the data?" If people do not see this data, they will start asking questions.

So before the questions start, I want to say it is not Lucky Charm and its not me.

So I am publishing here a correction to say that this offer by Mark Fletcher to share his data publicly for comparison purposes is withdrawn.

This offer was made by Mark Fletcher in this blog site and also in his own website on Discount Vouchers stated.

I published what I published on the newsagency blog as a newsagent to share the results I am seeing. I did so in the knowledge that you claim to have the vouchers too.

Pick your most successful Lucky Charm store running your points based program and lets compare publicly.

Well, I did not have to pick a Lucky Charm shop as Lucky Charm are very proud of their VIP system. Both Lucky Charm head office and one of their members Cris jumped in quoting figures.

So I then requested that Mark as he agreed to share his data. The offer to share data was suddenly rejected. I was stunned. My first thought was if it is as good as you say, "Why not release the data?" If people do not see this data, they will start asking questions.

So before the questions start, I want to say it is not Lucky Charm and its not me.

So I am publishing here a correction to say that this offer by Mark Fletcher to share his data publicly for comparison purposes is withdrawn.

In a retail loyalty program, the big problem is you need to ensure that the incremental sales lift from this program are not caused by the cannibalisation of existing revenue by selling at a discount, product that would have been bought anyway.

The cannibalisation of existing revenue is easy to measure with a VIP system.

In your VIP marketing system, divide your customers into two arbitrary groups say A and B. Say all you joined from the 1st to 15th of the month are A and the rest are Bs. Check to see that in marketing they are about the same and if not adjust by putting a few from the stronger group into the weaker one.

Now give your offer a whirl by sending it to the A group. You should be able in a short period to compare the results of A to B.

Now make a table.
A purchased X times, and the profit was P.
B purchased X1 times, and the profit was P1.

Now do some figures, generally when you do this the results are fairly obvious say A's buy 20% more times and the A's profit is 15% up. Now is that good?

If you really have to think about it, then I would say the idea is marginal and it is back to the drawing board.

If it works, do not stop. Try to refine the idea further. For example, maybe you could try reducing the offer to group B instead of say $2.00, try $1.50 for group B if you are still getting good results at $1.50 try setting group A to $1.00 and so on.

As over time, the world changes you need to be continuously updating. The key to a successful marketing program is not just ideas but ongoing measurement over time.

This is the only way to ensure a positive return.

In a retail loyalty program, the big problem is you need to ensure that the incremental sales lift from this program are not caused by the cannibalisation of existing revenue by selling at a discount, product that would have been bought anyway.

The cannibalisation of existing revenue is easy to measure with a VIP system.

In your VIP marketing system, divide your customers into two arbitrary groups say A and B. Say all you joined from the 1st to 15th of the month are A and the rest are Bs. Check to see that in marketing they are about the same and if not adjust by putting a few from the stronger group into the weaker one.

Now give your offer a whirl by sending it to the A group. You should be able in a short period to compare the results of A to B.

Now make a table.
A purchased X times, and the profit was P.
B purchased X1 times, and the profit was P1.

Now do some figures, generally when you do this the results are fairly obvious say A's buy 20% more times and the A's profit is 15% up. Now is that good?

If you really have to think about it, then I would say the idea is marginal and it is back to the drawing board.

If it works, do not stop. Try to refine the idea further. For example, maybe you could try reducing the offer to group B instead of say $2.00, try $1.50 for group B if you are still getting good results at $1.50 try setting group A to $1.00 and so on.

As over time, the world changes you need to be continuously updating. The key to a successful marketing program is not just ideas but ongoing measurement over time.

This is the only way to ensure a positive return.

We are doing some work on measuring customer churn, and so I am doing some studies on people abandoning a queue.

Studies show that most people abandon the queue behaviors before joining the queue. They see a line and walk out.

These people are divided into three groups.

1) Too big

Many give up when they see the queue as too big. In Northern Europe, surveys show this behavior occurs significantly when in the queue has more than seven people, in America it starts occurring significantly at about five people and I suppose Australia being in between it would be six.

Still I would suggest people be conservative and if the queue is say five people its time to act.

2) Slow

If a queue is seen as too slow people tend to avoid that queue. If they are waiting a long time they will abandon the queue. Slow EFTpos are probably costing you money.

According to a British study, a quarter will wait a maximum of two minutes, 59 per cent said they would wait no longer than four minutes, and 73 per cent of shoppers say they would abandon their purchase if they had to queue for more than five minutes. An American study showed that 5 to 10 minutes is the maximum acceptable amount of time that they are prepared to wait in a queue.

It is suggested that if it starts getting too slow make a faster Express lane, maybe with all its problems consider an honesty box.

3) They see it as long.

This is a tough one and its not quite the same as (1) above.

If you look into the shop and see a long queue, some people tend to leave even though the queue is not long.

It is primarily considered to be a result of a faulty shop fit. A useful exercise is to look at your shop and try to picture what the queue would look like to a potential customer if it has six people in a queue. Maybe take some photos to review. Now do something to hid the queue size say put a shelf up to block the view.

Another example is say you have an ATM, it has a long queue, people tend to see its queue as your shop queue, and they leave.

I hope this helps.

We are doing some work on measuring customer churn, and so I am doing some studies on people abandoning a queue.

Studies show that most people abandon the queue behaviors before joining the queue. They see a line and walk out.

These people are divided into three groups.

1) Too big

Many give up when they see the queue as too big. In Northern Europe, surveys show this behavior occurs significantly when in the queue has more than seven people, in America it starts occurring significantly at about five people and I suppose Australia being in between it would be six.

Still I would suggest people be conservative and if the queue is say five people its time to act.

2) Slow

If a queue is seen as too slow people tend to avoid that queue. If they are waiting a long time they will abandon the queue. Slow EFTpos are probably costing you money.

According to a British study, a quarter will wait a maximum of two minutes, 59 per cent said they would wait no longer than four minutes, and 73 per cent of shoppers say they would abandon their purchase if they had to queue for more than five minutes. An American study showed that 5 to 10 minutes is the maximum acceptable amount of time that they are prepared to wait in a queue.

It is suggested that if it starts getting too slow make a faster Express lane, maybe with all its problems consider an honesty box.

3) They see it as long.

This is a tough one and its not quite the same as (1) above.

If you look into the shop and see a long queue, some people tend to leave even though the queue is not long.

It is primarily considered to be a result of a faulty shop fit. A useful exercise is to look at your shop and try to picture what the queue would look like to a potential customer if it has six people in a queue. Maybe take some photos to review. Now do something to hid the queue size say put a shelf up to block the view.

Another example is say you have an ATM, it has a long queue, people tend to see its queue as your shop queue, and they leave.

I hope this helps.

We are currently experiencing a Denial-of-Service attack. In our case, a network of attacking computer are trying to overwhelm the processing power of our website. I estimate we are getting about 5000 pings a day in a concentrated bursts and its a real profession job as it is coming from about 3000 IP addresses. Someone is possibly paying a lot for this sort of professional job.

Here is what the logs are showing.

Like I said its a real professional job.

That is why some of you are getting this message

Resource Limit Is Reached

The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later.

Just in case they do succeed, I have removed all the account information stored on this site.

We are working diligently on this issue. At present, we are knocking out all spammers on this site, locking out IP addresses and getting professional help.

Thank you for your patience and continued support - Bernard

Our site is still under attack, although I have managed to get it back to some sort of normality but until this is over you need to register on this site to make a comment or email me and I will post it on your behalf.

The actual attack is mainly coming from Kansas in the US, from a network IP 173.208.148.*, but I think it is organised from the Fujian province in China.

As you can see from the graph above, they have been bombarding the website close to the maximum for a number of days. It is clearly a major effort from someone who has access to a sizable network of computers in Kansas and over 50 zombie computers all over the world. Here is my current IP address of the computers that are attacking us.

If you are on this list, you have some explaining to do.

I am wondering why it is happening. It's hardly like there is a a fortune waiting for who ever is doing this if they crack this website, okay they could get about 2000 newsagent, pharmacists, pet shops and others' email addresses. Not that they are going to get that as I removed the list. It is not a shopping site or trading sites, so what is their aim? I do not know, maybe as an expert from our website company suggests they want this website wrecked. Who knows?

For those people on older systems like DOS that do not have scripting, information sheets for the Financial Review you should have now the sheets on how to handle them and other newspapers that are not be published today.

Note is my advice to those on manual systems like DOS that you should seriously think of upgrading because doing it by hand can be very messy manually and its easy to get it wrong. I know from previous experience, there will be several people ringing up on Tuesday that something went wrong. It's been over 20 years since people went automatic.

Furthermore, as you need to prepare for the printout of several reports for your accountant, make sure you know what they want. I suggest as a minimum.

Sales reports
Stock Valuation
Customers Outstanding
Creditors Outstanding
Subagents Outstanding

Furthermore, as you need to prepare a printout of several reports for your accountant, make sure you know what they want. I suggest as a minimum.

Sales reports
Stock Valuation
Customers Outstanding
Creditors Outstanding
Subagents Outstanding

This time of the year, while you are collecting information for the accountant, and you are in that frame of mind. It would be a good idea to check your sales security indicators. This is a good check and if something is wrong, you may find it there.

What these indicators do is gives you a detailed breakdown for each operator on no sale, voids, count, totals, refunds, negative items and discounts. In my experience, unusual no sale and voids for each operator are the most important of these indicators.

Go to cash register reports

Open Staff and click on "Sales security indicators"

Select required period, in this case the last twelve months.

See how you go.

The report comes out in excel so you can edit it.

This time of the year, while you are collecting information for the accountant, and you are in that frame of mind. It would be a good idea to check your sales security indicators. This is a good check and if something is wrong, you may find it there.

What these indicators do is gives you a detailed breakdown for each operator on no sale, voids, count, totals, refunds, negative items and discounts. In my experience, unusual no sale and voids for each operator are the most important of these indicators.

Go to cash register reports

Open Staff and click on "Sales security indicators"

Select required period, in this case the last twelve months.

See how you go.

The report comes out in excel so you can edit it.

Like everyone in the newsagency idustry, we have been waiting for the judgement on this case. It has finally been released and it is available here.

What it does highlight is the legal dangers of blogging if you have a commercial interest.

We and others received contradictory information from "News Limited" and "The Advertiser" over the proposed scheduled Saturday cover price changes.

Because they could not clear it up in time, we did not update automatically this new cover price even though our guys waited until the last minute. I expected something better from News Limited.

http://www.newsmaker.com.au/releaseFile/view/id/20691/Supanews_PressRel…

Supanews' Australia's largest newsagency chain has launched its online newsagency. They are budgeting it for $3M and $5M in the first full year. After a few months it has done about $1.2 million.

It seems to follow many of the products found in a newsagency such as magazines, office supplies, ink, stationery and books.

The latest copy of Artwrap catalogue file, is now available for download.

For this and other supplier files please visit here

The ACCC has been recently notifying many newsagent suppliers that they are *targets* in the ANF application to renew its current ACCC Authorisation. I think much of the confusion, and concern was due to bad handling by ANF. It should have notified all the parties first even if just as a courtesy. I think the problem is that ANF did not think it was such a big deal, after all from ANF's point of view even if the ACCC gives authorisation, it is purely voluntary if a supplier wishes to enter such negotiations.

I urge any supplier who gets this letter, if they have any queries to contact the ANF immediately and discuss what is going on before doing anything.

For those with real concerns, I suspect that most if not all your concerns can be addressed promptly. For those that want to make waves, well here is your chance.

News Corp has released their long overdue review here in all regions except for Tasmania, Alice Springs, Cairns and Townsville which we are still waiting on.

An FAQ explaining many of the points is here.

The most important detail we see is that they are offering a three-year contract. This is something we have been saying the industry needs since the failed T2020. The effect of T2020 has been that many buyers have been reluctant to move because of uncertainty in the industry. As such prices of newsagencies have fallen much more than they should have, Not only that but this announcement gives banks and finance companies more security in lending money to newsagencies. This contract gives certainty.

The other point we liked was the margins will remain the same and in fact, slightly better. A drop in margin would have hurt the industry, way beyond the financial.

Overall we see it as a good plus.