I want to display Who's online on pages?

**DonegalPaul** · 10-20-2007, 02:01 PM

Is this possible? Basically I just want to display the number of people online at the bottom left of the pages beside where the date is but don't know where to start

**DonegalPaul** · 10-21-2007, 01:41 PM

no one????

**met00** · 10-21-2007, 02:31 PM

i guess I don't understand why you would want that. It doesn't influence sales, unless you are having server issues and you wat people to know that you don't have the power or bandwidth to handle a large number of visitors at the same time when the system slows down.

As for how to do it, take the "who's online" from that admin side and just get the number of records returned from the mysql call and display that number... not complex to do, but the "why" is what stopped me from even trying to create the code.

**MindTwist** · 10-21-2007, 04:35 PM

I kinda have to agree with that. I already do not understand much the default "xxx page views since whenever this shop started" that comes with oscmax and I think that with the default osc installation. I really do not see a reason why you would want to see your visitors how many people you have online... Come on, you are building an online store, not a forum.

**DonegalPaul** · 10-22-2007, 11:54 AM

The reason I want to do it is that 2 of my competitors do this and i figure that the when customers can see how many others are already online shopping it gives them some confidence in the popularity of the online shop / business?

It's a risk of course if your competitor shows theres 33 online if you only have 3 i know but there you go.

I really do want to do this so if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated??

**met00** · 10-23-2007, 01:07 AM

I told you how to do it already.

That said, do you match your competitors prices? Use the same images and descriptions? Does your on-line store work exactly the same way theirs does? Use the same SSL certificate authority? The same credit card processor? If your competitor were to say "been online since 2000" and you are just opening your store, would you put up "been online since 2007"? If they were to put in a live chat function, would you?

If you spend all your time "following" your competition, well then you are assured to continue to follow them.

If, on the other hand, you get out of the box and start to think ahead of the competition, then you can kick their butt.

Let's say your competitor doesn't list the MSRP and then their price because they sell everything at MSRP, then the best thing you can do is make sure that your store lists the MSRP with a line through it and then list OUR PRICE and below that a You Save.

If you competitor has one image up and it pops up in a popup box when you click to enlarge, then you should use a lightbox and multiple images.

The goal is not to follow the leader, but to be the leader. Just because they do something foolish (like display number of customers on the store) doesn't mean that you should follow suit. Or if you really want to play that game, look at their site throughout the day and see what their numbers are and then write a routine that generates numbers like theirs through a random routine and displays that number next to a "Current Visitors" that way you can rest assured that your numbers will be close to theirs... and then again, how do you know that isn't what they are already doing and they are actually generating a accurate visitor count?

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but when I consult people I always say that you should look at what you competition is doing, and then do what they aren't. When I created Recover Cart Sales I didn't do what my competitors were doing, sitting back and letting those sales go, I did what they weren't and tried to recapture those sales. That's one of the things that gave me an edge in my store. And the way you succeed and become the person that they want to beat is to get an edge over the, not to follow their lead.

**MindTwist** · 10-23-2007, 01:28 AM

Not much more to say, met00 gave you some very good points.

Again, I think displaying how many people you have online is stupid. I wouldn't give a damn if your competition does or doesn't do it, if they do something stupid, you don't have to follow them.