This post is going to explain the importance of your product reaching critical mass. When I say “product”, I mean an actual product you’re selling, or simply a website or blog. When I’m talking about critical mass, I’m describing the point at which your product becomes viral, sometimes known as the network effect. This should be a lesson to anyone thinking of creating their own product or service.

Above, you’ll see the typical technology adoption bell curve. What you need to realize is that you’re starting on the left, and you’re trying to get up the hill. Do you think it’s easy? Well, judging by Youtube, twitter, milliondollarhomepage, Digg, or myspace, it must be easy!

The truth is, you should have a path to success. Here are just a couple of paths that have worked for other products:

Hopefully I’m making the situation look difficult. I couldn’t find any concrete numbers, but you can be sure that more than half of online businesses fail within the first couple of years. That includes well-funded businesses. If you expect to start the next Fog Creek Software while working part time in the evenings, you need to have a plan.

The best advice I can give you is to do whatever it takes to get your product into the hands of as many people as possible. It might mean making partnerships with someone of influence, or it might mean creating a viral marketing campaign. It might also mean that you’ll have to give your product away for free, build up your army of followers, and then invent another great product. If you already have a product with a good user base, you’re probably already in good shape. If you are just starting out, don’t think that people will magically find you, unless you’re counting on the “lucky” path I described.

The look of a website is key in determining the emotion that your visitors will feel when they look at it. For example, it’s been proven that photos of people on your website will increase customer confidence, and lead to a higher sales conversion rate.

Traditionally stock imagery has been expensive to purchase, and time consuming to create. Many sites that I have seen simply steal images from other sites, or even hotlink in some cases.

I wanted to make sure my blog is using images that are legal, and I discovered iStockPhoto.

As of this writing, they have over 3 million images. The majority are extremely professional, and be just what it takes to give credibility to your website. I’m usually able to find a picture for each of my blog posts, which makes breaks up the content and makes it easier to read.

Here is a site for monitoring your position in a search engine, which I took the liberty of redesigning with some stock imagery.

Before:

After:

Today’s post is inspired by this blog post. The author posted a number of regular expressions for the different types of credit cards. I’m sure there are cases when they are useful, but there is typically a better way!

The Luhn algorithm was designed exactly for the purpose of validating credit cards. It’s basically a checksum check for the exact purpose of verifying that a credit card number was entered correctly. It does not pick up all errors, but it’s perfectly fine for real world use.

The best part is that we can easily use the Luhn algorithm in an ASP.NET validator. To do so, you’ll first need to add the Luhn JavaScript to your page. You can use a scriptblock on your page, or put it in a separate js file and include it. The script that I have tested and use is available on this site.

Here is an outline of the JavaScript you could use:

function ccValidator(sender, args)
{
    var ccString = args.Value.replace("-", "");
    args.IsValid = luhn_check(ccString);
}
function luhn_check(s)
{
    //Insert Luhn algorithm here.
    //Example at: http://www.brainjar.com/js/validation/default2.asp
}

The next step is to add an ASP.NET validator:

<asp:CustomValidator
    runat="server"
    ControlToValidate="txtCCNumber"
    ClientValidationFunction="ccValidator"
    ErrorMessage="Invalid credit card number"
    Display="Dynamic"
    EnableClientScript="true" />

You’ll need to change the "ControlToValidate" property to match the TextBox control that you’re validating.

Now you’ll have a validator that can check the credit card number in real time, before a postback! You’ll still need to determine how you’re going to do validation on the server if the client doesn’t support client-side validation.

There is only one other thing worth mentioning. If you’re running an e-commerce site, you typically want to avoid any issues that could cause you to lose an order. Over-validating is one of them. In many cases, even if the credit card does not get charged successfully, you should let the order go through. You can then contact the user and try to correct the situation. It might just be worth the sale!