One-of-a-kind job: cyber hitmen for Magento template market
Preface
Here at Lotus Seeds Design we sometimes call ourself a boutique of Magento premium themes which offers a very small selection of themes. You see, we work very slow focusing on our craft until we get it right, on average it takes 3 to 4 months for us to release a theme; we simply take our time, never in a rush. In two years we have only released 7 Magento premium themes, and theme selling in fact is a sideline of our Magento/web development service.
We knew we must have done something right in how we do with our themes and what type of customers we are focusing on, and we knew we have done something right in customer service, and us working on Magento daily since the first beta release, we have came out a very strong Magento problem solver; we have done pretty well in our small selection even on the early days, quite happily thinking we pose no threat, no competition to other bigger theme maker(s) who obviously have different philosophy on customer service, theme quality and design. We are very active in Magento forum doing the ground work that helps promote our service and product just like many Magento extensions’ authors do as well as helping other members, and we don’t hide behind a member name pretending to be someone who is not.
It never occurs to us that we have done something right that gets someone or some people, some template site(s) all heated up, and went great length hiring hitmen/hitwomen posting reviews in our theme listing, this happened when we had only two themes available year ago, but we were not the only target on such assault, other small theme sellers got hit too. The assault stopped when Review feature was shut down in Magento Connect with obvious reason. Funny thing is, according to our site stat, and feedback we received from our customers, we apparently benefit from the assault.
Hitmen return, heading into the Magento forums
The release of Magento Version 1.4 has caused many agony and frustration to many Magento store owners, Magento developers as well as theme sellers we believed; we are not immune from it either but the impact was relatively non-essential for that :1) Our selection is small; 2) We build our themes from scratch which is not dependent to Default, Modern or Blank theme released by Varien, which translates, we literally know every line of code, every xml/phtml template file of our themes therefor we were able to make our existing themes compatible with v1.4 in a very short period of time, and we are always able to trouble-shoot, offer advice to our customers and clients should they run into issue; 3) We sent out notice to our customers when v1.4 released, that they will be qualified for upgrade if their themes were purchased within certain time-frame or they can purchase an upgrade. Either way, they get a peace of mind that if they choose to upgrade to v1.4 their stores will be continued working.
Meanwhile, complaint about other theme sellers have surfaced in the forum regarding the v1.4 upgrade and that people wanted to know if there are other theme sellers who are ethical, responsive and providing good customer service. We took a chance promoting our service a bit by publicly stating our upgrade policy and our existence, quite harmless in our view. Alas, what we didn’t expect, is that it resulted hitmen return. We have good guess where do they come from but we are going to hold the thought just for ourselves, and we here make some screen shots/ analysis for public’s eyes.
Quote the hitmen: “Public is not blind”
Indeed! The first wise word ever spoken from cyber hitmen.
Week ago before hitmen returned an interesting stat showed up in our Google Analytics account. There are a few more suspicious referrals but the data doesn’t provide more conclusive finding so we will not post those.
What does this referral tells? Well! if you ask us, quite a good number of good/bad possibilities for public of whom is not blind.
What are Hitmen’s vocabularies?
We grew up watching Hollywood, Bollywood and Chinese movie, TV sitcom which many were featuring hitmen. Culture might be different, but the vocabularies and tactic the hitmen use, are universal!
Does hitmen get outsourced too or is it smoke and mirrors ?
Does hitmen get outsourced to Hindu-sacred-land like other IT, medicine, customer support, accounting and book publishing industries, or is that smoke and mirrors, that actually is a template site that the boss from the same land as the hitmen trying to knock out another bigger template site, and we poor little Magento theme boutique is caught in the middle of this fight? Now, if that is to be true, it shows a bit of intelligence and tactics coming from hitmen, or rather, the hitmen’s boss.
Conclusion? “public is not blind”, quote the hitmen again!
And we keep our thought just for ourselves.
Want to learn about hitmen from Hindu-land? Recommended reading:
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