Everytime I get a sale a bell rings

[nonstop]

I want to put something on my desk, or in the office which does something wacky but not too distracting everytime we get a sale on our website.

maybe making one of them noisy party whistles blow or something. Or something else funny, or something normal.

there could be different things happening for large orders.

anyone got any ideas? whats out there that I could use?

anyone know how I could implement this?

[oddsod]

Simplest way would probably be to have one PC in the office with sounds enabled that gets an email on each order. Each time there's an email it'll play, "You've got mail" or your other favourite sound.

But that's probably not what you're looking for.

[nonstop]

yeah that sounds really easy to setup OddSod esp. to play sounds.

I'm guessing I'll need some event watching software and some kind of usb device to activate the motors to do whatever.

keep the ideas coming!

[oddsod]

I'm sure someone here can come up with something that costs zilch. Like a javascript on the "Thank you" page that sends a signal to your watch page which causes it to reload in your browser and play the sound you've integrated into it.

Hmmm, but, it looks like you want a device. :)

[Automan Empire]

This reminds me of an old saturday night live joke.
"They say every time you hear a bell ring, an angel gets her wings. But, what they DON'T tell you is, whenever you hear a mousetrap snap, an angel gets set on fire."
Stay with me... this is foo after all...
Perhaps this could expand the concept for your device. With every sale a bell rings; whenever a Nigerian scammer logs on, think of the possibilities! Considering the growth of ecommerce, and the billions spent on ringtones, imagine an empire in sale-logging devices and custom tones! Perhaps I should ask now for royalties ;)
-Automan

[buckworks]

As an affiliate I get sales notification emails from some of my merchants, and my email program makes a sound like chainsaw when one of those comes through. It was the only unused sound I had left at the time.

So ... I've become conditioned to have positive, feel-good responses to the sound of a chainsaw. When I was visiting my brother and he was cutting wood for the winter it was a confusing morning. If I ever met a professional lumberjack I'd likely be at risk of becoming infatuated without knowing why! :)

[nonstop]

hehe this is great.

so I could combine my device with phsyco re-programming. Soon people will love the sound of the dentists drill and dentists will pay me hugh amounts to install them in offices everywhere.

I was thinking of getting the staff to make a big dancing monster. No?

hmm detecting a nigerian IP/delivery/billing address to do something else is a good idea.

[Essex_boy]

I had a cart once that send a text message to my phone which was great, dont think the firms in business anymore though.

[Jon_King]

Yea... have a dedicated email client check an account where only orders are recieved (or copies of orders) and set it up to play a certain sound file.

[wheel]

Wow, this brings back memories. My very first website (actually a brick and mortar business that ended up doing all it's sales over the web back in 98-99) used an email to fax gateway for our orders.

I can recall eating dinner, struggling with my wife whether to quit my full time job in order to run the shop. The fax machine interrupted that meal 6 times as orders came in. That finalized the decision for us. The sound of that fax machine was very positively associated with money in the bank.

[Essex_boy]

Can you still get the email to fax set up? Its a great idea.

[nonstop]

email 2 fax? why would you want that?

[wheel]

In 1998-99 or so I couldn't find any easy way to receive credit card information (I wasn't using a payment gateway, such things weren't readily available back then in Canada). Fax transmissions are relatively secure, so faxing from the secure server worked in terms of security.

Back then I was something like one of the first 1000 or so vendors to actually implement my own online cc transactions in Canada (or so Visa told me). I had to jump through rings to get it. Pages of forms, interview my ISP to discuss how they backed up the secure server, how often they changed passwords, etc. My how things have changed.

Nowadays, you're right. No good reason to do this.

[Essex_boy]

Thought it would be pretty handy for for a relative, she isnt IT'd up and logging in to email would be a problem (stop laughing) so if teh orders were faxed to her.... Providing they had all teh details like address etc she'd love it.

[dataguy]

It's pretty easy to send an email to a cell phone. I used to have an email sent to my cell phone whenever there was a sale made, which would trigger a custom ring of a cash register cha-ching. It was a great novelty, and my friends really got a kick out of it, until business really started picking up and my cell phone was ringing all the time.

Then my wife made me put an end to it. (I guess I married UP.)

[MediaSpree]

I was thinking about this standing in line at Target, everytime an item was swipped at the register it goes "Bleep!" and standind there for a minute and a half I heard at least 100 bleeps. I wished I could make sales like that on my website and hear that bleep each time!