December 8, 2006 by Amy

Who says you can’t be right AND happy?

I read something recently about people who let their need to be right overshadow their happiness. Instead of just letting something go, they feel the need to be right all the time.

And I thought that was pretty logical, at first. But then I thought about it more and more, and I thought about how I am one of those people who needs to be right, and I’ve decided that the theory about being right overshadowing happiness is all a big bunch of bullshit.

Because being right usually brings happiness. For me, anyway.

For instance, a few months after I began working here at the spa, I decided that our Web site shopping cart needed to be upgraded. It was pretty old technology, and wasn’t really a shopping cart at all. You could only order one gift certificate at a time, and if you wanted more, you had to go through the whole process again. There were no descriptions along with the items you were purchasing (and who knows off the top of their head what’s in a Day o’ Beauty after all?). Back-end logistics lagged behind today’s insta-technology. Printing and faxing were involved…it wasn’t pretty.

So I put together a proposal and worked on true on-line shopping cart, like what you’d use at Amazon or any of a number of other on-line retailers. I entered all the data myself, and worked with my developer to lay it out, get all the kinks and bugs worked out, and take it live.

It started strong from the beginning, but I couldn’t tell if my increased on-line sales were from the new technology or just a function of overall sales increasing.

Until this holiday season. Orders are flowing in like mad. They come through my e-mail box, so I’m constantly getting these little alerts. I’m trying to figure out if I can make those sound like a cash register (cha-ching!) but I haven’t had time yet. Priorities, you know.

Best of all, clients are using that shopping cart functionality that I so pushed for. Orders for two and three gift certificates are frequent. A few days ago I had one with six! Six spa gift certificates in one on-line order! I’m pretty sure there is no way that person would have gone through the old system six times, inputting their data each time, to order six separate gift certificates.

We are blowing away our on-line sales figures from last year.

So, today, I am right and I am happy. Cha-ching!