12/2007 Article Archive

  • December 31, 2007 in Business & Process

    Selling Website Design: How to Overcome the 3 Most Ignorant Objections

    Selling web design for the past seven years has given me the opportunity to hear every objection imaginable. Some are practical--"The price is too high". Some are emotional--"We don't want to hurt our other designer's feelings". But they all add up to a big NO. The strategy I've developed through this process, however, is not designed to turn every NO into a YES. When I make it my goal, instead, to turn every ignorant NO into a YES, I win on every level. Some people just don't like my style and letting them go is the best thing I can do. But if I leave a meeting rejected because I was unable to articulate the workings of my industry, there's a problem.

    • 33 Comments
    • 15739 Views
  • December 28, 2007 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (12/28/07 edition)

    This week boasts a surprising number of great blog articles despite an expected lull over the Christmas holiday. Several of my favorite bloggers took the whole week off but a few never skipped a beat. In the next few days we will be barraged with "best of 2007" TV shows and magazine articles so I thought it appropriate to include at least one such blog post in my list--thanks to Read/Write Web for providing it. Oh, and of course, the final Five for Friday of 2007 wouldn't be complete without a list of new year's resolutions--thanks to Blogging Tips for that one.

    • 0 Comments
    • 1307 Views
  • December 25, 2007 in Mirificam Press News

    A Merry Christmas From Bits O' NewMedia

    If you're reading this the day it was posted, you're probably stealing precious time from your friends and family--you should be ashamed of yourself. What? Hypocrite? Where? My family and I wanted to wish everyone a quick merry Christmas. I hope you all had a wonderful time visiting family and eating way too much food. I'd also like to say how thankful I am for Christ, the God-man, being born into this world and giving us such a wonderful and fulfilling hope.

    • 0 Comments
    • 1134 Views
  • December 21, 2007 in Friday Blog Clips

    5 for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (12/21/07 Edition)

    Apparently this is the week for articles with "2008" in the title. With so many floating around I decided to pick just two to go on the 5 for Friday list--and they're good ones. I'd also like to welcome Dustin Brewer to the list this week. His list of Digg-like social networks for designers is a great one. I'm going to be taking it easy next we so I'll be posting a quick Christmas message and then I'll see everyone back here again next week for 5 for Friday. Now, here are this week five best blog articles.

    • 1 Comments
    • 1692 Views
  • December 19, 2007 in Web Design Culture

    When Good Clients Ask You to Do Bad Things | 4 Tips for Weathering the Storm

    Bad clients are easy to come by. Just lower your prices enough and you'll have a whole school of them swimming around waiting to bite the hook. Good clients, on the other hand, are much more elusive. They seem to materialize out of thin air--usually by some complicated word-of-mouth train. And once you catch one, they stick with you. They listen to what you say and they keep coming back for more. You may find one of these clients a year--maybe not even that often. After a few years of doing business, you find that that little collection of good clients is the fire behind your passion for web design. You want to do everything you can to keep them with you. That's where the problem occurs.

    • 4 Comments
    • 4300 Views
  • December 17, 2007 in Web Design Culture

    Dear Yahoo! / Digg, What Were You Thinking?

    About a week ago, I was browsing Digg when suddenly I felt as if I had stepped into a time warp. I half expected my flat screen monitor to shrink and morph into fish-eyed CRT in front of my eyes. There on the home page was a giant banner made up to look like a Windows error dialog box. It was blinking red with a familiar X icon in the left-hand corner and it read "You are the 1,000th visitor: Congratulations you won!". I call this advertising "punch the monkey" advertising in honor of a flash ad that circulated a few years ago. You still see it around on cheesy sites but Digg knows better. So what could be worse than a site in the Alexa top 200 claiming that you are the 1,000th visitor? How about the Alexa #1?

    • 4 Comments
    • 2062 Views
  • December 14, 2007 in Friday Blog Clips

    Five for Friday | The Week's Best Blogs (12/14/07 Edition)

    Every week I spend hours reading and commenting on new media and design blogs. I run across so much good information that it's impossible to write one post for each great article I discover. So I've decided it's time to start making a weekly list of my favorite blog posts. Every Friday, I'll be publishing my "Five for Friday"--five exceptional articles posted by web design and new media bloggers during the preceding week.

    • 1 Comments
    • 1372 Views
  • December 12, 2007 in Mirificam Press News

    Help Build the Best Blog Search Engine for Web Designers... Bits O' BlogSearch

    After happening upon Rollyo.com last week, I was inspired to build a blog search engine for web designers. Rollyo is short for "roll your own" search engine. It's a simpler Yahoo powered version of Google's Custom Search. I knew as embarked on this mission that I wasn't the first to attempt it. But the wheel can always be made rounder without being reinvented.

    • 7 Comments
    • 3125 Views
  • December 10, 2007 in Web Design Culture

    Automated Mass Emails With a Nauseating Personal Touch

    We've all seen it before and we've all rolled our eyes. We get a suspicious looking letter in the mail--it could be junk or it might be real. We decide it's better to be safe than sorry so we rip open the envelope for a quick look. It's junk alright, but there at the top it reads, "You've been chosen, MATTHEW, to receive a special 0% introductory rate!" This tactic got old the minute we had the technology to do it. Is it really any better to do the same thing to our legitimate subscribers?

    • 0 Comments
    • 1431 Views
  • December 7, 2007 in Product Reviews

    Keyword Nortometer: A Free Online Optimization Tool With a New Perspective

    The Keyword Nortometer is a free online search engine optimization tool developed by Just Search. It takes the traditional keyword suggestion tool and gives it an exciting new twist. Instead of just suggesting possible variations on a keyword, the Nortometer retrieves words and phrases commonly used in top search results for a keyword. For example, when I type in "web design blog" the Nortometer will go to the top search engine results for that phrase and return other keywords and phrases appearing frequently in those websites. I've already found this information to be critical in understanding the relationship between phrases and the target audience. I had a few "ah ha" moments as I tested it out.

    • 2 Comments
    • 2704 Views
  • December 5, 2007 in Web Design Culture

    Browser Tricks: The Web Designer's Smoke and Mirrors

    I love that there is an air of mystery around the web designer. I imagine it feels a lot like being a magician pulling rabbits out of hats--only out of computers. I never know what will and won't impress, though, and my friends and clients are rarely impressed with the things that impress me. Changing the font across an entire website with a simple CSS modification often gets me little more than a nod. In my mind that's a pretty big rabbit. But there is one little trick that has never failed to conjure up the wows I like to hear. It's a Firefox extension called Tab Effect.

    • 2 Comments
    • 1709 Views
  • December 3, 2007 in Web Design Culture

    The Independent Web Designer in 2008 | 5 Make It or Break It Characteristics

    2007 is almost over. Time to start thinking about the future. If you've been designing web sites for more than five years or so, the tools and processes your are using today are completely different than the the ones you used when you started. Gone are the days of and tags, CSS and Javascript finally started working, and my nose goes up extra high when I hear the words "Front Page".

    • 15 Comments
    • 3667 Views