Business & Process (Archive)

Page 4 of 5 (45 total articles)
  • June 28, 2007 in Business & Process

    Blurring the Lines Between Life and Work

    Traditionally (or at least for the past 100 year or so) there has been a very clear distinction between home life and work life. I won’t get into all the cultural implications of that mindset but suffice it to say that I’m glad things are beginning to change. I am learning to view my work as a vocation rather than a career — something that my parent’s generation never had the joy of experiencing. For them, unfortunately, you were either a hard worker or a bum. Now, I admit that some separation of the facets of your life is important but I think you will find that the more you view them all as an extension of a single goal, the more fulfilling the whole process becomes. Here’s a photo of my father-in-law with our new daughter during one of my spur of the moment work/vacation trips in the middle of the week. I love my job!

  • June 21, 2007 in Business & Process

    Website to Earth: "I am not a brochure!"

    Recently, I’ve been starting meetings with prospective clients a little differently. Right off the bat, I tell them not to think of their website as a brochure. For some reason this concept sparks a big "ohhhhh" moment for a lot of people who aren’t in the industry. A brochure is static, difficult to change, and updated once every few years. Sound familiar? More than once I’ve found myself lost in a maze of sentence fragments and nonsensical rambling trying to explain how the web has changed in the last couple of years. It’s a hard issue to convey concisely. Take it from me and don’t try to tackle it head on. Just say, “Your website is not a brochure and if you treat it like one, you won’t be getting the most out of it.” For most of the business owners you will run into, their website is the most effective and efficient tool they have to communicate with, track, and serve new and existing clients. Doesn’t sound like a brochure to me.

  • June 6, 2007 in Business & Process

    » Protecting your ideas is overrated » Simple and Loveable

    » Protecting your ideas is overrated » Simple and Loveable As usual, Simple and Loveable is right on the money. Generally, aspiring entrepreneurs believe that their unique idea is what will make their business great, when actually it’s process by which the idea is thrust into the marketplace. Case in point, I have a client who is a photographer (leavethecamera.com) with a “unique” approach to selling photographs online. Sure enough, as soon as he launched his business, there was a local copycat. He freaked out at first but after I gave him some encouraging words, he calmed down and the copycat fizzled out in a couple of months. It was his dedication to his clients and his commitment to his idea that made his business rise above… not the idea itself. So share share share!

  • June 5, 2007 in Business & Process

    Get a General Idea and Run With It

    It would probably make me sick if I knew just how much time I have spent in preparation of projects with Liquid Design Media. Detailed proposals and flowcharts can become black holes that just keep getting bigger and I wave bye-bye to them long ago. Don�t get me wrong, it�s important to manage the expectations of your client, but leaving some things up in the air can be a great benefit to you in the long run if you under-promise and over-deliver. If you must prepare a presentation for a client, use other people�s web sites to demonstrate points and build screenshots of the interface if you must. This method is much more tangible to the listener. They won�t understand everything that is going on in your head anyway so give them something that they can see and touch. Follow this advise and you will see what a beautiful job being a web designer can be.

  • June 4, 2007 in Business & Process

    How Ads Really Work: Superfans and Noobs | fortuitous

    How Ads Really Work: Superfans and Noobs | fortuitous This is a great article about internet advertising. A big chunk of it centers around the new Google Analytics hit tracking program. I’ve used it and I can honestly say that I am impressed. They have added some very interesting reports like “Visitor Loyalty” that I have already found very helpful.

  • May 22, 2007 in Business & Process

    Proposals Should be Short and Sweet

    I’m a reminded almost daily of how important this principle is in the New Media business. I’ve written hundreds of proposals since I started Liquid Design Media and I’ve found that big picture summary proposals are the way to go for a number of very important reasons: (1) You will save a lot of time and energy. (2) They most likely won’t understand the details so the more you put in there, the more confused they are about what they’re buying. (3) Short, sweet proposals attract the type of easy-going clients that we all love. If I’m proposing a new web site for a client, I start out with an all-inclusive design and set up quote that covers the type of design I think would work best (Straight html, ajax, flash, or hybrid) and all of the other work necessary to get it up on the web with the basic static pages. Next, I list out the other elements (blog, news, calendar, etc.) that I recommend they should have on the site. I stay away from the hows and really focus on the whys. That will do. Don’t over think it and don’t worry about it, even if it’s a big project.

  • May 21, 2007 in Business & Process

    Powerpoint is Dead! Maybe not...

    I haven�t used Powerpoint in a long time for various reasons. I usually find that it�s easier to just talk with a client about a project and click around to a few web sites as examples. It comes across more personal and it takes a lot less time to prepare. But many times I have clients that have created Powerpoints themselves that they want to post on their web site (one of my least favorite requests). Kiss the Powerpoint to web conversion fear and anxiety goodbye! Slideburner.com has created a service that will allow you to upload those unwieldy PP presentations and convert them on the fly. It�s free for up to 200MB and $3/mo. for 1GB.

  • May 16, 2007 in Business & Process

    CreativePro Office

    This is a new online project/office management site that I found while doing some research for online calendars. I like the stuff that 37signals puts out and I personally use pipelinedeals.com to manage my projects but this one seems to really complete the loop with calendars, invoicing, todo lists, etc. It�s hard to find a one stop solution for running the da-to-day tasks in a business and this is the closest I�ve seen so far.

  • May 11, 2007 in Business & Process

    Should I Use Search Engine Marketing?

    Uhhhh…. Yes! I have found that using search engine marketing through Google Ad Words, Yahoo!, etc. and focusing on local keywords is extremely effective. It’s actually really surprised me how many web designers still don’t have faith in the medium they selling. Have faith! It works!

  • April 25, 2007 in Business & Process

    Web Site A La Carte

    As I have worked with clients at Liquid Design Media over the last six months or so I have come to realize that, up to this point in time, web site content has been “consumed” in a very limited way. For the most part, web site strategies in the past have amounted to little more than “How can we get hits on this web site?” Now (and by “now” I mean within the last few months) I find myself asking more and more “How can we get more people to subscribe to this web site?” It’s no longer good enough to have a good web site. There are a ton of those. You have to make content available to each guest in a format that is comfortable for them. Email updates, RSS, desktop widgets, and podcasting is the name of the game. Need an example? mibmidland.com is a site I just finished that is a perfect example of this web site a la carte concept. The content has been wrenched from the design and who knows where it will end up. I think this is the final step in the rise of the on-demand generation.

[BEGIN] [< 1 2 3 4 5 [Next>>] [END]