Maybe its time we changed the terminology. The phrase “Web design” is so notoriously misunderstood. For that matter the word design is misunderstood.
Its not about being pretty.
It’s that ah. . . feeling when you arrive at your destination and everything is clear. Someone has thought about whether you tend toward edgy or conservative. They know what you want and they have placed a nice big link right there smack where you will find it. They probably know what browser you are most likely to have and have taken steps to ensure everything works properly. Care has been taken not to offend your culture if you are a likely visitor or user.
And continuing on. They know what else you are probably looked at – what other related sites you are apt to visit. Care has been taken to raise the bar and to offer a better experience than you probably had at the competitor’s web site.
Better yet – you found it. That’s probably not an accident.
And perhaps its really really beautiful too.
More on the use and benefit of social media
If your website is a combination 24 hour receptionist, marketing department and customer service representative then what is the function of social media?
Social media is the guy standing on the sidewalk wearing a great big sandwich board who goes right up to potential customers and hands them a coupon.
Social media is the customer sales rep who travels to the customers door, develops a sustained relationship and is there to guide them in when your customer is ready.
Social media is a means of updating your content instantly in several places at once.
Your website is a repository of information and may be the site where business actually takes place (e-commerce), where follow up requests happen – basically where conversions take place.
Utilize facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning and YouTube and others to initiate and foster relationships and eventually drive people to your website.
Its important that your updates and posts be spaced appropriately and -especially in facebook – Take care not to overdo. Its easy to block page posts from a personal newsfeed and you wont know you have been blocked.
rr.interactive is happy to consult with you on any questions you have about implementing your social media strategy.
One of the side effects of the current economy is that clients want to bargain with me more and usually start out their conversations by saying “I can’t afford to pay much”. What they don’t say is what “not much” means. When I ask how much they have budgeted it isn’t an attempt to find out how much I can get away with charging them its a way of finding out how much they can spend. That way I can tell them honestly what they will get for their money. At that point they have the option of saying either “Well, I really do need something more so perhaps I can add a little to the budget” or “I really don’t need anything that complicated so we’ll go with the more basic project”.
At rr.interactive I do one to two pro bono projects a year for non profits or charities and I may give a break here and there if there is nothing else going on but for the most part I have an hourly rate I have to charge in order to keep my business afloat. To charge less might have me working 24 hours a day. Considering the fact that clients are taking longer to pay and that some aren’t paying at all my work week has already extended to 7 days and my work days – well you don’t want to know about those – suffice it to say I start my day at a ridiculously early hour.
This back and forth about the cost of a website has gotten frequent enough that I have added a price range list to the contact form on my website. My feeling is that if a potential client sees that they have a choice anywhere between $500 and $20,000+ they might not be afraid to really choose the one they think is the closest. If I publish what they will usually get for that there is no question about whether they could have gotten more for less.
Here are a couple of additional thoughts:
Consider how much a client that you obtain through your website is worth? Several clients?
Compare the cost of print advertising that runs once and is usually discarded to a website that represents you 24 hours a day 7 days a week and has the capacity to represent you more fully than a print ad can. For instance a full-page ad on a local magazine costs $1500. A small business can often get a decent website for that.
Last – You really do get what you pay for. When you pay a little more for someone experienced you are paying someone who can explain and is familiar with the pros and cons of different options ranging from hosting providers to content management and shopping cart systems. We can anticipate your plan for growth and ensure you don’t have to start from the beginning when you do. We are not as likely to disappear down the road when you want changes or updates. You’ll receive regular support.
This morning I stumbled upon a site that I can’t say enough about.
This site almost achieves the vision we all had for access of documents on the web. I especially find it useful for browsing through design publications.
The Death of Email
Ok, well yes, that’s a provocative title and really I don’t actually think its dead but I do think it might have several chronic diseases.
The river of human effort tends to flow downhill and email is still one of the quickest and laziest ways to communicate. Best of all it doesn’t stop productivity dead the way phone calls are apt to do. But.
Several issues are becoming more and more prevalent.
If I send an email, in most cases I don’t know, and have no way of knowing, if it has been received or not. So usually there has to be second email asking if the first was received. There are ways to get a return receipt or report but this isnt implemented universally.
Usually the first email was actually received but we are so inundated by junk that it likely came in, was saved and then forgotten.
Perhaps it was deleted by mistake in the daily mass deletion process – a little needle in a vast haystak of spam.
Most people are so familiar with this process that if asked if they received an important email will say “No, it never came.” To which I usually reply “Have you checked your spam settings?” or “It must have gotten caught in the spam filter.
Basicially I am letting them off.
Problem Two.
Sending an email where you make several important points simply doesn’t work. Somehow our attention spans have reduced to about the length of the average facebook status update or Tweet. Its almost guaranteed that you have had someone say they were never told something that turned out to be in the second paragraph of an email you know they received because they responded or acted upon something in the first paragraph.
So basically our best option is usually to pick up the phone. We can use it to call or we can text.
This will be safe until spam overtakes texting at which point foot messangers and pigeons might be our most viable options.
from → internet commentary