Posted On January 23rd, 2012 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Headspace News, Design, Business, Marketing, 0
Yesterday I attended Podcamp Halifax, which is a great annual, free event full of presentations about the web and social media. It's a great place to connect with people face-to-face that you know from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and learn new things that can help you with your business.
Much kudo's to the folks who put it on including Craig Moore from Spider Video. To those who came, it was great meeting you and I hope to you next year (or sooner)
I was privileged to put on a presentation based on Aarron Walter's book, Designing For Emotion. It attracted a good sized crowd and seemed to resonate with the people in attendance. Here were some mentions on Twitter:
HarmonicDev Harmonic Internet
GREAT talks yesterday by @brightwhite @kyleracki @SpiderVideo and keynote speaker @julien #podcamphfx and big kudos to the event organizers!
HStu Hannah
Designing for Emotion session with @kyleracki is packed and has tons of great ideas about creating human websites. #PodCampHalifax
22 Jan
TheRedSparrow Carly Murray
Design for emotion is a full room, very exciting! #podcamphfx
22 Jan
RegisDudley Regis Dudley
Add an element of pleasure for people using the website. Make boring tasks fun. Via @kyleracki #PodCampHFX
22 Jan
mattrogers222 Matt Rogers
Love the analogy usable=edible. Need to make web experiences not only usable but pleasurable #designforemotion #podcamphfx
22 Jan
I've also included my presentation in a PDF form for those who attended if they'd like it for reference.
Posted On January 18th, 2012 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Headspace News, 0
We're looking for an awesome web developer to join our team.
You are an intermediate to advanced developer with at least two years in the professional field. You are experienced building everything from basic CMS sites to robust web and mobile applications.
You write in PHP, advanced MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and know OOP and MVC concepts inside and out. Ideally, you work in a framework like CodeIgniter. You use source control like GIT and Subversion. You can work within a team environment with other designers, strategists and front-end developers. You can closely follow instructions from our lead designer/strategist and our director of technology, but you can also innovate some intensely creative solutions when the need arises.
Applicants should apply using our contact form and list their qualitifcation and experience within the body of the email. Successful applicants will be emailed to request an interview.
Posted On January 9th, 2012 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Headspace News, 0
Just a quick post to let everyone know I'm still alive. We had a busy December, more of which I can talk about soon. So far January is off to a great start.
Last year had it's highlights and challenges. We got to the beta stage of our proposal software, Pitch Perfect. I demo'd the app at Democamp Halifax and was completely blown away by the response, and by the event. The contacts I made there, and subsequently at Mentor Camp, were amazing. Even though the product isn't yet ready to be commercialized (although we've got big plans this quarter), the challenge to get it built in the first place were well worth the effort.
We are ready to soon launch our social media monitoring software, Social Gopher, which has been a long time coming. This month we launch version 1.0 and will be excited to hear users feedback on it. The aim of Social Gopher is to make monitoring easy for small to medium size businesses, and offer relevant search data.
This past fall, Amy Wheaton, our project manager extraordinaire had a bit of an early leave to have Baby Eli. She's busy managing different schedules now, namely feeding and sleep schedules, so we've been doing our best to balance the influx of work and make sure everything runs smoothly. So far we're managing well, but we expect some growth this year, so stay tuned for job postings on this very blog.
I just wanted to write a short thank you to all of our loyal clients, new clients, freelancers, staff and friends for the great year in 2011 and we look forward to working with all of you in 2012.
Posted On November 3rd, 2011 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business, Marketing, 0
I was looking at a website today and noticed a link to an online application for payroll. Great, I thought. An alternative to ADP. I reviewed their site and found the sign up form to learn about a special offer.
I took the time to fill out the form, which included fields asking how many employees I have, and what I currently use for payroll, and within 30 seconds I received a call from the sales agent. Everything okay so far. But he made several mistakes that lost him the sale in the end:
Uncomfortable Silence
The sales agent seemed like he wanted me to start the conversation when he was the one who called me. After some ums, ahs, and stutters, he asked me what I wanted. He should have already known what I wanted since I filled out a form to learn about a special offer!
Making me repeat myself
The rep then asked how many employees I had and what I currently use for payroll. It wasn’t hard for me to repeat what I already typed in the form, but the point is that I already told them and he should have had that info in front of him already. It just made me start to lose confidence.
He then asked how I found the site and I told him it was through an affiliate site - which he already should have known since the URL and banner on the site showed the online affiliate!
Put me on hold
Finally, he asked me to hold and I waited on the line for about 1 minute hearing shuffling and muffled talking, before hearing music kick in. At that point I hung up. He called about a minute later but by that point I was busy and didn’t care any more.
You would think that these days any company would think of this stuff as common sense what-not-to-do, but amazingly this company is probably wondering why they are having trouble closing deals when the answer is right in front of them - an inefficient sales process and inexperienced sales agents.
I’m sure there are lessons here we all can learn from when it comes to selling for our own companies.
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