Posted On July 13th, 2010 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Headspace News, 1
Wow, it’s hard to believe we’re mid-way through the year! 2010 has so far been a great year for Headspace as we continue to grow.
It’s been a while since the last post - way too long - so I just wanted to mention to those who still check for updates, that the blog will continue to be updated. The summer is unusually busy, with new project coming in all the time. Part of that has been our newest team member, Amy Wheaton.
Amy joined us from Colour about a month ago as our first official Account Director and has been shining in this role, helping keep our projects on track and help Kevin and me with new business opportunities. We hope our frat house of immature humour and Lord of the Rings references do not drive her away, but so far she seems to be putting up with it fine.
There’s been some new clients on board who we’re really excited about, but I’ll wait until we actually have some work to show in the projects section before I announce who they are. As always, there is some great tourism website’s and marketing initiatives we are working on, but we’ve also got a diverse group of new clients and projects that are keeping us on our toes. We also continue work on our web application, of which more details will surface as we get nearer to finishing and launching it.
I realize this is a bit of a general, self-serving post - but I wanted to give an update on where Headspace is in July of 2010, and let you know there will be some new content arriving shortly. Enjoy your summer!
Posted On May 18th, 2010 Author Adrienne Wylder
Filed Under Headspace News, 2
Headspace Design was thrilled to participate in the 34th Annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism in Portsmouth, NH this year.
The conference was presented by the NH Travel Council and took place from May 5-7 in the heart of historic downtown at the Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel and Conference Center. Over 200 participants attended which included New England businesses associated with travel and tourism, the Governor of New Hampshire – John Lynch, Mayor of Portsmouth - Thomas Ferrini, - Key Note Speaker Dennis Snow – author of Unleashing Excellence: The Complete Guide to Ultimate Customer Service and Lessons From the Mouse, Mel Allen – Yankee Magazine Editor, Steve Jermanok and many other industry professionals. This outstanding line up of business professionals, organizers and speakers made this event a true pleasure to attend.
The 3-day conference was kicked off with a fun-filled 2 hour Cinco de Mayo networking Cruise aboard the Isle of Shoals Steamship. We enjoyed a breathtakingly beautiful tour of Portsmouth Harbor out to the Isle of Shoals, made famous by island poet Celia Thaxter.
There is a draw bridge that lifts up to allow the steamship to pass through – to my surprise, as we cruised out of the harbor, I looked up to see two workers hanging from harnesses on the bottom-side of the bridge! What a place to work! We continued on enjoying food and beverages while mingling with fellow event participants. We passed by tug boats, blooming nature, fishing boats, light houses and the closed castle-like prison named “The Alcatraz of the East”. Students from the University of New Hampshire Travel and Tourism study program were proud to have some of their research papers on display. The owner of the Isle of Shoals Steamship Company, Robin Wittaker and her personable staff provided everyone with a real class-act experience!
Thursday was jammed packed with excitement, education and networking. Headspace Design’s booth was set up amongst the hotels conference rooms accompanied by fellow-exhibitors from magazines, photographers, local chambers, resorts, and more.
Our day began with a welcome and NH Division of Travel & Tourism update followed by workshops and round-table discussions on topics revolving around marketing with a heavy focus on the importance of the proper use social media.
Our Key Note presentation was scheduled to take place via a trolley ride to the Seacoast Repertory Theatre. This trip was rerouted to take place right in the hotel due to a 9 hour stand off and bomb scare on a bus that was passing through downtown! The Key Note speaker, Dennis Snow presented a compelling and inspiring presentation “Unleashing Service Excellence, Lessons From the Mouse”. Snow encouraged businesses to “look through the lens” of their customer. He presented simple models that could provide true lasting memories, a “WOW” experience and a sense of relationship rather than just another plain old stale experience. Every detail matters to the customer when you look through their eyes. He went on to add that this generation is in fact one of the most social generations to come about in a long time. They are very unique, in being an extremely “technologically social” society – this is the key to understanding our younger generation. Snow’s transparency, humor and 20+ years of experience with Disney provided all in attendance with a fresh perspective on how to provide the most engaging customer service experience possible.
The day’s events continued with more exhibitors networking, facilitated break-out sessions, a Member & Legislator Reception and a silent auction. We wrapped up our busy day with a lovely Farm/Sea Table Dinner Banquet where we enjoyed delicious local cuisine including Bison, fresh produce and local wines, cheeses & breads. The decadent dessert spread at the end made for a inconspicuous loosening of the top button on my trousers and a well deserved night sleep!
The conference continued into Friday with more outstanding presentations and events. The highlight of the day was the travel writer’s panel, “The Increasing (Not Decreasing) Role of Travel Writers Working Online & In Print”. This dynamic panel included Mel Allen, Yankee Magazine editor; Steve Jermanok, Boston Globe, Outside, multi-media; Marty Basch, Columnist for the Concord Monitor, Valley News, Caledonia Record, Keene Sentinel, Boston Globe contributor; and Christina Tree, New Hampshire, An Explorer’s Guide, Yankee and Boston Globe contributor. The panel encouraged businesses to share from their hometown perspective offering unique details and honesty rather than a stale “announcement of the companies new Director” when presenting ideas for press releases or article suggestions. There are many ways that the same story can be presented for topics of inclusion. For example: The announcement of a new chef could be included not only in the food section, but also in articles about unique local people or the trends of organic produce. Use your imagination and go beyond simple boring facts to create a “sense of place” for readers.
The conference ended with a Keynote address, End the Hype: Getting the Most Out of Social Media Marketing with Christine Major from Awareness Networks.
I wrapped up my day with a visit to the Maffatt-Ladd House and Garden, www.moffattladd.org who opened their doors special for conference attendees, a walk through the indescribably beautiful Prescott Park and a visit to some of the wonderful local downtown businesses. Overall, the conference was well attended, professionally run, informative and honestly…simply too much fun. Headspace looks forward to developing the relationships established with these fine industry professionals throughout the year and our attendance at next year’s conference! Many thanks to the NH Travel Counsel for their hard work.
Posted On April 2nd, 2010 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business, 1
In many ways, I don’t envy client who hire design firms.
Imagine you need to buy a couch. You walk into the furniture store, and the sales rep tells you he has the perfect couch for you. Only, here’s the thing, you can’t see it until you buy it. That’s exactly what clients of design companies face, and rightly so. After all, design is custom to the client, so unless the client has a crystal ball, it’s impossible to see what the design the company will produce. Because of this natural fear of the unknown, we often see requests outlined in RFP’s that are a little bit outrageous.
Let’s break down what the fears are, and what can be done to alleviate them. Also keep in mind I am not speaking strictly about design companies but development and marketing companies as well.
We will take their money and leave them with a broken monorail
Many clients fear that a company will come along, swindle the poor business owner, and then take off to Mexico with their money without performing the work, or performing it shoddily. While the tendency might be to wait until all of the deliverables are met to pay the design company, this approach will only turn off a real firm that could do great work for them. Cash-flow is a reality for every business, and good firms cannot afford to work for weeks or months straight before getting a portion of their fees.
A better approach is to ensure that there is a contract in place before the project begins. A professional firm should have some sort of statement of work that outlines what the client will receive, when, and what the terms of payment are. As long as that is signed off and agreed upon upfront before any work is carried out, it is highly unlikely a client will get taken advantage of.
They will not get what they want
Some clients fear that when all is said and done, they will not be happy with the work and still have to pay the agency fees. Much like in the couch example mentioned above, clients don’t like not knowing what they will get before they hire a firm. Some will even request design mock-ups within a proposal, otherwise known as spec work.
While seeming reasonable to those outside the industry, spec work is inherently evil. It is asking a company to perform their work before there is a commitment from the client. It is like asking a carpenter to build you a deck and if you like what you see at the end of it, you may decide to pay him; But if it’s not quite your cup of tea, well, you will tear down and ask another carpenter to give it a try.
A much better approach is to carefully consider the design company’s approach, portfolio, case studies and client references. If the company provides that, a client can get a true sense of their quality of work, and they can rest assured that the firm will deliver designs that meet the objectives of the project. Of course in any project there is some back and forth collaboration, and really there should be. The client-designer relationship is just that, a relationship and there needs to be give and take on both sides. Client should expect to have their likes and dislikes challenged, as they are not necessarily design experts, and are probably not the target audience that they are challenging the design team to influence. Also, design companies expect that their clients may request revisions to their designs that they do not agree with, but are willing to make if they do not sacrifice the professionalism of the work.
Lack of support
Especially in development, clients are often concerned that the company they choose to build their website or application will still be there one month, 6 months or a year from when the product is launched. They want to know that there will be a friendly voice on the other side of the phone in the event they screw something up in their content management system, or when they need a new feature developed. It can be a scary thing for a client to feel all alone when they are dealing with technology outside of their area of expertise. It can also be unsettling to know that the company they chose to build their project is now out of business or simply nowhere to be found.
The best way for clients to alleviate this fear is to, again, check references. Make sure the company is incorporated and insured, that they don’t have an obvious history of financial instability. It may also be worthwhile to ask for a support agreement in the form of a retainer so that it is clear from the beginning that ongoing support and maintenance is covered in the agreement. While this will probably require a financial commitment, it will ensure that the client can always pick up the phone and expect timely help when needed.
While unfortunately there are occasions where bad things happen to good people, in the professional community, it is rare that design firms are looking to do harm to clients. More often than not, they are looking to improve their client’s businesses so they can showcase that success in their portfolio, so client usually do not have anything to fear as long as they communicate and operate in a respectful and professional manner.
Have I left out any other fears that clients may have when hiring an agency? Are there better ways to set aside those fears than what I have mentioned? I welcome your comments below.
Posted On March 18th, 2010 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business, Development, 0
Many of the web projects that we bid for specify in their RFP that the vendor must build with web standards as specified by the W3C. However, in the past, some of our clients have wondered why sites we produce do not always validate, and some clients have even been challenged by losing bidders that they apparently made the wrong choice in a web partner. We were once even told that because a website didn’t validate, it would not rank highly in search engines!
The attempt of this post is to set the record straight and dispel the myth that web standards and validation are the same thing (though they are closely related).
Without getting into the intricacies of web standards, it is important to note that web standards have been devised by the W3C to separate content, presentation and behavior. HTML tags are “marked-up” around textual content in a semantic manner (using tags to describe the meaning and format of the content), and in a separate file, CSS is used to instruct the HTML how to look (ie: fonts, colours, layout etc.). For a more detailed, but completely simple and comprehensible explanation of web standards, see the post on Boagworld.
The W3C offers a validation service for free that will automatically scan a web page for inappropriate HTML tags. This makes sure that critical things like missing closing tags are spotted and corrected by the web developer. Validation is very useful and an important check to make before launching a website, but is it the same as building a site with web standards?
Remember that the ‘wrong’ way of building websites was often with HTML tables for layout, image tags for headings, and inline style-sheets. The ‘right’ way is with semantic HTML separated from presentation code. However consider this; You can build the old way, and your page will still validate, as long as your tables are correctly written, your image tags have alt attributes specified and your inline style-sheets are correctly formatted. So for anyone who says validation is some sort of certification or that it is official “proof” that a website is built to standards—the validator would in effect be approving a badly constructed website, and incorrectly stating it is built to standard.
Conversely, a properly coded, web standards-compliant website may be missing an ALT attribute on an image (which basically describes the image to users who have images disabled in their browser). Or the parameter that opens a link in a new window (target=“_blank”) may be in use. Because of these minor offenses, the web page generates validation errors. Should the errors be corrected? Probably, but sometimes it is the lesser of two evils to use degraded tags that break validation, while keeping the intended functionality of your website. (For all you geeks out there; I know you can use javascript to open links in a new window, but it’s not my point. Once a website is in a CMS, clients will often add images with ALT, or use the target parameter, in which case it’s out of your hands).
The point is, a non-standards based website may validate, while a beautifully coded, standards-based website may not validate. Validation is a best-case-scenario checklist, and not the be-all-end-all decider or whether or not a website was built with web standards.
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