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.
Posted On March 11th, 2010 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Headspace News, Business, 6
Here at Headspace, we have been asked why certain websites do not appear as nicely as they do int IE7 and up, Firefox, or Safari. Here’s why; Since last year, we have been early adopters of the opinion that IE6 should not be supported any longer.
IE6 is a 9 year old legacy browser that is unstable, insecure and does not properly support modern web standards. About 95% of the population do not use IE6 (and unfortunately the 5% that do are often government departments that only upgrade computers about once a decade).
In fact, to emphasize this point, Google announced recently that they are phasing out support for IE6, as is stated in their official blog.
This will speed up IE6’s already rapidly approaching demise.
Our position at Headspace is that all the websites we produce should be accessible in all devices and browsers, and platform independent, which is why we build with web standards as specified by the WC3. Accessibility means that the website functions properly (ie: links can be clicked on, forms can be used, and the text can be read either visually or with an assistive device, like a screen reader). What is wonderful about this approach is that technically, a website built in standards can be viewed on IE 2.0—it just won’t be pretty. However it is still accessible, the user will not be greeted with an error message, he will be greeted with unstyled paragraphs, headings and links.
At Headspace, we do not guarantee that websites we produce will visually render the same in IE6 as they do in modern browsers. Part of this is simply because the cost to do so would be large and eat up a portion of our client’s budgets that could be used on more valuable site features instead of the comparatively low ROI of supporting a legacy browser—one that only a small portion of the population uses.
It seems 2010 is the year Internet Explorer 6 will finally die. We’re hoping that others see the value in moving on, and I sincerely hope that Google’s influence will help put the final nail in the coffin of this old, unstable, and stubborn browser. It seems now the web can move forward.
Posted On January 17th, 2010 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Business, 4
For many web professionals, there are as many web-based applications and resources in one’s toolkit as there is traditional desktop software. I thought it might be helpful to share some of my favorite web-based resources with you. Keep in mind I’m not saying that any of these are definitely the best that can be used, they are simply my favorite. It is subjective to say any app is the best, so feel free to share your preferred applications in the comments below.
Project Management
Basecamp - For project management, Basecamp has little competition. It has defined the standard that many web apps are now measured by, and the creators have even built an open-source framework around the technology used to make Basecamp. We just love the simplicity, the great messaging/commenting system, to-do’s, milestones, and file-library functionality. Keeps us and our clients on our toes.
Email Marketing
Campaign Monitor - I have never used a better email marketing tool than CM. The templating system easily allows us to create editable newsletter templates for our clients, and even let’s them manage their subscribers, and view reports, seeing who opened and where they clicked on the campaigns. There is also a great feature which allows you to test your campaigns in a variety of email clients, and lets you know if it will get caught in spam filters.
Site Metrics
Google Analytics - The monster that is Google knows how to kill it’s competition, and one of the best examples is Google Analytics. Easy to install, and free to use, GA gives you advanced metrics, allowing you to see how many visitors are coming to your site, which are new or returning, where they are coming from, keywords they are using in search engines, where geographically they are located, which pages they click on, for how long…. the list goes on. This info is absolutely critical in calculating ROI for our clients.
Invoicing
Less Accounting - Less Accounting’s name says it all, you get to do less of what you hate doing. Great for freelancers (although adminittedly a bit slow and buggy as of late, which I am assured the developer’s are correcting), Less Accounting is a little lite for professional accountants. However if you want a tool to manage invoices and receivables, LA has a new and improved interface that makes it nice and easy.
Sitemaps
SlickPlan - A tool I learned of only recently, SlickPlan is awesome! It takes the pain and tedium out of creating sitemaps and flowcharts, allowing me to concentrate more on the actual structure of the websites or applications I’m planning. Best of all, it’s free (for now) and paid for by advertising. I use it for every new project.
Content Management System
ExpressionEngine - What can I say, we have completely adopted EE as our CMS of choice over the past couple of years. ExpressionEngine is the most well rounded CMS I’ve gotten my grubby hands on, being flexible, clean and modular, having a great support team, a fair price, virtually error-free code, a loyal third-party community of add-on developers, I just love EE. Our clients tend to love it too, as it hides a lot of the options some other CMS’s are plagued with (cough, Joomla!), and keeps the CRUD functionality straight-forward for novice users. For more advanced custom applications, we ues EE’s nerdier sister, CodeIgniter.
Honorable Mentions
While the aforementioned apps are my favorite and most critical for our business, the following applications deserve a mention. And yes, I know, not all of the following are technically speaking, ‘web applications’ and are more like ‘websites’, but enough semantics, on with the names:
- Before beginning a PPC campaign, or even organic SEO strategy for a client, we first check the keywords to see what the search volume is, how competitive they are to rank for, and get some ideas on alternative keywords for more targeted, long-tail approaches. There are tons of SEO tools out there, but the Adwords tool is great to get a high-level snap shot before you begin.
As a web designer, we use a lot of lorum ipsum, the classic ‘Greek Text’ substitute for content, when you need to style copy that doesn’t exist yet. Better Lorum Ipsum lives up to it’s name, allowing you to choose short sentences, long sentences, bulleted lists etc. It’s surprising how often I refer to this site when designing.
- Another simple yet surprisingly useful tool. I often have to create passwords for clients that are secure, and Good Password quickly and automatically generates a secure password in just a few seconds. Better than mashing the keyboard.
- A great design tool, Kuler is an Adobe product (and possibly the best example of link-bait ever!) which allows you to experiement with different colour combination. It beats simply messing around in Photoshop for two main reasons; a) it auto generates complimentary, triad, monochrome and analogous combinations, helping you instantly find colour combos that ‘work’. b) Kuler shows user-created favorites, and and is great inspiration when working on a brand project where you need a new palette and all you can think of is orange and blue.
- Okay, I know, Istock is just a cheap stock photo site. But more correctly, it’s the leading stock photo site, and it’s quality can at times rival the expensive rights managed stuff. It’s also a great resource when you’re just looking for examples in a mock-up or mood-board to show the general theme or style you’re going for, even if you don’t use the photo in the end. More than photos, It’s also rich with icons, illustrations and textures that can be great to just get the creative juices flowing at the beginning of a design project.
- Finally, the trinity of server management, Media Temple is our host of choice for the flexibility it offers, Plesk is the standard interface for managing domains, email accounts, and server files, and PHP MyAdmin is for managing databases on said server. The latter two are pretty standard on most hosts, but are nonetheless, critical for running a web business.
Hope this helped give a little insight into how we work and the tools we use. What are your favorite (and essential) web applications critical to running your business?
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