Posts filed under 'The Business of Development'
What is mesothelioma & why should you care? Well, mesothelioma is a type cancer that is often fatal and is usually caused in most cases by exposure to asbestos.
Why do you care about this on a Web Marketing or Adsense blog? Well, for one .. it is one of the highest paying keywords currently on the Google Adsense system.
Who pays for it? Law firms big or small for one. They are the same groups you see on late night television hawking their ads and promises of large settlements if you think you have been exposed. Most of these are not even licensed to practice in the state they are advertising with and if you read the fine print you see that they tell you that you will deal with one of their “associates” - typically a firm that is a part of their network in your area.
They, the people putting on these ads are essentially marketing firms.
The Mesothelioma keywords are more likely to be purchased by law firms doing direct work for their clients. This is not always the case - however if you click on a few of these ads - you can quickly tell if it is going to a law firm or some sort of intermediary surrogate website or business.
You see try an example of that here:
Apparently, botnets are now getting in on the action as well and whenever a user-computer get infected with a virus or bot - the user’s computer attempts to browse and emulate clicks or entice others to click through sites setup with just such content to generate clicks on the links. Some of these links generate a lot of money .. so now you know the financial incentive.
In the end - any search traffic you purchase in the form of keywords is only going to be as good as you have the ability to track conversions. If you have a shopping cart system, you can integrate conversion goals fairly easily and fairly cost effectively by adding Google Analyitcs and conversion tracking to your checkout success or receipt pages.
If you want to talk to one of our developers about that - just contact us here!
August 7th, 2009
Today we are working with Janicki Industries - a leading supplier for custom molds, composite tooling, 5-axis milled patterns and other composites for marine, transportation, aerospace and alternative energy. Janicki industries produces aerospace molds, marine molds and transportation molds for a wide variety of industrial clients.
Janicki Industries specializes in producing large precision-milled patterns, molds, plugs and tooling for aerospace, marine and transportation applications. The company is known for supplying one-of-a-kind manufacturing tools for superyachts and fuselages, machines tools from a wide range of materials including foam, fiberglass, carbon fiber, steel, Invar, and Inconel for companies throughout the world.
In addition to being a superior selection for composite manufacturing and machining needs, Janicki Industries’ services include: a highly equipped metrology department with state-of-the-art equipment, rapid prototyping capabilities and advanced industrial design and aerospace design engineering groups.
Products & Services include:
The company is building a new, 150,000 square-foot manufacturing facility to keep up with increased demand for its aerospace composite tooling.
Janicki engineers & tool designers are skilled at meeting your most complex tooling challenges. Whether you need a quick turnaround prototype or a complete production tooling system they will meet your needs on time and on budget. With over 25 years of aerospace tooling experience their engineering team uses CATIA V5 and Unigraphics NX3 software to solve the toughest product development and engineering challenges. They use Primavera scheduling software to manage a project’s schedule for manufacture. In addition to CATIA V5 and UG our Aerospace Design group can provide support work for stress analysis and finite element modeling.
July 6th, 2009
Basically that is what this post is all about. I am the number one in Google for this very term. It is not all that difficult to understand. You take some text that is unique, like this entry and you write about it. The exact phrase.
Number One In Google
I am you know. It does take work to get there, but I am proud to say I made it. all the way to #1. Now, I’m not sure exactly of what benefit this is to me, or anyone else of consequence - however it is #1. Not #3. Not #15. Not a “participant” ribbon.
June 19th, 2009
FDG Web, Inc does a lot of custom zen cart development both in the Seattle area or nation-wide. We’ve deployed basic, stock Zen Cart shopping carts - all the way up to 100% custom Zen Cart deployments using custom applications hooked into the Zen Cart open source framework.
Here are a few recent examples:
- Invite Designer - Online Wedding Invitation Designer: We created an AJAX-based “do-it-yourself” invitation designer application that allows their customers to choose invitation bases and customize the entire product in real-time. Customers can change fonts, colors backing, envelopments, sizes - essentially moving throughout the entire wedding invitation experience from save-the-date cards to the final envelope. The system allows customers to create and save custom invitations and it saves them to Zen Cart for checkout. The admin, can then reload the entire invitation into the editor to spot check all ofthe details, a very important feature when dealing with so personal a product.
You can see a live example of the Online Wedding Invitation Builder here.
- Boojeebeads - Boojeebeads.com sells beaded lanyards in all shapes and sizes.We gutted Zen Cart’s checkout process to conform to a more modern, streamlined process with less steps. Basically it combines buy without an account with a navigationless checkout experience that reduces the cart adandonment rate.
- Discount MexicoTours.com - This Zen Cart deployment created a custom tour management and reservation system on top of the Zen cart shopping cart. Discounted Tours get entered into the admin, which essentially are coupled with time-share presentations that a user purchases (the tour) and gets it at a discount (with a voucher that gets automatically printed during checkout) and it gets scheduled.
Additionally we develop custom modules for Zen Cart as well. we’ve done custom Zen Cart Payment Gateways. Zen Cart USAePay Integration, Zen Cart Destination-based Sales Tax , Zen Cart Google XML Sitemaps and other Zen Cart SEO techniques.
About FDG Web: FDG Web, Inc are 100% local Seattle Zen Cart Developers. We do not outsource in any way and pretty much the same people answer the phone and get to kow your projects year after year. Give us a contact here to see how we can help.
May 6th, 2009
FDG Web are Seattle Facebook Developers. We do develop simple and complex applications for Facebook and other Social Networking Platforms. We’re not an application publisher ourselves; it’s just not what we do. We build applications for our clients who then in turn publish and market the applications that go on to greater glory and profit.
Yes, I know … we should probably develop one for ourselves .. but then you have to market, support, sell and monitize these things and we’d have to stop being the complexly awesome service-based company that we are.
And, it is really hard to give up such a title.
All awesomeness and non-disclosure agreements aside - we’re working on three applications right now and have consulted, built in part or in whole entire applications that have in fact been mentioned in Forbes & Newsweek.
Awesome? I dare say so.
We work primarily with PHP / MYSQL, which is our prefered trechnology when we get to choose. API’s, platform calls .. we do it all. Contact us here for more information.
March 13th, 2009
The new release contains contract and proposal solutions all types of businesses. This kit of business proposal templates contains over 2400 pages of proposal and contract content.
You can find proposal samples and an occasional freelance contract on the Internet. Good luck on finding anything of quality or actual legal structure. Most of it is just guesswork documents that people post and offer little or no legal protection. (many of which are very basic and/or questionable quality). There is no other proposal and contract management system that compares in compatibility, International support, volume of materials and documents, quality of material and price than these business proposal templates.
What you get:
- Over 1500 pages of business proposal and contract template material:
- Over 400 proposal templates pre-designed for you needs
- Each template is a potential section or chapter in your proposal - mix and match as needed.
- 75 different complete bid-wining sample proposals with “real-life” content
- Over 1000 pages of completed sample content - easy for you to modify
- It also includes cover letters, inquiries and other type of follow-up letters
- It also includes general & specific work orders and general contracts
- It also includes multiple non-disclosure & other protection forms
- It also includes project & proposal development worksheets and other project documents
- It also includes our extensive proposal writing manual
- It also includes our government grant proposal manual
Proposal Kit saves you time and money and helps speed along the business side of your enterprise which is often so sorely neglected. We use Proposal Kit - so should you!
March 12th, 2009
Everyone should be well into their Q1 tax changes for destination-based sales tax.
Here in the great State of WA - the total number of records for Zip +4 to help you calculate your destination based sales tax has grown from around 50,000 such records to a whopping 104,000+ individual fields for the various tax zones. If you are not familiar with this requirement, as of July 2008 - WA State is now requiring any business who ships products within the State of Washington to collect sales tax based on the destination that the goods are being shipped to.
Usually, we are talking about a different of a fraction of a percent. E.g. the difference between one +4 zip and the other next door paying .02% more for a sub-tax like the RTA (Regional Transit Authority). However, without a way to automate the collection and reporting on such a burden - businesses face a near-impossible and expensive set of bookkeeping tasks to stay on the good side of the Department of Revenue.
Further, it is a far easier task to deal with if you can calculate the real-time sales-tax on the fly based on the shipping address and get the customer to “confirm” the shipping address right there in checkout.
Right now we’ve got a system that helps businesses with:
- OSCommerce Destination-based Sales Tax
- Zen-Cart Destination-based Sales Tax
- Virtuemart Destination-based Sales Tax
The methodology for dealing with destination-based tax can be found here. It involves using both a real-time mapping API to determine their Zip +4 based on the address entered, then is uses the current 100,000+ tax record database available from Wa State Dept. of Revenue. The method is the same for any state using Destination-based Sales Tax - however BE AWARE that the tax data seems to be changing every quarter. Even worse, is that the formats have changed at least twice in the past year as well. Additional collumns, etc make it hard to use import scripts to standardize loading your data. All of our deployments now have a CSV upload utility to map the fields for you - but then again, we’re awesome. True story.
January 25th, 2009
Madison Skincare and Laser Center provides skin health services, laser rejuvenation and dermatology services. They offer diagnosis and treatment of skin diseases and skin cancers as well as Seattle skin cancer surgery. They offer state of the art cosmetic services, including a full range of laser services, the Thermage non-surgical skin tightening, peels, Botox, Restylane, the new Aramis laser for acne treatment and prevention and Seattle aesthetician services.
Their cosmetic dermatology sessions provide cosmetic procedures to patients in a caring and professional environment. Services include several types of cosmetic procedures including Laser Services, Thermage for Skin Tightening, SilkPeel Microdermabrasion, Sculptra, removal of moles, Seattle Botox Injections, and Seattle Aesthetician Services.
You may also be interested in this skin care information and skin care resource website they provide to help you discover skincare treatment options and information available for different skin types. Of particular interest is their Guide to common Cosmetic Treatments.
September 30th, 2008
We’ve been doing a large number of custom Joomla development projects this year. Most of which seem to have a custom component that “normal” developers just do not know how to develop for them. In our Company, since we use all local, on-staff developers and designers - we have multiple people to work on our clients needs. There is rarely something our staff cannot solve when working together as a team. Here are a few recent project and how we worked with Joomla to bring about their solutions.
Skin Tour - Skin Health Tips & Care - We built a series of Flash Quizzes, each with a rather large system of branching paths that sorted users into one of ten different profiles and suggested treatments to the user. We also built an Interactive AntiAging Guide in Adobe Flex and tied its results into the User Profile system. Finally, a Joomla Video Blogging system was created with a tag cloud module and feeders.
The Quick Path - The Quick Path is a membership-based business website that offers wealth-creating and asset protection products. We built it around a core Joomla build with a custom, 4-tier affiliate program, virtuemart shopping cart and linked the affiliate program (JAM / JROX) to Joomla in a way that it creates a replicated website for each affiliate upon sign-up. Other features included: ACH integration, bulk pay for Affiliates via a Web Service and custom virtuemart reporting.
Fantagraphics, Inc -Fantagraphics is a custom Joomla build with a virtuemart shopping cart system. We created a special series of shipping tables, a destination-based sales tax system for virtuemart and a special “club discount” system for customers who want to purchase a discount club as a prduct.
If you want some local help from our Seattle Joomla Developers or even if you are located out of our area and want to talk via phone or email - contact us today!
September 18th, 2008
After a very long development cycle, we now have custom modules for Zen-cart and Oscommerce that can calculate destination-based sales tax. Using a combination of address verification and data made available by your State you can become compliant in no time flat.
The modules calculate based on Zip +4 to break down the sales tax by zip code and the 4 digit code as well. If you tax rates change quarterly like our state, you can upload and parse the CSV file they make available to you in order to update the rates in bulk. For more information, contact us here.
August 8th, 2008
One of the markets we obviously target is Seattle Web Design & people looking for Seattle Web Designers & Seattle Web Developers.
We love working for Seattle clients on development or design projects. It is an easy hop down the highway, preferably made at off-peak times since Washington State does not believe in building roads or non-Boondoggle mass transit projects (Hear that “Big Dig” we’re coming for you!).
Seattle is a funny area for Web Design & Development. Take us as an example. We are a company. We have an office. We have all local designers and developers. You will probably talk to the same people year after year because we have had less than 5% turn-over since we started back in 2000.
We tend to get a lot of work from a certain breed of company. This breed basically has very nice offices, slick salespeople and puts a lot of time into fancy proposals and “the process”.
What they do not do, is the actual work apparently .. but you wouldn’t know that from talking to them. They in turn, sub out your projects to people like us. Want to confused this breed of salesperson? Just ask them who specifically will be working on their project and watch them either
1) Tell you the name of someone who will probably NOT be working on your project.
2) Make up a name.
3) Tell you that will be decided later.
The last time we competed against a firm like this, after seeing this firm in the waiting room, I challenged the client to ask them this question. Apparently they did and they fumbled it bad. Sorry folks, no points for second place. Honestly rules.
In our area there also seems to be a large number of single individuals “faking” being a larger firm than they really are. Now I know this is common in other industries, especially whenever the ambiguous word “consultant” is invoked, however with Web Firms it seem to be more prevalent. Selecting a vendor is an important decision. It can make or break a project or even a business if you are building your business around a new application, portal or website.
A lot of people in our industry have full-time jobs doing something else, but still act like a 9-5 firm. This is a huge disservice to their clients.
Here are some examples and patterns to watch out for:
- Any firm that uses the words: Studios, We, Our, Staff, Employees, etc.. - yet doesn’t have a page devoted to Staff Bios or Resume. (To be fair - here’s our Seattle Web Developers bio page and I need to add recent hires.)
- Any firm or individual that lists portfolio pieces or clients by name, but does not link to the website or describe in detail what they did. This usually indicates that they were either employed at that Company or we not 100% responsible for the project.
- Any firm that does not list a mailing or office address.
- Any firm that seems to have a half dozen email address yet they are answered by the same person.
- Any firm that cannot tell you “who” will be working on your project - this means they take all jobs and then scramble to find people to do the work. These are called unnecessary middlemen in the real world.
- Any website that uses a non-professional email like AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.
- Any firm that talks about their multiple locations or offices, yet doesn’t list addresses. These are probably apartments.
- Any firm with a poor looking website; a website or portfolio that consists mainly of web templates or that can sell you pretty much the same solution no matter what you tell them you want. When all you know how to use is a hammer, everything is a nail.
Well, I am out of time for now. What do you think?
Tom
July 31st, 2008
Plyboo is in the business of Bamboo Flooring & Bamboo Floors, along with Bamboo Plywood and sustainable green flooring and other “Green Building” materials. We were called in to aide in correcting certain Joomla navigation and site structure requirements. We also added SugarCRM and worked on some lead generation & sample request forms that piped data directly into SugarCRM to integrate their website workflow and process with their back office systems. Our Everett, WA Office is currently covered in SugarCRM manuals and print outs.
Their products are fantastic. They have nearly every possible bamboo flooring product or derivative you could possibly want, including Bamboo Veneer & Durapalm Woven Paneling
Check out the Joomla build and product portfolio to see a content rich website using Joomla, custom components and SEO rich content.
July 25th, 2008
After several years worth of work and hundreds of hours spent with a consultant who does nothing but write Government Grants and Grant Proposals - The Government Proposal Pack of Templates is available for purchase.
Increase your odds of winning a Government Grant or Proposal using a proposal structures based on actual winning proposal writing “Best Practices” and formats.
- 50 sample proposals - over 770 pages of government proposal template material included. ($300.00 value.)
- Proposals range from a 1 page government proposal quotes to 10 to 15 page average RFP answers to complete 270+ page proposals.
- Over 270 pre-designed editable proposal chapters & proposal chapter templates.
- Government Proposal & Grant Templates are Self-guiding templates and walk you through the process of assembling and writing your proposal.
- Immediately Downloadable - start immediately!
- Create unlimited Government proposal and RFQ answers - at no extra cost
- Completely customizable with your branding, logos and information
- Save thousands of dollars and days or weeks of time
- Includes government grant work order contracts, non-disclosure forms, an extensive business proposal writing guide as well as a government grant proposal writing guide.
- Includes how to develop your proposals and analysis worksheets and spreadsheets to keep you on track
- Over 900 hundred pages of material and you can easily create new documents based on our templates to suit any government grant writing situation you may encounter.
- Includes Windows, Mac and Linux downloads for a single price!
Includes templates for:
Business Proposals
Federal Govt. Grants
Educational Proposals
Technical Proposals
Non-Technical Proposals
Non-Profit Grant Proposals
Business Plans
Quotes and Contracts
Buying or Selling a Business
Project Proposals
Local Govt. Grants
Book Proposals
Resumes
Letter Proposals
Product Sales
Service Sales
Sales Letters
RFP Responses
Get Government Grant Templates here.
December 31st, 2007
Real Estate Flier Templates - a new product from the TemplateKit.com development team.
IMPROVE YOUR IMAGE & Close the deal with our Real Estate Fliers
Now you can download and customize more than a dozen, ready to use, ready to deploy sales sheets for real estate marketing, home sales, specifications sheets, info sheets and more. Click on an image to see greater detail.
Just replace with your own photos and you are ready to save and print. Includes Both MS Publisher 95 - 2003 and the New MS Publisher 2007. Click on an image to replace the default with your own.
Unlimited Combinations. Click here to view all Real Estate Flyers.
December 12th, 2007
Symptom:
My client is using the new Google Checkout Module with Carrier Calculated Shipping, et al. (v1.4.5)
You can see the Google Checkout module for ZenCart here.
His freeoptions shipping module allows free shipping for orders greater than $50.00.
This is what his freeoptions shipping method options are:
Shipping Cost: 0.00
Handling Fee: 0
Total >= 50.00
Total <=
Weight >=
Weight <=
Item Count >=
Item Count <=
When you navigate to google checkout as a customer, it would not follow the pricing rules-- it would allow free shipping for any order regardless of price.
Here’s the Zen Cart Google Checkout Solution:
In the googlecheckout/gcheckout.php file, find these two lines: (line numbers 533 & 534)
$price = $quote[’methods’][0][’cost’];
$shipping_price = $currencies->get_value(DEFAULT_CURRENCY) * ($price>=0?$price:0);
replace them with:
if ($quote) {
$price = $quote[’methods’][0][’cost’];
$shipping_price = $currencies->get_value(DEFAULT_CURRENCY) * ($price>=0?$price:0);
}else{
unset($googlepayment->mc_shipping_methods[$key]) ;
continue ;
}
This should fix the other options in freeshipper as well - items, and weight, since it performs the same way (though I haven’t fully tested it in every possible combination or onfiguration). It should also fix any other shipping methods that just don’t show up based on some sort of option configuration.
Hope this helps someone else!
Kevin
November 27th, 2007
Search Engine friendly template you can use to start off your next project half finished. This template uses the XHTML Strict 1.0 DTD and pure CSS with no inline styles to convey your information with the minimum amount of code and markup. Tested in IE 6 & 7, Opera 8.0+, Netscape 7+, and Firefox 1.5 and up, all with consistent results.
I made this template as an exercise in SEO techniques, wondering if I could meet commonly held best practices for the CSS and still have it be search engine friendly, AND be XHTML Strict 1.0 compliant. It worked after a little tweaking and I invite you to have a look and learn from my example.
Zip file includes the photoshop PSD for the header for customization.
Download Zip file here.
View all Free Web & Flash Templates here!
November 20th, 2007
FDG Web has uprooted its Bothell office and moved to downtown Everett, WA - just down from the Everett Events Center. We now have a more creative space to work and design for our clients and projects. Since we serve clients worldwide and are not just offering Everett Web Design & Development services - everything is pretty much the same as it was before.
Our number, as always is: 877-239-3083 or 425-374-5383
We’ve added three new employees recently. Shannon Harper, Blake Morrison and Jared Albright. Look for samples of their work coming soon.
With the addition of these employees, we now have a well rounded team who can provide web design, graphic design, flash, multimedia, programming application development, print design, brochure design and other services for our clients in whether they live in Everett or elsewhere.
We’ve also been busy creating new Flash Applications and Templates for purchase.
November 11th, 2007
Human Resources Letters, Forms and Policies : Company Layoff Notice with Severance Form
View Document Sample
Document Length: 2 Pages
Usage:
Company layoff notice with severance.
Use the Company Layoff Notice with Severance Form to inform an employee of being laid off indefinitely. This form is used to include the reason for the layoff, recognition of service to the company, and information about eligibility for health benefits. This form also includes a page of terms and conditions for election of severance benefits.
View All Proposal Kit Products
September 4th, 2007
Human Resources Letters, Forms and Policies : Company Layoff Notice Form
View Document Sample
Document Length: 1 Page
Usage:
Company layoff notice form.
Use the Company Layoff Notice Form to inform an employee of being laid off indefinitely. This form is used to include the reason for the layoff, recognition of service to the company, and information about eligibility for health benefits.
View All Proposal Kit Products
September 4th, 2007
Human Resources Letters, Forms and Policies : Employee Suspension Notice Letter
View Document Sample
Document Length: 1 Page
Usage:
Employee suspension notice letter.
Use the Employee Suspension Notice Letter when suspending an employee for things such as a violation of company policies or poor performance. If an employee has been reprimanded and given a chance to improve and has failed they may be suspended.
View All Proposal Kit Products
September 4th, 2007
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