Posts filed under 'Rants & Raves'
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
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
It’s 3:00pm PST as I write and I just got another “tip” from some ambiguous article archive I apparently opt-in on about starting a home business.
This is probably the 100th or so of these I have gotten recently and it’s time to spill the beans.
Most of these so-called author’s do nothing else except send out articles on how to run a home-based business. Kind of funny in a way, because they do nothing else except send small paragraph-length emails that are horribly devoid of any real useful information about small business, starting a home-based business or anything else along the lines of this topic.
So, here’s Tom’s tips for the home-based or start up business. It doesn’t matter if you are large or small - here’s the straight talk you need:
1) Don’t be stupid.
This is key. This may be unavoidable for some.
2) Don’t “try” different marketing approaches without quantifying the results.
That means if you spend $125 on a yellow page ad, you better be asking your clients where they heard of you when they do call so you can tell if it’s a good investment. That goes double for keyword advertising like: Google, Overture, Sprinks, etc.
3) Your idea may totally “suck”.
Don’t be afraid to revise your idea. Columbus was looking for quicker route to India, but things worked out for him pretty well. Just because you have “an idea” doesn’t mean it is a good idea.
4) Don’t copy someone else’s plan.
That means avoid MLM, quick-turning real estate or home-based franchises that do not have a corporate office, UNLESS you’re really good at conning and recruiting other people.
5) Don’t believe the “pay yourself first hype”
If you’re building an enterprise that has employees, facilities, etc.. you should probably pay them first… it’s bad karma otherwise.
6) If you do have a successful run, you’re next is more likely to fail on your next idea.
See #3 above. Hubris & pride are killers. Ask the dot-com folks or as we see here in Redmond, WA - Former Microsoft millionaires who cannot start a successful venture on their own. Funny stuff. I started buying up the expired domain names of some of these companies who failed miserably, but still turned moi down when interviewing for them back in 98′ - 99′ when I was a young buck.
7) You don’t always have to “spend money to make money”, but quit being such a damn tightwad.
You rarely succeed on cheap hosting, programming, design or PayPal-only ecommerce sites. It costs you more in the long run when you’re cheap.
8) There is no 8th thing.
9) It’s not quick. You cannot get rich quick unless you play the lottery. You should focus on building a solid business slowly over time. We’re in year 4 and doing well using this principal. That goes doubly for the web. The web should be a channel for your business, nothing more. If you have no experience running an online store… find someone who does. You can’t expect to jump or transition an existing business into ecommerce without finding good help.
10) 60% of all business’s fail within the first four years, but for you we give you 11 months.
Don’t “try” to succeed. That is a half-assed approach that is bound to fail. Make a plan, write it out. Distill your offering down to 1-2 sentences that describe your service, product or whatever it is that you are doing to make money. Darn, now I have to split this one off into #11:
11) Don’t use ambiguous language.
You’re not the best. You’re not fooling anyone. Your brand new company that has a poor Google page rank or an Alexa ranking of 5,000,000+ (not good) and no visitors isn’t “The World’s Premier Provider of Technology-based Solutions for the Proactive Development and Deployment of Widgets.”
Look it’s easy:
Proposal Kit.com – Get the client, close the deal. Make more money from the jobs you take with easy to use contract, proposal and estimating templates.
Template Kit.com – Start your next project half-finished. Get a jump on development with our immediately downloadable source code templates.
Proposal Packs – Upgrade your image and your bottom line. Deploy proposals ranging from 3 – 32 pages in length. Our Wizard gets you up and running in minutes.
July 18th, 2007
This month’s technical question seems to revolve around the following questions.
1) How do I get a jump drive to boot?
2) How do I make a bootable usb drive or device?
3) I JUST WANT MY %#$%ing THUMB DRIVE TO BOOT!!!!!
Yeah, we feel your pain, so brace yourself for the harsh reality. Whether you want to get a jump drive to autorun or autoplay - here’s the straight scoop.
Getting a jump drive, thumb drive or any nearly any other usb hard drive device to autorun is almost impossible to accomplish.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news - but with today’s security settings and restrictions - even if you do get it to work - it is only under the most controlled of circumstances.
Now, this does not stop customers and marketing firms from calling us every week asking for how to do an autorunning USB Jump Drive for some marketing project they have (and usually frantic because they have already promised someone they can) - so obviously there is great need for this.
That being said, we’ve been actively studying how this is accomplished and under what circumstances. Gleen what you want from this - as we are merely reporting what we’ve found along the way.
1) Pre-conception #1 - All I need is an autorun.ini right?
Wrong. That might work for your typical CD-ROM or DVD project, however a jump drive is not treated the same as a CD-ROM or DVD. It is a device, not media. Granted, on some older Win 98 machines - we actually got the following to work by including both an autorun.ini & a seperate autorun.inf (as if it was a CD-ROM ISO).
If your file was presentation.exe, then your files would look like:
[autorun]
open=presentation.exe
or
[autorun]
shellexecute=presentation.exe
To see a list of all the various autorun commands you can use, visit this link.
Another resource is: http://www.phdcc.com/shellrun/autorun.htm
If you want Windows-based resources for booting from a USB Drive - here is the official Microsoft spiel: Recommendations for Booting Windows from USB Storage Devices: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/usb-boot.mspx
To sum the above article up - if you find that type of reading boring - Windows can easily make a USB Drive boot - if
1) You’re the manufacturer of Jump Drives, and
2) You can change your USB Device’s hardware BIOS to allow for Boot instructions.
If you cannot do either - then you cannot make a USB Drive bootable and anyone who says they can is a big, fat liar.
If you want to see some very cool multimedia presentations we can build for you - then give us a call about that. THAT - we can get to autorun for you!
UPDATED - We found this great little post on Digg - Simon’s Blog - how to autorun a USB Device.
March 16th, 2007
Most designers and developers do not know how much they should be charging for any given project. Oh, sure - they usually charge what “seems” like a high enough fee to generally cover what the project entails - however - this kind of guesswork leads to two equally painful problems.
- You underbid the project because you did not account for each and every task.
- You overbid the project - which hurts you in the long run with any given client.
Underbidding includes such overlooked items as: The time spent FTP files and synching with their current website or server; moving applications or components that require extensive testing and permissions; “face time” and other required meetings with the client, or even training and documentation requirements. Training and Documentation should not be thought as a trivial matter. Most developers and designers miss this one requirement and when the client wants to be trained on the software, open source or application you just built - they find themselves forced with either providing a hastily put together document - or spending unbilled time providing screenshots, walkthroughs and other documentation.
I do not know about you - but any time we need to travel to a client for training will wipe a minimum of 1/2 to 1 full day just getting to them and back again. You should set these expectations in the proposal and contracting process with your clients. We specify a $500 1/2 day and $800 full-day rate for onsite training and custom documentation. It encourages the right kind of clients and discourages the ones who do not understand the value of training and documentation.
Overbidding is equally dangerous. Sure, you may get more money from a client who doesn’t question your estimates - however - you are doing a great disservice to them by not accurately knowing how much to charge them for web development and design. We’ve forged a trust relationship with our clients that allows us to:
- Estimate the project.
- Propose a budget.
- Identify items that can be estimated as fixed costs to the client.
- Identify the items that may need a range, such as complicated programming tasks or research items we do not feel comfortable doing a fixed bid on.
- Billing against these estimates with real accounts of the tasks & hours taken to accomplish them.
Often the projects wil come under budget (because we are good at what we do) - and the billing comes out less for our clients. That is 100% win-win from our perspective.
Some developers and designers see that as an opportunity to make some extra cash.
We see that as an opportunity to show our value to our clients. That is usually the difference between a “Professional” and “Moonlighter”.
If you have accurate estimating - such as using the Web Design & Development Estimating Spreadsheets from Proposal Kit - then you should always know how much to charge for any given job you do.
If you have Web Design Job Costing - meaning you are tracking expenses and hourly time per project and actually comparing it to your quote - then you should always know when you are making or losing money as a web developer, designer, artist and so forth.
A professional makes money every time because of accuate pricing, tracking and contracts that do not hurt them. If you have need of such - you should take a good look at Proposal Kit Pro 11.0 for Web Developers and Designers.
March 1st, 2007
America Online™ is a source of frustration to a great number of Developers and Web Marketers around the world. When you consider AOL you have to remember that you are not just dealing with a custom web browser, but you are also dealing with the manner in which AOL runs their Network.
AOL’s browser is basically just a custom “skin” or “branded” version of Internet Explorer. It is the AOL proxy server that makes the web browser behave differently than through a normal dial-up or LAN connection. Two primary reasons for these differences involve how AOL processes graphics and handles caching.
One of These Things is not Like the “Others”
Another common complaint is that images can often look blurry on AOL’s Browser and in many cases have black bars, distortion, or lines running through your graphics.
America Online utilizes a compression software on any graphics which run on their network in order to speed up the delivery of web pages & HTML to it’s members. It accomplished this by compressing images and various multimedia applications which run across it’s network. AOL uses the proprietary Johnson-Grace image format .ART. All images that are BMP, GIF or JPG are automatically converted into the ART format by default. An AOL member must deselct the “Use Compressed Graphics” option under their Web Preferences in order to avoid this.
Cache Me if you Can!
One you’ve selected not to use AOL’s compressed graphics option, then you still must clear out your cahe in order to see any sort of difference. In your WWW preferences you can set your history to “0″ pages and then clear the History. After you do this, then you must also delete the files in your Temporary Internet Files folder. AOL offers the follwing instruction on how to accomplish this:
“By holding down the “Control” key on your keyboard and simultaneously mouse-clicking on the Browser Reload icon while the browser window is active will also clear your proxy cache and display the latest data from the website.”
Some Background Information!
Often, backgrounds used in designing both HTML Email & Webpages will display as “tiled” when viewed in the AOL environment. This is due to the compression algorithim which is used by the the Johnson-Grace compression software. A JPG which is wider than 640 pixels will be scaled down by AOL. You may use a GIF as a replacement for large background JPG’s, or try to save your JPG as “Progressive 3-pass” which the current version of the Johnson-Grace software does not recognize.
AOL Has It’s Own Format
Character formatting is only mildly supported by AOL. In order to format your email for AOL and get an idea of how your email will look to AOL recipients, you should start by eliminating all of the hard returns at the end of each line.
Justify my Paragraph
All paragraphs are left justified and have no indentation. There should be 2 spaces between each sentence as it provides white space. Every place you want to indicate a hard return, place
at the beginning of the next line. For paragraphs, use
, notat the beginning of the line. There should be no space between the
and the first character of the line.
Tabs
Do not use
, the tab key, , or other tab formatting methods. You will not like what you see, or what your recipient will see for that matter. It is far better to just use spaces whenever you wish to create an indentation or tab.
Character Emphasis
You may use your normal character emphasis tags as you think are neccessary for your mailing & message.(, , etc..)
Bulleted, Ordered and Unordered Lists
Unfortuanately, you cannot create lists using the traditional
or
, Unordered & Unordered List tags. The common workaround seems to be to simply put your number, followed by several spaces.
1) Whatever
2) Whenever
For bulleted lists, you merely need to replace the above numbers with an asterisk or other ASCII character.
* So on..
‘ And so forth..
“Don’t Quote me on this…”
Quotes and Apostrophes do not translate well into AOL Email. When entering these types of characters into AOL Email, be sure to usee ASCII Low characters. Furthermore, if you are using a program like Microsoft Word or other Office product to prepare your text/HTML before entering it into your mailing, you should be aware of Office’s Autoformatting feature.
If you cut and paste from Microsoft Word, there is always a chance that some formatting will not carry over into HTML very well. This is most often seen in the case of Auto formatting, when MS Word converts common keystrokes into symbols. -, “”, © and a host of others. These are called Windows Characters, and are not interpreted by your browser.
Word represents these ASCI characters as numeric values which a browser cannot understand.
This is why it is best to always work in text mode, or save your document as a dos text document and lose all formatting before transferring it to your HTML email.
Strange characters may inadvertenly wind up being inserted into your Email if you do not use a text-only editor such as Notepad or TextPad.
For more information see: HTML Email: An Introduction
Isn’t That Special
You will need to treat all special characters, those which are generated through an escpae sequence (™ ) as plain text. There is not currently a known workaround for getting special characters into your AOL Emails effectively.
Additional Resources
For more information on AOL issues visit: http://webmaster.info.aol.com/
November 8th, 2006
Flash Email: Dateline: 2 years ago: Everybody wanted to do it, no one seemed able to pull it off correctly.
Flash Email: Dateline: Now – See above.
It’s time for everybody’s favorite Flash Email update once again! It’s been a few years since we took a long, hard look at Flash Email, the promises of those pushing Rich Media technologies and those pesky little things like “Email Clients” or “Firewalls” that seem to get in the way.
The short of it.
Flash email is still very much an Enterprise-class solution at this point. There are a lot of marketers who say they can design it. There are many who say they can send it. But very few can guarantee that any large group can view or interact with it. Seriously, this author tested almost every demo, sample, preview or other “test” he could find and could not find a single instance where their Flash content showed up 100% correctly in my normal, everyday use, email client(s) (Outlook 2000 - 2007 and several web-based email clients as well).
Nada. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. I received garbled content or “alternate” content such as links, static images or .gifs.
So, as you can plainly see… most of the providers who claim to be able to specialize in Flash Email, are really just specializing in delivering alternate content. Anyone can set up a “best case” scenario as a demo.
Know you Recipient.
Now, I am not saying that these providers are not returning value for their customers. However, for the average developer, designer or businessperson who wants to utilize Flash Email in some capacity, it really is not all that simple. It’s just that some of these businesses are touting their Flash Email solution as foolproof and throwing around the phrase “99% of all recipients have Flash” as meaning that 99% can receive your Flash Email message correctly in their email client.
The following is a quick run-down of a Flash Email test we did, with an enabler that delivers alternate content (GIF Image) if the user could not display Flash. We sent it to 26 Different Email clients that we have here in our “lab”, and here are a few of the major email client results:
All email clients were set to receive HTML Email, Windows XP Professional SP2. Latest version of Flash installed.
| Outlook 2003: |
Blank Email + Warnings |
Outlook 2003:
( No Firewall or Anti-virus) |
Alternate content |
| Outlook 2002: |
Blank Email + Warnings |
Outlook 2002:
( No Firewall or Anti-virus) |
Alternate content |
| Outlook 2000: |
Raw HTML Code + Warnings |
|
Netscape Communicator 6.2 - 7.0x
( No Firewall or Anti-virus) : |
Alternate content |
Netscape Messenger 4.72:
( No Firewall or Anti-virus)
|
Raw HTML Code + Warnings |
| Yahoo Webmail: |
What email? Network must have killed it. |
| Hotmail Webmail: |
Nope, nada, zip, zilch. Completely Blank Email Received. |
| Horde Webmail**: |
See above. |
| Squirrel Mail Webmail***: |
See above. |
| AOL 6.0: |
Encoded as MIME. Attached at bottom. Does not open. |
| AOL 7.0: |
Never received. |
| AOL 8.0 - 10.0: |
Sorry. |
| Eudora 5.0 & 6.0****, Thunderbird (Mac & PC) |
Nothing. Just a bunch of warnings. |
And this is just one person’s test on the subject. There are a ridiculous amount of variables that can come between you and having the flash email work out. Some of these issues include: Security settings, restrictions in your browser, anti-virus, firewall, ISP’s firewall, email client, operating system or any number of third party software you may have installed along the way (Email forwarding, SPAM blockers, Dynamic DNS, etc.) The point is that even under very controlled circumstances, it doesn’t work out very well.
Doing it Right.
That doesn’t mean you should do a wholesale abandonment of Rich Media email, campaigns or other marketing ideas. What more and more companies seem to be doing is a bit of a hybrid approach to their Rich Media email and this is where designers and developers can help their clients by thinking more about the message rather than the medium.
Many of the best practices that we put forward in our first column, Flashing your Email (2001) – seem to have been copied and adopted extensively by Email & Flash Email marketers, kudos to you! Just go a google search on “flash email” – and see how may lists of 10 seem to crop up with the same practices. If you are designing for Flash email, consider the following:
Use an action to start the Flash Email
Preview panes, Outlook alerts or any other little email client quirks will either
1) Start playing the email immediately
2) Not only start playing it in preview mode, but play a simultaneous copy when you open the email (Becomes a wall of noise., that’s a bad marketing message)
3) Start playing, only to have the recipient notice it and then miss ½ the message to begin with.
A simple “Click here to play this message” can go a long way to preserving your messages intended delivery.
Animated Gif + Click through to Flash = Effective.
Nothing can replace the value of a well though out and effectively designed dual HTML Email & Text Campaign that combines Flash elements. Why not try an eye catching animated .gif file that has a “Call to Action” to let your recipient click through to your website? That should be the whole intention correct?
Track it. Study it. Improve it.
You should not limit yourself to just tracking the opening of the email or the click on an HTML Link. Flash MX 2004 allows for easy tracking of interactions within your flash files, or grab a copy of something like APT Launcher which aggregates data for you for larger projects. If all of your clicks are coming from the HTML, that is one thing, but some data points I would insert for tracking or more “blunt” metrics I would look for would be:
1) When did they get bored enough to stop the flash. (“Hmm… I don’t want to refinance)
2) When did they get interested enough to click through (“You had me at hello…”)
3) Did the Flash file start correctly? (Place a data point that starts when the flash successfully plays.
4) How far did the Flash file play before it stopped/quit/crashed/etc? (Put lot’s of data points)
Stop trying to close the deal in the email.
No one completes a sale within the email; no one fills out a mortgage/insurance/request for heartburn medicine or whatever the new “thing” is, so quit trying to design your emails to do so. You WANT them to click through to the website where all of your normal & “stable” actions and events “should” be. Certainly if you’re even thinking of investing in Flash or HTML Email – it is because you’ve already turned your website into a lean, mean revenue or lead generating machine.*
You do this because:
- The Flash movie will play perfectly.
- The contact and order forms are all set up.
- The data collection devices are in order.
- Nothing is left up to chance or a recipient’s email client.
- Nothing will “trash” the recipient’s computer or garble the message and associate you or your client’s brand with doing so.
[Editor’s Note: Why is it that the only thing that does seem to get through unscathed IS the logo or corporate url – like a giant “beacon of blame”. ]
It’s the offer silly.
Yes, “duh”, you know this I’m sure. Quit annoying your recipients with silly, boring, inane stuff. You can only make the word “Mortgage” stand out so much against the backdrop of everyday life.
Our most successful Flash email campaign was an animated .gif driven push to our site using a viral game as the “offer”. “It’s not in the Contract” – which was presented as follows:
- A Dual Text/HTML Email sent from Constant Contact, so that the recipients either got the animated .gif email I described above, or a simple text email to tell them about the game.
- We designed the game so that it was NOT intended to be played in the body of the email. You cannot control the recipient’s email client, nor should you try to.
- Constant Contact recorded the number of opens, clickthroughs, etc all of the normal metrics you would expect from an email campaign.
- The game was played on our website with a forward to a friend feature on the webpage located just under the game.
- The Flash file was encoded with our Flash-tracking software to record some internal metrics, as in the number of unique plays, repeat plays, clickthroughs to website, etc.
- The coupon code was tied into the order system to flag a discount and further track the sale.
- The game itself contained a coupon for a 10% discount and was designed to present our message to the user as they played (Presents branding and the idea that working without a contract loses you time, money profit, etc.
- Our normal affiliate system was in place to record cookies and server-side tracking for visits and sales.
Results:
- The game was emailed to 12,890 recipients.
- 6,879 opened the email
- 4,990 clickthrough to the game.
- The email was forwarded 512 times.
- The game was forwarded from the webpage 217 times to 534 people (multi-email fields)
- Importantly, the game was played 187,900 times.
- More importantly… the game generated 512 sales, 40 new affiliates, a number of new newsletter signups, multiple business partnerships, new clients for services and an all around general feeling of quantifiable success*****.
- Even more importantly… the game generated brand awareness and sales that we could not even track 100%. Phone sales, delayed sales, sales through our affiliates and so on.
This is where you need to be if you do not have the resources to employ an Enterprise application for your Flash and Rich Media email needs. Nothing can replace a well thought out campaign, offer or creative piece of marketing. There is no reason why you cannot concentrate more on your time, money and effort on improving your message and offer, rather than taking a more “flashy” approach.
HTML Email Design:
An Introduction to HTML Email
Unnece ssary Elements in HTML Email
For more information on troubleshooting HTML Email, visit our article archive here:
Additional links to Flash Email case studies, news, benchmarks or campaigns
Case Study Follow-Up: Flash and E-Mail
Fun @work: Viral Marketing for the Office
| * |
Seriously, if you could hear the sarcasm dripping from my internal monologue. |
| ** |
This is a common “skinned” web-based email client that is common with a lot of hosting packages. |
| *** |
This is another web-based email client you will find with web hosts. |
| **** |
This particular client was running “ChoiceMail” spam filtering. |
| ***** |
It’s that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you absolutely know something you did worked out successfully, and you didn’t “guess” that it made the phone ring or sales increase. |
November 8th, 2006
I don’t know what it is about the word “Blogosphere”, but I cringe everytime I hear it (It goes the same with “cyberspace” and “information superhighway”.). I suppose it is the fact that the only people who actually use the word “Blogosphere” seriously are those on T.V.
October 9th, 2006
