You know, sometimes there are times things need to be validated by members of the industry and this is one statement that I need to validate. Being the President, Founder and Lead Designer for a successful Multimedia company I have to get a few things off my chest.

“Web designers” are everywhere, anyone with a copy of front page and the internet are calling them selves web designers, seeking out clients to make a living from selling their services. Everyday while surfing the web I come across FrontPage built sites with stick on animated gifs and bloated Microsoft html code. There was obviously no thought to the end user or design principle while these sites where in development. Open new word document >slap in some stolen gifs from the web > save as html and WHAMMO you are a web designer. NO YOU ARE NOT.

Too many times I meet with a prospective client and they show me a horrible site that they paid obscene amounts of money for and I mean obscene, some of these sites are 3 times what my company charges and they look like they were done by a no talent hack in the basement of grandma’s house. Seriously how do you sleep at night ripping people off like that. My rates are not cheap but my portfolio is large and I have a steady flow of referral business coming in. I even have repeat customers that have multiple sites. No wonder there are so many clients that I meet that get visibly sullen when I show them my company portfolio and quote them on a new site. How can I blame them? They paid more than double what I am quoting for the mess they have now. Many of these poor people convince themselves that they have a great site because their “Web Guy” told them that it was a great site and they got a good deal on it.

I spent years in school and training in art to do what I do. My credentials include a Multimedia Diploma with Honors, Certificate of Business Admin. Marketing and Sales Major, Sales management experience, 15 years of art training and practice. During my training I spent time learning about Humane Interface design, optimization, scalability, graphic design, color palettes and more. These are some of the many tools that a true web designer has in his or her arsenal. I am a registered Adobe client using the latest in graphic design software, my companies programming principles are strict and clean and we write our own code. (Some times we write out code in notepad just to make sure we don’t get reliant on WYSIWYG editing.) We know where the code editor is in Dreamweaver and understand the differences between different versions of IE, Firefox, Opera. We understand color wheels, beta testing, bandwidth, image optimization. This list could go on forever I think you get the point.

I am going to explain what a true web designer/developer does when dealing with a new client. Before I start on any project for a client I have a FREE (YES I said FREE) consultation meeting with the prospect. Instead of spitting out some arbitrary number to them and telling them what their site will do. I have a full interview with the client and educate them to the benefits of a website. Take the time to introduce them to new technologies available for websites such as blogs, news, CMS, flash etc. After this meeting which usually take 1hr or more, I thank the client for their time and let them know I will work out a quote for them and email it later that day. If the client insists that I ballpark a quote. I will ask a few more questions and ballpark a range based on other sites that I have developed that are similar. Once the quote is approved I layout a project guideline for the client with milestones and payment schedules at each milestone reached. This helps keep things scheduled and gives the client piece of mind throughout the process.

To those guilty parties out there, you should be ashamed of yourselves. You are preying on people that want to grow their business or are just starting out. All you are accomplishing is helping these poor clients fail. Before you start demanding exorbitant amounts of money for your services try going to school and taking a few art classes, at least now you will do your clients and your reputation justice. To anyone that is out there looking for web sites PLEASE do some research and make sure that your choice in designer is based off their experience and previous work. If they have no work to show you then you are well within your right to ask for a mock-up before signing on to have them launch your web site project.

Us multimedia people are not all rip off artists and if you find the right one for your business you could be developing a long standing relationship for the better of both parties involved. As mentioned earlier I have many repeat clients and referrals making it unnecessary to advertise. No newspaper ads, no billboards, no mass emailing. My advertising consists of a small link on clients sites that allow it, linking to my main company site. My phone rings from new clients and 9 out of 10 times it is because they got my info from someone who I did work for.

Here are some other posts that give prospective clients some insight into the minds of web developers.

choosing-a-web-designer
artist-vs-programmer

My company site is located at www.mk2solutions.com if you click clients there are links to work that I have done. For other samples you can always contact me through the contact form as I have lots of sample layouts etc that are archived. As busy as we are I am always open to meeting a new prospective client to discuss their project. Worst case I will put a team together to develop it while I oversee each phase to insure the level of quality is at a level that I accept.

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Anyone that has read my resume will know that I spend many years in retail sales. Many of those years was in training new sales people and as a Sales Manager for a big box retail store. What I am going to tell you now is some secrets in the retail industry that are used to train the sales people how to play the psychological game of selling with you the consumer when you come in to the store. I trained and developed some top sales people in the company and managed top performing sales departments in two different stores. Here are some of the tools that I trained my team to use.

General Sales Process
The entire sales process from beginning to end is a game if you don’t agree with this try it out sometime. There is a winner and a loser in this game. The winner is the one who gets what they are working for in the end, the sales person get his/her sale or the customer leaves without purchasing the product that was trying to be forced on them. Sometimes the customer is going into the store to get something specific the game begins when the salesperson gets involved and tries to add the up sell products or extended warranties.

The best defense against these tactics and the up sell is not to get into a debate with the sales person or to demand a discount but simply ask tough questions designed to stump the knowledge of the sales person. Only the best of the best will be able to answer them all and if they can’t they will find out the answer for you right away. A sales person that in confident enough to say I don’t know but I will find out for you is someone that is worth dealing with and is generally going to be honest with you about your concerns.

Avoid like the plague that sales person who preys on the human need to get a “deal”. As I trained my sales people with a simple statement “A deal is only a deal when you get a quality product at a fair price”. Getting some no name 90day warranty brand for $200 less than the quality product is not a deal it’s a waste of money. You’ve seen them they litter the boxing day flyers and weekly sale flyers trying to get you into the stores to talk to a smooth sales person that will up sell you into something else. Its not bait and switch but really who wants the crappiest product just because it is cheap.

If you want to keep the sales people away tell them that you are not buying anything today you are just shopping around for some gift ideas and generally all but the eager newbies will go away and leave you alone.

That’s enough for an introduction more specifics in price and negotiating tactics etc will be coming soon…If you are interested in more information or have a specific question please feel free to leave a comment and I will reply with an answer.

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Hello fellow bloggers and entrepreneurs out there I have a proposal to offer.

My company is looking for entrepreneurs and people with a lot to say to start blogs. We are offering a joint venture into the blogging world and are opening a limited time offer to anyone interested in starting a blog. Here are the steps.

1. Choose a domain name (you can give you a sub domain)
2. Decide on a blog topic and choose your theme.
3. We will setup, host, maintain and manage ad campaigns on the blog.
4. You post and promote your blog daily.
5. Thats it! We also offer you an advertising revenue sharing model using un obtrusive profit generating ad campaigns.

Benefits are great, at no cost to you to start your blog, HUGE potential for income writing a couple of posts per day. No hassle with hosting companies or managing plugins, databases, ad campaigns WE WILL DO IT ALL FOR YOU!

Best of all any blogs that are operating under this model will also be linked to ALL the other blogs in the network using the blogroll. The more blogs there are the higher your traffic will be, the higher the traffic the more you make from ad revenue.

This is a limited time offer Mk2 Business Solutions is offering so contact us today for more information.

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Well I have been running Windows Vista 64 bit for a week now and all the bad things that I heard from people when I decided to switch have not happened. The system runs very efficiently all of my software works well with it and even games are running smoother and with less video glitches.

Problems that I have found to date are as follows.

1. SyncToy from Microsoft does not work on x64 bit vista but there is a work around that I found here.
2. PCI Simple communications Device driver not found but after uninstalling the device and running diagnostics when it was found on reboot. I was directed to a link to an Intel download that corrected the problem.

Windows is recognizing all of the RAM installed in the system currently 4GB with the other 4GB en route. Overall I am very happy with how well vista 64 is running and there is no conflict with any of my applications. Install time was just shy of 15min from boot to reboot after install. Adobe Master Collection CS3 installed in a very short time compared to installing it on the XP system.

64 bit OS’s are the future and if you are building a new system then I highly recommend Vista 64. If you are worried about certain applications not running in 64 bit environment then you can just run them in compatibility mode. 16bit applications won’t run on 64bit but seriously there is not a reason to run 16bit applications in todays world.

Here is a great site for tweaking Vista and learning more about how to speed up the OS at pcstats.com.

Well thats it for now folks. If you have any questions or want me to test things feel free to drop a comment.

Posted in Business, Computers, Reviews | No Comments »