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Blogs » Archive for February, 2006
Out of site, out of mind
Here is a reminder about why it is so important to stay in touch with past clients.
My sister emailed me this morning. A friend of her needs a certain type of highly specialized professional. My sister recalls that I know someone who is good at this profession, because she met him two years ago when I used his services. She wanted his contact information.
Sure enough, I can’t find it. This professional has not stayed in touch with me, and I lost his initial contact information. So now he loses a valuable referral from someone ready to hire him right away.
Please stay in touch with past clients. It is an easy way to pick up occasional work.
All this guy had to do was send an occasional holiday card or simple newsletter with his card in it.
This kind of basic stuff kills me.
Two professionals in initial phone screen and why one came up short
Here is a quick case study that shows the importance of how you handle yourself at all times. It involves attorneys, but applies equally well to web designers.
Yesterday I had a few copyright questions and called some local attorneys for assistance. The first was not available, so I left a message.
The second came to the phone. However, he was gruff. I asked him if I could tell him my situation and get his advice. He said, “Just be brief.” I was brief, and yet he still sounded annoyed at me throughout the call, as if I had bothered him.
The first attorney called me back soon after. He was friendly and enthusiastic. I liked him.
Guess who I’m hiring?
The same applies to web design/development professionals. There is a wide variety in voice tone, enthusiasm, and basic courtesy/phone skills.
It always amazes me how professionals make the dumbest mistakes in building new client relationships. (As you can tell if you read this blog, there is no shortage of highly skilled and educated professionals who constantly get in their own way when it comes to client service and marketing).
Ask a few of your friends these questions:
1. How do you come across on the phone?
2. …
PHP in Zurich
After seeing what these guys have accomplished, met up with Maarten and Christian and got motivated to start PHP Zürich. This is running in parallel to the Swiss PHP user group, which tends to meet less frequently and roves around the country, at the cost of establishing regular faces. Amazingly, PHP Zurich has already got it’s first non-founding member - Rolf, who I met in London.
The first PHP Zurich meeting will be next month on Tuesday 14th at 18:30 - location - Bitflux HQ. I’ll be giving a short talk on PHP security, aimed more at beginners, then we’ll move on to Rossi’s. In future, the plan is to meet once a month on the first Tuesday - if you want to be notified automatically, see here.
Anyway - more info at http://zh.phpug.ch. If you feel like adding some details about yourself, see here. It’s open to anyone interested.
Scriptio: It’s Flash without Flash!
Okay, when the author contacted me to suggest an addition to my roundup of top JavaScript libraries, I’ll admit I was skeptical. But after a brief play, I must say: Scripto is very cool.
Scriptio is a cross-browser framework for building simple presentations made up of animated text, shapes and images, much like the sort of things Flash was used for back when it was “just” an animation tool. With the Scriptio JavaScript library loaded, you can display an animation with one line of code:
new Scriptio({script:’demo.txt’, width:500, height:120});
Scriptio will then read the animation script you specify (demo.txt in this case). This text file contains a series of instructions that describe the animation that will be displayed. Here’s a simple example:
:picture “slide1.jpg” at {0,0} size {500,120} label “slide1″
:display “EXPLORE” transparency 20 face “Tahoma, Century Gothic, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif” size 40 color yellow at {-150,50} label “explore”
:slide “explore” to {500,Top(”explore”)} duration 5
+1
:picture “slide2.jpg” at {0,0} size {500,120} fade 1 label “slide2″
:layer “explore”
+2
:clear “slide1″
This code displays an image, then slides the word “EXPLORE” (with 20% transparency) horizonally across the display for five seconds. At the one-second mark, it begins a one-second fade-in of a new picture, and makes sure the “explore” text …
AOL Converts Better Than Google
WebSideStory has released data breaking down the conversion rates for the top four search engines: AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and Google.
For the month of January, AOL Search generated the best conversion rate at business-to consumer e-commerce sites (6.17 percent), followed by MSN (6.03 percent), Yahoo (4.07 percent) and Google (3.83 percent), according to the WebSideStory Index, a new statistical barometer that features techno-graphic and e-commerce trends culled from the millions of users that visit web sites using the company’s award-winning web analytics technology, HBX Analytics. The study includes traffic from both organic and paid keywords.
One of the explanations given for the difference is that “portal” sites like AOL, MSN and Yahoo tend to attract more active shoppers. “With portals rich in content and services, AOL, MSN and Yahoo may tend to appeal toward a more buyer friendly demographic. Google, meanwhile, may appeal to more browsers – those with less of an intent to buy,” aid Ali Behnam, senior digital marketing consultant for WebSideStory.
That being said, all four of the major search engines are still greatly outperforming the “other search engines” category, which generated a measly 1.97% conversion rate in January 2006, and just 2.3% during the 4th quarter of 2005, …
JavaScript Libraries and Patterns: Yahoo! Does AJAX
This is republished from The SitePoint Tech Times #132
JavaScript is hard, but it could be a lot harder. These days, choosing your tools can actually be most of the work.
Many, many years ago (okay, five), JavaScript code on a web site was a sign of a code-savvy developer with some extra time on his or her hands. Cute effects like mouseover image swaps (and not-so-cute broken right-click menus) were usually the result. Even on such technically adventurous sites, writing more than 100 lines of JavaScript code was virtually unheard of.
Today, the poster children of web application success consist of numerous beefy and interdependent JavaScript files with a light dusting of HTML and CSS. With JavaScript codebases easily outweighing markup and style sheets, should most of the sensitive, new age web developer’s time be spent scripting?
Well, unless you’re trying to solve a problem that no one has tackled before, the answer is “probably not.”
A great deal of energy in the web development arena is being put into building reusable solutions. Here at SitePoint, we just sent The JavaScript Anthology, nearly 600 pages of such solutions, to print. And today Yahoo! joined the growing number of entities offering libraries of reusable …
Two kinds of AJAX: HTML++ vs Client / SOA
Think this needs stating clearly, following the comment from Bill Edney on of technicalpursuit (Tibet), and because I think it reflects experiences people are having with AJAX.
In short think there’s going to be two kinds of AJAX application, one I’ll dub “HTML++” and the other being the Client / SOA Bill mentions. To describe them roughly…
HTML++
AJAX is used to enhance existing HTML forms / user interaction but the fundamental paradigm is still the same as “normal” web applications. Some key smells of this style;
- Page reloads still happen frequently
- It’s possible (if you make the effort) to degrade gracefully to non-supporting browsers / browsers with JS turned off.
- Session state still resides on the server.
In practice this is what everyone’s doing right now, with varying degrees of success. For many I think the effort and cost to “go HTML++” will far outweigh the benefit. Practically think this is best done server-side with tools like HTML_AJAX that do the “thinking” for you (side note: while giving this talk, mentioned JPSpan is effectively dead - HTML_AJAX is, to some extent, it’s successor - it’s a bit like PEAR::SOAP and NuSOAP).
Meanwhile an interesting “in between” example, which I …
Do you really have integrity?
Integrity is on my mind today.
One of my clients is in a dispute with his investor. As a result, his investor has disputed an Amex card charge for work that I did for them, claiming not to know me. And the client is not responding, even though he seemed happy with the work (which happens to be live on his website as I write this). So now I have to go to the trouble of working with American Express to make my case for the charge.
Another client has received full payment from me and is not releasing the code for a project he did. Actually, it was his offshore team that is not releasing the code, but I hold him responsible. He is trying to track them down, but my suspicions are raised.
Integrity means wholeness. In morality/ethics, it means having a point of view about what is right, doing what is right, and — at the highest level — taking a stand to correct what is not right.
Being late shows a lack of integrity. Not keeping your word shows a lack of integrity. Providing faulty work just to get a job done with shows a lack of integrity.
We all …
AdLinks: ‘Out-of-Contextual’ Advertising?
Although this is Chris’ area of expertise, I thought this was worthy of a look for anyone investigating alternative ad serving systems.
I’m not sure if Google actually invented contextual advertising but there’s no doubt they popularized it. Whether it be via their search results, adwords or even inside Gmail, this has been a revelation for the web, and a generally positive thing for users — if we have to see advertising content, it might as well be relevant to us.
However, it would also be fair to say this hasn’t been a unmitigated success. Take Kontera Technologies ‘DynamiContext’, an adserving system that analyzes each word within a body of content and attaches tooltip-like ads to words it has inventory for.
According to Kontera :
They (AdLinks) are links within the content that upon click will link the user to relevant commercial information and offers. AdLinks are relevant to the content of the page, the click is initiated by the user, they are simple to use, and above all helpful for the user who is interested in additional and relevant information and or offers.
A pretty nice idea in theory — except for the fact that establishing the context for individual …
Are you taking advantage of offline media?
Many recent posts about the case studies talk about getting visible in online communities, which is a solid tactic.
I also want to be sure you are taking advantage of print media. There are many low-cost options out there to test a magazine or newspaper and see if it will work. For instance, a number of companies manage the classified advertising departments of clusters of magazines.
Let’s say you want to reach readers of Fast Company, Inc., and Entrepreneur with an offer. Well, it turns out that a single firm manages the classified advertising for each of these magazines. For about $12 a word, you can reach the over 600,000 people that read Fast Company and Inc. Magazines.
If you want to reach local zip codes, www.Valpak.com is a way to do that for pennies per household (in the USA; I don’t know if they are international or not). They mail out packs of coupons.
The point is: You can test offline media at a low cost and expand to larger buys if you are successful.
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