Hi there,

I’m your potential client. I’m in your target demographic. I’m what they call a “quality of life” customer. That means that I’m not afraid to pay a little bit more for something as long as I feel that it enriches my life in some way.

I spend a lot of time on the internet. I’m a pretty savvy and very cynical customer. I’m more likely to Google you to see if you can back up your claim than I am to ask you. I’d rather contact you by email than talk to you over the phone. So, let's talk small business to small business.

Here are 5 ways you lose me:

1. Hello, My name is Unimpressed.
Are you serious?

When you meet someone on the street, do you automatically start up a sales spiel which includes talking about yourself in 3rd person? How about telling me you’re a “team”, when you’re a sole proprietor?

Take a look at this packaging. Is this not some of the sexiest stuff you have ever seen? Jeremiah and I bought a bottle of Izze and of Dry just because we liked the packaging. The Dry was delicious (my favorite is rhubarb). The Izze tasted like cough syrup, baby aspirin, and seltzer. But we both agreed after we drank the disgustingness, that the packaging really sold us. No one escapes the design machine.

Smashing Magazine compiled a list of beautiful and expressive packaging and they have more than a few favorites of mine. I've followed a lot of these companies for a long time, but one of the companies I was surprised to see not there, Duffy. Duffy's packaging is amazing and their identity work is incredible. This is how much we love Duffy, we saved a Basil Hayden whiskey bottle (from the Jim Beam small batch collection) just for the packaging.

Alright, three issues that we're tackling right now, because of the busy-ness of our schedules. Our time is so pressed that we're not really available to work on outside projects.

Issue 1: The issue of new blogger. We had planned to bring Brian on a few months ago, but because of our schedules we never had a chance to sit down and train him because of scheduling conflicts. Our plan now is to bring in another blogger, but we don't want to jinx that before it's secured.

Issue 2: Because we've had an unexpected increase in our workload, we're unable to finish our own personal projects (which were pretty damned awesome, by the way). So we're currently reworking a schedule that will allow us to complete some of our own projects. There are some projects that we weren't able to get to.

This was the error that ruined our lives! Alright, not to be so melodramatic, but for the week that we've been without the entire Adobe Master Collection CS3 it certainly feels that way. We'll start with what the problem was, a dreaded MSCVR80.dll error. It started a full week before with crashing of Photoshop randomly. Then it progressed on last week to crashing on the splash screen.

We'd click the applications, they'd crash. We immediately started searching online for how to fix the problem while trying to keep up with other work we had in queue. Luckily we had backup copies of Adobe CS1 on-hand (which as you know taking from CS3 and putting into CS1 leaves a lot to be desired and all of Adobe's programs).

A little background
This has been a known problem for Adobe since earlier last year. Even after assistance from Adobe, few on the forums found a resolution to this problem. Based on the forums there are more than a few people with an expensive icon of failure on their desktops.

There were a few possible causes we learned from the Forum, but these were reported the most resolved:

Work Work Play is unavailable for the month of February. That's right, we're all full and we're pretty excited about it.

Slots are now open for April. We have current work slots open for March and April Contact Us.

Don't forget to check out updates to our portfolio. Jeremiah had a pretty awesome opportunity to work with designer Laura Roeder to produce TristinStyling. He used WordPress as a CMS (though there are many other tools to perform this job) and customized SlideShowPro for portfolio presentation. We know the importance of valid markup and we try to teach that to our clients, but often that falls to the wayside. Ultimately, Christine got the site that she wanted and we're happy about it.

A very belated Happy New Year! It's our first entry of 2008. We haven't been able to blog because we've been busy working with new clients. We've had the best month (since opening in August), with clients and jobs that we've been proud to work on. That success has allowed us to hire a professional blogger. He'll keep you updated on projects and write about what we love, the internet. He'll be starting in two weeks.

Qualities we looked for in a blogger: World of Warcraft Level 70, willingness to eat dry cheese boxed version of macaroni, will work for said macaroni, devotion to the internet, previous published writing, and the top and most important quality willingness to let me call you up at all times of the night to discuss new The Sims 2 expansion pack. Just kidding.

Now that we're no longer worrying about updating the blog, we're free to work on our own projects. So, in the coming year, you'll see what a small team of knowledgeable individuals who love what they do can achieve.

If you're a potential client and you need to build an intensive site that requires e-commerce, classifieds, community interaction or a clone site, be prepared for it to take more than 2 weeks to finish. Smoothly run projects require time and planning. Even if we have code repositories from previous sites we've created, it will still take time to customize them to your needs. Planning and understanding of how the project will work from the beginning takes time, but in the long run it will actually save you money.

Scenario: Client says that they want to create a presence online to rival a well-established site and they need it built within 3 weeks (from scratch), and "any experienced development firm can handle this."

Your developer was awake, but only so that he could post ads like this to qualified individuals:

"Need to know how to build Drupal site. Willing to pay $250.
On a tight deadline. This is very easy should not be a problem."

He needs to know how to make the website he promised you he knew how to make. In this Freelance Switch article about the 13 Breeds of Freelancers,there's a great comment by Dan Lockton about the ‘Say-yes-then-figure-out- how-to-do-it’ freelancer. On the list of freelance don'ts, this one ranks pretty high. Here's a great article on what you should look for when hiring a Drupal developer.

"It's not about the website. It's about your business."

One of the reasons that the RFP (request for proposal) method is so inadequate is because unless the team you're working with has researched your company and understands your goals outside of, "I want it to look like this," you're not choosing the most qualified. You're choosing the most affordable. Though, to quote the great Red Adair, "If you think it's expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur."

On many of the bids I see placed on freelance sites, the most affordable and the most qualified are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. This is another reason, I think we find seriously great designers forgoing these sites and meeting clients the more traditional way. I think most of the established companies with show stopping design, even if they were quoting low, would never be chosen for these jobs. Why? Because there's a level of mediocrity that exists on these sites that makes even an average design site look out of place.

We are very pleased to announce our redesign of Enemybook. Enemybook is a Facebook app that disconnects you to the so-called friends around you. Enemybook was created by MIT student Kevin Matulef and his latest press interview aired today on NPR's, "All Things Considered". Congratulations Kevin!

We're working on our own Facebook app to be released in 2008.