For the past 10 years I’ve been running a small graphic design business. As challenging as running a business is, the rewards and benefits (being my own boss, flexible work hours, extra time with family) have certainly outweighed the trials. Supporting local small business is also important to me, purchasing goods and services whenever possible and spreading awareness by word of mouth or social media. The one aspect of small business that I do not agree with is the use of the status as an excuse to resolve an issue. Continue reading
I was recently asked to do a few talks on internet marketing and social media; one of the topics was QR codes. My experience with QR codes is more in seeing how they’re incorrectly applied and this is how I presented the topic. A few examples I presented can be seen here.
Anyone notice that some people are still using the phrase “X years of combined experience in Y” to promote their services? In my view the proof should be in the pudding, if you’re good at something it should be reflected in the positive experiences of your existing customers. Combining one persons years of experience with another doesn’t increase credibility, it’s just poor use of smoke and mirrors.
It’s been almost a year and a half since my last blog post which is far too long. Over the past year and a half it’s been pretty busy with work with new clients, projects, and the odd presentation. There’s also the twenty month old twins that steal some of my attention – rightly so :-)
You’ll probably notice Propel has a new website, pretty exciting stuff! Admittedly the previous site was a quickie to get ready for an event (2 years ago!) so getting a new one up was always on the list of to-dos. Undoubtedly there will be a few minor bugs or ways things could work better, let me know if you have any comments or ideas.
The blog will be fed a few times a month, if you follow Propel on Facebook or Twitter you’ll see when there’s something new. Hope to see some of your comments.
Marketing & Design failures of Real Estate
I passed a real estate sign the other day and noticed there was a YouTube logo on it as well. I thought to myself, how are real estate agents using YouTube to sell properties? Are they video shorts of the agent and company, a slide show of images of the property, or an actual video walkthrough? When I got back to the office and checked out the property in question what I was presented with was best described as the Blair Witch Project – low budget, jiggle-cam, walk-through of the property that gave me a first person perspective of breaking into a home.
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Listen, learn, and adjust
Sometimes it’s hard to take criticism, even if it’s constructive. In your mind what you’ve done is near perfect because you’ve spent countless hours supposedly perfecting it. Of course this thinking is flawed, you’re only one user with one train of thought.
It’s easy to finish a project, move on and forget but it’s important to review and revise once the end product has been released. An age old practice many designers/developers partake is to brand their name to the work and hang it on the wall as if it’s a painting. While I’m on the fence about signing my name to a project, one practice I do believe in is receiving feedback and improving the end product.
Posted in General Guff, usability, website design
Tagged consumer feedback, linkedin, online marketing, ROI, site improvement, usability
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We’ve all seen them but how many of us have used them – Bell and Rogers wifi Hotspots. Service providers post their signs like they’re a badge of honor when really it’s a sign of inconvenience. Every time I walk into one with my iPhone it asks me if I want to join the Hotspot network. At first I didn’t quite understand how the service worked, expecting it to be free. Not the case! So I’m forced to turn off my wifi and go back to the 3G network. Continue reading
Posted in General Guff
Tagged Bell, internet access, linkedin, Rogers, Second Cup, Starbucks, wifi
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For the past few months I’ve been pondering the idea of not supporting Internet Explorer 6 when developing. I thought I should do some research to see how other designers and developers feel about the version in question. What I found was a large following to no longer support IE6, not only from small companies but some well known. Continue reading
I’ve always been amazed at how bad customer service is sometimes. We all have our off days when we want to crawl into a hole and just get through the day but we can’t forget about the client (or customer). New clients are great but repeat customers are better. As time and projects go on you build trust and rapport with the client and they become advocates of your business. We can all agree that referrals are the best type of business.
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The decline of print has been a widely discussed over the past year. At the last AIM conference there was a panel called “Is Print Dead”. I must admit it wasn’t the most interesting discussion but a few obvious points were stated; Continue reading