I got involved in this discussion regarding developing offline portfolios for web developers. I think having a pdf file of your online work is a great idea.
We were discussing this in the office today and Tina mentioned that she worked for a company that requested proposals from web developers. She said the one that impressed them the most sent through an email portfolio,had an online portfolio and also posted over a hard copy.
That impressed her firm hugely. And they got the job.
…………that, as a web developer, your web site will generate you many leads. prospective clients will hardly look at it.
Web developers spend a huge amount of time developing web sites to act as a portfolio of the work they can do. I’ve found prospects rarely find web developers through their web site.
I’d even go as far as to say that, for a lot of developers, a web site would be the thing they spend the most time and money on and it gives them the smallest return.
If you’re a web developer you need to measure just how you get your clients. Is your web site working?
Regards
Brendon
This is always a good one that clients try and do to slow down the completion of a job so they have more time to get the money together to pay.
You’ve done everything on the site, it’s complete.
But wait……the client has one last look and decides he needs to add content to a page. They’ll send it through “shortly”.
2 weeks later your still waiting. You can’t send the invoice until the job is done.
You email and call. It will be there “shortly”.
It’s a tough one. As the developer you want the site up and going for a couple of reasons:
1. So it can strart doing some good for the client
2. So you can invoice tyhe client and get your money
The only lesson here is never put up a site live until you have money. If the site is up live there is no hurry for the client to pay you. You need to give them an incentive!
Cheers
Brendon
I’ve just been going through a filing cabinet looking for something and happened across a list from the last month on leads that came into the office, that we followed up and then ultimately nothing happened.
A common theme among the leads is that I gave plenty of free advice on the phone and via email and then followed up with a quote. After the quote I followed up with a phone call (small jobs, intertsate clients).
In 3 out of 4 cases the person never got back to me at all.
Leads me to 2 conclusions:
1. When you give free advice people start to devalue what you offer
2. Small interstate jobs are unlikely to come through because there is no personal contact (that’s not true when I’m dealing with web savvy people)
So the question is: do we not deal with small interstate based jobs?
The answer to that is probably, “No, what we have to do is identify where we’re going wrong with our processes from the time we take the call and see if we can’t improve them.”
No good dismissing a potentially large market from our services.
Brendon
I use all 3 of the main blog softwares (is that a word??):
Movable Type here
Blogger at Tailored.com.au
WordPress at TailoredPodcast.com
Movable Type cost me $199 from memory.
Keeping In Mind I Don’t Do The Programming
Keeping in mind I don’t do the programming and am pretty much technically inept, I’ll rate them thus:
# 1: Blogger – free, incredibly easy to use, simple. 10/10
# 2: WordPress – free, really easy to use, trickier to get photos and stuff online. But damn nice all the same. 9.5/10
# 3: Movable Type (this site’s software) – $199, fairly easy to use, I once tried to get an image online and lost my whole post. Haven’t tried again. (I’ll try now after saving this post). 6/10.
Tina’s Photo (our newest employee)
That wasn’t that easy. I didn’t really understand what I was doing as I went and then the photo needed to be a new post by itself (I’ve pasted over this post to go with the pic, rather than just embed the photo in the post).
Cheers
Brendon
After quite a break we’re back!
We’re doing some new things online and are about to launch our biggest site ever (no details public just yet).
We’ve been implementing online video – a pay per click manual e-book site and a search engine optimization e-book review site
Check them out – both are 7 1/2 minutes long.
The results have been positive and, without getting specific, my advice is to use video online and start using it now!
We’re also doing a podcast over at TailoredPodcast.com.
We’ve employed Tina for the specialist Audio & Video role.
Cheers
Brendon
P.S: Go on, go. Start your video making! ;o)
I’ve just posted a longish reply to a post over on SitePoint (author’s note: SitePoint are the guys who published my kit – I have a prior relationship with them).
I’ve just started posting around a few forums a bit and it’s good to see some of the same people about (Steve – from RaveDesigns – and Brandon Eley are 2 of the first names I saw at SitePoint. They’ve been giving great advice for years with passion and enthusiasm. Fantastic job.).
It never ceases to amaze me what a great resource SitePoint is for web people. Mark and Matt and the team have done a great job for the web development community.
If you haven’t checked out SitePoint – take a look at the forums especially.
Regards
Brendon
Conveying that you are trustworthy is essential online.
Stanford University have a well-respected Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab that puts out details of their research every now and then.
Here’s the lastest on developing web credibility for your web site.
Regards
Brendon
Man, these guys know how to make good stuff.
Their latest is their keyword research tool that simply blows the competition away.
And, as usual with Google, it’s free.
Check it out for all of your keyword research. It’s brilliant and very easy to use.
Brendon
Hello
Commenting has been enabled on the site now and we’ll, hopefully, avoid the thousands of spam messages.
Cheers.
Brendon