Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
The Intangibles of a Web Designer
Written by Sam Bishop | December 21st, 2011 | Business, Clients, Tech | Comments
Sometimes it is the things that come along with hiring a web designer, outside of the actual web design, that end up helping clients the most. Since I started CWS 5 years ago we have learned a few tricks that have saved us time and money. This could be anything from a couple of hours of time to hundreds of dollars a month. These little tips have been passed to our clients and their businesses.
Photoshop Alternatives One simple example was providing a few alternatives to Photoshop for a client. The client was under the impression that they needed Photoshop to resize and crop images to use in their CMS. After pointing them along to Picnik, Aviary, and Gimp (if they wanted a stand-alone application), they were able to save a quick few hundred dollars. This was not the first, nor the last, free service that we found …
CWS Turns 5! Thank You Everyone!!!
Written by Sam Bishop | November 2nd, 2011 | Business, Clients | Comments5 years ago today, Connected Web Solutions LLC was formed in a small apartment in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania. What started as a budding freelance business with a few clients in Central PA has turned into a successful growing business with more than 50 clients spread over 3 continents.
I just want to take the opportunity to say thank you to all our clients, consultants (Lee & Jim), and supporters over the last 5 years. Without you, CWS would not be here today. I can’t say thanks enough for all the fun web projects, hard work, feedback, criticism, guidance, advice, Facebook likes, ReTweets, and support you have given.
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The Real Cost of Building a Website
Written by Sam Bishop | October 6th, 2011 | Business, Web Design, Web Development | Comments
Many people ask how much it costs to build a website and unfortunately there is no simple, quick answer. It depends on a variety of things including, but not limited to; how many pages, layouts, complexity of features, and a lot more which will be for another post.
What I will do is briefly outline the steps from the initial meeting through a full launch from one of our previous projects that is simply a brochure site for a small business. I will outline the hours as well to give you an idea of the man hours involved.
Initial Meetings & Communication (Proposals/Agreements)
The initial meeting can take place over the phone but is preferably done in person. It is mainly a question and answer to understand the client’s needs and goals of the site. We have a basic set of questions that help steer the discussion but this is …
LeadSHIFT Launches – Simple Lead & Referral Tracking
Written by Sam Bishop | June 4th, 2011 | Business, Products, Web Development | Comments
After seeing an article on Freelance Switch, Prospect to Client Tracking Spreadsheet, I figured rather than using just a document, why not build a simple web app to solve the same problem? The article/document was the sole inspiration for LeadSHIFT.
I loved the idea of tracking the time from initial contact to signing a contract. I also wanted to track things like which types of contact (email, face-to-face, phone, etc) and which types of project types (web design, app dev, consulting, etc) had the highest conversion rates. If you know that you convert 75% of leads on the phone vs 45% with email why would you not get the lead on the phone?
Another great piece of trackable information would be referrals. I thought wouldn’t it be great to see which contact referrals generated the most revenue or had the highest conversion rates. Then when the time …
Take Advantage of Free Services
Written by Sam Bishop | October 3rd, 2010 | Business, Tech | CommentsThis post is about how you can save yourself (or your company) money by using free services. When you think about the cost of all the services/software you currently pay for and the free alternatives you can easily save hundreds of dollars a year.
Gmail happens to be my personal email account of choice. By using filters to automatically tag emails from certain people or to auto-star emails from clients, it provides a ton of flexibility if you are willing to learn its basics. They provide more space than you would probably ever need and they don’t have a pesky attachment maximum size of a couple megabytes. Savings = $60.00+
Calendar
Google Calendar is a great full featured FREE calendar that can sync to just about any phone wirelessly (so if you make an appointment on the road, it’s automatically in your calendar when you get home). Not …