It’s been too long since my last post but I was struggling to find a good topic for a post.  I have since realized that in the last 3 years I have been able to successfully freelance and bootstrap my business into a successful web design agency.  I thought that I would pass on what I have learned over these last 3 years.

1. Do your homework
   I was fortunate that I had someone to ask a handful of questions (the former GM at my pro soccer club) about starting a business before I took the plunge but that is not the case for all of you.   Learn about the appropriate paperwork to fill out in your state.  Figure out what kind of business entity you want (LLC, Corporation, Nonprofit).  Learn about registered trademarks and copyrights if they apply.  There are tons of books out there but I recommend contacting SCORE with a list of pre-made questions you have about starting a business to get your answers quickly.  SCORE is an amazing FREE service that is basically a bunch of retired business owners that offer their advice to people starting or growing small businesses.  They

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After reading the 4 Hour Work Week, I wanted to experience a mini-retirement.  This was obviously going to be impossible with the way Connected Web Solutions functions but I thought why can’t I have a mini-retirement where I can still get work accomplished?  And so, here I am living in Costa Rica for 3 weeks running the business as though I were at home.  This is not the easiest thing in the world in terms of meeting with clients and potential clients but in terms of development and maintenance it has been perfect.  Communication has been fine thanks to some tools I would like to mention.

1. Skype
2. Syncplicity
3. Google Chat
4. Blackberry (As a modem)
5. Thunderbird
6. WordPress

Skype – Since before CWS was founded in 2006 we were using Skype.  Skype is a free VOIP solution to speak to other Skype users for free.  Skype also has a multitude of services that CWS takes advantage of.  SkypeIn associates your Skype account with an actual phone number that anyone can call.  For about $30 a year and and an additional $3 a month to make unlimited calls to and receive from the US.  This is perfect for CWS considering…

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Web standards. Some of you may know exactly what they are and some may have no clue. I like to think of them as a sort of coding practice for any website project. Those of you in the industry have all heard of separation of structure, layout/presentation, and behavior. Most of the time this just means your structure is contained in your (x)html, layout/presentation in your CSS, and your behavior in your javascript.

I am going to list some of the benefits and hopefully anyone from a site owner to a developer can take something from this.

Makes maintenance a breeze

I have worked on too many sites with inline styles or even styles declared in each individual html file and the maintenance is almost NEVER easy. The Find and Replace tool is not perfect so the time it takes to make a site wide change is exponentially larger than if it would have been created with web standards in mind.  This gets especially painful when there is a mess of javascript as well. So to website owners, you could save a lot of money in web maintenance if your site is developed following web standards.

Search Engine

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Since I had no background in anything business related, when I started CWS I had a lot of catching up to do.  In the last 2 years I have read a handful of business, marketing, and entrepreneurial books.  I am sure that some of you have heard of these before but I was able to take something important from each of them.

The 4 Hour Work Week
Thanks to Tim Ferriss and this wonderful book I am proud to say that CWS will be working from Costa Rica for a month in 2009.  This book is all about automating your business or finding ways to be able to work from home even if you have a typical office job.  The tips recommended in the book are absolutely brilliant and have helped in a myriad of ways for CWS.  Taking “mini-retirements”, finding virtual assistants, tech solutions, and tons more.  This is my most recommended book.  I was fortunate enough to meet and speak briefly with the author and it only reaffirmed how smart this guy is.  You can check out his blog too that has even more useful information at

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So everyone would love to see how people use and view their website but it’s easier said than done.   In a perfect world, everyone would have a budget and a good chunk of time for user testing but for smaller web projects this never happens.  For those of you who don’t have the budget or time to conduct user testing head on over to ClickTale.

ClickTale provides multiple options or anonymously recording random user sessions.  It basically records a video of the mouse moving around the screen and the interaction with forms and such.  This is priceless user testing for no cost.  Granted you do not get to see the user and their actual reactions and you cannot ask them questions but this is a phenominal tool for finding usability and design issues with your site.  You can see if your users are actually scrolling down your pages or if they are having trouble with your forms.  It even has some basic heat maps generated for you (by vertical mouse position).

So head over there and sign up for a free account.  They limit you to 100 pages recorded per week but it is a great service to go along…

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