November, 2009

Design / Marketing — No Comments
24
Nov 09

Refocusing the Catalog toward People

Catalog Revision 1

On Tuesday I started the second pass on the catalog page, this time thinking from the customer’s point of view. I ended up reorganizing the page again, moving the technical information into the diagram itself, and writing up a draft of the things that customers might be interested in. Before, I was thinking like a developer. If you’re curious to see what the old draft layout looked like, click the thumbnail on the right side of this paragraph.

In the new draft, which is only halfway done, I made the left-hand side into more of a description of the design philosophy behind the page template. I’m also purposefully trying to avoid the use of the word “template”, for no other reason than I suspect it is too jargon-y.

Catalog Revision 2

On the right-hand side is supplemental information. It isn’t finished or formatted yet, but it captures my main concerns, which break down into several groups.

Listing the Goods:

  • Exactly what you get for your $75.00
  • What you don’t get (hosting, etc)
  • What can be customized for an additional fee.

Listing Extras and A la Carte Services

  • Hosting
  • Writing
  • Creative Services for hire

Putting people at ease

  • Defining what you get, simply
  • Taking the worry out of the commitment
  • Maintaining an enthusiastic, can-do tone instead of burying them with caveats and “it depends” kinds of answers.

This was rather painful to go through. Although I’ve done this many times before for larger design proposals, I’m trying to appeal to people with small budgets that aren’t familiar with web technology. And frankly, I don’t want them to have to worry about it. At the same time, I don’t want to end up doing endless customization. Web hosting, design, and customization is fairly complicated, and I don’t want to undersell the effort that goes into it.

After reflecting on this for the past few hours while puttering around the house, the solution to this dilemma is simple: don’t allow customization. The whole point of this catalog of simple websites is that they are simple, and that means not overloading the catalog page with too many options. Provide alternatives by providing new website design templates.

The way I would like this catalog to work goes something like this:

  1. Prospective client browses through the designs and finds something they like.
  2. They read what can be customized in terms of photos, colors, text, and links.
  3. They see one price for this kind of customization, and a second price for full customization that is more in-line with custom web development.
  4. They read exactly what they get, are comfortable with the terms, and act immediately by putting down a starting payment.

What is complicating this is the reality that the prospective client also needs to buy hosting and register a domain name. Everyone I talk to who is new to this is confused. To take away the pain of this, I should offer the following (perhaps with an attendant fee)

  1. A recommended domain name registrar
  2. A recommended web hosting provider / my hosting option, if available
  3. A checklist to follow and fill out, to return to me.

The prospective client also needs to deal with content creation. It’s one thing to choose a template, and quite another thing to provide high-quality graphics and photos, logo artwork in the right format, and write good copy. I think I’ll use another checklist approach:

  1. Client is provided with a list assets to be provided. They can be submitted electronically through email or an online form that I could create.
  2. The provided assets are used to fill out a “staging area” that shows those assets in use, grading each asset for quality and suggesting ways to fix any problems. Bad assets will look pretty bad, and I think showing them back to the client may make it apparent that the providing of good source photos is up to them. Or, they have to hire someone to redo it (photography, for example) for an additional cost.
  3. When all the assets are received, the website design can proceed.

Then there are all the add-on services that are not automatically included, like setting up email for the domain, analytics, newsletter management, search engine optimization, and figuring out who will be maintaining the website. At the bare minimum, making sure email is working is a given.  I can throw in analytics at the same time by using something like Google Analytics + Google Apps for Domains. Putting together a good package that serves the creative entrepreneur will take some time and research.

Tomorrow I’ll do some more writing, and try to finalize the catalog before Thanksgiving rolls around. The catalog will have exactly one product in it: the tiny multi-page website. It will also have all the ala carte packages that are necessary for very small websites in it, with descriptions. I have a few nibbles locally for websites, so I’ll do the test marketing on them and see what they say.

Design / Marketing — No Comments
23
Nov 09

Sell Sheet Evolution

The sell sheet from last week was created in Illustrator CS4, so I took some time Monday afternoon to convert it into an InDesign CS4 document. InDesign is a page layout program that’s more suitable for creating multi-page documents, and generally it is faster at handling large amounts of text, applying common styling to multiple pages, and so forth. The newer versions of InDesign add quite a few nice effects like drop shadowing, flexible rounded corner tools, and transparency, which makes it possible to do more final compositing in InDesign than “baking the effects” in Illustrator and Photoshop.

Catalog

The image shows the front cover and the sample inner page. The inner pages will be two-page spreads, so the inner page shown here will be on the left side. The right side will have more information about the page template, which I need to write first.

One of the creative concepts I’m playing with on the front cover is the idea of ready to wear. Making template-based websites with minimal alterations is not unlike buying a suit off-the-rack and having it tailored slightly, so this might be a good metaphor. The suit in this picture, ironically, is a custom suit that my Dad helped me get last time I was in Taiwan, but the material is nice and I thought it would be a good backdrop. I shot the pic with a 50mm macro lens on my Canon 40D DSLR with a single 150W halogen bulb to create the background texture, and edited the resulting RAW file in Photoshop, editing out the dust specks and cat hair before importing it into InDesign. It’s an 8.5×11 150DPI image; kind of low in resolution for a printer, but acceptable for my purposes.

When I get a chance, I’m planning on printing an actual physical label and arranging it artfully on top of the suit, and shooting it in natural light by a big window at the studio. I’ll have to remember to switch the 40d from SRAW to RAW shooting; this will give me the necessary resolution to print very sharp when I output the final catalog at a digital print-on-demand service like Blurb or Lulu. This will be nice to show to prospective clients in person.

Staff Meeting — 2 Comments
23
Nov 09

Monday Staff Meeting

It’s now November 23, 2009. This is the third staff meeting, and from this I can get a sense of how much time I am realistically spending on Agenceum. But first, let’s see what I got done:

Last Week’s Goals, Continued

Bold are ones that got done. Italic designates in-progress.

  • Post descriptions on blog. [est design/implementation time: 6 hours?]
  • Create simple package for $50-$250 based on two designs. [est: 2 hours?]
  • Create marketing message / value proposition / benefit statement. [est time: 2 hours?]
  • Create simple advertisement poster.
  • Adapt poster to web for agenceum.com
  • Establish sales goals and metrics
  • Assemble a list of prospective local clients from friend network
  • Create “get the word out” checklist.
  • Consolidate backups onto archival DVDR and hard disks
  • Create basic Agenceum identity sytem; use this to bootstrap the identity offering.

Yep, not a lot of things on the checklist got done. What did get done, though are:

  • Logo Design [6 hours]
  • Simple Package Sell Sheet [4 hours or so]

The Sell Sheet embodies the marketing message / description aspects. However, I’m probably going to have to spend some time drawing up a better focusing worksheet. In my old workplace we put up a whiteboard with the list of weekly goals, and during breaks we’d go stare at it and figure out what we could do to make progress on them. Since I work in three different locations (coffee shops, Sid’s studio, and my home office), there is no single place where I can maintain the whiteboard. This blog is probably the closest thing to it, but it is inaccessible from the studio because we don’t have Internet there. I’d like to make a portable office command center out of folding medium density particle board; this might be a nice project to test out Ponoko, the online laser-cutting fabrication company.

Other Things Done

  • This was an unusually social week, with an out-of-town appointment scheduled almost every day. MURDER on productivity.
  • Reviewed quite a lot of simple CMS systems, as this will be a necessary component for easy-to-edit solutions for the low entry point clients. I am probably going to use WordPress as the base for blog-style sites, and ModX for simpler sites that don’t have the blog requirement. I also looked at SilverStripe, but it lacked that mystery snap that I look for in software (it would have been a cool introduction to Python, though). I also very quickly installed the Expression Engine 2.0 Beta (Kaylee), which is going to Release Candidate on December 1st, but this is way overkill for what Agenceum needs.
  • Thought quite a bit about the marketing plan and product positioning. The marketing plan is Word of Mouth currently using the materials I’m developing. Product positioning can be two levels: the $50-$250 “get started”, and the regular custom development starting at $1500-$2500. I need to work out the ala carte pricing though.
  • Attended a “Scrum Club” meeting, learning more about agile development methodologies (Kanban, specifically). I’m going to be trying to adapt Scrum to Agenceum’s practice.
  • Attending the November Board of Directors meeting for Float Left Labs. It’s very exciting to see Kelley start her non-profit business, and see the positive press it’s getting.

Things to be Mindful of This Week

  • Maintain focus on deliverable and tangible items on my list.
  • Try to schedule fewer social engagements.
Design / Marketing — 4 Comments
19
Nov 09

Web Template Sell Sheet Draft

I’ve gotten a basic draft for the sell sheet for the first template, which is based on my friend Angela’s website.

Sell sheet draft

The basic idea is to provide an all-in-one package at a fixed price to very small businesses of one or two people (musicians, for example). I have arbitrarily set it to $75 in this example, and have attempted to list everything that is included in that for customization. There’s some stuff missing, in hindsight: the assumption that the client will provide photography, logo graphics, and text, for one. I can imagine having a slim book full of stuff like this.

There will also be developer documentation, detailing how  the template “works” and how to maintain it.

Check out the PDF of this (work-in-progress) file if you’d like to see it in more detail. Discussion, as always, is welcome!

Advertising — No Comments
17
Nov 09

Investigating Google AdWords

I got a free promotional code for a $100 credit from Google AdWords, the search engine advertising service that lists advertising links on the right side of your Google searches. The code I received expires at the end of November, so I decided to sign up and give it a try for a friend’s photo business; this would be useful experience to help me understand how a pay-per-click advertising model works.

It’s not quite free; there’s a $5 balance minimum you need to maintain, and a $10 “activation fee” which is apparently in place to deter fraudulent users from signing up and dumping accounts.

Staff Meeting — No Comments
16
Nov 09

Monday Staff Meeting

It’s November 16, 2009. There’s a lot of carryover from last week, which was derailed by Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday fuzzyheadedness and overscheduling social time; the result is not enough quiet work time.

Goals Met

  • Review starter page designs.
  • Create simple marketing brief for $50-$250 clients.

Other Things Done

…but don’t contribute directly to the Agenceum bottom line…

  • Project archiving started burning to DVD-R and DVD+R media. [4 hours]
  • Project digital storage scheme finalized enough to stop worrying about it. [2 hours]
  • Attended Float Left Labs staff meeting; found out about Scrum and local Scrum Club. [4 hours]
  • Edited and posted Podcast #3; make some improvements to the iTunes RSS enclosure and embedded media for better presentation. [4 hours]
  • Started collecting data regarding music theory for generating compact reference, as prelude to composition. [4 hours]
  • Got the Groundhog Day Resolutions posted. [3 hours]
  • Got the first Business Lessons from Facebook Gaming article posted. [4 hours production]
  • Learned how to cook a pot roast.

Principles Established

  • Establish regular working hours (need to get to sleep early, re-establish morning habits)
  • Avoid scheduling meetings every day; these are productivity killers.
  • Limit social engagements during the day.

Things to be Mindful of This Week

  • Establishing realistic performance metrics; need to start tracking time spent on agency stuff. Use the Excel spreadsheets for tracking time.
  • Maintain momentum through lightweight time tracking.

Goals for This Week

Many of these still stand from last week. The ones in bold are the ones to focus on first.

  • Post descriptions on blog. [est design/implementation time: 6 hours?]
  • Create simple package for $50-$250 based on two designs. [est: 2 hours?]
  • Create marketing message / value proposition / benefit statement. [est time: 2 hours?]
  • Create simple advertisement poster.
  • Adapt poster to web for agenceum.com
  • Establish sales goals and metrics
  • Assemble a list of prospective local clients from friend network
  • Create “get the word out” checklist.
  • Consolidate backups onto archival DVDR and hard disks
  • Create basic Agenceum identity sytem; use this to bootstrap the identity offering.
Design / Marketing — No Comments
13
Nov 09

Thinking about Templates and Marketing

The first thing on this week’s list of Agenceum goals was the posting of the public web page templates that we’re starting with. There are a few dependencies involved, but first I need to clarify what these templates are supposed to accomplish. Here’s my lines of reasoning.

  1. A designer needs to show the design to land clients. Examples are the best, because prospective clients can judge using their own unvocalized criteria; in other words, clients know what they like when they see it. This is the easiest path to selling.
  2. The traditional path to show your examples is to have a portfolio section to your website. I could show a number of past projects, but ultimately portfolios are kind of empty. A great project, in my experience, tends to come from a good match of client and vendor values, therefore I would like to find a way of getting around the “wall of project postcards” to instead convey values and compatible competencies.
  3. The way I’ve sold traditionally has been through demonstrating my grasp of broad concepts, the ability to distill insights, and translating my understanding into specific implementations of graphics or code. I also put a very high emphasis on code quality and engineering. Most importantly, I’m not an “ornamental” or “style” designer; I specialize in organizing information so it makes sense. These are difficult concepts to substantiate with just a few pictures + handwaving in the copywriting.
  4. Custom projects are expensive and difficult to quote. It requires a lot of effort on the part of the prospect to define their vision, and therefore this requirement is a hurdle to be overcome. Additionally, custom projects are big time commitments for me as well, and working by myself has become increasingly unpalatable. I’d rather work with people, but finding the right ones has been a challenge for the past 20 years.
  5. To target the $50-$250 demographic, custom projects are not really an option. The R&D phase has to result in packaged solutions that meet a very specific set of criteria for the purchaser. Therefore, I don’t really want a portfolio page at all. I really need a package + upsell product page.

The non-traditional approach I’m taking is to share the basic source code. I don’t regard source code as my primary value to a client. It is the customization of that code to integrate the customer’s values and selling proposition that is valuable, and typically it’s only valuable to that client. For the $50-$250 client, we’re not talking about programming mission-critical space missions; we’re mostly using glue code to have one system talk to another, integrating existing libraries and GUI widgets, and populating a few interesting data structures.

So here’s how sharing the source code theoretically will work for me:

  • I’m rebuilding from scratch. I need to research and recreate dozens of standard website and interactive components that, while conceptually simple, each have their own implementation gotchyas. I’m building these basic stand-alone modules to strengthen my knowledge of best practices that will save me time in the future.
  • The basic stand-alone module becomes the product that’s sold. This is like the website template business, except one step closer to the non-developer consumer. Since my target market right now is the person who’s just getting started on a small scale, a rock-solid basic module is just what they need. They should be able to see what their dollar buys them; that helps allay fears that may get in the way of closing a deal.
  • The people who like what I’m doing are more likely to be people that I can work with. I am not sure how this will happen exactly, but it’s highly likely that I will meet one or two people who look at what I do, like it, and have some complementary skills and values. Documenting and sharing also helps me solidify my own understanding.
  • A growing repository of source code, well-documented and ready-to-download and experiment with, is a magnet for incoming links. This boosts page rank, increases visibility, and raises credibility. Of course, the quality needs to be there too. I don’t claim to be the best or have all the answers all the time, but I know the power of finding the right example at the right time is a blessing. These tend to come from bloggers and other people going through the same struggle. I’m happy to be part of that community.

So I have two audiences: potential clients and my peers. Potential clients don’t really need to know every technical detail, but they probably would feel good knowing that the engineering is there and how it can be customized. My peers would be interested in the technical details.

This reminds me of the way I feel toward certain cars. BMW comes to mind for having an image of both quality and engineering. However, BMWs are upscale, and I’m looking to create more of a mass-market entry-level good-enough quality+value offering. I guess that might be the renewed Hyundai USA. However, I think cars are too mass-market to be a good comparison. I’m really in an craftsman mode, putting myself back into the journeyman position, intent on showing what I can do.

The next step is to make an information page that address both potential clients and peers. This is an intermediate step; I need to gather all the information in one place so I know how to present it. Now that I am more clear on the WHY and WHO aspects, this should be sufficient to guide me in the next day.

← Older Entries