Just ran across a blog post about a new site (currently in beta) from Salted Services, called “Doctype.” There’s not much information available yet, but you can see a screenshot here and you can read a little bit about Doctype here. Looks like it will be a question/answer type site for web designers trying to troubleshoot web layout issues. I signed up for the beta, so hopefully I’ll get a login soon.
Archive for July, 2009
The MailChimp/Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress
Friday, July 10th, 2009
If you happen to be a user of MailChimp, Google Analytics, and WordPress, then this plugin might be something to check out: the Analytics360 Plugin for WordPress. The plugin pulls MailChimp and Google Analytics data right into WordPress, so all your stats are front and center when you login to WordPress.
We’ve just officially launched Crunchy Melon!
Friday, July 10th, 2009
That’s right, we’re now officially live! First off, we thought it might be helpful to answer a few questions you may have.
1) Why did we start this site?
Well, while running Slice ‘n Dice, we’re always getting asked questions about what apps to use, how to do this or that, etc, so we thought – why not put all that information in a blog and hopefully help web design business owners run their business better.
2) What’s going to be on this site?
You can expect lots of great info on here about topics that are important to web design business owners. We’ve already written a few posts on topics like: “Long proposals won’t win contracts“, “Choosing web stats for your clients“, and the super useful app “LittleSnapper“. If you have any questions for us, topics you’d like covered, or apps/services you think others would like, then please email them to us at hello at crunchymelon dot com.
3) You’re writing for “web design business owners”, what if I don’t own the company?
When we say “web design business owners” we really mean anyone who is responsible for building websites for clients, regardless of their title. So, even if you don’t own the company, you’re welcome here!
We hope you enjoy your visit!
Long proposals won’t win contracts
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
I’ve done quite a few proposals over the years. Some of them were for big sites, some were for small sites. Sometimes we’d win these proposals, and sometimes we wouldn’t.
One of the things I noticed is that longer proposals really didn’t do anything for us. Some of the proposals I created were quite long and drawn out, listing all sorts of information, reasons why the client should hire us, samples of our work, information about our team, and so on. Often at the end of presenting these proposals, I’d hear “Ok, thanks for that, we’ll have to think about it.” Of course this usually meant, “We don’t want to hire you, but we’d rather not say it to your face.” Hmm, nice.
Over the past few years, my proposals have been getting much shorter. Now they’ve gotten to the point of just a simple email, with a few sentences about how we’d do the project, along with pricing information. And you know what, we win more projects now than ever before. I’ve come to the conclusion that long proposals won’t win you any more contracts. I’d say 99% of the time, when a client contacts you, they already know whether they want to hire you or not. Usually they only want to know two things:
1) Can you make this project happen like I want?
2) What will it cost me?
If you can answer those, you’ll be well on your way to much simpler, more cost effective proposals.
Web Design Business Kit
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
If you’re looking for a great guide to running your business, you’ll want to check out the Web Design Business Kit from Sitepoint.com. I bought the first version of this kit and it really helped us run our web design company. It has great advice like how to win proposals, how to keep clients, marketing techniques, and much more.
The part I really liked though were the pre-made documents. There are proposals, agreements, contracts, faq’s… it’s really chock full of helpful documents. That being said, the one thing I didn’t like about the kit was that some of the documents seem to go on forever, so I would recommend editing these documents down to something that works for you. Overall though it’s an excellent resource.
FTP on the go, with FTP On The Go
Monday, July 6th, 2009
Imagine it’s Friday night, you’ve just left the office when suddenly your cell phone rings. It’s that client you just talked to earlier today. They wanted a change made on their website. Ok, you think to yourself, now what could they want? Cautiously you answer the phone and hear “We have to get that wording changed now!!!” Of course by “that wording” they mean the line of text in the include file, buried 3 directories deep… not the text you have setup in a CMS for them. What do you do? Well if you have FTP On The Go, you whip out your iPhone, FTP into their server, edit the file, hit save, and continue on with your weekend plans.
In case you haven’t guessed by the rather corny introduction, FTP On The Go is an iPhone app that lets you FTP into servers. You can edit files, download them to your iphone, upload files… basically anything you’d normally do via FTP can be done here. Obviously you wouldn’t want to code an entire web layout with this app, but it works great for those emergency fixes on the go.
One of the really nice features of the app is the ability to enter and save login info, so you can just hit connect to get access to your server. You can also set a password on the app itself, so if someone borrows your iPhone, you won’t have to worry about them accessing your server.
To find out more about FTP On The Go, you can visit their website or view this app in the app store.
LittleSnapper: A super easy way to create design notes
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
We use a handy little app called LittleSnapper to annotate screenshots. LittleSnapper lets you easily capture web pages, screen shots, jpgs, or even DOM elements (portions of a web page, like a table or paragraph). Once you’ve snapped something, you can add notes, arrows, lines, boxes, circles and more to the image.
We’ve found this to be great for things like marking up design comps with notes (for clients or for the designer) and leaving notes for a developer so she knows how something should be coded. For even more ideas, check out the LittleSnapper case studies.
Once you’ve annotated an image, it can be exported as a jpg/png image or you can share it on Flickr, Quicksnapper (LittleSnapper’s sharing service), or FTP/SFTP. There’s also a companion app for the iPhone.
If you need to annotate screen shots, LittleSnapper is definitely worth a look.
Using Basecamp on your iPhone
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
If you’re like me, you probably love Basecamp and your iPhone/iPod Touch. Fortunately there are several apps that allow you to use Basecamp on your iPhone.
One such app is called Outpost. It allows you to view your projects, messages, to-do’s, and milestones. Outpost will even cache a local copy of your data on your phone so you can access information and post messages/milestones/to-do’s while you’re offline. It then syncs everything once you’re back online. I’ve been using it for awhile now and really love it.
A few other apps you can checkout (note – I haven’t used these, post a comment if you like any of them): Encamp, Groundwork, Projects, Minivan, & Mother Camp.
Link: Tips on working remotely from LifeHacker
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
Here’s an interesting tip on working remotely. Most web companies are used to this sort of thing, but it could work great for remote employees or working with clients as well: