Since then the welder has proven quite handy - I was able install the new floor in the trailer, and have also been able to create a tandem bike for my kids:

And a piece of artwork for our mantle:

Over the years I’ve also used the welder to make repairs and add-ons on the 1964 CJ6 Jeep that I’m working on, as well as small repairs for friends, relatives and neighbors.

So - what I’m thinking now is that if this web development gig doesn’t work out for whatever reason, I’ll be able to go apply for any welding job because I have eight years of experience welding.

Wait - why are you rolling your eyes like that?  And what was that small huffing sound you just made?

Well, OK.  You’re right.  Picking up a small welder and dabbling in it periodically doesn’t really add up to 8 years of experience that an employer would be interested in, does it?  I have a friend who is a certified welding inspector - he owns a business that does metal fabrication so he employs professional welders and has to inspect their work.  He likes to wander around my projects and point out which welds would and wouldn’t be acceptable to him - and I usually feel good if I shoot 20%.

Yet - I see this pitching of hobby work and playing around as “experience” in the web design and development world and it seems like people fall for it in a way they wouldn’t with my welding experience.  A few weeks back I was contacted by a person who just took on a internship with a client that I had done a site for.  The project included a new custom design and deployment on a content management system so all content on the site could be updated or changed without them needing to know HTML.  It was the perfect fit for them as a business because they are small and not in a field of business where they’d naturally have people on staff with web skills. The site was immediately beneficial to them - with their previous site you couldn’t Google their name directly and get their site in the results, and the new site got them in #1 spot for their own name in short order.

However it was the classic case of having all the available tools at hand and never taking the time.  The site has sat, relatively unchanged, since we launched it roughly 4 years ago.  Then here comes the new college intern who assures me that he has been “designing websites for about 8 years now” so I wouldn’t “need to be concerned that he would end up damaging the site.”

Right.

I went to look at it yesterday and sure enough - the main navigation has been moved, the nice little main nav icons that tied into the company’s business area (and they paid for) are gone, and in the place of the main nav is now a “doesn’t quite fit in that space” blurb for “latest news”.  Latest news - for a company that had nothing new to say over 4 years time.  All the new content could have been integrated without requiring the design changes.

Specifics aside - what bothers me is my former client probably heard the same “8 years experience” line and, even though it’s coming from a college senior and therefore means that this persons “experience” started in roughly the 8th grade, gladly handed over their most prominent piece of business marketing to this person.

So business people - listen up:  Periodically noodling around with web technologies as a hobby doesn’t equal “experience”.  Sites built out of that context are rarely based on any real-world constraints of time, budget, or business requirements.  When someone uses the word “experience”, what they should be implying is “I spent a considerable portion of my day for that period of time working with this stuff” and (ideally) “people paid me for it”.

You wouldn’t look at my welding projects and hire me on to do structural, mission critical welding.  Don’t do the same with your website.

I re-read that post this morning and have a few red flags to add.

7. Previous Web Developer Baggage
Once in a while I’ll be approached by someone with a project that has already been taken on by another developer and the project has failed.  In these situations the potential client always blames the previous developer for the failure, saying they had misrepresented themselves, or were over committed, or were just flat-out not able to do the work.  The potential client will then appeal to my ego with statements like “After reviewing your portfolio it’s obvious you would be a much better fit than the previous developer was.”

But - like stories of dating relationships and marriages gone awry -I’m only hearing one side of the story.  Might the issue really have been a client with unrealistic expectations, or who were unable to pay their bills on time?

I always feel like the only real way to seriously think about taking on a project with baggage would be to interview both sides of the failed project and see if I could determine what really happened.  But the time investment for doing that is such that it never makes sense because neither side is going to want to reimburse me for that time.

Additionally, if the site is sitting there half-baked and “just needs to be finished” then I’m faced with the prospect of it being started poorly and either having to rebuild it from the ground up or being responsible for issues with the site due to poor decisions being made at the foundational level by someone with less experience than I have.

8. Emergency 911
It’s amazing the number of contacts I get for projects where the timeline is “ASAP”.  Here’s an actual request: “We need a complete EE build with content and user migration from a Drupal install, the design is in Photoshop and needs to be converted to HTML, and looks like we either need some custom EE code or use of a 3rd party module.  Oh and the deadline is in 11 days”. 

Not 11 business days, just 11 days.

So after I’m done with the gut-reaction snide response that I won’t post here, the first question I have to ask is “How did the project get to be in this state?” And if the answer is “poor project management” then the follow-up question is “What other aspects of the project are suffering due to being managed poorly?” Is the design going to be right?  Has the proper functionality been identified?

I’m reluctant to take on projects that come with a red flashing light to wear on my head - I didn’t create the crisis situation so feel no urge to shoulder the responsibility of resolving it.  Although - I have toyed with the idea of proposing to take it on, but at 2 or 2.5 times my normal rate.  So far the stress potential hasn’t been worth the possible financial gain.

9. The Client Who Knew Too Much
Maybe the better title is “The Wanna-be Developer as Client”.  When I get communications from clients that include nonsensical statements like “we like the idea of separating content from presentation for SEO reasons”, or they want to talk about URL structure before the site design or IA is done the hair on the back of my neck goes up just a bit.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate technically-savvy clients, but when they have things just a bit “off” it makes me wonder how they got there, will they be open to and capable of being re-educated, or will it be a constant struggle to get them to understand how things actually work?

10. Hi, My Name Is Tom Sawyer
Once in a while I will be contacted to put a proposal together for an ExpressionEngine site, but the real reason for the proposal request is to determine if EE is actually well-suited for the project.  The challenge with these types of requests is that in order to do a quality needs assessment and (if EE is the right fit) a proposal it requires a lot of time - which is likely why the client hasn’t done it.

ExpressionEngine provides a pre-sales forum for answering questions like this - and I’ll often even pitch in on those threads.  But if the project needs an in-depth requirements analysis then that’s really outside of what I should have to provide at no charge in the form of a quote - that’s work that should be defined as it’s own project and I should get paid for as an internet consultant with specialized CMS knowledge and experience.

11. You Don’t Know Me
Boyink Interactive was a charter member of the ExpressionEngine Professional Network, and it’s been a valuable source of leads on new projects.

The downside is I’ll often be BCC’d in on emails along with multiple other members of the Pro Network.  I’ll have to be honest—if I’m elbows-deep in projects when these emails come in they do have less weight than email addressed to me specifically, or email that has come through Boyink.com instead.  I wonder if they’ve even reviewed my work at all, or are just blasting everyone on the Pro Network to see who responds.  I don’t immediately discount these emails, but if they have any other red flags (and they often do) then it’s not likely I’ll respond to them.

12. Can You Hear Me Now?
I’ve had a few interchanges with potential clients where they just couldn’t answer simple direct questions put to them via email.  And asked two or three times in different ways.  In one case after email exchanges hadn’t worked well I scheduled a phone call with the potential client instead.  When I called at the appointed time they answered with “Uh, hello?”.  This didn’t exactly instill confidence that they could communicate well enough to work with and that they were a marketing & communication firm was the deciding factor in passing on the work.

So there you have it - now the “dirty dozen” of client red flags. Will there be more?  Only time will tell…

Hello! We are here to give your website a marketing edge over your competition! Because people judge whether to remain on your website within the first 4 seconds, you must grab their attention quickly. There is no better way to do just that than with internet personalities called NetGreeters. Imagine a customer’s surprise when a talking person invites them to personally browse your site during those four crucial seconds.

See this “marketing edge” in action here, link provided by Jambor-ee..  I can imagine site visitors being surprised to get a talking head, alright—and then annoyed that there is seemingly no “close, go away or shut up” button, clicking on it in frustration takes you to the site of the company who produces the...thing...and the talking head covers up most of the links on the page which forces you to wait before proceeding.

This is nothing more than a Flash intro overlaid onto the home page with no “Skip Intro” button...and really - if all you have to say is “welcome and there’s alot of great information here”, then you’re simply wasting people’s time with something that could be done via a photo and and a paragraph of text.

Oh - and please...if you’re going to do audio on a website record it somewhere without all the distracting background noise....

At any rate, since I couldn’t work I decided to try fishing.  I have to tell you—I know very little about fishing.  All I’ve ever really done is the hook, bobber and worm approach and I’m happy to keep the experience on that simplistic level.  There were some poles at the cottage, one was setup with the necessary tackle so my son and I went and dug up some worms. We spent an hour or so out on the dock, and managed to find a small “hot-spot” where we got nibbles and caught a couple of small sunfish (sunfish being 50% of the species I can identify on sight).

I cast the pole back into the hot-spot, and again got a nibble.  I jerked the pole to set the hook, felt that I had a fish on, and handed the pole to my son as he had yet to reel one in.  I noted that the bobber went way under as he reeled, but sunfish seem to be able to put up quite a fight for a small fish so I didn’t think anything of it. When my son lifted the fish out of the water, however, we were both amazed to see what I’m pretty sure was a large mouth bass hanging there instead.  In a split second a couple of things happened - my son and I both started making some really excited sounds, I thought “boy we should get him back in the water and drag him to shore instead of hanging him there”, I went to grab for the pole, and then the fish was gone - taking our only tackle with it.  The line had indeed broken from the weight of the fish.

My first reaction was what you’d expect - great disappointment for both my son and I over losing out on such a nice catch.  But as I watched my son scramble off the dock towards the cottage to go tell my wife and daughter what had just happened, I had to smile as I realized we had caught something else that no brittle fishing line could take away - a great story.  In the day and a half since that moment the conversation has turned back to it several times - and I’m (almost) glad the fish got away as I think it makes the story even better.

Mulling over it since - this one small event has renewed my belief that, for all of our concerns over the technology of the internet, at the end of the day it’s a storytelling medium.  The great challenge - as people both with stories to tell and for those of us in business to build things that enable others to tell their stories, is to not lose focus on the end goal.  Sure - design, fonts, colors, content management and a score of other things are important.  But if at the end of a visit to a site a visitor hasn’t been the recipient of a fun, intriguing, engaging and memorable story then all of our efforts have been wasted.

Personally I’m going to try and do a better job of that here on Boyink.com.  What that means, exactly, I haven’t figured out yet - better project overviews, better blog posts, a revision of the About section - anything’s possible...but I need to work on being a better storyteller.

I found one - search engine placement. After only a few short weeks of use my Twitter page is showing up at #3 in Google results for a search on “Boyink”.

Lesson learned - use Twitter, with a link to your business site from your Twitter profile, to boost or protect your site’s position in search results.

The document doesn’t really detail out the site - just including a few specific functions it needs to have.  And it breaks the project out into a discovery phase and a production phase, so they expect some time to be spent doing audience confirmation, needs analysis, user/stakeholder interviews, determining required functionality, etc.

Yet - they want a budget that covers both the discovery and production.  A fixed fee, even.

So - we don’t know what we want, we want your help in figuring that out, but you need to tell us how much the whole thing will cost beforehand.

Do web development companies actually do this?

And the questions!  They stop just short of asking about your childhood and what situations from it might benefit the building of their site…

Oh - and gotta love this jewel:

The price is commensurate with the value offered by the candidate. As a non-profit institution, the _______ is able to to accept pro-bono service and recognize the provider to the full extent allowed by the Internal Revenue Service, including naming the provider within the web site and other collateral as an _______ supporter and partner.

So, if you build us a free site we’d let you put your name on it.

Wow.  Such a deal.

I’d be interested in hearing about other experiences in reading and responding to web site RFP’s....I’m betting there are some interesting ones out there.

And yes, if I end up taking part in a response to this RFP, you can expect this blog post to go away...if I end up passing on it I’ll post more snippets - there are quite a few good ones.

I want to play with Twitter a bit to see if it has benefits for businesses.  Anyone else using Twitter?  What for?

As part of that withdrawal, I took myself a bit outside the “internet hype-loop”, which I was reminded of this week.

I was reading an announcement regarding an upcoming site launch, and I hadn’t a clue what it was about.  I’m guessing if I had stayed subscribed to all those feeds, and read Digg faithfully I would have known what this announcement was talking about.

But I don’t think it was entirely due to my withdrawal.  I’ve noted that the marketing around so-called “Web 2.0” sites seems to be done in a strange way - with all sizzle and no steak.  I recently bumped into an old co-worker, and asked him what he was doing now.  For a couple of minutes he went on, talking about “new channels to market”, and “Web 2.0” and “Community” and when he finished up to take a phone call I sat there, still wondering “Yeah, but what does the site do?” After spending some time on Google I found that it’s a place for film buffs to interact with other film buffs, and the site will also sell films online.  OK, why not just say that?

Again this week, I read another announcement about a site. The first thing that struck me was that the site hadn’t launched yet - it was yet another teaser announcement with no projected launch date for the site.  It went on to hype up the features that are “in the works” and that I should subscribe to the nifty AJAXified mailing list.  Then I could help out with the private beta at some point in the future.

My reaction...was a large stifled yawn.  First - if you didn’t already know about another site that this one is related to (and I didn’t) the whole announcement was pointless.  Second - do people still get excited about sites that don’t yet exist?  Call me cynical - but call me when it’s actually launched.  Third - why is it still about the “features”?  Is AJAX still the Web 2.0 Pied Piper - gathering users in it’s wake?  And fourth - do people actually have time they are willing to spend helping out these sites during a “Beta” phase?  Methinks Tom Sawyer would have made a killing in Web 2.0 marketing…

And so your point is.....

Good question.  I guess my point is I’m still somewhat mystified over the whole Web 2.0 thing, I’m amazed that people continue to spend time, energy and money trying to make a better MySpace, and I’m surprised that the “hyping up fluff” marketing methods around these sites are still getting used.

Isn’t it time for another round of innovation?

On the other hand, we dropped cable for our single 13” TV.  I have a cell phone, but if I use it twice a week that’s a lot.  I absolutely will not allow any game consoles in our house.  I don’t use IM, PDA’s, or any social networking tools. 

Overall - I just want to make sure that each addition of technology to my life really makes something easier, saves me time or money, or leads to more income and I’m not using it just for the sake of using it or because it’s the latest thing on Digg.

Which is a long lead-in to the reason for this post.  I visited a client the other day - a large client, the type that has a formal reception area and the typical “sign-in” book where you write your name, your business name and who you there to visit.  And (if you’re like me) you scan the other names of the book to see if your competitors are there and who they’re visiting.

On my previous visit some months ago the normal reception book had been replaced with a computerized system.  The receptionist had to walk me through how to use it, I typed in the data, and the system printed out a label which the receptionist affixed to a badge for me to wear.  The tag had my name but largely had the client’s logo on it.  I had to estimate how long this project was going to go on - as the tag had an expiration date, after which I would have to go through the whole process again.

I walked away with mixed feelings.  First off - I didn’t like being literally “branded” with the clients logo on a tag I had to wear.  No good reason, really, just that if I have to wear something branded on my person I’d prefer it be my brand - however insignificant it is compared to the client’s brand. 

Second - the whole check-in process took at least 5x longer than the old-fashioned sign-in book - mostly, I know, due to it being my first time using it. However, even if familiar with the system if I had to start over again it still would take longer.

Third - what are those sign-in books there for anyway?  I’ve questioned them in the past and the only answer was from the head security guy—saying that if there were an emergency they would use the sign-in book to know what visitors were in the building.  I had to wonder if this new system would be valuable in that respect - if an emergency occurred, assuming it was one that didn’t lead to loss of power, how long would it take to get that data out?

Back to my most recent visit.  I entered the building and out of habit went to sign the book.  I then remembered the new system and started to move to it.  The receptionist caught my eye, shook her head, and waved me into the building.

I wasn’t able to speak to anyone about it - but can only assume that this was another case of a complex technological “solution” replacing a very simple “problem” and being rejected by it’s users because it made their job harder or just wasn’t worth the effort.  The bigger question is how long that system will sit there, gathering dust, until the people behind it are willing to admit that it has failed and bring the “old fashioned” sign-in book back.

All in all it’s reaffirmed for me that there is much logic to starting simple. Yes - setting up an eCommerce section for a new project is fun and exciting.  But how about starting out with a phone number?  Or taking advantage of existing services like CafePress?  Yes, we can create fancy web contact email forms that route email to different people based on subject, but how about we start simple and see how often that contact form gets used? 

How about it - have you seen cases of mis-applied technology?  Have you developed something yourself that seemed like a good idea at the time but in retrospect wasn’t?

We’re interested in a content management system like Expression Engine. Please advise as to cost and timing. Our URL is ________.  Thank you.

Simply put - I can only quote a project to the same level of detail as it’s been specified.  In the case of the above—which is a slightly edited version of an inquiry email I recently received, I can’t even begin to put numbers or timing on the project as it’s simply too vague.

I always think of websites as being a bit like a custom-built house.  I don’t think people would approach a home-builder and say, “Hi - I’d like a house.  How much would that cost and when can you have it done?” The potential customer would know that in order to estimate the cost of building a house there are many decisions that have to be made that further define the project - the overall square footage, the number of bedrooms vs. the number of bathrooms, the location, the finish materials (brick or vinyl siding, etc). 

I know the comparison falls apart a bit under heavy scrutiny - as in most areas there is a rough “cost per square foot” number that people use.  But you get the idea - vague definitions can only get vague answers. 

Same thing with a website - in order to quote prices, I need requirements.

Iif you don’t feel comfortable defining your own requirements, I can develop those for you as a consulting service.  We would agree to a certain number of hours (typically 15-20), and I would spend those hours interviewing your staff and customers, analyzing your current content, finding out more about your current business and future goals, etc.  The deliverables for this engagement are an internet strategy document that summarizes my findings and plots out a build approach, a sitemap, and a set of wireframes that begin to map out the structure of the site (like an architect’s blueprints).  At this point you could take those deliverables and use them to get estimates from any number of web developers.

If you want to develop your own requirements, this Project Survey (MSWord format) provided by the folks at ExpressionEngine is a good start.  You likely won’t be able to answer all the questions, but answering what ones you can will help me start to determine what your project will cost.

Please understand - I don’t intend this to come off as a rant.  As a small business owner I appreciate each and every inquiry for work that I receive.  I just want to be able to provide estimates that are as accurate as possible - and I’m sure as a potential client that’s what you want as well. 

In order to do that I just plain need more detail about the proposed project.