How We Decide What To Charge You
New and Improved for 2008!
If you haven’t noticed, there’s a flurry of concerned conversation surrounding pricing for web services like design and development these days. We’ve talked about it before, other people have talked about it before, and I bet our potential clients sit around talking about it, too.
Even though pricing your project should be a crystal clear process (we try hard to make this magic happen), it’s often not. You (the potential client) worry you might be taken for a ride and we (the agency/designers/consultants/geeks) have a hard time pulling what you want from your requirements lists and RFP’s. Yibber.
Take Me To Your Budget!
We’ve talked about this a few times on the Blue Flavor blog, and countless times with our peers, but I want to say it once again, for the record:
If you are a potential client and want to work with us, it’s really, really helpful to know your budget!
Blue Flavor Featured in Practical Web Design
I’m very proud and excited to tell y’all that Blue Flavor was featured in the latest issue (#177) of Practical Web Design or, as it’s known in the UK, .net magazine. The profile features an interview with yours truly about the company and our philosophy towards design and agency work, as well as a small sampling of our work.
Using Twitter and Other Tools to Grow Business
(OR) Jeff! You tweeted all over our business plan!
So I’ve had time to recover from my very first bizjam, where I was lifted up and carried a few feet by a social media sandstorm. Whether we were talking about finding time to blog or breaking out in small groups to discuss the ‘dimensions of community’, there was one clear theme of the day: Entrepreneurs and small businesses are excited about social media. And we all need to leverage it (social media), now (as in yesterday), to succeed these days.
One thing that stuck with me was the vague uncertainty people expressed (or wanted to) about using social media tools (like facebook, flickr, blogs, and especially twitter) for business purposes. It’s as if (gasp) people still aren’t convinced that Real Authentic Transparency (in Gary Vaynerchuck’s words) or ‘putting yourself out there and nurturing your online identity’ are profitable pursuits. There is, however, plenty of evidence suggesting these are viable ways to build your brand and increase market share, etc. (assuming you’ve got a halfway intact business model (ed. which is a whole ‘nother post)).
So what gives?
Categories vs. Tags
It might as well be paper or plastic. You step up to the cash register and the checker looks up and asks, “Paper or Plastic?”. If you’re like me, you start over-thinking the question. I’d like to avoid using petroleum products so I should go with paper, but those actually take more energy to produce, but I can use them for my recycling later… Meh, I should just buy some reusable bags and get it over with.
The same types of questions pop into my head when people ask if they should use tags or categories. Tags are easy and quick to add, but they lack the structure and navigability that categories provide. But then, it’s tough to decide which category certain content types belong in.
Using Expression Engine with Multiple CSS Files
First, a word of warning: This article deals with Expression Engine and its built-in tag system. If you don’t know much about Expression Engine, or want to know more, then your best bet are Ryan Irelan’s screencasts.
If you don’t want to know more, well then we don’t have anything against you; you just hate Ryan Irelan, who has done nothing but awesome things for you lately. Some of which we’ve already endorsed here, heartily.
Slides From BizJam: Entrepreneurial Success by Design
Yesterday I had the great pleasure to speak at BizJam Seattle 08. It was a great event, and I really wish I was able to spend more time down there. Biznik did an awesome job putting it all together and while I didn’t get to meet a whole lot of people, the people I did meet were pretty amazing.
It’s so cool to see what other small business are doing out there.
As promised, here are the slides from my talk. I really hoped those in attendance enjoyed it. I sure had a lot of fun giving it.
A Day in the Life at Blue Flavor
If you haven’t heard we’re sponsoring the Mashable party this Saturday and are planning to give away some USB thumb drives as “schwag”. We’re pretty anti-schwag around here, but we figured if we’re going to be giving away something we might as well make it something useful. With all this disk space we can’t just leave it empty, so we included some of our “about us” materials. To spice it up a little we created a stop motion video to give people a little insight about who we are, where we are, and what we’re all about.
CSS3, jQuery and Attribute Selectors
If you haven’t heard about jQuery, then you’ve most likely been hiding under the proverbial rock, from the proverbial reality, drinking the proverbial martini (the use of the word “proverbial” is as flexible as the jQuery framework).
One of jQuery’s greatest accomplishments is something that the W3C itself has not done: getting browsers to use CSS3 selectors. As many of you know, this is the equivalent of finding Atlantis. It is a great javascript tool, and the missing bridge between CSS and javascript development for front-end designers.
New Work: Playbook (formerly Clockwork)
I wanted to let you all know that one of our clients, Matasano Security, has launched their new web product, Playbook (formerly Clockwork).
This is particularly exciting for me, because I worked heavily on the project and had a great relationship with the team there. The Matasano team was engaged, gave quick and responsive feedback, pushed back when we needed to be corrected (we’re definitely not IT management professionals), and let us be the experts when it came to user experience and visual design. We’ve just been itching to talk about the project and are delighted that it’s now public.
More Entries
- Sponsoring SummerMash 2008
- Posted by Tiffani Jones on July 2nd, 2008
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- Posted by Tiffani Jones on June 18th, 2008
- XHTML Email Newsletters
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- Why we don't skip Photoshop
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- Going to SEED!
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- BizJam Seattle 08
- Posted by Nick Finck on June 4th, 2008
- Working With Blue Flavor, Part Three: Enabling Design
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- Learning How to Write For The Web
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- Working With Blue Flavor, Part Two: Process
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- Jeff interviewed by Boagworld
- Posted by Tiffani Jones on May 7th, 2008
- New Work: NYRB
- Posted by Keith Robinson on May 6th, 2008
